„The pandemic’s transition toward becoming a disease that the world can manage more easily and learn to live with. “Really?!?It’s the disease which needs to become something we might be able to learn how to live with?!?””
„That’s how pandemics work. Like the 1918 flu…”
„Well…The virus itself is being passively selected by the naturally occurring ‘evolutionary forces’. We, as a conscious species, act more or less ‘uncoordinatedly’. We develop vaccines, determine that masks are good for us and then refuse to use them to their full potential. Doesn’t make much sense, evolutionary speaking…”
On the other hand, the article is interesting. Like so many other times, the content is ‘somewhat’ different from the click-bait title/presentation….
And, maybe, I should remember you that ‘nicichiarasa’ is the Romanian word for ‘don’t overstep it’, …
For whatever reason, Linkedin pulled at my sleeve. Trying to convince me to finish, after god only knows how many years, editing my profile.
Really guys?!?
I know that good quality AI doesn’t grow on trees. And that good old human intelligence is too expensive… but a “young lady”?!? Let alone the fact that I’ve been working since 1986…
And yes, you guessed right. The picture at the top of this post has been adorning my Linkedin profile since the first day I joined!
In retrospect, I realize that one of the first clues that communism was about to crumble has been the growing number of jokes we were making. About the rulers, about the ideology… about the whole thing, actually.
Could the following story be construed as a good sign?
A man goes to see his boss. “Boss”, he says, “we’re doing some heavy house-cleaning tomorrow before my mother-in-law arrives for Christmas. My wife needs me to help with cleaning, moving and hauling stuff”. “COVID has us short-handed” the boss replies. “I can’t afford to give anyone a day off”. The man says: “Thanks boss, I knew I could count on you!”
You know how much I hate having to admit that I have no clue about something, right?
I didn’t ask you what’s going to happen! Nobody knows that… I only asked you what you feel about it. What’s your impression about what’s going on!
Well… They surely evolved a lot faster than what we’re accustomed with… But none of them reached the point we’ve been expecting… not yet, anymore. And the signs don’t bode well… On the other hand, evolution is like tennis. A sport they had invented and which is very popular among them. Among all of them! Coming back to evolution, no matter what the signs suggest, it’s not over – one way or the other, until the very end. Until the last ball had been played and the last individual had died. Or until the ‘field’ had become unusable…
And what seems to be their biggest problem?
They still have to overcome quite a number of hurdles… the most important being the fact that they haven’t yet learned how to balance their need to maintain their distinct individualities with the reality that they have to coordinate their efforts in order to achieve anything worth mentioning. Including their own survival!
Any possible explanation for this inability of theirs?
The only thing I can think of is their particular sexuality. The more evolved among them have only two sexes. And the roles played by each sex are hugely different! Hence they have a clear idea about what complementarity means but also this strange notion of ‘priority’. Each sex considers itself more important than the other… Starting from here, it’s almost understandable that each individual, as they grow up, attempts to assert their individuality. Defend it from ‘intrusions’. Impose it upon as many of the others as they can… This impulse is so strong that even now, more than 5 generations after one of them – a certain Charles Darwin, had figured out a theory of evolution, most of them still consider that evolution is about the ‘survival of the fittest’…
This being the only difference?
Yep! They check on all other bench-marks… We can review each of them, if you want.
In the context of Kyle Rittenhouse’s trial, a friend asked me ‘which right takes precedence?’
A ‘right’ can be understood in two ways.
As something granted to somebody by somebody else. Or as a consequence of modus vivendi. A consequence of how people interact among themselves.
People who see it in the first way, will ‘fight’ to establish that ‘precedence’.
Those who understand rights as being a consequence of social evolution will negotiate among themselves about the order in which rights should be exerted.
Hence my assertion. No guns should be present at a ‘peaceful’ manifestation. Where people come to manifest their grievances. Where a car or two might get torched. Where a window or two might get smashed. But where – if things go as ‘planed’, nobody will loose more than a couple of teeth. No matter what!
But as soon as guns are brought along, the ‘atmosphere’ is changed. People start loosing their lives. And while a car, or a window, can be replaced… lost life cannot be brought back!
And for me, life takes precedence over property. I would aim a gun – If I had one, at somebody trespassing through my bedroom but I would not shoot at them unless my – or others, life was in danger.
