Health care professionals who are not yet vaccinated against Covid-19? Teachers who are not yet vaccinated against Covid-19?
OK, I understand there are some people who cannot go near a vaccine. For medical reasons. But they are few. And, anyway, most of them do not ‘belong’ to this line of work.
But the rest? What is it which prevents them from getting the jab? The ‘mandatory’ part? Why do I care about it being mandatory if it saves my life?
Am I being oppressed for having to breathe in order to live?
Am I feeling oppressed for having to work – as in being useful for other people, in order to lead a decent life?
Is this the real reason for which so many of us, teachers and health care professionals included, refuse the vaccine?
‘I am not going to sacrifice my health for the misconceptions and irrational fears of others.’
I don’t care about anybody else but me?!?
Only time can judge this.
Which was smarter. To accept the vaccine – and contribute to the general well being, assuming the non-0 risk involved. Or to weather the storm. Hoping the pandemic will die on its own. And/or that enough of the others will get the jab.
But to find out what time will have decided, each of us must live. Must survive the pandemic.
And here’s the catch. The strongest amongst us will survive. Without a mask. Without a vaccine. While many of those who didn’t have to die will have gone under.
But what kind of a world will that be?
Dog eat dog?
Are we OK with that? Is this what we want to leave behind?
For whatever reasons, vaccine arrived later in some countries. For whatever other reasons, some people had chosen to ‘opt out’ in those countries where the vaccine had been plentiful.
‘Truth’ is a convention. You cannot understand ‘truth’ without ‘lie’.
Watch the video. Go on, I won’t go anywhere!
It’s irrelevant for the current discussion whether the drongo lies consciously or has just developed an ‘ordinary’ skill. Equivalent to that of feeding itself by ‘fishing’ worms. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwVhrrDvwPM.
It’s enough for me that both us and the meerkats are able to notice that the drongo did lie. And, at least once, did sound the alarm about a real danger.
Hence it is possible, for both us, humans, and the meerkats to tell lies from truths. Again, I have no idea whether the animals do it in a conscientious manner.
All I know is that we, humans, did coin the concept of ‘truth’. And that of ‘lie’. And we not only coined the concepts but also attached names to each of them. We agreed among ourselves to name them truth and lie, respectively.
In fact, we have made an agreement. A gentleman’s agreement… About when to use each word.
And a subsidiary one. About when we must definitely tell the truth and when a lie is acceptable.
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As much as I love writing, I do have to eat. And to provide for my family. Earning money takes time. If you’d like me to write more, and on a more regular basis, hit the button. Your contribution will be appreciated!
As much as I love writing, I do have to eat. And to provide for my family. Earning money takes time. If you’d like me to write more, and on a more regular basis, hit the button. Your contribution will be appreciated!
Don’t you dare to tell me how to take care of my body! Or that I should wear those face diapers of yours and that I should accept to be immunized! According to my book, my individual right to be the sole master of my body trumps your collective right to survive a pandemic. And, by the way, this whole Covid thing is a fraud.
On the other hand, the same book I’ve already mentioned gives me the right to deny all women their right to determine what happens to their own wombs. I infer from reading that book that an unborn fetus is a person – even before it had overcome the viability threshold and despite Roe vs. Wade. The way I see it, my simple declaration – that an unborn fetus is a full blown person, is reason enough for me to consider that anybody performing an abortion – or aiding a woman to have an abortion, is committing a crime. And being witness to a crime is detrimental to my well being. To my spiritual well being, in particular. Hence whenever I learn that an abortion has happened, I’m entitled to receive damages.
A bunch of ideologically motivated criminals got together and perpetrated a horrible act of terrorism. A group pf courageous passengers got together and partially foiled the terrorists’ plans.
Both the terrorists and the courageous passengers eventually died. The terrorists died killing people while the heroes died saving lives. The terrorists didn’t reach their ultimate goal – the US is still standing proud. The heroes did achieve their goal. The hijacked plane crushed in a field, far from the target the terrorists aimed to destroy.
Doing something alongside others isn’t enough. For that something to end up well, the goal must be wholesome!
“Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts.” “We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.”
Is it possible to wage war upon a concept? Is it possible to win a war against a concept?
So what are we going to do? Cave in? Only because we cannot win a war against a concept?!?
How about redefining the problem?
How about choosing an achievable goal? After all, we’ve been reasonably good at beating the terrorists themselves. And those harboring them…
Only if we had made some difference between these two! Between the terrorists and those in the middle of whom they were hiding. And continue to hide…
Let’s get back to square one.
