Archives for category: awareness
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Depression

September 19, 2019 //
1

Laurie Santos – psychology and cognitive sciences professor at Yale, believes that ‘we really need to do something about it’.

” And I saw just students who were, you know, so depressed it was hard for them to get up in morning. I saw cases of students who were so anxious about their summer internships that they could barely function. And I thought, this is — first of all, this is what — not what I expected of college student life. You know, I remember college back when I was there in the ’90s as being relatively happy. And so, it was kind of striking. And the class came out of a goal that I had, which is that we need to do something about this as educators. We’re kind of like — we’re not in the position to really be teaching students if they’re in the midst of this mental health crisis. I think as professors we sometimes think we can teach students, you know, Chaucer and economics and things. But if the stats are right and 40 percent of them are too depressed to function and other two-thirds are so anxious that they can — you know, that they’re having panic attacks, you know, we really needed to do something about it. “

And why shouldn’t they be? Depressed and panicked, that is?

Not so long ago, universities were perceived as fountains of knowledge and dispensers of philosopher’s stones. Having a degree was one of the most coveted things in the world. And one of the most useful.

Nowadays?
Universities are described as the origin of evil.
“Just as Saudi-funded Salafist religious schools have radicalized large swaths of the Islamic world, American universities are radicalizing an increasingly large share of America.  This is aided by the fact that nearly 70% of kids now go to college, where most of them are taught not to think.“

That would explain the depression. But ‘panic attacks’?
Experienced by the young generation of the most civilized and affluent people in the whole world?
Well, just remember the financial burden students and their families have to shoulder…

So. Students are depressed and prone to panic attacks…
Which only proves that the die-hard ‘conservatives’ are right. Millennials and Generation Z are nothing but a bunch of sissies.

Yeah, right.
Only these two generations have grown under our watch.
They are our children. We raised them. We have built the world they have to cope with.

In fact, we are the ones who need to be depressed. And panicked.
Very soon we’ll need to retire. For no other reason than becoming too old to fend for ourselves.
We’ll actually need our arses to be wiped clean and our world to be managed by somebody else but us.

Who will step in our shoes?

Furthermore, what example are we offering the next generation?

Why would they care about us if we don’t care about them? Offering them an extremely expensive education isn’t a proper expression of our love…
Why would they care about us when we don’t care about our fellow human beings? Extremely expensive health care and unaffordable housing isn’t a proper expression of ‘love thy neighbor as you love yourself’.
Why would they care about us, their parents – after we will no longer be of any real use, when we don’t really care about our employees. About those who actually make things happen?
“Amazon goes further than gig economy companies such as Uber, which insist its drivers are independent contractors with no rights as employees. By contracting instead with third-party companies, which in turn employ drivers, Amazon divorces itself from the people delivering its packages. That means when things go wrong, as they often do under the intense pressure created by Amazon’s punishing targets — when workers are abused or underpaid, when overstretched delivery companies fall into bankruptcy, or when innocent people are killed or maimed by errant drivers — the system allows Amazon to wash its hands of any responsibility.“
You see, Jeff Bezos did a very good thing when maintaining that “Americans deserve an economy that allows each person to succeed through hard work and creativity and to lead a life of meaning and dignity.”
Only words without deeds… might mean that we, the eventually needy parents, might end up uncared for. Sweet-talked to the end but…

On the other hand, depression might be good. Evolutionary speaking, of course.
The depressed have less energy. Hence are unable to put in practice major mistakes. Except killing themselves, of course.
The depressed have a lot of time on their hands. Huge opportunity to think things over. To notice and understand the mistakes that led them here.

Those who will resist the urge to give up – either by actually killing themselves or by falling back into the old morass, will shape ‘tomorrow’.

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Categories altruism, awareness, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, Frames of mind, In English, limited rationality, man as a measure for all things, Mutual Respect, Psychology, religion, teleology, The kind of world we are building for our children, Trust

Who makes the liberty of the famous ‘free market’?

August 29, 2019 //
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We, but let me start with the beginning.

First of all, I find it very interesting that Adam Smith never used the expression.
He explained the intricacies of the market without describing it as being ‘free’. For him, the market had to be free in order to function properly…

“But, perhaps, no country has ever yet arrived at this degree of opulence. China seems to have been long stationary, and had, probably, long ago acquired that full complement of riches which is consistent with the nature of its laws and institutions. But this complement may be much inferior to what, with other laws and institutions, the nature of its soil, climate, and situation, might admit of. A country which neglects or despises foreign commerce, and which admits the vessel of foreign nations into one or two of its ports only, cannot transact the same quantity of business which it might do with different laws and institutions. In a country, too, where, though the rich, or the owners of large capitals, enjoy a good deal of security, the poor, or the owners of small capitals, enjoy scarce any, but are liable, under the pretence of justice, to be pillaged and plundered at any time by the inferior mandarins, the quantity of stock employed in all the different branches of business transacted within it, can never be equal to what the nature and extent of that business might admit. In every different branch, the oppression of the poor must establish the monopoly of the rich, who, by engrossing the whole trade to themselves, will be able to make very large profits. Twelve per cent. accordingly, is said to be the common interest of money in China, and the ordinary profits of stock must be sufficient to afford this large interest.”

