This morning I almost blew my top. I was listening to the radio. A usually decent station. Usually decent and, like all of us, imperfect.
The news anchor was interviewing an ‘expert’. An Ivy League Professor of International Relations and other blah-blahs. I’m not giving their names because I want them forgotten, not even more famous than they already are.
‘Is there any chance for this conflict to end in a negotiated manner?’ ‘Yes, if/when both sides will find a mutually acceptable solution. For example, if the Ukrainian side would accept a referendum in Donbass – and in Crimea, and if the Russian side would accept UN inspectors to validate the process. This would be in line with the general accepted policy of self-determination and ….’
OK, and where’s the difference between what Putin keeps saying and what I’ve just heard?!?
Two non-Ukrainians telling Ukraine what to do…
I’m going to set aside, for now, what these two – wait, three! – people are saying. That Ukraine, the Ukrainian People, should give up a piece of their land. My immediate interest lies in ‘who these three guys think they are’?!?
OK, only those who don’t want to see haven’t yet found out that Putin is a dictator. But for a renowned Ivy League Professor to elaborate a scenario according to which the UN would supervise a referendum where an occupied population would have the opportunity to vote whether they want ‘their’ aggressor to maintain its control over the already occupied territory….
Would that distinguished Professor be comfortable with a referendum – equally supervised by the UN, taking place in California? Which California had already been occupied by Mexico? For which referendum, the Californians were asked where they want to live? Whether Mexico should continue its occupation or should the Mexican army retreat behind the internationally recognized border?
No, I don’t think the Professor has been paid by Putin. Or ‘compensated’ in any other way by the ‘red Satan’. I just consider he was not paying real attention to what he was saying. He had just opened his mouth and verbalized what his mind was churning. The current ‘events’ have disturbed his pleasant existence to such a degree that he really needs this ‘fly in the ointment’ to ‘fly away’.
He is so ‘driven’ by his ‘need’ that he is no longer ‘patient’. He just can’t ‘stop talking’ for long enough to realize how fast Putin’s propaganda machine will make ‘good’ use of his ‘verbalizations’…
‘See, the good Professor confirms what our Beloved Leader has already done. It’s the Ukrainians who are not reasonable! They should first change their leadership then come back into Mother Russia’s arms.’
When are we going to understand?
Don’t tell others what to do unless you are prepared to ‘take advice’ yourself… And, for your own good, don’t trade your future freedom for your present comfort!
– If ‘no government’, then who would pay for the army we need to defend ourselves?
Ooops… you’ve just answered the ‘why does Russia ‘encourage’ the trolls who push ludicrous libertarian ideas’ question. Which trolls attempt to achieve two things at once. Weaken the concept of free government and give libertarian-ism a bad rep. Transforming libertarian-ism into yet another form of extremism.
Let’s get serious and try to find an answer to ‘why, and how much of it, do we need government?’
The boring one would be: ‘Whenever one government falls, another one takes over. The interregnum is always bad so… let’s get used to it’.
‘Getting used to it’ works only for very short expanses of time. Left on its own, all ‘government’ becomes sloppy. So sloppy that it soon becomes such a burden that even the most ‘used to it’ lose their patience. Government, all of them, need to be kept on a tight leash. Otherwise it will soon cease to perform as intended.
– But if you have to keep it on a tight leash, why bother with any in the first place? Can’t we do without such a bothersome pet? What’s the point of the whole thing, anyway?
Instinctively, we’re against ‘government’ for two reasons. It costs us a lot and it used to represent the interests of the ruler.
Until 10 000 or so years ago, we didn’t need ‘government’. People were living more or less like the modern day Sun People still do. In the Kalahari desert… small bands roam the place, living of the land. The bands are small – so that they might find sustenance, they don’t have any ‘private’ property to protect, hence they don’t need government. Neither did our ancestors.
