Respecting other people’s opinions means respectfully telling them how wrong they are – when they are, of course, instead of shouting, in their faces, about how stupid they are – in that precise moment.
In this sense, this meme is, actually, inflammatory. Nobody who has paid some attention in high-school – and has maintained a working eye-sight, will ever opine about something like this. Only those who 1. don’t see/know the difference between a ‘factor’ and a ‘base’ and/or 2. don’t care enough to pay real attention – and want to get it over with, would fall prey to this ‘ruse’.
Using this example to demand ‘stop the antiscience movement’ is, in fact, disrespectful! And counterproductive. It will only deepen the chasm between those who believe in science and those who see the ‘science peddlers’ as being arrogant know-alls.
This book represents Djuvara’s thesis for his 1974 Doctorat d’Etat.
There are two main ideas which are to be pointed out here. A first one hidden under the distinction he identifies between ‘culture’ and ‘civilization’. The second being the bread and butter of his thesis. That civilizations are initiated in one place, diffused/exported for a while and then replaced – or led further, depending on how one chooses to interpret the facts, by people until then living somewhere on the fringes of the civilization they are replacing/refurbishing.
Nothing really new, right? ‘Cyclical History’ wasn’t invented yesterday. And certainly not by Neagu Djuvara.
Well, Djuvara’s ideas – like everybody else’s, are nothing but ‘overgrowth’. Things which sprung in people’s minds ‘on top’ of what those people had already learned. Found out. Or, of course, both.
In a sense, what I’ve said in the previous sentence is the very condensed abstract of Djuvara’s second ‘main idea’. The first, the ‘hidden’ one, – again, in an extremely abridged version, being that ‘history, as a narrative, is nothing more and nothing less than what historians choose to make of the facts they had learned about’.
Too blunt? Well, first and foremost, I’m an engineer. Not a fancy pen-pusher…
OK. Let’s go further. I’m going to illustrate, briefly, Djuvara’s main thesis by presenting his version of what had happened in Europe. What had started as an European phenomenon, more precisely.
The Roman civilization had grown at the periphery of the Ancient Greece. And, eventually, took over more ‘space’ than the Ancient Greeks. The Russian civilization had grown at the periphery of the Byzantine/Orthodox one and eventually took over. Or, at least, attempted to… The Holy Roman Empire of German Nation ‘recycled’ – or, at least, attempted to, the ‘ancient’ values and traditions. Great Britain had grown at the periphery of Europe until it took over the whole world. At least for a while… The US, which had started as a British colony, had grown into the most powerful nation known to man.
‘OK, I understand what you meant by trailers and trailblazers. Some of those who trail might end up trailblazing. Do you want to add anything? Is there an actual point to your post?’
Yep. As they say about the market, ‘past performance is no guarantee about the future’. The fact that things have happened as they did is no guarantee that they’ll keep unfolding in the same manner.
In a sense, Fukuyama was right, after all… Even if not in the sense he thought it!
According to “The end of history” people – all over the World, had realized the relative merits of ‘liberal democracy’ and ‘capitalism’. Which were going to be put in practice, effectively marking ‘the end of history’. Thirty years past that moment, it seems that things aren’t going in that direction.
I’m I contradicting myself? Who’s right, after all? Djuvara? Since history doesn’t seem to have stopped? Or Fukuyama, but for some other reason? Than the one advertised by him?
‘History, as a narrative, is nothing more and nothing less than what historians choose to make of the facts they had learned about’
Then, if history is ‘man made’, what about the future?
Can we really make it? Predict it?
‘Make it’, for sure! If not us, then who?!?
‘Predict it’… that’s something totally different!
There are signs, though.
First of all, Djuvara had described something which can be compared with fire burning in a savannah. It starts in one place, burns for a while… and then starts up some place else. Until now, no fire – no fire known to man, had burned any savannah so thoroughly that nothing was left for a ‘second’ fire.
Secondly, Fukuyama said that history will end when all humankind will sync. When all ‘civilizations’ will be run according to the same paradigm. According to the liberal democratic and capitalist paradigm, in Fukuyama’s vision. We’re still far from that. Only there is one paradigm which is willing to play that role! To fill those shoes…
The ‘greed is good’ paradigm! Or, if you don’t like to think in ‘monetary’ terms, the ‘my version is the only right one’ paradigm.
The problem being that these two work in concert. They are two facets of something called ‘intellectual arrogance’.
