The most horrible thing about this poster is that it contributes to the fallacy that having five cars and a huge mansion will necessarily make you happy.
The way I see it the ‘war on inequality’ is following in the steps of the ‘war on drugs’ and the ‘war on terror’.
Fighting symptoms never cures the ailment, at most it provides temporary relief until the patient’s death, pun intended.
What we need is something to hope for, to believe in.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/the-real-cause-of-addicti_b_6506936.html

Activists dismantle Ukraine’s biggest monument to Lenin at a rally in the eastern city of Kharkiv on Sept. 28, 2014. Photo: Igor Chekachkov/Associated Press

Wall Street Journal reports that Ukrainian people are somewhat baffled by  a new law banning the use of Soviet (and Nazi) symbols.

“While few outside Crimea and the rebel strongholds of eastern Ukraine want to join Russia, not all Ukrainians are ready to repudiate a joint history that remains dear to many across generations.

“I wanted to tell my child that there was ‘Uncle Lenin,’ and at one point Mama took part in a big celebration in Kiev” in honor of the first Soviet leader, said 37-year-old Svetlana Arshavina, who lives in this suburb northwest of the capital.

“Now what will I tell her? That they took Uncle Lenin and smashed him to pieces?” she asked.”

Isn’t it rather strange that the nephews of those who survived the 1921 Famine still harbor any respect for the likes of Lenin?

http://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraine-tries-adapting-to-life-without-lenin-1432324644
https://www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/article/other/5rfhjy.htmhttp://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/famine-1919.htm

Efficient Market Hypothesis, eh?
The proponents of this hypothesis posit that all participants to the market are perfectly rational and that they all have enough pertinent information about what is going on as to be able to reach reasonable business decisions.
Now consider this: ‘ten percent of the egg producers being wiped out results in a up to 85% hike in retail prices’.
Quite reasonably, don’t you think?
As for efficiency… maybe for the owners of the surviving ‘egg producers’…

Sometimes yes.
For instance in an economy where cash is readily available some employers might be tempted to split the compensation they give to their employees in two parts. An upfront one – which gets to be reported to the IRS – and a behind the counter one, that is settled directly between the employer and the employee. If a minimum wage is enforced the state knows for sure how much will be the taxable part.
Or in a situation when enough of the employers get together, form a cartel and start lowering the wages so much that the ordinary people end up dying of hunger.

Otherwise…

In fact there are many opinions about how this concept imposes undue constraints upon the economy. Some say it discourages job creation, others say it makes it a lot harder to start a new business and so on…

While all these opinions have their merits, just as the concept itself has its own, I think the situation is a little bit more complicated than this.

For starters I’m going to introduce the concept of ‘priming’.
“Priming refers to the incidental activation of knowledge structures, such as trait concepts and stereotypes, by the current situational context. Many studies have shown that the recent use of a trait construct or stereotype, even in an earlier or unrelated situation, carries over for a time to exert an unintended, passive influence on the interpretation of behavior.”
In other words an established mind set influences both the way we see a certain situation and the decisions we make in certain circumstances.

Minimum wages do exactly that. It both sets our minds in a certain way and establishes a certain set of circumstances.

First of all it tells us that it’s OK to compensate labor as little as possible and then settles an ‘acceptable’ minimum.

I see some of you fretting: “And what’s wrong with paying as little as possible? Are you nuts? I have a bottom line to worry about here!”

Precisely. You should take into consideration the whole picture – the bottom line – instead of short-sightedly aiming your efforts towards short term cost cutting.

Henry Ford taught us a very valuable lesson more than a hundred years ago.
By paying each of the workers more you might end up lowering your aggregate labor costs on the medium time frame.
But there’s more. What Ford did created the conditions for a mentality change. Receiving more money prompted workers to start planning ahead. On $2.25 a day Ford’s workers could afford to work for 3 days a week and spend the rest drinking. On 5 bucks a day they realized they could raise a family. Things changed dramatically. They stopped skipping work and this is how the famous American working middle class was introduced to the world.

The advent of minimum wages turned back the wheels of history. Blue collar employees were returned to the condition of working beasts whose work is no longer evaluated on an individual basis but compensated according to some opaque calculations made by government bureaucrats.
The companies no longer compete among themselves for the best available talent; they just hire anonymous ‘industrial operators’ from a pool of undistinguished semiskilled, disheartened laborers.

