Language is the tool we use to convey information. To speak our minds…
The consequences of tool use – messages, in this case – depend on the yielder. The consequences of shooting a gun depend mainly on the person aiming the gun. The consequences of using language … depend on those who are at the both ends of the ‘barrel’.
Messages – consequences of language being used to put together batches of information with the intent of transmitting them to an audience – are interpreted as soon as they reach their ‘target’. Meaning – what the receptor makes of a message, using the same languaging tools as those put to work by the emitter – depends mainly on the receptor. In fact, most of the times, there’s more information to be gleaned from a message than that intended to be conveyed by the person initiating the exchange.
If interested in who said what and what Orwell thought about the subject… just click on the link above. I’ll only add the reasons for which I know it to be a misleading affirmation.
The factual truth is that only dictators need to be guarded by rough men during their sleep. And during the rest of their lives… We, the rest of ‘the people’, go to sleep at night knowing there’s only a very slim chance to be targeted by thieves. Yes, we know that the police will likely come to investigate after the fact. After the fact… But we also know that we are less likely to fall prey to violence than those living in other countries because our societies work better than those which are more violent than ours.
Because our society works better, not because we employ more ‘rough men’ to guard us… On the contrary! The more violent a country, the more ‘popular’ the ‘rough men’ are. On both ‘sides of the isle’!
And the more violent a country, the less peacefully people sleep in that country…
Unfortunately, it was a ‘deep critical thinker’ who had come up with this idea in the first place. That ‘if you want to control, you need to isolate the intellectual’.
A ‘plain-clothes man’ doesn’t think in these therms!
Let me rephrase the whole thing.
I am rational. Which means that all my conclusions are valid. Simply because I have reached them in a rational manner. Hence all other conclusions are wrong. For the simple reason that they are different from mine. Since they are wrong, they should not reach their audience. For they might displace my conclusions from the public mind! Which brings me to the conclusion that if I want to conserve my position – as the official thinker – I must make it so that all other intellectuals must be isolated from the public. Only I need to dress up this conclusion as if it was about the greater public good.
And this is why Protagoras of Abdera and Socrates had been banished from the forum. Why Plato maintained that before being allowed to rule the philosopher-kings had to be specially trained for the mission. Taught to keep an open mind towards alternatives! Why Marxism, Fascism and all other authoritarian lines of thinking lead those who pursue them into the same dead-end. Into abject failure…
History doesn’t go anywhere. It pesters us with lessons. Until we figure out their meanings. Or until there’s no one left. No one left to be pestered! Darwin 2.0
One of the recurrent lessons history is peppered with: ‘Imperia always fail. Sooner or later, eventually all imperial social arrangements end up in abject failure. Empires as well as monopolies.’
And no, the Pharaonic empire didn’t last for 3000 years. What happened there was 30 something successive empires. Read dynasties. Whenever a dynasty lost its grip, its empire folded. Whenever a new dynasty took over, it presided over a new empire. Same thing happened in modern France. Same territory, same population, same culture, 5 republics and two empires since 1789. The fact that the last three republics have been consecutive doesn’t merge them into a single one.
Europe has been the scene of a whole host of wars. Some of them worldwide wars. Since the French Revolution, all empires which had attempted to subjugate their neighbors have failed.
Napoleon’s attempt had initiated the German ‘coming together’ and turned Russia’s attention back to Europe. Napoleon the 3rd had helped Bismark to finalize Prussia’s taking over the rest of what we currently call Germany. WWI was started by people who had no clue and put on hold by people who had no vision. Started by imperialistically thinking people who didn’t see any need to evaluate the consequences of their countries going to war and put on hold by (other) imperialistically thinking people who continued the well established tradition. Again, without any attempt to evaluate the consequences. Hence the vanquished - the only vanquished that was still standing at the end of the war, Germany – was presented with a hefty bill. And made to pay crippling war reparations. Which clumsy actions had prepared the scene for Hitler’s advent to power. WWII – or, more exactly, WWI 2.0 – was ended by far wiser decision makers. Who had chosen to integrate the vanquished rather than deepening the trenches. Although fought with ‘softer’ weapons, WWIII – also known as the Cold War – fits perfectly. It was also lost by the aggressor. Not as much won by those resisting as lost by the empire attempting to widen its grasp.