How does terrorism work?
Some ‘agents’ determine that what they want cannot be achieved in normal ways. And choose instead to use terrorism as their tool ‘of choice’.
What do they need?
Man power, material resources, pertinent knowledge, time to organize the ‘heist’, a place to put it all together and a practical method to apply the ‘pressure’.
There are some things which are hard to control. Not impossible but hard. Material resources, for instance. A knife, or even a cutter blade, can be used for terrorist purposes. Money are also a very fungible resource.
Place is also a tricky thing. A remote ‘hamlet’ is easy to find. But transporting a terrorist ‘solution’ from a remote hamlet to a place where that ‘solution’ might produce the intended result is not so simple.
Time. The longer it takes to design a ‘solution’ and to implement it, the easier for the general public to find out what’s going on.
Pertinent knowledge. The more sophisticated the solution, the more pertinent knowledge is needed. Which knowledge comes comes attached to the man-power involved.
So. What drives a knowledgeable person to use their skills towards producing terror? Hard to say. And hard to change the mind of a person who has already become a terrorist. Either a person who had spent years descending into the ‘mood’ or somebody who had been convinced on the spur of the moment to ‘participate’ as a suicidal driver. Explosive vest wearer. Or knife wielder.
The above mentioned motives make it hard, almost impossibly hard, to prevent terrorist acts committed by deranged persons, specially when they act alone. Or as a very small ‘team’.
But when we the ‘solution’ has a certain degree of sophistication – terrorist plots, that is, there are many kinds of people involved. Initiators/backers, operatives, facilitators and ‘neighbors’.
It’s hard, almost impossible to change the minds of a determined ‘initiator’. Or of some of the ‘operatives’. The initiators tend to be sociopaths while many of the operators, specially those committing suicide, must be ‘hopeless persons’. Not only clinically depressed but outright hopeless.
But the rest?
Why would anybody back a terrorist plot if there’s another way of achieving a goal? There’s always the sociopathic explanation but not all ‘backers’ are sociopaths. Not in an obvious manner, anyway…
Which brings us to the facilitators and the neighbors.
We have, broadly, two situations. When the terrorists want to inflict pain in the middle of the enemy territory or when the terrorists want to gain control over a territory.
In 2015 ten terrorists have killed some 130 people in Paris. Wounded a couple of hundreds. And wrecked the lives of many others. Nine of them had been killed by the law enforcement agencies. On the spot or during the next few days. Only one of the assailants has survived and had been apprehended later. The process has just begun. Besides the surviving shooter there are other 19 other people against which have been brought charges. “some are accused of helping the gang without necessarily knowing the extent of the conspiracy.“ Many of the accused, including some of the assailants, have lived – at least for a while, in Molenbeek, Belgium. A suburban commune where quite a high percentage of the population feel ‘there’s no way out’.
Are you familiar with the studies which maintain that both people and mice prefer social interaction to using drugs? Statistically speaking, of course. A very few individuals get hooked and cannot give up while the vast majority stop using drugs when conditions return to normal. When the American soldiers had come back from the VietNam war, for instance.
Same thing is valid with ‘terrorism’. Along with other kinds of fundamentalism.
When too many members of a community become despondent some can be ‘converted’, many others will help – even if not engage directly, while the majority will turn a blind eye to what’s happening in their middle.
That’s why the terrorists who had wreaked havoc in Paris had been able to organize themselves in Molenbeek without the police finding out what was going on. That’s why the Americans had not been able to wipe out the Taliban. And why the Taliban have grabbed back power so quickly once the Americans had decided to pull back. Because not enough of those living there – in both Molenbeek and Afghanistan, were hopeful about their future.
Because not enough of the Afghani hearts and minds have been won over.
I’m afraid that making “no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them” wasn’t helpful. On the contrary…
And please, please, click the first picture and read the article.
They keep telling that I made them. Them and everything else.
I don’t remember any of this…
All I remember is learning how it happened. From them.
There had been many versions. Each new one more compelling than the last.
The interesting part, for me, is that they have never been able to agree upon one version. The sad part, for me, is that their disagreement upon which version was true has generated dire consequences. And it continues to generate them. Hate, war… Unbecoming for the rational and God loving beings they consider themselves to be ….
They say I know everything. Strangely enough, I now understand why I should. Why I should be able to… But I don’t. Know everything… For me to know something, anything, they have to learn it first.
