We need to eat. At some point, we discovered that by cooking it we got more out of the food we had at our disposal. Then we learned to cook tastier and tastier meals.
Because we’ve some how convinced ourselves that being happy trumps being alive.
Evolutively speaking, pleasure is a ‘heads up’. It tells us that we do ‘the right thing’. That the food we eat is suitable for us. Nourishing. Evolutively speaking, happiness is a heads up. That we’re on the right track. That we’re doing nothing to jeopardize our survival.
Those ‘heads – up’ were valid. Once… And they still are. When ‘used with discretion’.
The problem being that we’re currently harnessing the horse behind the cart.
We’re no longer pursuing life as a wholesome experience. We just want to be happy! We no longer eat to remain alive. We just want to have a better experience! An even better experience than the previous one…
Should we return to the Stone Age? When so many of us died of hunger? Of illness? Should we give up the ‘pursuit of happiness’ as a legitimate goal?!?
How about being happy while pursuing a meaningful life?
The difference between a scientific paper and a piece of ‘mere’ literature. And what can be learned by analyzing a message.
I’ll start with the second.
A message has two layers of meaning. The ‘prima facie’ and the ‘deeper levels’.
When somebody asks ‘What time is it, please!’, the first thing you do is to check your watch. Most of the time, it’s the proper way to react in this situation. But not always! Sometimes, the guy only wants to find out what kind of watch you’re wearing. To determine if it’s worth the effort. To steal it from you!
If looked at from the proper angle, most messages speak volumes. The first volume is always about what the ‘speaker’ wants to convey to their audience. The next ones are about the speaker. About their ability to speak, about their manner of thinking… and so on. When speaking, the speaker wants to convey a limited amount of information. The intended message. When listening, an attentive listener may learn more about the speaker than about the issue at hand!
A scientific paper starts by stating a conclusion. And continues by listing the arguments. An ‘ordinary’ piece of literature builds a ‘scaffolding’. Introduces a series of ‘things’ and leads the reader towards a conclusion. Which is more likely suggested rather than imposed.
Should I continue? About what I learned by reading the Amnesty International report?
The most important issue here – for Amnesty International, being the fact that “Ukrainian fighting tactics endanger civilians”. As if Ukraine was the big bully. Who had enough resources to carefully select ‘tactics’!
“Attacks launched from populated civilian areas”. Hello!!! Ukraine itself is a populated country! Mostly by civilians… This is not a joust. Which may be organized ‘out there’, on an open field. If both sides agree… This war, like almost all others, is about conquering, and defending, populated areas!
“Such violations in no way justify Russia’s indiscriminate attacks, which have killed and injured countless civilians“ Finally!
But shouldn’t this be the ‘main course’ of the Amnesty International report?!? After all, it was Putin who had ordered the Russian army to invade Ukraine… It had been his orders which had started this mayhem!
I’m getting old. Old enough, as a good friend of mine had noticed, to have a way closer relation with sex than ever before.
I am a sexagenarian!
Which gives me certain bragging rights. You see, everything around us has been made – or started – during my watch. Or earlier…
There is a small catch, though. Not everything around us is good. In working order. Sustainable! Some 50 years ago, humankind had developed the means to destroy itself. Remember MAD? We – our fathers, actually, took a step back. And took the necessary steps. In the end, nothing happened. We’re still here, in spite of having the possibility to spoil everything. Nowadays, we’ve reached another inflection point. And no, I’m not speaking about ‘global warming’. Not exclusively, anyway.
Global warming is only one of the many things which may go wrong. One of the many ways in which we may fuck everything up!
My point being that it’s not the first time in history that we are able to fuck everything up. It’s the first time in history that we are fully aware of the many ways in which things might go totally wrong and we’re practically doing nothing!
Why?!? Because we have grown old!
When I grew up, there were relatively few old people around. A lot more than when my parents had grown up but a lot less than now.
When apes had become human – when humanoids learned to speak – old people were precious assets. Having lived a lot – and being able to share their experience, in detail – they had become depositories of knowledge. The go-to place for when you wanted to learn about something. When you needed a certain piece of information. Hence the old-timers had, gradually, accrued a lot of respect. As a category. Add the fact that in order to grow old – to survive for long enough, it helps to make ‘the right calls’. OK, you also need to be lucky… but being smart does come in handy…
Are you done yet? Adding these two? Being looked up to because you are old with thinking good about yourself?
In the ‘good old days’, people who had reached my age had their ‘confirmation bias’ tempered by ‘impotence’. No, not only sexual impotence… In those days, individuals were a lot more aware than we are today of how much we depend on each other. Of the fact that individually we are impotent! The old ones knew they were going to starve if the young ones would cease providing for them while the young ones were aware of how useful the old ones could be. Nowadays… We, the oldies, continue to believe we know everything – we survived, didn’t we? – while the young bucks believe they can find out whatever they might need from the internet… Meanwhile, we – the oldies – no longer need the youngsters to provide for us.