What we currently have on our hands, WWIV, is a ‘pinnacle’. Putin attempting to revive Russia’s ‘old glory’ and the reaction of the ‘free world’ are a case study. And a horrible remake. Mistakes already made since the French Revolution have been reenacted as if never happened. The aggressor failed to realize that at some point his actions will beget a reaction. That even if that reaction will be late, it will surely come about. The ‘good guys’ have forgotten – never really cared to understand? – the lessons of WWI and WWII. No real attempt to integrate post communist Russia into the democratic fold had been made. Not in an organized manner, anyway. Everybody was happy that ‘history had finally reached its end’ and Russia was left to its own devices. Even worse, it was treated as a no-man’s land. Mutatis mutandis, post-communist Russia had been treated just as South America and Africa had been treated after they had been discovered by the Europeans. Even worse, the ‘good guys’ have forgotten – or had never understood – that a bully has to be stopped early. And that the easiest way to stop a bully is to encourage his ‘sycophants’ to free themselves from his influence. And to help, in earnest, those who are bullied to overcome their plight.
Now, almost two years after the aggression organized by Putin against Ukraine has become ‘hot’, there still are people who consider Ukraine should negotiate. Should accept the inevitable. Other consider that helping Ukraine is ‘money down the drain’. That there’s no way for Ukraine to win.
The way I see this, we’re back in 1942. Nazi troops were controlling most of Europe and most of North-Africa. But the signs were already there. Russia, nor Britain, didn’t collapse under the onslaught. The nazis had been driven out from Moscow’s suburbs and Leningrad remained out of reach. From there on… Hitler kept making stupid moves. Until the Third Reich crumbled under its own weight. Helped by the Allied bombardments. And let’s not forget the huge amount of western weapons and munitions shipped by Russia’s then allies to Murmansk. Nor those hauled using the Iranian railway.
Now. Will we relearn the lessons which are readily available to us? The lessons we should have already learned? What’s keeping us? Does anybody still think Putin, or any other dictator, will ever stop? Tired of waiting? Be glad Ukraine isn’t. Be glad Ukraine isn’t tired of fighting!
Marxism is an ideology. Ideologies don’t have errors, they are thought templates used to evaluate a certain situation and to determine what to do next. Ideologies are tools. They can be used properly or improperly. Sometimes, the best use for certain tools is to be left alone. Particularly when you understand they are useless. If you understand they are useless… Hence it’s not Marxism which is full of errors, it’s the Marxists who are barking up the wrong tree.
Which tells us Marx’s brilliant analysis wasn’t deep enough. He had noticed a series of facts but he had failed to notice the bigger picture. He had failed to see that all authoritarian regimes had failed. Under their own weight. Inevitably. And he had failed to notice that all democratic regimes had survived, and thrived, for as long as they had managed to preserve their democratic nature.
Hence the Marxist cure, communism, was stillborn. A tool to be left alone. The attempt to impose yet another authoritarian regime – with no matter how generous intentions – after the overwhelming experience of all other authoritarian regimes failing abysmally, is nothing but the compelling proof of social and historical blindness.
And why start this post by quoting Marx himself? Because that quote is more than enough. More than enough proof for Marx being a bully. It’s OK to ‘change the world’ if you own it. If it was yours… But bearing in mind that there are other people living in the same world… wouldn’t it be nice to ask their opinion about the whole thing? About the changes you want to make? Which changes will dramatically affect the world they live in?!? They are simpletons? Whose opinions are worthless? Because you said so yourself?
There is an old ‘rule’ which maintains that even a broken watch may be accurate. From time to time, if it retains its arms… Twice daily, to be precise!
Same thing is valid for people. From time to time, each of us will utter something which actually makes sense!
Sort of, anyway…
The catch being that in order to ‘prove’ the temporary accuracy of the broken watch you need one in good working order. Or, alternatively, you need a good understanding of time.
Same thing with Peterson’s uttering. On the face of it, the phrase is catchy. In fact, it’s just as useful as a broken watch. What solace will be felt by the victim of a tough tyrant when that person realizes that no tyrant, however tough, was ever capable of ‘achieving’ anything without the compliance of the weak? Without the compliance of those who had done, in their weakness, what the tyrant had told them to do…
So yes, broken watches are, sometime, accurate. And yes, Petersen is right to tell us that both tough and weak people can wreak a lot of havoc.
But neither of these two pieces of trivia will be useful to us until we’ll understand it’s up to us to put them to good use. To understand the temporary nature of the accuracy displayed by the broken watch and the fact that no man, however tough, becomes really dangerous unless condoned, or even helped, by ultimately hapless weaklings.
