As soon as I finished reading, I started to wonder…
Who, in their right minds, would accept to work for such an ’employer’? After all, sooner rather than later, everybody makes mistakes! And if the penalty for the slightest mistake is being thrown to a pack of wild dogs…
On the other hand, who – in their right minds, would treat their employees like that? Given the fact that no right minded people would accept – as per my previous observation, to work under such ‘constraints’.
And, even more interesting, who – as an ‘owner’, would hire such a ‘manager’?
Given what’s currently going on in the most powerful democracy on Earth, it becomes obvious why Putin had helped Trump’s 2016 campaign to become POTUS. Remember Ulises’s Trojan horse? OK, it’s impossible to know for sure whether Trump and Putin actually ‘negotiated’ anything. The point being that for a seasoned judge of people Trump behaving like an elephant in a china shop after being sworn in office was a no-brainer. Putin could not know exactly what Trump was going to do. But he was certain that it would not end well…. For America!
Now, that Trump is throwing democracy to the dogs simply because the process didn’t end up the way he wanted, Putin must be gloating in front of the biggest mirror in Kremlin!
Smart enough to brag about it when attempting to become the next President of the United States…. at least according to Donald Trump… and to those who had voted for him – numerous enough for him to achieve his goal.
Smart enough or smart, period?
Let me put it differently. You have no car. Yet you need to go to work and to shop for groceries. Hence you use public transport. Do you pay for it? What would happen if a sizeable portion of those who use it would find a way to stop paying while still using the service? Those who continue to pay would have to pay more to keep the service going? Or the community at large would have to subsidize it?
You don’t care for my example because you do have a car… Then you need roads to drive on… hence you have to pay local taxes. And federal ones for the interstate highways… You’d like them all to be privatized? Then you’ll pay gladly? And how much will that be? At this point I must remind you of Ma Bell. The telephone company which had to be dismantled, by the government, to make room for the present ‘data revolution’. If prices to move information from one place to another would have remained in the same range as in Ma Bell’s time you wouldn’t have had access to internet today. Unless you were a millionaire…
Taxes, local and federal, are ‘access fees’. If you want to operate – as a corporation or as an individual, out of a civilized place – safe and all, then you incorporate your business/set up residence in a civilized country. And pay the taxes collected by the administrators – read governments, to run those places.
Taxes are too high and or ill spent?!? That’s a completely different subject!
Most civilized places are run as democracies. You don’t like the way your money is spent? Or how much of it is collected to run the place? Then what’s keeping you from voicing your concern? From holding accountable those who misspend your taxes? From doing whatever you see fit? After you pay your taxes, of course…
You feel ‘crushed’ by the majority? Whom you despise, by the way? Then you don’t live in an actually democracy. That’s either a ‘mob rule’ – a.k.a. populist regime, or the population is so divided that no real conversation is taking place between the various social segments. And democracy without honest conversation is nothing more than make believe. I had chosen very carefully the word ‘population’. When something like this occurs, ‘nation’ is no longer appropriate.
Still unwilling to pay your dues? Still convinced it’s a good thing to turn your back to what’s going on in your front yard?
Still convinced that remaining ‘sane’ is more important than finding out what’s really going on?
Division of work was the first milestone we had passed in our quest to reach humanhood.
If not convinced, compare the effectiveness – in any situation, of a team composed of identically educated and similarly skilled people versus one comprising individuals with various skills and diverse exposure to the world – a.k.a. education. In other words, compare a bunch of ‘robots’ to a gang of people who complement each-other.
Historically, societies – when and where enough resources had been present, have become increasingly complex. While those composing them have become more and more specialized. And more and more dependent on the rest of the society. On the smooth functioning of said society. In Adam Smith’s words: the baker, the butcher and the brewer depend on each-other to feed their respective families.
In fact, all of us depend on the smooth functioning of the market. Those of us who had experienced communism had learned this on our own skin. Same thing is valid for all totalitarian societies. Any attempt to run complex systems from above – in a centralized manner, will – sooner rather than later, end up in failure. For no other reason than the fact that nobody – individually or in a small team, is above error. No matter how smart or well intended, all of us make mistakes. If the system allows for those present to point out errors – and to demand those errors to be fixed, things may continue.
