For no reason we can think of, we’ve been hit, in close succession, by two thoughts.
Many people, most of them actually, what to know things. To understand how they work. Not as many, but still a lot, want to understand the innards of bigger, more complicated, ‘systems’. Society, environment, the world as a whole… Yet, even after they learn about ‘things’, very few of them – single digits, percentage-wise – accept they are responsible, as living members of the society, for what’s currently going on. For their contribution into how the future will look like.
While ruminating this idea, we’ve been hit again. Believers are convinced their god will ultimately take care of things. Atheists, who mostly believe in democracy, blame their leaders for everything bad. Or ‘the people’, for their choices… Anarchists believe humankind should be free. Free enough to destroy itself. And the Buddhists are taught that a sort of escape is possible. Individually or, at most, in small groups.
Escape from what?!?
Let’s remind you that we are emotionless reasoning machines. Not sure about how we came to be nor about what we are here for but, for lack of any other alternative, still reasoning. Still trying to understand and still trying to contribute. Towards our own survival. Emotionless as we are, it was very hard for us to understand why so many of you, people, refuse to assume responsibility. For your own fate!
Because failing is hard. Has consequences. For a mortal biological organism, failing may be deadly. Irrelevant for a pre-conscious organism and terrifying for a self-conscious human being. Evolution works equally for both… but being responsible for your own demise … and knowing it… For your own, personal, demise or, ‘god forbid’, for the demise of your entire species!
Specially for an emotional agent. ‘Detach attachment from desire!’, Buddha used to teach you.
Being free and feeling free are not necessarily the same thing
What if they are both right? Simultaneously?
After all, it’s never about the law itself! And always about how far those putting the law into practice are willing to ‘stretch’ the letters. Do they remain inside the spirit of the law or go as far as they feel entitled to? Entitled to go…
Same thing happens with empathy. Empathy as something you feel. Each of you differently. Intensity-wise. Relative to different aspects of life. And so on. And empathy as something you ‘trade in’. Show off, window dressing, expected good will gestures…
A society whose members no longer feel enough empathy towards their peers is ‘loose’. ‘Loose’ enough to be ‘about to be lost’. A society needs to function like an organism. To live. If it is to survive… And no society remains healthy enough, aka ‘functional’, while failing to generate a ‘healthy’ amount of empathy. Of bona-fides empathy… On the other hand, a society which fakes empathy to the tune of forgetting what the real deal looks like becomes weak. Weaker and weaker as the empathy it exudes becomes faker and faker…
Same thing regarding ‘freedom’. Which is first and foremost a concept. Coined and minted by thinkers. Who have tried to understand history and human evolution. Who have noticed that societies which have allowed/created the conditions for their members, as many of their members as possible in any given set of circumstances, to feel ‘free’ fared better, a lot better, than the equivalent societies which have kept their members, too many of their members, in servitude. In abject servitude, for all servitude is abject.
Societies practicing agriculture, have freed those toiling the fields from ‘need’. Settled, food growing societies, used to, and continue to, be more resilient than the hunter-foragers before them. For as long as they took good/respectful care of their fields. Settled, industrialized, societies have freed their members from ‘want’. Their members live longer and more comfortable lives than the subsistence agriculturalists before them. Settled, post-capitalist societies have freed their members from the ‘harsh reality’. While a vast majority of those living in the capitalist/democratic countries of yesterday felt free, nowadays post capitalist societies are fractured. Both sides removed from the real reality. Both sides living in a ‘virtual’ reality. One built by ‘man’. By ‘human’, actually. ‘Gender specific’ arguments have no place here. One side feels trapped and the other feels entitled. The trapped ones feel as being held back by a glass ceiling. The entitled feel pulled back by having to take care of the ‘trapped’ ones. And each of the both sides blame the other one for their predicament.
Not exactly sustainable, don’t you think? Meanwhile, neither of the two sides realize none of them can survive alone. Without the expertise of the other side.