We are wealthier than ever before, we have pension plans and we vote as a team… the world is ours, as it should be! And since we don’t have so much more to live…
But how sustainable is this situation? For the shortest of the imaginable time-frames…
“Your mind is only a part of you. Like the driver is only a part of a car. Irreplaceable but…
Most of us believe it’s the driver who tells the car where to go…
Well, the driver has to follow the road, obey the rules, interact with the other drivers, take care of their own needs… fuel and maintain the car… only then they are ‘free’ to ‘pursue’ the destination. Which destination is, more often than we care to admit, chosen by the heart rather than with the help of the mind.
So yes, it’s the mind who should tell itself what to believe. Only it needs to reach a certain serenity in order to make a proper decision. To be able to choose by itself instead of accepting, indiscriminately, ‘suggestions’!”
Not for a particular king! No. Not even for kings in general.
Only for all those ‘in charge’! As a reminder for the fact that their authority is very fragile. Goes for only as far as it is accepted. Protected by those who respect it.
As a reminder for the fact that fences not only protect but also separate.
The point being that whenever those calling the shots no longer suffer the consequences, the situation becomes extremely fragile. That whenever a ‘king’ needs to be protected from his subjects instead of by them…
Art is, maybe, the first form of interaction between us and the place we inhabit. The first manner in which we ‘ingest’ that place, only to regurgitate it later. The first manner in which we learn about that place and the first manner in which we express what we have just learned. Esthetics is how we make sense of art. How we organize our ‘first impressions’ regarding the ‘place’ we live in. How we ‘edit’ those impressions in order to make them more easily understandable. Philosophy is what we made out during the artistic endeavor to learn. The never finished product put together by our ‘digestive system’ out of the artistic interactions we have had with ‘reality’.
Techne is what we do. The transformations we impose unto things in order to make them capable to satisfy our needs. Or our whims… Science is the process through which we gather information. The information which becomes more and more necessary as our doings take us further and further away from the original reality. Manipulation is what we do after we consider to have amassed enough information. After we have developed a certain understanding of the world and have decided that time has come for us to ‘take what’s rightfully ours’.
You know what ‘skills’ are. What we’re ‘good at’. Technology is how we pass our skills to other people. So that we can work in concert. To coordinate our efforts. The outcome of which is Reality 2.0. The reality we have brought about. The new reality which constitutes reality 1.0 for those currently alive.
Linkedin took the trouble to inform me that Frontex is looking to hire an Executive Director.
As far as I know, the ‘marks’ for this kind messages are chosen by some ‘algorithms’. Which are supposedly driven by something called ‘artificial intelligence’.
Which makes me wonder…
Are these algorithms intelligent enough to determine that I have the slightest chance of being selected for this position? That I have the slightest intention of applying for it? Alternatively, dumb enough to bother?!? Or are these algorithms intelligent enough to, for whatever reason, attempt to pull my leg?
‘So you’d better stop trying! Why don’t you just enjoy life as it is?’
‘What about Copernicus? Did he change the world?’
No, he only offered us an ‘alternative’ interpretation of it! It was us, those who had accepted his interpretation, who did the actual change. By acting as if Copernicus’ teachings were true.
‘But Copernicus hadn’t been the first to utter those ideas!’
Indeed! But until Copernicus, the world didn’t actually need that version of the facts. Up until those times, for ‘regular Joe’ it made no actual difference whether the Sun circled around the Earth or the whole shebang moved the other way around. The Sun dawned as advertised and spring always came as it was supposed to. Which circled around who made no difference but for the academics!
Only when ‘regular Joe’ had started to sail around the Earth – and needed to accurately plot the course of his ship on a map, the relative motion between Earth and Sun had become relevant. For those belonging to/living in the ‘real’ world!
For the last 15 last years or so I have pushed myself to understand what was going on around me. Each time I had the impression that I had discovered anything new I was soon disappointed. Very shortly afterwards I most often found out that somebody else had written about the subject. Describing it more or less in the same way as I understood it. Not to mention the fact that the vast majority of the answers I had found had been reached by reading. My quest changed accordingly.
‘Why has this trove of knowledge been left aside for so long?’
Because regular Joe didn’t have any use for it? Until now, that is…
But, surely, the elite should have done something about this! After all, ‘understanding’ – a.k.a. ‘making sense of things’ – is our only reason to be, right?
Not so fast! The elite did something about ‘it’. As I’ve already mentioned, there’s nothing much to add to the things already understood by others and passed along to us from the depths of history. The very fact that all these pieces of information have been carefully preserved by countless generations of scribes and ‘book keepers’ is the living proof that the elite fulfilled its calling. It’s up to us to make good of their dedicated work. For our own sake.
And for that of our children!
So yes, I cannot change the world. Neither can either of you! Alone.
nicichiarasa 