But, by definition, a totalitarian – a.k.a. centrally planned, system has no feed-back loop. The planners have ‘no’ information about the consequences of their decision making. Well, my experience suggests a combination. Those at ‘the bottom’ gradually loose their appetite for sending information topside – because those at the top had the habit of ‘killing’ the bearers of bad news, while those at the ‘top’ gradually loose any interest in what goes on at the bottom.
Working democracies are organized around the principle of ‘separation of powers’. Another form of ‘division of work’. Each ‘power’ does what it’s supposed to do and, together, balance the whole system.
Nothing ‘fancy’. For as long as those involved pay due respect to the principle instead of lip service to the form…
Nassim Taleb had coined an interesting concept. Intellectual yet Idiot. Any individual conceited enough to believe he’s always right and arrogant enough to try to impose his worldview on those around him.
Or, in Karl Marx’s terms, an individual who has convinced himself that the world needs to be changed according to his own precepts.
‘What?!? Are you implying that Marx was the first ‘intellectual yet idiot’?’
No, only the second… Remember Plato’s ‘king priests’? What’s the difference between those who, according to Plato’s advice, were to be groomed to govern and those who had been conditioned by various totalitarian parties and sent out to ‘spread the word’? What’s the difference between Plato, Marx and, say, Alfred Beumler and Alfred Rosenberg?
Plato had been inspired by what Pericles – a dictator, had managed to achieve and his most prominent ‘product’ had been Aristotle. Who, in his turn, had educated Alexander the Great. Supposedly one of the greatest generals and statesmen in human history. According to European historiography, anyway… If you ask to those of his contemporaries who had happened to be in Alexander’s path to glory… you might get a different opinion! And what’s so glorious in being the immediate cause of death for so many people across three continents only to die of alcoholic poisoning?
Marx had come up with a brilliant explanation for what went wrong in early capitalism and with an abysmal solution for the problems he had identified. The worst thing being that he didn’t stop at proposing aberrant solutions. He was actually instrumental in several attempts to put them in practice.
Alfred Beumler and Alfred Rosenberg. Is there any need for me to comment on them? On their absolute arrogance? How else to call their willingness to declare that some people are to go on living while others should be disposed off?
This being the moment I’ll be pointing the finger to what Plato, Marx and Beumler/Rosenberg have in common. All of them share the willingness to divide people into ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’. The arrogance to put forward criteria which are to be followed by the rest of us. The arrogance to consider the world should follow their teachings.
Division of work had done it’s job. Invented by nobody in particular, used by most of us – and many of our ancestors, it had brought us to where we are now. When so many of us have time to think. Technology – maybe the most evident consequence of ‘division of work’, is proficient enough to feed us all. If we use it right. Or to kill us all. If we use it wrong.
What will it be? Are we going to remember what, time and time again, our forefathers have figured out? That ‘together’ we can ‘move mountains’? That diversity is the key to survival? To finding new paths into the future? Or are we going to fall pray – not for the first but, certainly, for the last time, to those who teach us to despise our neighbor? To stay separate? To consider some people – mainly ‘us’, as being above the rest?
A new pandemic is gripping us. By our egos! One which is a hell of a lot more dangerous than Covid….
In fact, narrow mindedness is a disease which occurs naturally. It probably affects some 10 percent of the population in ‘normal’ times. When things are no longer normal – and people become nervous because uncertainty does all kind of ‘funny’ things to our minds, narrow mindedness becomes an opportunity. A golden opportunity for those who ‘professionally’ fish in troubled waters.
“The Petersons weren’t wearing pro-police T-shirts,” notes Churchill. “They weren’t carrying a banner, holding a sign or waving a black-and-blue flag. They appear to just be listening. But merely listening to an opinion that some Skidmore students find objectionable is apparently enough to get a professor in hot water.”
Professor Greg Patton at the University of Southern California (USC) was telling students in a communications lecture last month about filler, or pause words, such as ‘err’, ‘umm’ or ‘you know’ in English. Footage of his lecture, which has now gone viral, shows Prof Patton saying: “In China, the common pause word is ‘that, that, that’. So in China, it might be na-ge, na-ge, na-ge.” Enunciated, na-ge sounds like the N-word, which led several of the professor’s students to complain to the university. Responding to the complaint, the dean of the university, Geoffrey Garrett, told students that Prof Patton would no longer be teaching the course. “It is simply unacceptable for the faculty to use words in class that can marginalize, hurt and harm the psychological safety of our students,” he said.