I’ll come back to this notion sometime in the future. Now I’ll end up telling that there’s not much left of the ‘savannah’.
When things were unfolding as Djuvara described them, the planet itself was more or less ‘virgin’. Unexploited. Unoccupied. Human culture used to be diverse. Ideas were developing. Traded. From one place to the other. From one culture to the other.
Nowadays, much of the planet – our home, is occupied by the, more or less, same civilization. And by an increasingly similar culture.
Nothing inherently good nor bad here, mind you!
If we still have no definitive history, then the future hasn’t been written yet. It’s up to us to choose the right trail. For no other reason than the fact that there are very few trails left for us to burn!
I still have to find, only I’ve lost patience, an explanation for what had ‘fed’ Trump. Trump as social phenomenon…
For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished but the people did not share in its wealth. Politicians prospered but the jobs left and the factories closed.
Trump has made himself famous. Among others, for imparting new meaning to the concept of ‘fake-news’. And for using “alternative facts” to introduce us to an ‘alternative reality’. His…
Only his reality did have something in common with that faced by many of his fellow Americans.
Oops! Suddenly, Trump’s ‘alternative’ reality – part of it, at least, has become one with that experienced by “we, the People”. By a majority of them, anyway.
What made so many people – dispirited, undoubtedly, believe that a self professed pussy grabber and proud member of the Washington establishment would solve their real-life problems… by ‘draining’ the very ‘swamp’ in which he had grown to his present stature … that’s something for other people to explain.
My point being that Trump’s behavior had very closely followed that of Goethe’s Apprentice Sorcerer. He had used his uncanny knack of playing hide-and-seek with reality to climb into the Oval Office only to be fired after one mandate. To be the first American President who had survived two impeachments. And the second one who had witnessed – more or less unmoved, the untimely demise of half a million Americans due to disease
But the first who had done that during a mostly peaceful mandate. Pandemic, true enough, but otherwise peaceful.
NB. The ‘Spanish Flu’ pandemic, which had happened during Woodrow Wilson’s mandate, had caused the death of 675 000 Americans. Only that had occurred just after a world war, when viruses hadn’t yet been discovered and man hadn’t yet walked on the Moon.
What will happen next?
Who knows… Goethe’s poem had a relatively happy ending because a master sorcerer was at hand. Who had solved the problem with a swift gesture of his powerful wand.
No such easy solution is available now. But one thing has become clear. Again…
Two things, actually. Too many dispirited people eventually become a powerful – and highly unstable, ‘Petri dish’. Where all kinds of ‘social experiments’ might ‘spontaneously’ explode. And playing with people’s passions might take you places. But will, almost always, end up badly.
‘Handicap’ has become a dirty word… Somewhat strange, given the breadth of its meaning. Horses get handicapped in order to even their chances to win a race. Yachts get handicapped so that different makes might participate in the same race… In these situations, its an ‘honor’ to be handicapped…
Then why has this concept, ‘political correctness’, become so ‘popular’?
You might already be familiar with the ‘upfront’ explanation.
“political correctness has reset the standards for civility and respect in people’s day-to-day interactions.”
I’m convinced there was something more. Civility and respect haven’t been invented yesterday. We’ve been polite for quite a while now.
Yeah, only politeness had been invented, and polished, when society was way more hierarchical than in is now. In those times, when a ‘superior’ told somebody ‘you idiot’ that somebody paused to think. The ‘idiot’ could not dismiss what the ‘superior’ had just told him. The ‘idiot’ really had to make amends. He was so busy trying to correct himself that he couldn’t allow himself to feel offended. If anything, he was grateful. The ‘superior’ had made the effort to help the ‘idiot’ improve himself instead of dispatching him altogether. In modern times, even before PC had become fashionable, calling someone’s attention about how idiotic he was behaving only made him angry. Hence dismissive and unresponsive. In an era when all people had become peers, a new ‘manner of speaking’ had to be invented in order for ‘information’ to be made ‘palatable’.
The process had been successful. So successful that the same approach had been used when dealing with other ‘hot’ subjects. Race, gender… ‘inclusion’ in general…
In fact, the process had become too successful for its own good!
Some of the ‘enthusiasts’ have reached the conclusion that ‘everything’ is open for reconsideration. That ‘everything’ should be closely reexamined. According to the ideological lenses worn by the examiners, of course…
Unfortunately, the end result is rather messy.