The entire economy suffers, from lack of solvable demand and an increasing apathy that doesn’t bode well for the future.

Also, demography doesn’t help any.
I keep hearing that individuals should improve their skills if they want to live better and that mature people who see working for McDonald’s as a life-time career cannot ever expect a ‘decent’ life style since McDonald’s jobs are for students trying to earn some pocket money.
Well… things have changed a little since people who tell this story have been in college.
In those times families had three or four children and about half the jobs were in manufacturing. That meant that the father was the bread winner, mother stayed at home and the students manned the burger joints.
Nowadays most manufacturing jobs have been exported to China, father and mother are both working, part time, in the unglamorous part of the service sector and no longer venture to have more than one or two children.
That’s why McDonald’s has become a lifetime career. For lack of eligible students, first and foremost. Thirty years ago blue collar workers could afford to send their children to college and the students went to McDonald to work for pocket money. Nowadays blue collar workers no longer afford to make many children and don’t have the money to send them to college.

Increasing minimum wage won’t change much. It would only convince the people at the bottom of the society that there is no way out and the CEO’s that there is no need to make any fundamental change in the way they manage the ‘work-force’.
Until employers will start considering their employees as partners instead of adversaries things will remain just as they are now. Or get even worse.

PS. How come so many of us constantly forget that most of the clients – after all they are the ones who keep the economy afloat – are employees?

Deflation ‘for dummies’.

Nietzsche a avut o bucățica de dreptate cand a spus ca “Dumnezeu a murit” numai ca luat-o razna înainte sa fi apucat sa facă cu adevărat lumina în problema asta.
Ce vreau sa spun
este că Dumnezeu nu a murit pe cont propriu. L-am omorât noi. De două ori. Și în timp ce prima dată am fost în stare  să rezolvam situația acum se pare ca nu mai știm pe unde sa scoatem cămașa.

Permiteți-mi să mă explic.

Nu am nici o modalitate de a ști dacă Dumnezeu a fost cel care ne-a creat. Îi voi lăsa pe alții să decidă în problema asta.
Pentru mine este suficient că nu văd nici o dovadă serioasa în favoarea acestei ipoteze. Există doar unele “mărturii” furnizate de persoane aflate într-un ‘conflict de interese’ mare cât o catedrală. A Neamului. Așa că aceste mărturii mi se par cel puțin părtinitoare. Pe lângă asta eu unul nu am nevoie de vreo explicație de tip Deus ex Machina cu privire la nimic din ceea ce exista în acest Univers. Știința modernă a făcut o treabă destul de buna, cel puțin pentru mine.
Pe de altă parte ipoteza contrară este absolut imposibil de demonstrat. Și atunci, de ce sa-mi mai bat capul?

Ce știu, sigur, este faptul că cel puțin un fel de Dumnezeu există cu adevărat! Cel care a fost creat de noi, o reprezentare socială a cărei existență provine direct din relația noastră mentală cu El.
Simpla existență a acestui Dumnezeu virtual a avut două consecințe foarte importante. Astfel a fost facilitata aparitia democrației și a unui mod coerent de a înțelege lumea – un Weltanschauung, ca sa folosesc un termen tehnic nemțesc.

Voi face aici o scurtă pauză. Mantra curenta este că “Dumnezeu ne-a făcut după chipul său”. Acest lucru are doua consecințe practice foarte importante:
– Că, cel puțin la nivel declarativ, suntem egali între noi – am fost cu toți turnați în aceeași formă, nu?
– Și că fiecare dintre noi adăpostește o scânteie de divinitate. Iar aceasta natura, parțial divina, pe care o împărtășim cu toții vine însoțită de o mare responsabilitate. Așa se explică principala poruncă „practică” pe care am primit-o – să nu ucizi și să nu judeci pe altul. Cine suntem, fiecare dintre noi, ca să jucăm rolul lui Dumnezeu față de alți „semeni de-ai noștri”?
De asemenea, împărtășirea unui același Weltanschauung a fost ceea ce ne-a oferit posibilitatea de a acționa ca o comunitate, cadrul în care ne putem ajuta unul pe celălalt. Pentru un timp, cel puțin, dar cât de bine a fost cât timp acest cadru a funcționat ca lumea. Dacă stăm puțin să ne gândim am înțelege că nici unul dintre noi nu ar putea face mare lucru fără acest cadru. De fapt  nici măcar astăzi, cu toate tehnologiile moderne pe care le considerăm acum „normale”, nici unul dintre noi nu ar fi în stare să supraviețuiască prea mult, dară-mite să prospere, pe termen lung.