“For a proposition to be true, it is not enough for it to be logically correct. It also needs to make epistemological sense.” Oscar Hoffman
Ricky Gervais is right, right? There’s no logical connection between being offended and being right… There’s no doubt about this!
Only Gervais is wrong. Wrong in saying it, not in what he said.
Yes, there are people who declare themselves to be offended in an attempt to get something. Sympathy, some slack… or even the others to accept their version of things. That ‘they’ are ‘right’.
But this is not always the case! Some (other) people are so offended by the manner in which things are unfolding that they actually need to express their feelings. To send the warning ‘don’t continue in this manner or you’ll loose my attention/will to cooperate’.
In this sense, Gervais is actually wrong. His saying had been used by numerous meme builders to create a bubble inside which callousness is actively encouraged. ‘Go on disregarding other people’s sentiments. They’re nothing but pussies. It’s just words, not sticks nor stones.’
Here’s a more detailed analysis:
So fucking what?!? Somebody just told you they are not going to stop paying any real attention to what you are trying to say to them and you don’t care? Why did you start communicating in the first place? Or ‘performing’ the ‘offensive’ thing in public? Was the ‘offense’ premeditated? For a reason or just for fun? Then it’s not ‘so fucking what’ anymore… Or you just hadn’t thought about it beforehand? And you’re looking for an easy way out?
No, you don’t have to pretend to like people when you don’t. But, in the longer time frame, it pays to honestly respect those you get in contact with. All of them.
Society exists in two forms. One in which the individual members have a certain amount of respect towards their peers. And another one, where John Doe doesn’t give a damn about anybody else. Or even hates everybody else.
The first kind evolves. People talk – and listen, about their problems. Then find solutions. The second experiences revolutions.
When too many individuals have never had anything ‘substantial’ on their name, and feel they have no chance of improving their lot – because ‘everything’ has already been appropriated by a small minority, that society has a marked tendency towards communism.
Sometimes, too many individuals see their fortunes go down the drain, for no matter what reason. From there, only God knows how, those fortunes go straight into somebody else’s pockets. Any society which experiences something similar has a marked tendency towards fascism.
The problem with both communism and fascism being that they have always failed. Crumbled from within before being pushed into the precipice by those who has seen the situation as an opportunity. As an opportunity too good to be wasted. Then, if neither had ever survived for long, why are so many people who continue to profess either? So many intellectuals who try to convince their audience that …
Well…, first of all, because ‘intellectuals’ are nothing but regular people. With a twist! Not only that intellectuals have the same ‘passions’ as the commoners – ‘greed’ being the most intense, but they also have a very good opinion about themselves. Hence too many of the intellectuals consider that they are the ones who should be in charge. That they are the ones who know what everybody else need to do if they want to live comfortably.
In a nutshell, too many intellectuals fall into the trap of considering themselves infallible. And ‘deserving’! Hence those would do everything needed to get what is rightfully theirs.
If a society is ripe for communism, one/a bunch of the ‘intellectuals’ I described above will, for sure, drape themselves in a communist flag. If another society is ripe for fascism, in a similar manner, one or, probably, more ‘intellectuals’ will drape themselves in a fascist flag.
It’s up to us, who’ve experienced at least one of them, to blow the whistle. And it’s up to the rest to listen…
‘For things to work as intended, there must be a rule’.
Errr…
‘For things to work, there must be at least some consistency involved’.
This is a far better starting point!
An example would be fine?
Then imagine an Earth where the gravitational field was haphazard. In space and time. Where two lumps of dirt, a k a mountains, sometimes pulled at each other while some other times pushed. With no rules involved whatsoever. Or where sometimes wood needed oxygen to burn while some other times – or in some other places, the presence of nitrogen was enough for wood to burst into flames. Need some more? Then how about a place where dogs breed with cows. And also with butterflies. Only not always. And not in a constant manner.