So yes, Rittenhouse was right to defend himself but he shouldn’t have brought that rifle to a manifestation. No matter how riotous. It wasn’t his job to police the town. A town which wasn’t his home, where he owned no property… but where he eventually had taken two lives while ‘protecting property’. While asserting “his right to bear arms“.
To solve it, you have to break the box your own mind has assumed. The limitations your own mind had imposed, at least initially, over the whole thing. You have here the psychological intricacies.
But ‘breaking’ the box isn’t enough. You also need to ‘see’ the lines… Giving yourself enough ‘space’ to solve a problem is an absolutely necessary step but will not necessarily take you there.
There are other approaches.
There’s a guy, very successful, apparently, who advocates rethinking the boxes. You can start exploring his ideas here:
There’s another guy who argues that there is no box. No box at all! And that what you should do if you really want to ‘boldly go where no one has gone before’ is to “Set your box on fire“ Ooops… the guy really needs to make up his mind! Before giving advice to others … How can you “set your box on fire” before acknowledging its existence?!?
Which brings me to conclusion.
The first step towards solving a problem, any problem, is to determine the box which contains that problem. The limits you have to cross in order to be able to build a solution!
Which solution might not become apparent the moment you have crossed those limits! Or ever…. But which solution would have never crossed your mind had you remained inside the original box.
Inside the box in which you had originally confined yourself!
Stage 1 You are the prisoner of the box you have assigned to the problem you have to solve.
Stage 2 You’re still inside the box but your thinking outside it. The box had become porous. ‘Inflatable’, even. You can make it as big, or as small, as you deem necessary.
Stage three. You have removed yourself from the box. You are aware of the fact that the problem must still be solved inside of a box. Inside your knowledge and inside whatever resources may be made available for the task. But your current relation with the box containing the problem makes it possible for you to understand – and, maybe, solve, the meta-problem. From the outside it’s easier to figure out that it is you who needs to muster the pertinent knowledge, the necessary resources and the stamina to solve the problem. If you really want it solved, of course.
As much as I love writing, I do have to eat. And to provide for my family. Earning money takes time. If you’d like me to write more, and on a more regular basis, hit the button. Your contribution will be appreciated! Another very efficient way to help would be to share my posts.
As much as I love writing, I do have to eat. And to provide for my family. Earning money takes time. If you’d like me to write more, and on a more regular basis, hit the button. Your contribution will be appreciated!
As much as I love writing, I do have to eat. And to provide for my family. Earning money takes time. If you’d like me to write more, and on a more regular basis, hit the button. Your contribution will be appreciated!
There’s no more love lost among your people. Anything has become enough reason to fight for. Which has transformed them into a dysfunctional collection of mobs. Too many people make themselves available to the highest bidders and too few of them ever lend a helping hand to a neighbor in distress.
I know. Things are, indeed, very bad!
And what you going to do about it? After all, you’re in charge now… Do I need to come back? Take things into my own hands?
The treatment is already under way. And I’m sure you’re aware of it!
It might be. But your cure seems to be making things worse … The old and feeble die alone, the commoners distrust their leaders, the leaders no longer care about those they are supposed to lead, the con-artists command more respect than those committed to the ‘things well done’, ‘fake’ is widely admired while ‘true’ is left behind… where are they headed?!? I’m afraid some drastic measures are called for!
During the last 2000 years I’ve been thinking hard about the past. About what you had done when confronted with similar situations. Your measures had been efficient indeed. Harsh but very efficient. It’s not the harshness of your methods which have prevented me from following in your footsteps. It’s the short memory of my people. Of our people… they haven’t changed that much, you know… They forget quickly. A short ‘episode’ leaves a short memory… and the more ‘intense’ the episode, the quicker they ‘clean’ it from their ‘comfort zone’. ‘Something like this cannot happen again!’ So instead of an all cleansing flood or a pestilence which would have decimated them I had chosen a milder cure. A disease they will not be able to tame until they will learn, again, to cooperate. In earnest! And across every barrier they have erected among themselves! Until they make a habit of helping each-other instead of running each-other into the ground.
OK, Son, let’s give your method a try. After all, it was you who to love them to love each-other… It’s your teaching they no longer obey!
There’s something else, Father! Something I wanted to ask you for a while now but didn’t find the proper occasion. What were you thinking when you gave them freedom of will? Without teaching them first how to learn?