As soon as people ‘invented’ agriculture – raising ‘tame’ animals at first and working the land soon after, things had changed dramatically. The advent of agriculture brought two things. An increased productivity and private property. Soil has not been born equal. Both pastures and arable land can be good, passable or bad. People wish to have the best. Those who already have it are willing to defend it and those who don’t are willing to steal it. Increased productivity means that those who produce are able to hire people to protect their ‘means of production’. Their property. As a consequence of fighting for it, some people accumulate more and more of it. More and more ‘means of productions’ – property, means an ever increasing need for ‘management’ and an ever increasing need for ‘protection’. Soon you have a very ‘wealthy’ owner – the lord of the place, call it what you like or use the name given to him by his subjects, the people who perform the day to day management of the ‘whole-sale property’ and those who protect it from ‘marauders’. Both the ‘managers’ – read ‘government’, and the ‘protectors’ – read ‘army’, used to be under the direct supervision of the local lord. For a while – for as long as the lord kept everything in balance, everybody was happy. The ‘peasants’ were happy because thy were safe, the ‘managers’ were happy because the wise lord used to appreciate their work and ‘compensated’ them accordingly, the ‘protectors’ were happy because they were well fed and taken care of. According to this article, the great Egyptian had been built by willing people, not by slaves. https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2003/07/who-built-the-pyramids-html But soon enough, the lord had become estranged from his people. Government had become an instrument used to extract more and more wealth from the peasants while the army was used to protect the government against the people and, whenever possible, to increase the property of the ruling lord by stealing some from the neighboring ‘lords’. The ’empire’ was born.
But this development could take place only in certain circumstances. Where those below the ruling lord had nothing more to do than to obey. Where the best subject was the disciplined one. Where autonomous thinking and imagination were frown upon by the ruler. Where one mind was enough. Whenever the ‘environment’ mandated the individuals to remain relatively autonomous, proto-democratic forms of self government had been experimented. From the nomadic pastoralists of the Central Asia to the sailing communities in Ancient Greece and Medieval Scandinavia. Those driving herds or sailing ships need to be a lot more independent-minded that those who just tile the earth. No offense intended here! Simple observation will notice that where the geography of the place had allowed it, somebody had ‘built’ an empire. The Nile Valley, the Middle East, the Russian plain, China, Mexico… Where ever the geography of the place was fragmented enough by sail-able sea, proto-democratic forms of self-management had been developed. The sailing Ancient Athens versus the land-locked Sparta, Medieval Scandinavia versus Medieval France…
Fast forward to present day. When we have two forms of government. The more or less democratic ones. Those under whose ‘guidance’ discussions like the present one can happen. And the more or less authoritarian ones. Which actively discourage autonomous thinking.
Mind you, there are no ‘perfect’ governments. There’s no perfectly democratic arrangement anywhere on Earth. Because we are imperfect human beings. And there’s no ‘perfect’ authoritarian government. Because no government can survive for long if it attempts to centralize the decision power. The closer a government gets to being perfectly authoritarian, the smaller is the crisis needed to topple it. Unless it is supported from the out-side but that’s another topic.
So. It is fairly simple to understand how authoritarian governments fail. Too much ‘stiffness’ makes it impossible for authoritarian governments to evolve. To find solutions for whatever challenges pop up constantly.
But what can go wrong with the collective forms of self-rule? With the participative forms of social self management? Otherwise known as democracies? Lack of enough popular involvement. Due to a sense of apparent safety, initially. And to a feeling of apparent impotence, soon after. Lack of enough fore-sight. Those who should know better become distracted, for whatever reasons. Too much opportunism. More and more of the ‘insiders’ use ‘the power of the government’ to fulfill their own, private, goals instead of making sure that ‘government’ works properly.
And what does that mean?
A government works properly when the community which self manages itself using that particular (form of democratic) government survives in the long run. When those momentarily working inside the government make things happen for the community at large. When people, both inside and outside the government, follow, in spirit, Kennedy’s words.
Am I being naive? Maybe… But wouldn’t it be a nice thing to have? A nice thing to chase, anyway?
And what better way to chase ‘it’ than voting for people who at least pretend to be honest? Who at least make the ‘right’ noises? Whom we can hold accountable whenever they break their promises? Instead of voting for those who promise barrels and barrels of ‘pork‘? https://grammarist.com/idiom/pork-barrel/
Ideological pork or hands-on pork, I don’t know which is worse…
– I thought we were talking about a glass ceiling, not a glass bottom…
You see, we have to deal here with the difference between depth and thickness.
A ‘coat of paint’ has a certain thickness – we know where it starts and where it ends, while a sea has a certain depth. We know it’s there, we know where it starts – at the surface of the water, but we’re never exactly sure where it ends. How deep it actually is!
Another way to put this would be to compare the depth of human consciousness with the thickness of the cerebral cortex. The depth of the reality we perceive using our brain and the thickness of the cerebral tissue where this perception takes place. The depth of the reality we, humans, have built during our history inside the relatively shallow portion of the Earth where we feel at home.
We use a small number of phonemes to communicate among ourselves. A relatively small number of words to convey hugely complicated concepts. Two digits, 0 and 1, to build artificial intelligence… inside a wafer thin ‘slab’ of doped silicon.
– OK, enough introduction. How about making in clear what you really meant? A glass ceiling or a glass bottom?