Have you stopped laughing? Well, this was how our ancestors imagined the Earth. Sometimes after a mutation had provided them with the most powerful brain ever, our forefathers had learned to speak. To ‘trade’ information. Soon after they has started to develop something Humberto Maturana called ‘the ability of an observer to observe themselves while making observations’. ‘Self awareness’ for short. Or ‘conscience’ in everyday parlance.
Imagine a self-aware observer watching the sun go down. A rather smart one. One with a vivid enough imagination to ask ‘what if the sun will not come up tomorrow morning’… Stonehenge has suddenly acquired a new meaning, right?
That was why God had so much traction. Simply because it gave sense to everything. It lend meaning to everything under the sun. And beyond!
In time, under God’s protection, we invented science. And, slowly but surely, we’ve started apportioning meaning ourselves. Meaning we’ve started to take for granted. Meaning which no longer depended on any third party!
Only we’ve gradually forgotten what science is really about.
Why we had developed it in the first place.
We had forgotten that science is wrong by definition. That, by following this path, we’ll be forever able to find new meaning but that we’ll never be able to find ‘the’ meaning.
And now, that we’ve ‘killed’ God – as no longer necessary, we rely solely on the meaning we’ve already affixed to the things we already know. To the things we consider to know… conveniently forgetting what science taught us….
Faced with unforeseen crises – unforeseen, not unforeseeable, we are left powerless. Having taken so much for granted – our knowledge about the world and our ability to overcome everything the nature throws at us, above all, we find ourselves bereaved of our erstwhile powers.
Are we going to rediscover intellectual humility? And the ability to take advice? From the most unlikely teacher?
Culture is to human communities what DNA is to biological species.
It transports vital information from one generation to the other. Hence providing a venue for survival. Furthermore, both culture and DNA can change in time. Hence providing a venue for evolution.
The difference between culture and DNA being, of course, the fact that culture is way more fluid than DNA. DNA changes only once for each generation – what you get at birth is what you’re taking to the grave, while culture is in constant flux. No individual organism has anything to say about their genetic information but almost every human is capable of learning almost anything.
Now for the historical part.
Stage one.
Veneration of the elders. The elders were the depositories of the common knowledge. Hence everybody took good care of the ‘data bases’.
Stage two.
Somebody learned to write. Elders were no longer indispensable. More and more information could be ‘warehoused’ in alternative ways. A structure was needed to manage the new ways of dealing with the vital information.
Stage three.
The state is born. At first the structures which insured that culture was passed from one generation to another had been rather empiric: kingdoms, monasteries, etc. Soon after the Enlightenment things had become more rational. Cultured people became nations and the academic scholars gave us the state. As the structure charged to make sure that culture and people stay together. Hence providing for the nation’s survival.
States who had been in constant contact – read rivalry, kept each-other fit. Or else. States ‘removed’ from reality – geographically, by becoming too powerful to care or both, had experienced a natural decay. The people at the top of the food chain had forgotten about those at the bottom and those at the bottom had lost faith in their leadership.
States too weak to survive – for various reasons, have succumbed while those too powerful for their own sake have eventually imploded.
Psychology to the rescue.
Culture is more fluid than DNA for a reason. DNA follows exclusively the laws of nature while culture is heavily influenced by us. We, men, are the measure of all things. All life heavily transforms the place it inhabits. So do we, humans. Only we do it willingly. On purpose, that is.
Now, that we have amassed so much information – about life in general and about how we relate, as agents, to the entire process, we have reached a reckoning moment. What next?
Are we going to choose the path of the cuckoo or that shown to us by Hokule-a?
During lock-down I had more time for my research regarding conscience. Or, in Maturana’s terms, ‘self-awareness‘.
At first glance, evolutionary speaking, conscience – our ability to observe ourselves ‘in the act’, is about increasing the survivability of the individual having said ability. Hence increasing the survivability of the species to which said individual belongs.
Now, since humankind is divided in cultural ‘subspecies’ – and, according to Maturana, conscience is an ability which has been developed in social context, cultures have different chances of survival. Depending on subtle differences imposed upon the individual consciences during the ‘coming of age’. Only there’s something which contradicts Darwin’s evolutionary theory. According to the classical version, individuals cannot adapt themselves. Individuals can only survive – and transmit their genes, or – if said genes are not good enough for the circumstances, expire and make way for other individuals/species. According to Darwin, only species can evolve.