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As much as I love writing, I do have to eat. And to provide for my family. Earning money takes time. If you’d like me to write more, and on a more regular basis, hit the button. Your contribution will be appreciated! Another very efficient way to help would be to share my posts.
As much as I love writing, I do have to eat. And to provide for my family. Earning money takes time. If you’d like me to write more, and on a more regular basis, hit the button. Your contribution will be appreciated!
As much as I love writing, I do have to eat. And to provide for my family. Earning money takes time. If you’d like me to write more, and on a more regular basis, hit the button. Your contribution will be appreciated!
More than ten years ago I was preparing my thesis. To get a ‘title’ – BA in sociology, in my case, each Romanian student must submit a paper to a commission. To help them, students are allowed to chose a Professor. My choice had been Petre Anghel. We had many interesting ‘exchanges’. Before, during and after preparing my thesis. One of the most interesting ones had been about education.
Education is, maybe, the most ‘conservative’ things known to man. The transfer of knowledge from one generation to the next one is the single thing which allows a society to survive. And to thrive, if each successive generation diligently improves what has been bestowed upon it!
Petre Anghel
Fast forward to right now.
The US is the current ‘top dog’.
According to my Teacher, for a nation to reach this ‘stage’ it needs a smooth flow of knowledge from one generation to the next one. And a strenuous effort to improve that knowledge made by each successive generation.
Nowadays, both current generations – the one trying to pass over its knowledge and the one at the receiving end of the process, are dissatisfied with the current ‘education system’. Many belonging to the ‘mature’ generation are obsessing about ‘who runs the system and towards which end’ while the ‘learning generation’ is buckling under the costs incurred during the process.
Do I need to remind you that it’s the conservatives the world over who are whining about this?
OK, I understand the whiners living in failed states. Afghanistan, Somalia… But those enjoying the perks of living in the ‘civilized’ world? What are they complaining about? Weren’t they in charge while the current education system had been put in place? Aren’t they the parents, and educators, of the current student generation?
What’s going on here?!? Why are the American Conservatives, living in the most advanced country of the world – no doubt here!, the most vocal critics of their own education system?
What, and why, went wrong?
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As much as I love writing, I do have to eat. And to provide for my family. Earning money takes time. If you’d like me to write more, and on a more regular basis, hit the button. Your contribution will be appreciated! Another very efficient way to help would be to share my posts.
As much as I love writing, I do have to eat. And to provide for my family. Earning money takes time. If you’d like me to write more, and on a more regular basis, hit the button. Your contribution will be appreciated!
As much as I love writing, I do have to eat. And to provide for my family. Earning money takes time. If you’d like me to write more, and on a more regular basis, hit the button. Your contribution will be appreciated!
I argued earlier that truth is a convention. And that the Truth exists but will never be known. Not in its entirety, anyway.
Then what are we left with? How can any of us decide what is true and what is not?
First of all, any convention needs three things. The two convening parts and the object of their convention.
‘So, you want us to believe that truth is a make-believe?!?’
That it can be, yes!
And the further from the real truth – from reality itself, that convened about truth is, the worse the fate the believers will eventually have to face.
The first example which jumps to my mind is the fate of Bernie Madoff and ‘his’ investors. Bernie and each of the investors had convened a truth. That his investment fund was sound. Consider what happened to each of them. To each of the investors and to Bernie Madoff himself.
The single truth which is accessible to us is that while there is a single truth – we may call it ‘reality’, if you want, we’ll never know it in its entirety. We may get ever closer to getting there but we will never arrive.
The corollary – which is an integral part of the kernel truth, being that the effort to get closer to that single truth can be exerted only as a collective endeavor. Any other approach will, sooner rather than later, end up in a cul-de-sac.
The sooner we agree about this ‘kernel’ truth, the more peaceful the journey to never get there will become.
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As much as I love writing, I do have to eat. And to provide for my family. Earning money takes time. If you’d like me to write more, and on a more regular basis, hit the button. Your contribution will be appreciated! Another very efficient way to help would be to share my posts.
As much as I love writing, I do have to eat. And to provide for my family. Earning money takes time. If you’d like me to write more, and on a more regular basis, hit the button. Your contribution will be appreciated!
As much as I love writing, I do have to eat. And to provide for my family. Earning money takes time. If you’d like me to write more, and on a more regular basis, hit the button. Your contribution will be appreciated!
nicichiarasa 