The things we believe are what we have in common with those who promote them.
Well, nobody ‘blindly’ beliefs anything published in the media! We use our cognitive biases in order to do that.
The media publishes the things we like to hear. To sell advertising space, to please their sponsors… While those who actually do this, the journalists, appease their consciences with ‘we have to give them what they want’. ‘Cause we actually do ‘buy’ their stuff…
And we believe the things we read in the kind of press we ‘buy’ because we no longer bother to keep in check our cognitive biases!
Who has anything to gain? From this vicious circle spinning faster and faster?
Nobody, really! But we all have something to lose.
Everything, actually!
When was the last time you met a dead person who regretted anything?
“Behold, the man has become as one of Us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat and live for ever: Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.“
Tradition is a collection of knowledge. Which has been agglutinating in time and is used as a ‘benchmark’ by the currently living keepers of the relevant tradition. ‘Relevant’ in the sense that not everything which is still remembered continues to be useful.
Functionally speaking, tradition is both a filter we use to interpret the reality and a guide we use when shaping future action. And we use it simply because the alternative would be to start from scratch whenever we see anything or have to do something. Like a child learning to walk and speak. Like a child who keeps saying ‘what is this and why do I have to…’ We get many of those answers from the traditions passed over by our ancestors. Without these traditions we would be like a lonely child. A collective child who keeps asking for direction but who gets no answer. Because there’s no one around to answer…
Ideology is also a collection of knowledge. Which has been put together, edited or both at the same time by an ideologue. Or group of ideologues. Psychologically speaking, ideology and tradition work in the same way. Both as a filter used when interpreting reality and as a guide for future action.
But there are some differences.
Tradition has been vetted by evolution. Individual traditions have evolved themselves. No modern Jew would ever consider stoning to death “a woman who had been caught in adultery”. Even if this used to be the biblical standard punishment for such a transgression… Some traditions have disappeared altogether. Because, at some point, they had ceased to be relevant. Their teachings were no longer helpful… At some point, those who were living in those traditions had understood, one way or another, that their particular tradition was suggesting an interpretation of reality which was … wrong! So wrong/useless that the entire tradition had to be abandoned. Like the Egyptian pyramids. Other traditions are still alive today. Because at least parts of them continue to be relevant for those who keep them. “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth”.
In fact, what we call ‘modern civilization’ is based entirely upon this particular piece of tradition. We’ve built it together, as children of the same father. We’ve been building it under the authority of the said father, who had given us dominion over everything which was moving under the sun. And the fact that we considered ourselves to be the children of the same father – siblings, hence equals – has given birth to the very notion of human rights.
Ideology, on the other hand, is still fresh. Some of it might make it, some of it might break us.
The bible itself has been nothing more but a piece of ideology. When it was written… The fact that those who had been inspired by the bible have survived, as a flock, for so long is a strong suggestion that the biblical tradition has been useful. That, overall, the suggestions derived by the ‘keepers’ from this particular tradition have helped them in their quest.
Other ideologies have been less successful…
Communism, for instance. On the face of it, the communist ideology is a continuation of the christian tradition. People are to be considered equals, resources are to be shared among the members of the community… what more can you wish? Well, it didn’t work out that way. It actually failed. Abysmally. I know, I’ve been there myself.
I’m not going to delve into why some ideologies work – and live to become traditions – while others fail. I’m not God, I don’t know everything. What is plainly visible, for those who want to see, is that authoritarianism – under any ideological pretext – is doomed to fail. This being the reason for which God – or the wise guy who wrote that passage – had banned Man from the garden of Eden. An immortal man would stick to his convictions until it would be too late. Until the heaven would had fallen upon his shoulders….
I cannot end this before sharing with you what prompted me to write it. The goal of Hamas – ideologically shaped and ideologically imposed upon its followers, regardless of any of the circumstances – is to destroy the state of Israel and to replace it with an islamic state. Is there a ‘promise’ about how people will live once that islamic state would be imposed? Except that they will have to obey? The goal stated by the communist ideology was equality! Not people’s happiness or anything like that. The way to obtain that goal was a continuous revolution. A sort of jihad, if you will… Now look at what Hamas has accomplished. At what Marx’s communists had accomplished…
Choose wisely. ‘Cause each of us is born into a tradition. Into a particular tradition… But ideology is something that each of us chooses. And can give up!