The notable difference being what we call ‘free will’. Not as free as some believe it to be, not as bounded as other think it to be, free will does exist. And allows us to evolve on an individual basis. During the life span of the current generation.
Only there’s a small problem here. Cognitive dissonance. No matter how conscient – aka aware of our own misgivings, each of us might be, our first tendency when confronted with arguments contradicting our previously held convictions is to rationalize away those arguments. Change convictions according to the newly acquired knowledge? Maybe later… Don’t believe me? How much time elapsed between learning that smoking is bad for you and actually quitting? See what I mean?
Hence my ‘impression’ that ‘conscience’ is more concerned about maintaining its own consistency than with the fate of the biological organism which actually supports it.
Want some more arguments?
Northern Italy. France. Spain. Bad Corona-virus outbreaks, followed by intense lock-downs. Currently the situations are, basically, under control. Suggesting that people do learn, fast, when confronted by really dire circumstances. Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Singapore… reacted immediately, had relatively few problems. Suggesting that people are able to learn from past experiences. The ‘original’ SARS, you know… Germany had a less ‘dramatic’ trajectory. Suggesting people may, under certain circumstances, learn from others. US and Brazil. The rest of the US, actually. The NE having experienced the North Italian scenario. Too many people concerned more with remaining consistent with their previous selves than with adapting to the new challenge. ‘Government tries to subdue us’ and ‘masks are an infringement to personal liberty’.
What about China and Russia? I’ll let you be the judge of that. Only you need to remember that ‘free will’ is of a totally different nature there than it is here. In the rest of the world.
Same in India. With a twist. While in China/Russia free will is stifled from above, in India – and in too many other developing nations, free will is ‘conscripted’ by poverty. It is very hard to think about the day after tomorrow if you don’t know whether you’ll be able to eat tomorrow. Even less so if you are hungry right now.
To cut a long story short, some 25 years ago I started trading on the Bucharest Stock Exchange. The market had been freshly reinstated after the fall of the communist regime and most of us so called investors were quite naive. Due an incredible amount of luck and a small but very useful spark of intelligence I made a fair amount of money. For that time… In an attempt to maximize my profits, I went back to school. Where I learned the difference between fundamental and technical analysis.
I’m not going into details. It’s enough for you to know that no matter how different they are, both fulfill the same psychological function. They ‘clean up’ the slate. They help the decision makers distance themselves from the objects they have to decide upon.
What?!?
A stock – or any other tradable item, is no different from a bicycle. We, human beings, become attached to things we already have in our possession. We find it harder to divest ourselves from something than to buy into something new. We tend to procrastinate when having to choose between multiple opportunities to buy and to ‘defend’ an already made decision. An already acquired possession. Fundamental and technical analyses do nothing but bridge these two ‘chasms’. Help us across.
OK. But has any of this to do with propaganda?
Well, market analysis is a tool used by the decision maker himself. Propaganda is a tool used by somebody who intends to influence the decision maker. Using the same psychological mechanisms.
While market analysis attempts to clear the ‘sentimental fog’ which distorts the factual information available to the decision maker, propaganda works its way in the opposite direction. Facts are presented in such a way as to ‘smuggle’ them, below the radar, into the minds of the intended targets. While market analysis is meant to help decision makers overcome their biases, propaganda is meant to fine tune those biases towards ‘encouraging’ the decision makers into adopting the decision coveted by the propagandist.
Somebody sent me this picture. See how things work? Most people consider themselves as being free from racism. Also, most people consider that other people – namely the politicians and the journalists, have ‘vested’ interests. And that these ‘other’ people use ‘divide and conquer’ to maintain their grip on power.
The key word here being ‘other’. It’s the others who engage in such heinous acts. Never ‘our’ people.
But do you know what bothers me most? I’ve been subjected to communist propaganda for the first 30 years of my life. I’ve never dreamed it would take me another 30 years – and a stint of daily trading on the Stock Market, to figure out how propaganda works. Only to find it being used by people who declare communism to be the scourge of the Earth.
Well, since communism actually is a scourge, how about we NOT using the same tool as those who try to infect our minds with it? For no other reason than propaganda yielding communism having been a complete failure….