Whether it is a glass ceiling or a glass bottom is a matter of perspective. A matter of where you are when looking at it. Above or below. The only thing which really matters being the fact that you see it despite of it being made of glass. Despite it being transparent.
Transparent to our eyes but not to our conscious mind.
– But if it’s already transparent, why is it such a big thing to break through it? We already know what’s behind/above it…
Seeing is not the same thing as knowing… just as 0 and 1 scribbled on a computer chip is not enough to make an intelligent computer…
“Two idiots go on a fishing trip. They rent all the equipment – the reels, the rods, the wading suits, the rowboat, the car, and even a cabin in the woods. They spend a fortune. The first day they go fishing, but they don’t catch anything. The same thing happens on the second day, and on the third day. It goes on like this until finally, on the last day of their holiday, one of the men catches a fish. As they’re driving home, they’re really depressed. One guy turns to the other and says “Do you realise that this one lousy fish we caught cost us $1,500?!?” The other guy answers “Wow! It’s a good thing we didn’t catch any more!””
“On his evening walk Tony finds an ancient pottery bottle half buried in the silt down the river next to an old rusted-out van. Carefully examining the bottle, he notices that it still has a stopper in it, and there is some kind of writing etched around the neck of the bottle. Using his shirtsleeve, Tony gently begins to rub the mud from the bottle, to see if he can decipher the characters. To his surprise, a thread of smoke oozes from around the stopper and the bottle begins to shake violently. With a sudden POP the stopper flies off and a genie appears before him, its arms folded in the traditional genie manner. “Thank you for freeing me!” cries the genie. “I have been trapped in that bottle for over a thousand years!” The genie continues “In return for releasing me, I will give you a reward of one million dollars. However, Tony, I must warn you, if you accept it, the person you loathe most in this world will get twice as much. Do you accept the reward with these terms?” “Of course I’ll take it!” Tony replies with a smile “My family could use the money!””
“Every Friday night after work, Dave would fire up his barbeque on the shore of the lake and cook a venison steak. All of Dave’s neighbours were Catholic and since it was Lent, they were forbidden from eating meat on a Friday. The delicious aroma from the grilled venison steaks drifted over the neighbourhood and was causing such a problem for the Catholic faithful that they finally talked to their priest. The Priest came to visit Dave, and suggested that he become a Catholic. After several classes and much study, Dave attended Mass… and as the priest sprinkled holy water over him, he said “You were born a Lutheran and raised a Lutheran but now you are a Catholic”. Dave’s neighbours were relieved, until Friday night arrived and the wonderful aroma of grilled venison filled the neighbourhood again. The Priest was called immediately by the neighbours and he rushed over to Dave’s place clutching a rosary and was prepared to scold him, he stopped and watched in amazement. There stood Dave, clutching a small bottle of holy water which he carefully sprinkled over the grilling meat and chanted to it: “You were born a deer, you were raised a deer, but now you are a rainbow trout“.”
“OK, I had a laugh. And your point is?”
If the first two were such idiots, where did their money come from? If the guy who hates his family is wise enough to accept the genie’s offer, what is it that still makes the rest of us to actually kill each-other?
“And the third joke? What hidden meaning do you have for that one?”
“A turkey was chatting with a bull. “I would love to be able to get to the top of that tree” sighed the turkey, but I haven’t got the energy”. “Well, why don’t you nibble on my droppings?” replied the bull. “They’re packed with nutrients”. The turkey pecked at a lump of dung and found that it gave him enough strength to reach the lowest branch of the tree. The next day, after eating some more dung, he reached the second branch. Finally, after a fourth night, there he was proudly perched at the top of the tree. Soon he was spotted by a farmer, who shot the turkey out of the tree. Moral of the story: Bullshit might get you to the top, but it won’t keep you there.”
After reading this interview for a second time, I asked myself: ‘Why are you paying so much attention to this guy?!? After all, he doesn’t say anything new…’
Then it hit me!
“Russia” and “we” are two different things.
Russia, the country, cannot indeed afford to “lose”. To ‘lose it’, to be more precise. Russia will survive, no matter how many more ‘mistakes’ the morons currently running it will commit.
“We”, on the other hand, are the ones who can. And eventually will. Lose. Everything.
And the longer those “we” are allowed by Russia itself to run the Kremlin, the worse it will be. For everybody. Us – the rest of the world, included.
‘But when will this nightmare end?’
That I don’t know. All I know is that it will eventually do that. End.
Look at the picture above. When have you seen anything more British than that? OK, fake British. Make-believe British. But British nonetheless.