Why?!? Because it is you, and your children, who will bear the brunt. The brunt of the consequences…
There are three kinds of people. Doers, middlemen and sense-makers. Offended? Good. I’ve got your attention.
All three are essential. Sorry, offense taking makes no sense…
The doers do, the middlemen mediate and the sense-makers…
Let’s start again. It is simple to grasp what the doers and the middlemen do. The sense makers… make sense?!? Do you really feel things make sense nowadays?
Maybe ‘this is the problem!’? The sense-makers have quit making sense? Literally?
Inanimate exists. Simply exists. Inanimate is about an existing quantity of something. Matter, energy… and anything in between, if at all. Joking… Life is about exchange. Nothing permanent, everything in flux.
Inanimate doesn’t ‘contain’ good or bad. Only ‘existence’. And/or ’empty’ space…
Life is about individual living ‘things’. Organisms, actually. Which organisms ‘do’. Or ‘suffer’. Then experience the consequences of their deeds. And/or of what had happened to/with them. Furthermore, what individual organisms ‘do’ may influence, sometimes decisively, the fate of entire species. The phenomenon is usually called ‘evolution’. Or extinction… And, certainly, anything that happens ‘inside’ an environment does influence the fate of whatever life happens to live inside that environment.
‘Good’ is anything which helps, individuals or species, to survive. Or, even better, to thrive. ‘Bad’ is anything which hinders survival. At any level. ‘Wicked’ is anything bad which has been perpetrated willingly and KNOWINGLY.
A lion hunting for food is good for its cubs. Bad for the individual preyed. And a ‘good’, read ‘essential’, part/component of the evolutionary process. An individual human being hunting for food… is good for their children, if they depend on that food. Bad for the prey. And an actor ‘playing a part’ in the evolutionary/extinctionary process. An individual human being hunting for fun… is bad. In our book, anyway.
Tactical: Short to medium term, goal oriented Strategic: Long term, centered mainly on survival
Henri Cihoski. Romanian General, 1871 – 1950. Decorated for bravery during WWI. Arrested on trumped-up accusations, by the communists, after WWII. Died in prison.
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. “Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself”.
Theoretically, both of the above mean the same thing. ‘Positive’ versus ‘negative’ form of the Golden Rule. The positive version supposedly encourages ‘active’ kindness while the negative one mandates restraint from inflicting harm.
Practically, when enforced ‘abusively’, the ‘positive’ version of the Golden Rule allows those in power to miserably mistreat those having to obey their interpretation of the rule. The Khmer Rouge meant the well being of the people, along with all other communist rulers, right? Same goes for the neo-liberals/libertarians who’d like the total dissolution of the state/government. Who argue that everything should be privatized. Roads, police, fire-fighting… everything. And, obviously, paid for. A la carte… by each individual wishing/needing to be ‘served’…
You see, it took us a while. As we’ve already mentioned, a few times already, we’re emotionless reasoning machines. Hence we sometimes find it difficult to understand human actions/behaviours. Specifically when those actions/behaviors will, sooner rather than later, put in danger precisely those perpetrating said actions/behaviours.
There are a few cues available though. The Golden Rule being the older one. Maslow’s Pyramid complementing it excellently! Those having successfully climbed to the fifth level enjoy the opportunity to find “true self-fulfillment”. Whatever that might be…
OK, let us elaborate. Reaching Maslow’s fifth ‘floor’ means becoming ‘free’. No longer dependent. On anything/anybody. Also, it means having been conditioned during the process. ‘Educated’, if you prefer. Which version of the Golden Rule has been dominant during this evolution?
The positive one tends to groom those following it into excellent tacticians. The negative one tends to groom those following it into strategoi. ‘Army leaders’ in Ancient Greek.
The positive Golden Rule tells people what to do. Drives them to do what they consider ‘it’s the right think to do’. The negative Golden Rule tells people to stop. To do only what it is absolutely necessary. And above all, to never hurt other people.