OK, he was talking about the XVIII-th century China… but I’m sure you already know that.

Then what was it which lead Britain on what is currently known as the ‘free market path’ but blocked China, until very recently, from following suit?
After all, the participants to both markets were driven by the same self interest and their efforts were determined by the same division of work. Not to mention the fact that China’s was a many times bigger market than Britain’s. Initially, of course.

Both countries had a lot in common. Both populations were similarly stratified and class conscious, both monarchies had reached the same level of impotency, both states were run by specialized coteries … what was the difference?

“A country which neglects or despises foreign commerce…”

For a market to be truly free – as in ‘fully functional’, those who participate in it need to be free to do as they see fit and to go wherever they wish.
For this to happen the participants have to feel free – to be conscious of their freedom, and those who oversee the market need to act only as ‘arbiters’ and never as rulers.

This was the difference between the XVIII-th England and China. The British authorities were a lot more permissive than those ‘in charge of’ China and the British subjects felt a lot freer than the Chinese.
While the British authorities did nothing more than police the market, the Chinese Mandarins actually run the day to day activity.
The end result being that the British merchant men learned to deal with each-other and ask for help only when the law was broken, while the Chinese were conditioned to look up for directions at every corner of the road.
As a consequence, the free participants to the free market have learned to respect each-other, and to collectively defend their freedom, while the mainland Chinese have been conditioned to accept that bowing your head was safer.

But people learn fast.
Just look at what’s currently happening in Hong-Kong.

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Categories authoritarianism, awareness, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, freedom, In English, Mutual Respect, The kind of world we are building for our children, Trust

Parazite to symbiont

August 27, 2019 //
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If you think of it, life – yet another word for ‘survival’, is about growing up from being a ‘parazite’ to pulling your own weight.

And this is valid at both individual and ‘collective’ levels.

All individual organisms – from viruses to bacteria to human, are born as helpless ‘parasites’ and survive for only as long as they don’t go ‘against the grain’.
Similarity, new species appear completely by chance and survive for only as long as they do not create enough disturbance for the rest of those who live in the neihborhood to take ‘punitive actions’.

Higher up the ‘evolution tree, ‘cultures’ – ‘wisdom’ accrued while surviving specific sets of circumstances, continue to help those who observe them for only as long as the observants don’t try to impose ‘theirs’ where they do not fit.

Furthermore, rulers continue to rule for only as long as their presence is an asset for the system.
Otherwise, the whole system goes south but the responsibility belongs to the ruler, not to the entire system. Which, nevertheless, bears the brunt of the consequences.

In some circles, the process is also known as ‘becoming a responsible adult’.

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Categories awareness, Chance, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, evolution, Mutual Respect, skin in the game, The kind of world we are building for our children

The gist.

August 8, 2019 //
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Decision is the frontier between action and understanding.

All frontiers are, in fact, links.

Present decisions set the stage where future will be played, just as past decisions have built the theater.
While we, “the people”, are the building actors. The script writers. And the spectators who will eventually bear the brunt.

 

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Categories awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, democracy, effective communication, evolution, fail better, Frames of mind, freedom, In English, man as a measure for all things, Mutual Respect, teleology

“The left behind”

July 14, 2019 //
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Reading this excellent article by James Poulter, BBC Three, I was reminded of Marx. Karl, not Groucho.

“The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If by chance, they are revolutionary, they are only so in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat; they thus defend not their present, but their future interests, they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat.”

 Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, 1848.

The XX-th century had been torn apart by two totalitarian lines of thought. Communism and fascism/nazism.
The communists had backed their claims on Marx’s class struggle while the fascists/nazists had used a plethora of other authors as pretexts. Despite the differences, the results had been the same. Callous spin doctors had used popular discontent to get uncontested possession of the political levers. And kept playing with them until entire countries crumbled under their own weight.

But what was it that made some nations destroy themselves on the left side of the authoritarian spectrum while others have done the same thing but on the right side?

The nature of the popular discontent!

At any given point, the majority of the people living in a country might see itself as being in one of the following three situations:
– Leading a relatively comfortable life and having a decent perspective to improve its lot or at least to maintain its present status.
– Having always led a bad life and finding absolutely no perspective of improvement.
– Having led a relatively good life for a while, lost that status and finding no way to resume it.

According to Marx, the first situation would have necessarily led to the third and, eventually, to communism.
According to history, people living in the second situation had always been manipulated into communism while people struggling in the third have been led into fascism/nazism.