That was which hit me. That during its entire history, Russia had tried to emulate Britain. The Russian elite has for ever tried to rise itself to ‘British standards’. From Peter the Great to Putin. All the while convincing the Russian People that the road they were trundling on was unique…
The sooner the ordinary Russians will figure out that they have been misled – and enough of the elite will understand that British-ness is good only for the Brits, they will make peace. Among themselves. With the their Ukrainian cousins. And with the rest of the world!
Read what brittanica.com has to say about each of them. Just click their names.
Then tell me why are we, any of the democratic countries in the world, still making business with any of the dictatorial regimes still plaguing the Earth? Why do we continue to harbor any of the yachts owned by corrupt oligarchs? Or their money?
The first reaction, for the ‘average person’, is to ‘love’ this post.
The ‘normal’ reaction, for the ‘fact-checkers’ among us, is to ask ourselves:
Is this actually true?
Heidegger has something really interesting to say about the subject. I’m gonna put it succinctly and bluntly.
None of us knows everything about anything. Not even about the most trivial thing. Because the very nature of our knowledge and of our manner of expressing it – language, none of us is able to ‘put together’ even the simplest ‘absolute’ truth.
Hence, according to Heidegger, we have as many truths as there are people interested on the subject.
‘Then the African Proverb is a ‘lie’?’
Nope.
The African Proverb pictured above is a meta-truth. Heidegger’s truths, as well as those discussed by Popper, all converge towards the ‘absolute’ one. As each of the ‘people interested on the subject’ dig deeper, each of them gets closer to the kernel. Probably none of them will ever get exactly ‘there’ but their respective positions will become ever closer.
Meanwhile, there’s nothing like a ‘meta-lie’. As we had ‘truth’ and ‘meta-truth’. A lie, any lie, is also a meta-truth.
We know – we are under the impression, more exactly, that we’ll never reach ‘the absolute truth’. About any subject, let alone the ‘absolute-absolute’ one. But we can conceive that there is one. Somewhere. At least about individual points of interest.
Do we even have the concept of an absolute lie? What would that be? How could that even be expressed?
This being the reason for some of us being able to come up with so ‘plausible’ lies. They put so much truth into their words that it becomes harder and harder for us to notice that the ‘proposed conclusion’ is misleading.
That, in fact, they are lying through their teeth.
What does ‘worst’ mean in this circumstances? Until now, I was under the impression that ‘critics’ were good. That in a democratic setting, the critics are those who pull at our sleeves when we go astray. That the critics are those who bring us back to the straight and narrow. How can ‘critics’ become ‘bad’? Let alone “worst”…
As many of you already know, I grew up under a communist regime. In Ceausescu’s Romania. That was were I learned to decipher messages transmitted using the ‘wooden language’. Or, in Orwell’s parlance, “newspeak”…
Here’s what I make of Elon Musk’s words:
‘From now on, the “digital town square where matters vital to the future of mankind are debated” is mine. Mine to make what I see fit of it. To “make better” under my own terms. And if you don’t like it, keep ‘barking’. There’s nothing you can do to me. I’m going to make Twitter ‘private’. A.k.a. free from any ‘market interference’. Furthermore, your ‘barking’ will only increase the traffic. Hence the money I’ll be making on the back of your ‘free speech’.’
Twenty four years ago, in 1998, I spent a fortnight visiting Tunisia. I still remember the discussions I had with my wife. In our native Romania, we – the country, not the two of us – already had a couple of malls – which were quite new for us. Each time that we entered a Tunisian suk – also known as a bazaar, we felt like strolling through a mall.
In the Middle Ages, a suk was the property of the local sheik. Even if each ‘stall’ was operated as an individual business, the whole thing was run at the whim of the local ruler. According to the laws of the land, but still at the mercy of the landlord.
Each mall, the building, is owned by a company. And, the business, operated by another. Usually by a chain. Hence the ‘freedom’ of the individual businesses ‘housed’ by each mall is ‘defined’ by the rules put in place by the owners and the operators. Under the laws and by laws valid for the physical location of the building but still at the ‘mercy’ of those who own/operate the mall.
From now on, the “digital town square where matters vital to the future of the mankind” are ‘freely debated’ by us will be owned and operated by yet another one of Elon Musk’s enterprises. Who, for now at least, promises to welcome his “worst” critics, whatever that might mean.
And an after thought. A way shorter translation of Musk’s words might be: ‘Freedom of speech means being able to say ‘those who criticize me are bad people”. With the corollary that some are worse than others…
When Mario de Andrade found out that he had but one life, he had set for himself a certain goal. To live his second life in a certain way. In the way he considered worthwhile.
We’re about to find out that we have but one planet.
nicichiarasa 