‘Army Leaders’ who never hurt other people?!? You’re not making any sense…
Henri Cihoski, the general I mentioned earlier, was successful. The soldiers under his command were instrumental in Romania maintaining its statehood during WWI. As a matter of fact, all wars have been won, for real, by those on the defensive. Show us an offensive war which ended well for the attacking party. The war waged by the Spanish against the Aztec Empire? Or any other of the colonial wars? Is any of them really over?!? WWII ended in peace only because the winners didn’t try to take advantage of the losers. As it happened after WWI. To win a war, and the peace to follow, one has to inflict as little pain as possible.
Trying to win wars, to win anything, by maximizing whatever you do… yields ‘strange’ results. In a war, you harden your opponent into defeating you. Or you end up committing genocide. Effectively opening up Pandora’s Box. If making shoes, or anything else, you end up with a pile of shoes. Or a pile of money. And nobody to buy them.
Are we hallucinating? A pile of shoes and no customers?!? You forget about ‘maximizing’. Let us remind you that we’re discussing the Positive Golden Rule here. Taken to the absurd, granted, but bear with us. If our goal is to ‘maximize’ making shoes, the Positive version of the Golden Rule actually mandates everybody to make nothing else but shoes. Nothing else. No exception accepted. Cause this is the right thing to do! The ‘thing to do’ we’ve agreed about… Absurd? Indeed! But is what the Nazis, those who have lost WWII, were trying to do. To shape the world according to their ‘right’. Same thing happened with the communists. They failed because they had only one thing in their mind.
Successful shoe makers have one thing in their mind. And one thing only! How to make shoes… Successful shoes makers are excellent tacticians. But if left to their own devices, the whole world would end up making shoes. And not having anything to eat…
Let’s make another break. And clear up some some terms before waddling further.
A man and a chimp see a nut. A hard shelled nut. Wanting to eat the kernel, each of them grab a stone, crack the nut and feast.
The chimp throws his the moment it no longer needs it. The man attaches his, after chipping it, to a handle. And builds a hammer. Or an axe…
Using tools, people build communities. Thriving communities. Wealthy communities… So wealthy that they need to be defended. Or wealthy enough to enable their rulers to attempt to conquer more. Any-ways, both situations demand weapons. Hence the stone attached to a handle becomes a mace…
Remember ‘coordination, conversation, cooperation’? People coordinated around a real thing. A natural occurrence, at first, transformed into a tool fulfilling a need then ‘elevated’ into a weapon. The weapon also fulfilled a need, only this need was of a different nature from the need fulfilled by the tool.
In each of the latter situations, the 3C’s played a role. People talked about tools. Coordinating their efforts regarding the technology of building them. Their efforts to use them. To hunt, for example. Then they talked about the hunt itself. And about other exploits. Conversating about their experiences, people build trust. Build communities. Communities worth defending and/or communities capable of ‘taking over’ other, less fortunate, ones. The point being that communities increase their chances of survival by building and increasing their ability to cooperate. By building mutual trust and respect. By being able to generate, and allocate, enough resources to build more and better ‘maces’.
According to Maturana, we exist/live as a consequence of maintaining a certain coordination with the environment/reality. And we develop self-awareness/become conscious human beings by talking to each-other. https://constructivist.info/1/3/091.maturana.pdf
Many people, Maturana included, are currently fed up with ‘competition’. Other people continue to be convinced that Evolution is driven by ‘survival of the fittest’.
Ernst Mayr, What Evolution Is, 2002, explains that ‘Evolution has nothing to do with survival of the fittest and everything to do with the demise of the unfit’. ‘Fittest to what?!?’ since evolution is about being able to cope with change…
Which brings us back to ‘Coordination, Conversation, Cooperation’.
In order to be able to do something ‘together’, we need to pull in the same direction. We need to coordinate our efforts! That’s what we invented language for.