Instead of facilitating the dialog, the stiffer and stiffer set of ‘appropriate’ ‘rules of engagement’ has almost stifled any transfer of meaningful information.
“Despite this obvious progress, the authors’ research has shown that political correctness is a double-edged sword. While it has helped many employees feel unlimited by their race, gender, or religion, the PC rule book can hinder people’s ability to develop effective relationships across race, gender, and religious lines.”
Ibid.
Not only that people find it harder and harder to understand each-other, ‘things’ themselves become blurry.
Now, do the statues of these two people stand for the same thing? And no, I’m not trying to discern between two villains!
Each of them had done an immense amount of harm and had produced endless suffering. People are still smarting to this day because of what both of them had done. Only there are some differences between them. One had also done some good in his life. While the other had been used, after his death and without his consent, as a symbol. After he had, directly, kept people in slavery he had also been used to further the sufferings of black people.
Are we capable of seeing any of these differences? Or are we too angry to differentiate?
Do you remember why we had invented political correctness in the first place?
“The popularity of authors like Deutsch, Sandbrook and Foote – men of very different calibre in many different ways, but all wordsmiths who form history into desirably unchallenging packages for certain kinds of audience – is undeniable. It points to a conclusion that the wider historical profession, from schoolteachers to internationally renowned critical scholars, struggles to overcome. People, and specially people from priviledged groups, do not want historians to tell them bad things about their tresured identities. They will, indeed, forcefully react against such challenges, when given the political rallying-calls that allow them to do so. In that sense, it must be said, they do not want history. They want what they are increasingly getting: a cosy blanket of half remembering and convenient forgetting that is cushioning their slide down the slope to full-blown cultural dementia.”
Imagine an ‘outside observer’. From, say, Sirius. Who had just arrived. Didn’t have enough time to become familiar with what’s going on here.
Thailand. Ballots had been cast in November. A party had lost. And pretends, without proof, that the elections had been rigged.
“In his first public comments after the coup, Gen Hlaing sought to justify the takeover, saying the military was on the side of the people and would form a “true and disciplined democracy”.” GETTY IMAGES
When the parliament was about to be convened, and the electoral results formally confirmed, the backers of the loosing party – which had happened to be the army, declared martial law and annulled the electoral results. The leading general announced in public that the measure had been adopted in pursuit of a ‘real and disciplined democracy’.
The US. Ballots had been cast in November. The looser pretended, without proof, that the elections had been rigged.
When the parliament was convened to certify the results, a mob had stormed the House of the Parliament, at the bidding of the loosing President. Order was finally restored and the dully elected President installed into office.
What would the ‘outside observer’ think about our planet? About us…
What if their job is to asses whether we should be allowed to roam the Galaxy? To be entrusted with some very powerful technological ‘secrets’. Which would help us solve some of our very stringent problems. Feel free to name a few…
One of my high-school mates had emigrated to Canada. From Romania. He’s been living there for 25 years now. We keep in touch. A few years ago, he told me:
“We come from their future. I currently experience things which had already happened in Romania.”
His prophecy had been fulfilled, and then some, yesterday. The sixth of January, 2021.
1991, Romanian miners occupying the Romanian Parliament.
The differences between the two instances exist and they are not insignificant.
Both Trump and Iliescu – the Romanian president at that time, had been democratically elected. Both on populist platforms, even if the concept wasn’t as widely used in 1991 as it is now.
Only 1991 wasn’t the first time the miners had come to Bucharest. In 1990 Ion Iliescu – the ‘cripto’ communist leader who had risen to power as a consequence of the 1989 uprising, had ‘thanked’ the miners for quelling a ‘festering’ anti neo-communist protest organized mainly by students. In fact, this had been yet another precedent. ‘Occupy’ Piata Universitatii 1990 versus Occupy ‘Everything’ 2011. In 1991, the miners had, again, ‘occupied’ Bucharest. Again, ‘supposedly’, under their own volition. The then prime minister, Petre Roman, had adopted some very stringent free market reforms. Which had fallen foul of both Iliescu and certain swaths of the population. Hence the miners had not been driven back to Valea Jiului until Petre Roman had been revoked from office.
And 1991 wasn’t the last time the miners had attempted to make themselves noticed… As the old saying goes, it’s harder to quiet down a hornet’s nest than to stir it up!
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?
