Archives for category: 1989

There are no facts, only interpretations.
Friedrich Nietzsche

I’m afraid the political world wasn’t where this intellectual leprosy had originally came from.
The political world was only the place where this disease had become ‘viral’.
Where this manner of (not) thinking had been weaponized!

Its origin can be traced back to our intellectual arrogance.
To our conviction that ‘I can be right on my own’. Without any ‘input’ from the outside…
Even in spite of whatever information might reach me from ‘outside’, if that information doesn’t fit my already held convictions. My ideology….

In fact, this belief – ‘I’m entitled to my own convictions’ – is exactly what people on both sides of the divide have in common. Intellectually speaking!
A shared disease… a virus infecting indiscriminately…

What are the errors of Marxism?

Marxism is an ideology.
Ideologies don’t have errors, they are thought templates used to evaluate a certain situation and to determine what to do next. Ideologies are tools.
They can be used properly or improperly.
Sometimes, the best use for certain tools is to be left alone. Particularly when you understand they are useless. If you understand they are useless…
Hence it’s not Marxism which is full of errors, it’s the Marxists who are barking up the wrong tree.

If you really need to put your finger on something, if you need to point out a culprit, I give you Marx.
Yes, Karl Marx is your man.
His analysis was brilliant. His diagnostic was spot on.
Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the progress of dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact within the whole range of old society, assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands. Just as, therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.
His cure – the mandate he gave to the “bourgeois ideologists who have raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole”, and whom he called “communists” – was abysmal.

Which tells us Marx’s brilliant analysis wasn’t deep enough. He had noticed a series of facts but he had failed to notice the bigger picture. He had failed to see that all authoritarian regimes had failed. Under their own weight. Inevitably. And he had failed to notice that all democratic regimes had survived, and thrived, for as long as they had managed to preserve their democratic nature.

Hence the Marxist cure, communism, was stillborn.
A tool to be left alone.
The attempt to impose yet another authoritarian regime – with no matter how generous intentions – after the overwhelming experience of all other authoritarian regimes failing abysmally, is nothing but the compelling proof of social and historical blindness.

And why start this post by quoting Marx himself?
Because that quote is more than enough. More than enough proof for Marx being a bully.
It’s OK to ‘change the world’ if you own it. If it was yours…
But bearing in mind that there are other people living in the same world… wouldn’t it be nice to ask their opinion about the whole thing? About the changes you want to make? Which changes will dramatically affect the world they live in?!?
They are simpletons? Whose opinions are worthless? Because you said so yourself?

“The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If by chance, they are revolutionary, they are only so in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat; they thus defend not their present, but their future interests, they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat.

The “dangerous class”, [lumpenproletariat] the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.”

As I just said.
Bullly!!!

There is an old ‘rule’ which maintains that even a broken watch may be accurate.
From time to time, if it retains its arms…
Twice daily, to be precise!

Same thing is valid for people.
From time to time, each of us will utter something which actually makes sense!

Sort of, anyway…

The catch being that in order to ‘prove’ the temporary accuracy of the broken watch you need one in good working order. Or, alternatively, you need a good understanding of time.

Same thing with Peterson’s uttering.
On the face of it, the phrase is catchy.
In fact, it’s just as useful as a broken watch.
What solace will be felt by the victim of a tough tyrant when that person realizes that no tyrant, however tough, was ever capable of ‘achieving’ anything without the compliance of the weak? Without the compliance of those who had done, in their weakness, what the tyrant had told them to do…

So yes, broken watches are, sometime, accurate.
And yes, Petersen is right to tell us that both tough and weak people can wreak a lot of havoc.

But neither of these two pieces of trivia will be useful to us until we’ll understand it’s up to us to put them to good use. To understand the temporary nature of the accuracy displayed by the broken watch and the fact that no man, however tough, becomes really dangerous unless condoned, or even helped, by ultimately hapless weaklings.

The things we believe
are
what we have in common
with those who promote them.

Well, nobody ‘blindly’ beliefs anything published in the media!
We use our cognitive biases in order to do that.

