Archives for category: awareness
You can!
But should you?!?
Neither makes sense.
At first glance, the second even less.
Buying a gun in order to ‘have an opinion’ is not only possible but also cheap.
At a second glance, the first is worse.
It sets the stage. In a certain manner….
“Mother Earth is a source of life,
not a resource.“
Chief Arvol Looking Horse
Mother Earth being the source of life – the, not “a” – is a truism. Regardless.
On the other hand, being a mere resource isn’t bad either… For the simple reason that all reasonable people treat resources is a responsible manner.
Right?
Specially when speaking about resources which are ireplaceable!
And since there is only one Earth… Huge, indeed, but finite nevertheless…
Which brings us back to ‘to each their own’.
Basically, there are two kinds of people currently living on Earth.
Some continue to treat it as a Mother – take from her only what they need and refrain from littering her bossom.
And the ‘cherry-pickers’. Who go by “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.” Who believe they had been given a free hand by their God. A free hand regarding the ‘dirt’ they have been made from…
The only problem with the ‘cherry pickers’ – exclusivelly with the ‘cherry pickers’ – being the fact that they don’t read enough. Enough of their (own) Book.
King James’ version is rather hard to ‘read’? OK…
‘Don’t eat any animal which has not been bled out first and don’t spill human blood?’
I’m afraid you’re still not getting it.
According to the book we’re talking about, God has made the entire world. Sparated the stars from the Earth, the water from the dry land, made all the plants and the animals… and Man.
Which man needs the Earth to live upon. An Earth as close to how it currently is as possible, in order for man to live comfortably!
But since “in the image of God has God made mankind”, then God himself needs the Earth.
For whatever reason.
Which means we’d better take good care of His Creation.
Of His entire Creation!
Keep it Virgin.
In Spirit!
Before wrapping up, I must remind you the Covenant between God and Noah’s children. Us.
“Never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.”
Corelate this with “Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed” and “for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me” and the whole thing suddenly has a new meaning.
‘OK, no more floods. But you’re still going to feel the consequences of your own follies. You, your children and all those wallowing in the wicked way’.
Ce înțelegeți prin
Libertatea mea e libertatea ta?
Când libertatea mea/ta de a ne flutura pumnii prin aer se oprește acolo unde începe nasul tău/meu, nici unul dintre noi nu este cu adevărat liber. În situația asta, libertatea noastră este libertatea de a ne lupta între noi pentru cât mai multă libertate individuală.
Concepția asta tratează libertatea ca și cum am avea de a face cu o cantitate limitată. De libertate.
Cantitate pe care ar trebui să o împărțim, într-un fel sau altul, între noi.
Limitele libertății sunt de natură calitativă, nu cantitativă.
Vom fi cu adevărat liberi, cu toții, doar atunci când vom fi liberi împreună.
Decât atunci…
Atunci când vom înțelege că libertatea începe în fiecare dintre noi – în sufletele și în mințile fiecăruia dintre noi, și că libertatea noastră, a tuturor, poate fi pusă în practică – adică poate fi crescută, micșorată sau chiar anulată pentru o perioadă, doar împreună!
The Universe doesn’t care because:
It isn’t aware. Of anything.
It isn’t aware of us.
It’s a jerk.
Or the Universe does care but it’s us who are not aware…
And this has happened many more times across the world/along human history.
The fact that Stonehenge exists is ample proof that those people had been able to generate enough ‘wealth’ to build it.
We’ve been able to find out that the boulders had been sourced from two places. The 20 tons hard-sandstone sarsenes ‘traveled’ about 20 miles while the 2 tons blue-stones had been schlepped for about 220 miles. According to Mark Pitts, writing for the British Museum. And we think we have a fair idea about how the whole thing had been put together. Read the paper.
But we know close to nothing about the people who did it.
The stone ring is all that’s left of them.
Isn’t it strange? For such a technologically sophisticated people – and rich enough to afford such a herculean endeavor – to disappear in the mist of history?
And here’s a selection of other abrupt endings/’hibernations’:
Mohenjo-Daro and Harrapa in Pakistan.
Angkor Wat.
The Great Chinese Wall
The Egyptian pyramids
The Athenian Parthenon
The Roman Coliseum and the roads cris-crossing more than half of Europe
Kuldhara, the ghost-city
Machu Picchu
And, last but not least, the cathedrals mentioned by Reuter’s Mark John.
Europe did take a break after finishing building those cathedrals….
What am I trying to ‘suggest’?
That we, as a cultured species, have a tendency to evolve in fits and starts.
We tend to reach pinnacles only to descend – sometimes temporarily – in abject ‘marasmus’.
Could ‘self-sufficiency’ explain at least some of this?
While the spinning jenny was key to 18th century automation of the textiles industry,
they found it led to longer working hours in harsher conditions.
Mechanical cotton gins facilitated the 19th century expansion of slavery in the American South.
NOTA BENE!
Don’t tell me capitalism is at fault for any of this.
Capitalism is but a way of doing things. A road. Which we followed to where we are now.
How we behaved en-route and what we decide right now was/is our own contribution!
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?
“Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?
Have you left no sense of decency?”
Joseph Nye Welch, 9 June 1954,
replying to Senator Joseph McCarthy.
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…
“that which is divinely natural,
but must be learned humanly; a phenomenon of Science.“
Mary Baker Eddy
Well, we are indeed in the presence of a miracle.
In the presence of a wonderful miracle!
In spite of the entrenched obstinacy of some ‘infallible’ and very powerful agents – who had Giordano Bruno burned in a public square for maintaining exactly the same thing – we have finally accepted this as a fact.
Some of us, at least…
Biden led Trump 37% to 35% in a hypothetical matchup, with the remaining 28% saying they weren’t sure who to pick or would vote for someone else or no one at all.
Neither Biden nor Trump were widely liked by people outside their parties. Just 31% of independents had a favorable opinion of Trump and 32% thought as much about Biden.
At 80 years old, Biden is the oldest U.S. president ever to sit in the White House, and 63% of Democrats in the poll agreed with a statement that he was too old to work in government. Thirty-seven percent disagreed.
Still, Biden leads the Democratic contest by even more than Trump leads the Republican field, with 63% of Democrats’ support compared with 15% for anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.”
What’s going on here?
What happened with/in the greatest/most powerful democracy on Earth?
Why has the American People allowed itself to be split in half? Each of those halves bowing to its own idol…
Only because ‘they had avocados’?!?
And what about Reagan? He was right, after all… Trump was the government, wasn’t he?
Reagan was incomplete.
Government is nothing but a tool. A tool for the society to govern itself with. “of the people, by the people, for the people“. But also a tool for a dictator to exploit a country.
Blaming the tool never takes the blamer out of the ‘unpleasant’ situation.
A more complete statement would have been:
‘Any unchecked government tends, sooner rather than later, to become a problem.’
The key word here being ‘unchecked’, not government. For the same reason which had prompted ‘god’ to warn us:
Any graven image you will ever make will inevitably be incomplete. Not because of your incompetence but because of my infinite complexity. I, your god, am infinite. Hence incomprehensible. You might glimpse some, or even a lot, about my ‘true’ nature but you’ll never find out enough. Enough for you to make a ‘usable’ graven image.
A reliable idol…
nicichiarasa 