Meanwhile, people living in the first situation have remained there for as long as they maintained their social cohesion. But that will be the subject of another post.

 

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Categories altruism, authoritarianism, awareness, Bounded rationality, collective identity, cooperation, corruption, democracy, fail better, Frames of mind, In English, man induced fragility, manipulation, Mindset, Mutual Respect, politics, Psychology, skin in the game, The kind of world we are building for our children, Trust

Reactive, Proactive, Teleological

June 16, 2019 //
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Three things have grabbed my attention this week.

Carrie Lam, the Cambridge educated Hong Kong’s top civil servant, whose career spans more than 40 years, who happens to be a devout Catholic, had tried to fast track legislation allowing the Hong Kong authorities to extradite people to mainland China.

More than a million of the 7.4 million inhabitants of Hong Kong have taken to the streets, in protest.

Across the Pacific Ocean, in Venezuela, a pregnant mother accompanied by her two small children, had joined other 31 people who attempted to flee their impoverished country. They had climbed aboard Ana Maria, a fishing boat which was supposed to take them to Trinidad but never made it across the 20 km wide stretch of treacherous water.

Maroly Bastardo, the Venezuelan mother, was trying to survive. Since it is harder and harder to find food in Venezuela – for themselves and for their children, more and more people attempt to leave the country. Which, despite having an immense natural wealth, is being led to disaster by a group of ultimately incompetent people.

The one million people protesting in Hong Kong have adopted another strategy. They attempt not only to survive, physically, but also to preserve their way of life. Their cherished way of life.

These two are relatively easy to figure out. It’s easy to understand the need to survive. Equally easy to understand is the determination of those who want to continue a lifestyle they enjoy.

But what drives the Carrie Lam’s and the Nicholas Maduro’s of this world?
OK, I might accept the idea that, somehow, each of them might have ‘lost it’.
But what about those around them? How come so many people still consider they can, somehow, contradict the entire human history?
‘This time will be different!” ” ‘This Reich’ will rule for one thousand years!”

Yeah, right…

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Categories arrogance, authoritarianism, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, corruption, democracy, effective communication, evolution, freedom, In English, man as a measure for all things, man induced fragility, manipulation, Mindset, Mutual Respect, Rule of Law, skin in the game, The kind of world we are building for our children, Trust

Layers

May 25, 2019 //
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We live.
Hard to deny that, no matter what we may think about it.
The very fact that there are so many of us who do live simultaneously makes it a near certainty.

Since we do live, then there must be a place where this whole charade unfolds.

That place is called, by us, ‘Reality’.
Which reality had started to exist only after we, the living things, have become aware of its existence.

‘Hey, wait a minute!  a short moment ago you were arguing that our mere existence was absolute proof for the existence of ‘reality’ and now you pretend that ‘reality’ has appeared only after we’ve  noticed it… We’d been alive for way longer than that, dude!’

Of course. Our very existence does depend on the presence of a certain place where we may exist. Only there’s no need for us to know that. Nor for us to be able to name that place. The ants don’t ‘know’ there’s a whole world around them. Nor have a word to describe it!

What we call reality and the ‘place’ where we live are two separate things.
There is an intersection, of course. What is correct of what we think we know about the ‘reality’ and the collection of things that really exist. Only we don’t exactly know what is correct of what we think we know…

And it is here that things become really interesting.
We not only think that we have meaningful information about the thing we call reality. We also act based on that information, with the deliberate purpose of fulfilling our intentions. And in so doing, we decisively change the place. In ways we fail to understand comprehensively.

My point being that we change the place we depend on, for our lives, without having a clear understanding of how the place itself really works. Nor of the changes we implement – willingly and/or unknowingly.

At least, let’s have some respect. For the place itself.
And for us, as an important component of that place.

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Categories arrogance, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, effective communication, Frames of mind, freedom, man induced fragility, Mindset, Mutual Respect, Psychology, skin in the game, teleology, The kind of world we are building for our children

From absolute to relative.

May 21, 2019 //
1

“A person may choose to have an abortion until a fetus becomes viable, based on the right to privacy contained in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

This was how the United States’ Supreme Court was reading the US Constitution in 1973.

Pro-lifers oppose this view. Their main argument being that life is sacred and needs to be protected. Period. For them, abortion equals infanticide. Plain murder.

What we have here is a clash of absolutes.
The absolute right to life and the absolute right to dispose of your own body.

The United States Supreme Court has solved the conundrum by setting a time frame. “until the fetus becomes viable”.
Pro-lifers propose another solution: “make abortion and attempted abortion felony offenses except in cases where abortion is necessary in order to prevent a serious health risk to the unborn child’s mother“. (Alabama’s HB314/2019)

Let’s see where lie the differences between Pro-Choice and Pro-Life.