The media publishes the things we like to hear.
To sell advertising space, to please their sponsors…
While those who actually do this, the journalists, appease their consciences with ‘we have to give them what they want’. ‘Cause we actually do ‘buy’ their stuff…

And we believe the things we read in the kind of press we ‘buy’ because we no longer bother to keep in check our cognitive biases!

Who has anything to gain? From this vicious circle spinning faster and faster?

Nobody, really!
But we all have something to lose.

Everything, actually!

When was the last time you met a dead person who regretted anything?

Ciordeala de azi celebrează poporul român.
Că tot vine ziua națională.
Dacă nu vă recunoașteți în personaj ori nu sunteți popor român,

ori nu vă autoevaluați corespunzător.

Unii dintre noi am avut profesori buni!

Așa că suntem în stare să ne evaluăm corect, asumăndu-ne statutul de ființe mărginite și rămânând în cadrul poporului român.

Și da, mare parte din bulibășeala de astăzi poate fi atribuită dezinteresului popular față de știința rece.
Dezinteres care vine din străfunduri istorice. Vezi zicala „cine are multă carte are și un pic de nebunie”.
Dezinteres încurajat frenetic de o anumită parte a spectrului politic. Vezi insistența neo-liberală cu privire la inutilitatea studiului. În special atunci când vine vorba despre disciplinele umaniste. Vezi insistența cu care sunt sfatuiți tinerii să învețe doar acele deprinderi care pot fi monetizate rapid pe piața muncii…

Colac peste pupăză, să nu uităm contribuția părinților contemporani. Nu intru în amănunte cu privire la motivațiile acestor părinți, cert fiind doar comportamentul acestora.
Își împing copii până la epuizare. Le pretind să aibe doar note de 10 și să exceleze la toate activitățile extrașcolare la care îi înscriu.
Doar că cei mai mulți copii sunt pur și simplu normali! Nu extraordinari, așa cum îi vedem noi – părinții lor.

Care copii normali nu pot satisface așteptările noastre nerealiste.
Care copii normali sunt descurajați de reproșurile noastre continue cu privire la nerealizările lor.
Care copii normali renunță, în cele din urmă.
Demotivați fiind, renuntă la școală, renunță la educație, renunță la a mai citi …

Și devin pradă!

Then Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. He said to them,

“It is written,

‘My house shall be called a house of prayer’,

but you are making it a den of robbers. ”

What’s wrong with them?
They know plenty and they have everything…
Yet they’re not even content, let alone happy!

Din când în când, de multe ori din zona artistică a societății, vine așa câte o chestie…
Care ne trage câte un dos de palmă peste ochi!

Peste ochii închiși, strâns închiși, ca nu cumva să intre realitatea peste noi!

Noi îi punem pe țigani să facă tot felul de lucruri. Pentru noi…
După care tot noi îi înjurăm! Tot pe țigani…

O fi bine?
Nici pentru ei, nici pentru noi!

‘Evolution is not about “the survival of the fittest”.
Evolution is about the demise of the unfit!’

What Evolution Is, Ernst Mayr

It’s not ‘what doesn’t kill you’ which may make you stronger.
You are! That guy….

But only if you learn enough from the experience!

Regardless of our individual beliefs,
it would be rather naive
to consider there’s nothing but the here and now.
Internet wisdom

What have you done since graduating into awareness?

Worrying about tomorrow?

Welcome to being a human.
And how do you assuage your fear?

Put your faith into an exterior agent?
Trust your fellow humans to bail you out if necessary?
Make sure you’ll never depend on anybody else but you?

Each of these three strategies presumes differently about what happens outside yourself.

The more responsibility you transfer to the outside agent – currently known as God in certain circles – the more serene your life. You don’t have to change anything except putting your faith in the outside agent of your choice. If that works for you. Only by transferring the ultimate responsibility to ‘the outside’, no matter how hard you continue to do whatever you were doing before the epiphany, you embrace the fact that your fate is determined outside of you.
If you expect your mates to do ‘the right’ thing, you must prime them first. You have to behave in a manner conducive to ‘community’. You and those around you. The community itself has to behave as a community.
To make sure you’ll never depend on anybody else, you need to know everything that might happen to you. In fact, you have to know everything.

Each of these three strategies, or any combination thereof, mandates that there are things happening beyond here and now. Beyond what each of us might know and control.

Are there any other alternatives?