Și acest lucru, uciderea lui Dumnezeu, s-a întâmplat de două ori.
Am dat naștere unei prime generații de zei, făcuți și aceștia tot după chipul nostru, bine și rău împreună. Zeii Antichității Egiptene, Grecești, Romane și mai apoi cei ai Nordului împărtășeau același comportament cu cel al oamenilor. Ba chiar, din când, unii dintre ei coborau din Olimp și împărțeau cu noi chiar și paturile. Asta până la un moment dat. După aceea ne-am obrăznicit și i-am abandonat. Filozofii noștri ajunseseră, încă de-atunci, la concluzia că știu ei mai bine ce trebuie de făcut și că pot oferi soluții complete pentru toate problemele noastre doar prin puterea gândurilor lor. Și uite așa autoritarismul absolut a sfârșit prin a avea binecuvântarea oficială a Academiei, în timp ce adorarea zeilor a fost lăsată pentru masele de fraieri.
Din acel moment s-
a dezlănțuit iadul. Pentru 6 secole după ce Platon a scris Republica sa Marea Mediterană a fost martora unui șir de imperii care s-au distrus unul pe celalalt, fiecare dintre ele condus fiind de tot felul de împărați care se credeau care mai de care mai zei, mai filozofi sau chiar și una și cealaltă.

Până când am pus în loc un alt Dumnezeu. Unul care ne-a spus să nu ne mai certăm între noi – pentru că toți suntem frați – și să începem să trăim în comuniune. Până când l-am omorât și pe acesta.

Nu că nu am fi fost avertizați. Pascal, matematicianul francez, ne-a spus că este complet irațional să respingem cu totul existența lui Dumnezeu. Dacă, în realitate, acesta nu există credinciosul nu pierde nimic iar necredinciosul nu câștigă nimic – în afară de satisfacția dubioasă de a se putea lăuda, după moarte, cu “Ți-am spus eu!”. În schimb, dacă Dumnezeu există, atunci credincioșii vor moșteni lumea, în timp ce non-credincioșii și-au făcut-o cu mâna lor. Numai că, între timp, toți au trăit într-o lume structurată de presupusa existență a lui Dumnezeu și s-au bucurat de cele două consecințe menționate mai sus – egalitatea între oameni, chiar dacă numai în teorie, și capacitatea de a face lucrurile în mod concertat, mult mai eficient decât de unii singuri.

Acum, că ne-am ucis Dumnezeul pentru a doua oară – episodul la care face referire Nietzsche – ne-am „rătăcit” din nou. Numai că de data asta nu am pierdut doar o ipotetică viață de apoi ci am început să transformam, treptat, chiar lumea în care trăim într-un infern.

Și dacă nu mă credeți, haideți să urmăm sfatul lui Lešek Kolakowski.
“Să comparăm lumea fără Dumnezeu a lui Diderot, Helvetius, și Feuerbach cu cea a lui Kafka, Camus și Sartre. Prăbușirea creștinismului, care a fost așteptată cu atât de multă bucurie de către Iluminism a avut loc aproape simultan cu prăbușirea Iluminismului însuși. Noua Ordine, antropocentrică și radiantă, care avea să se ridice și să îl înlocuiască pe Dumnezeu de îndată ce ar fi fost răsturnat de la putere, n-a mai venit. Ce s-a întâmplat? De ce a fost soarta ateismului în așa fel ciudat legată de cea a creștinismului, astfel încât cei doi inamici să ajungă să împartă același ghinion și aceeași incertitudine””(Dumnezeu într-un timp fără Dumnezeu, 2003)

Acum, de ce nu putem face efortul minim de a încerca să înțelegem ce ne-a spus Pascal? De ce este atât de greu să înțelegem că noi înșine stricăm viața frumoasă pe care am putea-o avea dacă am continua să pretindem că Dumnezeu există ȘI dacă ne-am comporta în consecință?