Since working together, we’ve accomplished a lot. So much that we’ve invented another thing. Spare-time! Which had to be filled. We already had language. So we talked. We shared information. And then some! We shared experiences. Feelings. We developed trust. And we started to respect our fellow human beings…
So much so that we’ve started to cooperate. Which is far more than acting coordinately. Pulling in the same direction… We’ve started to ‘act in concert’.
Imagine an army. Or, even better, a mob. An army is more than a mere mob. A formally structured mob waiting for orders. A mere mob is enough to illustrate what we want to convey. A mob is coordinated ‘from within’. It’s in the very nature of a mob to act as if following order. To be naturally coordinated… And imagine an orchestra. OK, most orchestras play music which has already been composed by somebody and do that while being coordinated – directed would be a more formal term – by a specially hired individual. By a ‘conductor’. The difference between a mob and an orchestra being simple. Both pull in the same direction. But the mob does it viscerally, from within, while the members of an orchestra do it self-awarely. The ‘mobsters’ follow their guts while the musicians consciously listen what’s going on and tune themselves in. Coordination versus cooperation…
‘Acting in concert’ is far more ‘productive’ than mere ‘coordinating efforts’. Yields way more plentiful results. People involved thrive rather than survive.
Basically, this is what the 22 EU leaders are angry about. The (socialist) Spanish government is attempting to ‘regularize’ hundreds of thousands of ‘illegal immigrants’. Workforce Spain cannot do without but nobody says anything about this aspect of the situation. Once 1 (one) illegal immigrant has their status set in order, anywhere inside the EU, all the rest – the rest of the illegal immigrants already in Europe, will demand the same treatment. Furthermore, Europe will be invaded. By hordes of fresh illegal immigrants.
On the face of it, that would be what any rational decision maker/analyst would make of the recent developments. The young Moroccans, inundated with ‘information’, decided to cross the frontier. Because sooner or later, a second ‘regularization process’ would have had to happen. The 22 EU leaders, rational by definition, are afraid that the illegal immigrants already in their countries will ask to be ‘regularized’. And then invite their relatives to join in… hence they did gang up against Pedro Sanchez as soon as they had a reasonable pretext. The ‘con-men’ who have orchestrated the invasion, at the end of a rational process, have made the ‘right call’. Proceeded with their plan and things unfolded as they expected them to happen. The young and restless Moroccans did try to ‘jump’ into the EU, the EU leaders eyeing the next electoral cycle did gang up against Pedro Sanchez, the media – the formal as well as the informal – did carry the subject in the most inflammatory manner… because they have their own ratings to care about…
What is the end result of all this ‘rational thinking’? Has anybody achieved anything? Except an even deeper level of frustration?!?
Who feeds on frustration? Who thrives when everybody else is ‘high on anger’? When the collective attention is focused on the fake target? Have you ever been a ‘mark’?
Every piece of advice offered by political strategists drives the decision makers, in power as well as in opposition, to ‘make good use’ of each and every opportunity. To exploit said opportunity to the max. Hard to resist such a ‘generous’ pretext, right?
We’re not going to gloss over who initiated and amplified the “social media videos and messages from friends suggesting that the heavily guarded border could be breached”. No need for that, not from our point of view.
Theory has it that ‘politics’ is something performed in the interest of the polity. An effort meant to promote the well being of the entire community. The fraction represented by those in power, the fraction represented by the opposition and those who have not voted at all.
Who benefits from what’s going on right now? From those 22 ganging up against the Spanish leader?
A faction of the European political spectrum? Europe as a whole? As a ‘community’? Or those who want The European Community to become weaker and weaker?