Man has a natural tendency to prey on other people. This being the reason why humans must be educated and for which we need a lot of coercive measures.
I strongly disagree. The first sentence is utterly wrong and the second is brazenly manipulative.
Something which can be educated isn’t ‘natural’. Not in the sense implied above! People can be educated to eat in a certain manner. As in having ‘table manners’. People can be educated about what to eat. And what to avoid eating. To avoid eating things which are both delicious and nourishing. People can be educated even about how much to eat! But you cannot educate anybody to stop eating!
What is truly natural about ‘Man’ – about all people, actually – is that they need to interact with other people. In order to become full fledged human beings, people need to live among other people.
What can be educated is behavior. How to interact with other people.
People can be educated to cooperate. Or people can be educated to gang up. And prey on those outside the gang.
Please note that those who gang up in order to prey on others do cooperate among themselves! Even if that cooperative behavior has a strong hierarchical nature.
Learning from who’s experience? A wise man is supposed to learn from other people’s experiences, right? No need to make your own mistakes, as long as they have already been committed… and the consequences made public!
‘Admitting that I may be wrong’ … easier said than done, for obvious reasons! Very few people enjoy being proven wrong. Specially when ‘others’ get the upper hand. And even more so when those ‘others’ have nothing special. When those ‘others’ are nothing more but our “potential equals.”
We’re doing it for a noble cause. In pursuit of the truth!
How about us being led into a wild goose chase? Not by Karl Popper, mind you!
Modern propaganda, and particularly the kind currently permeating the social-media, is shaped and propagated by very skilled operators. Who are familiar with all the tricks in the psychology book and conversant in most ideological tenets currently whirling in the public space. And each of these propagandists has their agenda… Each of them tries to pull as many of us into their orbit… One of their favorite tools being Popper’s “I may be wrong and you may be right and, by an effort, we may get nearer the truth”. In fact, these operators use Popper as a lever to break open our skepticism. To soften our disposition and to prepare the soil for the seed they want us to accept. And nurture… How to resist? Given the fact that we are mere novices while they are masters of their chosen profession? Masters at ‘brain fogging’…
They try to mis-use Popper, we’ll use Popper as an antidote. Do you feel treated as an equal? Being invited as an equal member into a truth searching party? Are you involved in a real debate? Do you get to say anything?
Or you, along with the rest, are simply told what to believe?
As an European, I’m fascinated with how intense the Americans are. ‘knows nothing (nor cares) about Kommunism’… As if Joe McCarthy had never existed – btw, he was a fascist – and Kommunism had been a German thing. All other languages use “c” when spelling the word, you know…
As a Romanian – who had spent the first 30 years of his life under the yoke – I can pretend to know a thing or two about the subject. Given the fact that Romania had been subjected to both fascist and communist rule. 1938-1945 and 1945-1989, respectively.
Apparently, and declaratively, those two are at the opposing ends of the political spectrum. In the day to day practice, both belong to the totalitarian mode of controlling a society/country.
Before going any further, I’m going to mention a few traits shared by both modi operandi.
Communism had been first formulated – by Marx – and only then put in practice. Fascism, like most other political ideologies, had been first practiced and only later put into words. As far as I know, for communism to be successfully instated in a country, that country had to have had experienced a bout of fascism. Even if it had not been declared as such. This is a necessary condition but it isn’t sufficient. Fascism had been invented – declaratively – in Italy, but Italy hasn’t – not yet, anyway – become communist. All communist and fascist regimes had ended in abject failure. While all communist regimes had been instated in former fascist(oid) countries – to the best of my knowledge – fascistoid regimes may be, and already have been, reinstated in former communist countries.
There are also a few notable differences. Communism pretends all property belongs to the entire people while fascism allows individuals to retain the ownership of their ‘belongings’. But only theoretically and subject to various limitations. Under communist rule, the ‘democratic process’ is used exclusively to rubber-stamp whatever decisions had already been made by the current dictator while some fascist regimes use the electoral process to gouge the ‘social temperature’ of the ‘political organism’. While the communist regimes tend to crumble under their own weight, the fascists usually grow too big (cocky) for their own good.
Before ending, I must mention the fact that both China and Russia have become fascist countries, despite China’s leaders pretending their country, literally their country, continues to be communist and despite Putin pretending Russia is a democracy. A democracy which attempts to denazify Ukraine…
nicichiarasa 