De ce ne este atât de greu ca măcar să ne prefacem că îi respectăm pe cei cu care s-a întâmplat să împarțim planeta?
E adevărat că respectul mimat nu este la fel cu cel autentic numai este mult mai bun decât imensul dispreț generalizat în care ne bălăcim continuu.

Chiar și mai important este faptul că dacă nu vom mai folosi atâta energie pentru menținerea câmpului de forțe de care avem nevoie pentru a ne proteja de disprețul care ne sufocă am avea mai multe posibilități să ne imaginăm o lume mult mai bună decât suntem în stare acum.
Și, cine știe, poate că vom reuși să descoperim cât de frumoși suntem atunci când ne dăm jos armurile.

Poate că în felul acesta vom da naștere unui nou Dumnezeu.
Spre satisfacția celui care se uită de sus la noi.
Dacă există.

Lešek Kolakowski, Dumnezeu într-un timp fără Dumnezeu, 2003, http://www.firstthings.com/article/2003/06/visions-of-eternity-7

That’s one way to look at it.
Sometimes it might indeed resemble a punishment but please remember the many times when common sense prevented us from making huge mistakes that might have ruined our lives.

Misogyny and misandry are equivalent scourges.
I fail to see any difference between ‘kill all men’ and “beat her savagely, laughing as he licks the tears from her crying eyes.”

David Futrelle's avatarwe hunted the mammoth

Murdered feminist activist Grace Mann Murdered feminist activist Grace Mann

Last month, police say, University of Mary Washington student and feminist/LGBT activist Grace Mann was murdered — bound and asphyxiated by a male housemate and fellow student.

An antifeminist blogger is blaming her death on feminist jokes about misandry. 

View original post 912 more words

Does he have any ‘right to exert his authority, inside the limits that have been delineated for him’?

Somebody who has real authority enjoys a certain degree of autonomy, if not outright independence. ‘Authority’ is almost never clearly delineated, there is always a gray area where the discretion of the individual in charge is the one that calls the shots.
More over if we, the ‘subjects’, consider that he has ‘the right’ to exercise that authority then it’s us who are in deep trouble.
‘Exertion of authority’ ‘smacks’ of the situation  when the ‘authority man’ had conquered his position against the wish of his subjects – like the emperors of the old. (Or like the communist dictators of not so long ago, only they pretended to exercise their authority for the benefit of the people while the emperors of the old were more straightforward and declared themselves ‘gods’)
Nowadays, at least in the democratic states, authority is, theoretically, used as a tool, towards the accomplishment of what the person in charge is supposed to achieve, not as a right enjoyed by that person.
In fact the notion of a right to exert authority inside some limits is akin to what has been described as ‘feudalism’, a social arrangement not that different from the Athenian democracy. The people were divided in two categories, just as in the previous situation – the ‘imperiums’ of the Antiquity, the difference being that in an imperium the top class was inhabited by a single individual – the emperor/dictator, while in feudalism/Athenian democracy the top class was inhabited by the free people, whose authority/freedom extended only as far as it started to encroach the authority of the equivalent individuals. I have to remark here that in many circumstances feudalism has very quickly degenerated back to imperium – for instance in absolutist France, ‘L’etat c’est moi’, or in tsarist Russia, while England successfully avoided that due to the spirit enshrined in Magna Charta.
The difference between feudalism/Athenian democracy and the modern democracy being that currently we can no longer speak of individual authority simply because nowadays no one has the “right” to own slaves – as the Athenian ‘democrats’ had, nor even enjoy extensive authority (bar the right of life and death) over other people – the serfs, as the feudal barons did not so long ago.

Nietzsche was somewhat right only he went bonkers before he was able to shed some real light on what was going on.
The point is that God didn’t die on his own. We killed him. Twice. And while the first time we were capable to fix the situation now we seem incapable to ‘make the right thing’.

Let me explain myself.

