Does it really require an understanding of the principles?
Very good question!
Maybe not.
If all you want to do is to light a fire using the same kind of implements as those gifted to you by your teacher … then no. All you have to do is to remember how to build a new set of implements when the old one is gone and follow the instructions. To a T.
But if you want to make one step forward… to improve the implements… to rise to the next level…
“When we talk about birthing people, we’re being inclusive.
It’s that simple.
We use gender neutral language when talking about pregnancy,
because it’s not just cis-gender women that can get pregnant and give birth.
Reproductive freedom is for *every* body.”
@reproforall
– What’s wrong with these people?
– What do you mean?
– They consider themselves to be reasonable.
Their ability to ‘reason’ is mentioned, by their thinkers, as the single thing which separates them from the rest of the animals. Sets them apart from the rest of those who inhabit this planet.
To me, reasoning is how their consciousness operates. How their consciousness manifests itself.
The real difference between them and the rest of the animals being the fact that their consciousness is far more capable than that of the ‘mere’ animals.
– ?!?
– Just look at them!
Is there any difference, any real difference, between a 3 days old human infant and a chimpanzee of the same age? Or even between a 3 days old baby and a 3 days old foal? Except for the foal being able to run?
– The baby will eventually learn to speak. Will develop consciousness and the ability to think. You said it yourself…
– WILL!!!
Will eventually… if everything goes right!
If that baby is raised by responsible people. Who speak to the future human being. And teach them to be human. Help them develop a functional consciousness.
Children who have no significant interaction with other human beings and fail to learn to speak – or other form of language, until they reach puberty will never be able to ‘recover’. To accede to consciousness.
– OK. But I still don’t understand what has flabbergasted you!
– Not you too!
What drove you to copy them? To misuse language so horribly… “what has flabbergasted you”…
– But it’s so funny!
– Until it no longer is!
Look at them. Just look at them.
20 years ago, they made a movie about a man getting pregnant. A comedy. Everybody laughed.
Nowadays they take sides on ‘pregnant people’…
OK, language can be used ‘artistically’. ‘Stretched’ to obtain something. To explore new meanings, to express emotion, to make fun.
But does it make any sense to use language in order to seed confusion? To cause people to fight each other?
Rather self-defeating, isn’t it?
How much sense does this make? To misuse the medium which made you possible in the first place?
How sensible is it to weaponize language?
Who has anything to gain from this?
Other than a few, very short-term, perks?
“The times when it might be appropriate to use “pregnant people” is when you were talking about the universe of people who can get pregnant, some of whom are actually men, trans men like me, and some of whom are non-binary people who don’t identify as men or women.” (Evan Urquhart, Slate, 2022)
Because neither has any damns to give…
They call it Cuetlaxochitl.
They used to call it that way for a very long time.
And it was they who had associated it with the Winter solstice. With the Winter solstice, not the ‘Aztec’ solstice…
We, or rather I, don’t know how they used to call the mistletoe. All I know is they used to associate it with their ‘spells’. Performed, again, during the Winter solstice.
At some point, we – or rather after the Christians got in contact them, the mistletoe first and poinsettia later – have associated both with our manner of celebrating the Winter solstice.
In fact, we have appropriated both the celebration itself and the plants associated with it!
I’m not going to discuss whether this was a good or a bad thing.
It had just happened. And we have to live with the consequences of all those things having had happened in the past.
All I’m going to discuss in this post is their association with Christmas.
With what the Christians consider to be ‘Christmas’ and celebrate it as such.
But is there anything to be discussed about the matter?!?
They have associated each of these plants to their celebrations.
We have associated both to one of ours.
What is to be discussed here?!?
Do we feel bad for what we – our ancestors, actually – have done to them?
And want to atone for what had happened? And for the consequences of what had happened? Which consequences continue to unfold to this day…
We want to make amends – and to get rid of our guilt – by giving them back their plants?!?
Really?
How will any of this benefit them?!?
‘Cause this is about them, not us… right?
How about we stop buying the drugs coming from there?
Making it possible for them to shake off the drug lords which make their lives miserable?
How about we stop patronizing them?
How about we start respecting them for being our ‘brethren’? As in equally-fledged human beings?
Instead of we acting as if they were immature children. Liable to feel hurt that we have borrowed their ‘toys’…. For the sole reason that we think that giving them back their ‘sacred’ plants will cleanse our consciences….
The world doesn’t belong to leaders.
The world belongs to Humanity.
Proper = As it should be. As expected. ‘Clean’.
Property=Something which belongs to someone.
A mutually respected arrangement among the members a certain community which establishes boundaries. Which members have the right to go ‘there’ whenever they want while all others have to ask for permission before crossing that ‘boundary’.
A convention among the members of a certain community about what is the proper thing to do in each ‘patrimonial’ situation. A convention about who has the right to do what to the things which happen to co-exist with the members of the above mentioned community.
The above mentioned ‘things’ include the place where the entire community happens to live. ‘Their’ land.
Which brings us to who owns the world.
The leaders? As many of them assume?
Or the humanity, as Dalai Lama has reportedly said?
How about neither?
My point being that we are nothing but guests in this world.
We come empty handed and we leave empty handed.
Yes, we need property while dwelling on this planet.
But only in the sense of who can do what where. And with the limitation that the ‘what’ we do has to be ‘reversible’.
Just as we leave this world with nothing – we leave even our hands here, our presence on the planet has to be ‘discrete’. Has to produce as little disturbance as possible and all that disturbance must disappear in time.
We need to keep the world a proper place.
It’s the only place we have.
No other home for our children.
No other place to spend our last days.
Properly.
You cannot learn
what you think you know.
Epictetus
How many times have you been hit by something you didn’t see coming?
Not very often… for the simple reason that these encounters use to end up badly!
Bent fenders, broken bones…
Hence we pay attention. Or get killed… end of story!
But how many times have you experienced bad consequences, really bad consequences, after misjudging a situation?
After a ‘doesn’t matter’ uttered nonchalantly?
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?
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!
The Universe has no other meaning
than that we attach to it.
How do we find that meaning? How do we make sense of things?
According to Schoppenhauer’s take on the matter, we make sense of the world by carefully (?) ruminating the “pictures in our head”. The information which has already reached our ‘inner forum’.
Which means that we should be very careful when letting something ‘in’!
When reading a text, for example…
‘You should follow science, not scientists. Because scientists can be sold.’
Logically speaking, the phrase makes a lot of sense. Right?
Practically… not so much.
Do we learn everything about medicine before taking the pill prescribed by the doctor? Simply because the doctor might have been sold to the big pharma?
Do we learn everything about microwaves before using a microwave oven? Simply because the physicist who had invented the thing might have been sold to the makers of household appliances?
Do we stop using planes because they are used to spray our skies?
Literary speaking, what do you make of “scientists can be sold to the highest bidder”?!?
Sold by whom? How can anybody sell a scientist?
I might understand the notion of a scientist being bought… of a scientist selling his soul, his scientific soul, to the highest bidder… but selling one… Is there a market for scientists?
only because it happens to resonate with something you are already inclined to believe.
nicichiarasa 