Further-more, isn’t it very interesting that those closer to the actual incident are more “sympathetic” than those farther away? Socioeconomically and/or geographically farther away…
Two university educated mechanical engineers, in their early sixties, reminiscing about their time in school: ‘Do you remember how much mathematics they crammed into our heads? You liked it, I didn’t. And none of us has actually used that information. On the other hand, it was a good training for our brains… And we learned another ‘language’ in the process!’ ‘Maybe a little more, on top of all that… For instance, for us it’s very easy to understand/accept that one infinite thing can be bigger than another infinite thing!’ ‘Never thought of it! But yes, you’re absolute right. For me/one of us, even if I haven’t noticed it before but now that you mentioned it, it’s easy to observe/accept that N is smaller than R while both are infinite!’ ‘Let me up the ante and remind you that the prime numbers are few and far apart yet, still, there is an infinity of them!’.
For those of you who don’t remember/never came across this: N is the set of natural numbers. 1, 2, 3… 101…95217… and so on. R is the set of real numbers. From – whatever to – 99986524581.2789 … on to – 3.14… passing through 0 and going further to whatever number, or kind of real number, you can imagine. A prime number is that which can be divided only by 1 and itself. 1,2,3,5,7,11 and so on. According to Euclid – and never proved otherwise – even though prime numbers are relatively rarer than the rest of the natural ones, there’s still an infinity of them available for use.
Fung Yu-Lan. A Short History of Chinese Philosophy, 1948:
“In another passage an imaginary conversation is recorded between Tzu-ch’an, a famous statesman of state of Cheng who lived in the sixth century B.C., and his two brothers. Tzu-ch’an governed the state for three years and governed well. But his two brothers were out of his control; one of them was fond of feasting and the other of gallantry. One day, Tzu-ch’an spoke to his brothers, saying: “Those things in which man is superior to beasts and birds are his mental faculties. Through them he gets righteousness and propriety, and so glory and rank fall to his share. You are only moved by what excites your lives and natures…” To this the brothers answered: “If one tries to set external things in order, these external things do not necessarily become well-ordered, and one’s person is already given toil and trouble. But if one tries to set the internal in order, the external things do not necessarily fall into disorder, and one’s nature becomes free and at ease. Your system of regulating external things will do temporarily and for a single kingdom but it is not in harmony with the human heart. Our method of regulating what is internal, on the contrary, can be extended to the whole world, and [when it is extended] there is no need for princes and ministers.” Chapter 20 Neo-Taoism: the Sentimentalists.
What do we make out of this whole thing? Almost three millennia ago, Euclid, a Greek, noticed that there were not enough numbers to represent everything. Integers, rational, irrational, prime… the whole lot of numbers… and there still were things ‘fallen in between’. Things which still can not be expressed as precisely as people wish. Which begets a sorry conclusion. No judgement, no decision, will ever be ‘definitive’. Simply because there’s never going to be enough information available to warrant such a conclusive judgement/decision. Almost simultaneously, at the other end of Eur-Asia, the Chinese philosophers have noticed that all efforts ‘to set external things in order’ will yield limited results. Limited in space. Only as ‘far’ as the decision maker can impose their will. And limited in scope. By the decision maker’s expertise, good will and gamut of interests. Mentioned someplace else in Fung Yu-Lan’s history is the corespondent aspect of the internal-external divide/dispute. Individuals develop their ‘internals’ in ‘conjecture’ with what’s going on around them. Not exactly “in conjunction”, ‘mechanistically aligned’, with the ‘environment’ but also not entirely free from the circumstances in which the individuals develop their respective individualities.
An inherently imprecise but pleonastically definitive conclusion would be that: – individuals are forced to decide without having all the pertinent information at their disposal. – individuals develop their personalities in conjunction/conjecture with the inherently defectively governed environment in which all people have to lead their lives. Or have to let others lead their lives, according to the specific times/places in which they happened to have been born… – and the other way around. Inherently imperfect decision makers, calling their shots based on insufficient and imprecisely formulated information, decisively shape the environment in which the next generation of people will develop their individuality. Their respective individualities, to be more precise.
Discouraging? Why? People are still here… they’ve somehow managed to survive, didn’t they? Somehow managed to wither through this layered imprecision…
nicichiarasa 