I have no way of knowing if it was God that created us or not. That’s something for others to decide.
For me it’s enough that I see no evidence to support the first hypothesis except for some ‘testimonies’ provided by people with vested interests in the matter. I find those testimonies highly biased. Nor do I find any need for a Deus ex Machina kind of explanation for anything that exists in this Universe. Modern science has done a good enough job in explaining the world to me.
On the other hand the second hypothesis is absolutely impossible to demonstrate. So, why bother?

What I do know, for sure, is that at least one kind of God does exist. The one that has been created by us, people, a social representation whose existence stems directly from our mental relationship with Him – the One who supposedly created us.
The mere existence of this ‘virtual’ God had two very important consequences. It brought us democracy and it provided us with a coherent way of understanding the world – a common Weltanschauung in German terms.

I’ll make a short break here to elaborate a little. The common lore is that ‘God made us in his image’. This means that, basically, we are equals among ourselves – we’ve been all cast in the same mould, right? – and that each of us has a spark of divinity in him. Quite a heavy responsibility – being of a Godly nature – don’t you think? Hence the ‘do not kill/judge’ commandment. Who are we to play God towards other Gods?
Also partaking in the same Weltanschauung was what offered us the possibility to act as a community, to help each other. For a while at least but it was good while it lasted. After all none of us could have done much by himself.
In fact none of us is able to survive for long by himself, let alone thrive solitarily. Not even today, with all the modern technology that we now take for granted.

We gave birth to our first generation of Gods, made exactly into our image, good and bad together, during the Antiquity. The Greek, Roman and German Gods were our look alike-s and shared our unruly behavior. Some of them even occasionally shared our beds. Then, at some point, we got cocky and abandoned them. Our philosophers thought they knew better than that and that they could come up with comprehensive solutions all by themselves. That’s how absolute authoritarianism ended up having official blessing from the Academia while the adoration of Gods was left for the unsuspecting masses.
All hell broke loose from that moment. For some 6 centuries after Plato had wrote his Republic the Mediterranean Sea had been a string of empires toppling one another.

Until we came up with a different kind of God. One that first and foremost told us to stop quarreling – for we were all brothers – and start living in communion. Until we killed him also.

Not that we haven’t been forewarned. Pascal, the French mathematician, told us that it is completely irrational to reject the existence of God. If, in reality, God doesn’t exist the believer looses nothing and the non believer gains nothing – except for the lame satisfaction to be able to brag ‘I told you so’ after death. Conversely, if God does exist, then the believers are going to inherit the world while the non believers have dealt themselves the worst hand ever. Meanwhile, by living in a world structured by the presumed existence of God both believers and non believers enjoyed the two consequences I mentioned above – equality among people, even if only in theory, and the ability of doing things in concert, a lot more efficiently.

Now, that we’ve killed God for a second time – the murder described by Nietzsche – we’ve lost it again. Only this time we didn’t lose just the hypothetical after-life, we’re gradually transforming this one – the only life we have for sure – into a bloody nightmare.

And if you don’t believe me do as Lesek Kolakowski suggests.
“Let us simply compare the godless world of Diderot, Helvétius, and Feuerbach with that of Kafka, Camus, and Sartre. The collapse of Christianity that was so joyfully awaited by the Enlightenment took place almost simultaneously with the collapse of the Enlightenment itself. The new, shining order of anthropocentrism that was built up in place of the fallen God never came. What happened? Why was the fate of atheism in such a strange way tied to that of Christianity, so that the two enemies accompanied one another in their misfortune and in their insecurity?” (God in a godless time, 2003)

Now why can’t we make the small effort to understand what Pascal told us? Why is it so hard to understand that we are spoiling the beautiful life we might have if only we kept pretending that God existed and behaved accordingly?

Why is it so hard at least to fake some respect for those who happen to share the planet with us?
Fake respect is not as good as the genuine one, of course, but is a lot better than the huge amount of scorn that is publicly traded these days.
Even more important is that if we won’t have to use so much energy in maintaining a force field to protect us from being drenched in scorn we’ll may be able to imagine a better world than the one we currently have to deal with.
And, who knows, maybe we’ll have time to discover how beautiful we really are, inside our armors.

A new (representation of) God would be born this way.

god-is-dead

Lesek Kolakowski, God in a godless time, 2003, http://www.firstthings.com/article/2003/06/visions-of-eternity-7