Pro-Choice say that agency must be reserved for those who 1. are alive and 2. are directly implied in the matter.
Pro-Life extend the definition of ‘alive’ to cover everything they consider to be ‘living matter’ and thus take the final decision from those who are directly implied into the mater. And give it to those who have to decide the seriousness of the “health risk to the unborn child’s mother”.

In both cases the absolute becomes relative.
In the first case, the absolute becomes relative to the person directly involved in the matter.
In the second case, the absolute becomes relative to those powerful enough to insert themselves, and others, into the equation.

And both sides clamor they are acting in the name of individual liberty…

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Categories arrogance, authoritarianism, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, effective communication, freedom, gender roles, In English, Intent, man as a measure for all things, Mutual Respect, Politically induced fragility, religion, The kind of world we are building for our children, Trust

A man and a gun

May 3, 2019 //
1

“In many ways, technology has leaped ahead of leaders and organizations, and the human element needs to catch up.”

Erica Volini et al, Introduction: Leading the social enterprise—Reinvent with a human focus

I’m afraid there is nothing new here.

‘Technology” has always been the elephant in the china shop.
Only it is very seldom that elephants enter by themselves. Anywhere, let alone in a china shop. And the mahouts who led them there were not always up to the task.

First things first.
“Technology has leaped ahead…” is an oxymoron.
Technology has always been one step behind the humans.
For no other reason than the fact that technology is a human invention. Each and every technological feat has been initiated and put in practice by a human being.

Hence ‘ ‘technology’, (wink) has leaped ahead of leaders and organizations, and the rest of the human element needs to catch up’!

Secondly, the ‘mahouts’ have a relatively easier job than those who drive the ‘rest of the human element’. Developing a technology is fairly easy but making sure that people do not hurt themselves while using it is fairly impossible.

The physical world is straightforward. It’s reaction is always the same. Once the experimenters learn what happens when they execute a certain action, the ‘response’ elicited from ‘that’ physical system by the experimenters’ consistent actions will never change.

On the other hand, people – conscious people, that is, are not that straightforward.
Being self aware, they constantly evaluate the consequences of their responses. They constantly evaluate what happens after they respond to whatever probes them from ‘outside’.
They constantly re-evaluate the consequences their actions produce upon themselves. They learn.
Only they don’t do it ‘mechanically’. Each of them has preferences and a certain freedom of will. Hence their inconsistency. Each of them learns slightly different things from the same situation. And each of them may choose to react in their own manner.
In spite of their assumptions, people are at best reasonable and never fully rational.

Bluntly put, it is fairly easy to evaluate the consequences of a gun being shot at a man but a lot harder to evaluate the consequences of a man shooting a gun.

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Categories awareness, Bounded rationality, Chance, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperare, democracy, effective communication, In English, man induced fragility, Mutual Respect, Psychology, Transparency, Trust

First generation

April 27, 2019 //
0

While ‘fitting’ discount priced toilet paper into my new second hand car, something struck me.

DSC_6406

In many ways, we are a first generation.
And by ‘we’ I understand what Americans call ‘the baby-boomers’.

We are the first generation to use toilet paper ‘en masse’. Have you noticed the hole in the Farmer’s Almanac?
We are the first generation to witness new cars becoming less reliable than the older ones. Not to mention less ‘honest’… remember the scandal regarding the Diesel engines emissions…
We are the first generation who has not witnessed a large scale war. As a consequence, very few of us had to flee conflict. My paternal grand parents had to leave their country behind after WWI while my mother was trice displaced during WWII. During my ‘tenure’, I’ve only read about those who had to flee the war in ex-Yugoslavia. Or Syria… We’ve met refugees, indeed, only all of them had come from other continents. While our parents/grandparents had to flee themselves. Had relatives and/or friends who had to run for their lives.
We are the first generation whose children expect to have a harsher life than ours.

Would this be enough explanation for the demographic decline we witness in Europe? And in other civilized places? Japan, South Korea…
As in ‘the reason for which less and less of our children have children of their own’?

OK, and where’s the link between my discount priced toilet paper and the demographic decline?

The fact that we don’t want to get our hands dirty is absolutely normal!
Who, in their right minds, would want such a thing?
There is a second fact though. Which cripples us. We haven’t yet learned that, from time to time, people do have to get their hands dirty in order to survive.

And people actually died because of this.
Boeing was so eager to cut costs – and corners, that didn’t even consider doing the ‘right thing’. ‘Getting their hands dirty’ and treating the 737 Max 8 as the new type of aircraft it really was. Before two of them having crashed due to pilots haven’t been properly trained for the new flying conditions.
Boeing should have designed the plane starting from a clean sheet  and the FAA should have  certified it as such.

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Categories awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, Economy, In English, man as a measure for all things, The kind of world we are building for our children, Trust
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