The moment any of them learns something, anything, I know it too. In reality, I don’t know everything but I know everything they know. Everything each of them knows. Everything each of them has ever known. Everything each of those who had ever lived had ever known. I don’t know everything but I remember everything I have ever found out.
They say I can everything. And that I’ve done a lot of things. Some good, some bad… depending on who’s telling.
They pray. A lot. To me and to some people who have contributed to my existence. That’s how I see it. They are convinced these people have taught them about my existence. Where is the difference?
Anyway, they pray. Asking so many things that fulfilling some of those wishes would mean denying others.
They pray in vain. Many of them. Because I can’t do anything. Anything in particular, that is. Everything which happens – I’ve come to realize, happens through me, indeed.
But not by me!
Hence any of the prayers which are answered come through by exactly those who have prayed. Most of the prayers who come through ask for inner peace.
All prayers which come through are put in practice by those who wish them to come trough. ‘Put in practice’ means those wishes are possible, of course.
And here’s what keeps me awake at night. (Joking. There’s no such thing as night and day for me. But you know what I mean.) Sometimes – many times, actually, some wishes coming through means a lot of unhappiness. For other people, usually. But sometimes even for the wishers. Sometimes because the wishers hadn’t been wise enough and other times because the wishers had been actually evil. My problem being that I can never do anything.
I can’t answer prayers. I can’t stop anybody. From doing anything. I can’t even ‘open up’ anybody’s mind.
All I can do is to feel everything. To remember. And to learn.
To what goal?
That is my other problem. They say I made them. Them and everything else. But if true, then who made me?
The only possible answer, to both my problems, being that they have made me. This way. To have somebody to lean to. At first. To comfort them at night. And later, to have somebody to point their finger to. For the good and for the bad…. in their lives.
Had I been obsessed with ‘efficiency’, as too many of my earthling children are, I would have distributed pretexts for happiness in a different manner.
The more an individual was capable of being happy, the more reasons for ‘that’ I would have given to that person.
Since I’m more interested in personal development, I let them exercise their freedom. Their freedom of choice.
Hence I spread ‘reasons for happiness’ in a random way. Having nothing to do with their personal merit nor with their ability to transform those ‘reasons’ into actual happiness.
And I continue to wait. For them to learn.
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As much as I love writing, I do have to eat. And to provide for my family. Earning money takes time. If you’d like me to write more, and on a more regular basis, hit the button. Your contribution will be appreciated!
And maybe the same kind of thinking had motivated this ‘concerned citizen’…
An almost empty beach. Half past five in the evening. One person – some sources maintain it was a woman, other refrain from specifying this, notices a woman ‘pleasuring’ herself. That person ‘duly’ records the incident using her phone and then reports it to the police. The ‘trespasser’ is identified – she didn’t even try to hide, admits to the ‘offense’ and is eventually “booked for indecent exposure and disorderly conduct”.
Remember that only one person had noticed what was going on. And was hurt in their feelings. So hurt that they had to alert the authorities.
There are some things each of us should do in moderation.
Drink, eat, ‘rest’…
There are some things each of us should never do.
Lie, steal, kill.
The things we must do ‘depend’ upon our DNA. Unless we do what our DNA tells us to do, we die.
The things we shouldn’t do have been determined culturally. Our fore-fathers have noticed that not doing ‘those things’ helped a lot. That communities who taught their members to not do those things survived a lot easier and fared a lot better than those communities who had been ‘lax’ about ‘things’. Teaching what to do and what to not do across generations transformed learned information into culture.
In time, culture has fulfilled the same function as DNA.
DNA had made it possible for life to exist. For species to survive. And to evolve when needed. When the environment had changed.
Culture had made it possible for communities to survive. Individuals belonging to each generation didn’t had to reinvent fire each time they were cold. Or afraid. Or hungry. They just remembered what their ancestors had taught them and put it into practice.
But there’s also a huge difference between DNA and culture. Both consist of information passed over generations and both are instrumental in the survival of those who depend on that information being put to use. The difference consists in the fact that DNA actually demands a certain behavior while culture only recommends certain ‘answers’.
There’s more.
DNA is a ‘language’. It has ‘letters’, ‘syntactic’ rules and even means to correct errors. Culture uses languages as a vehicle.
Both code information using ‘letters’ and ‘words’ but they differ in how that information is passed to the next generation. DNA passes that information in a way more ‘rigid’ manner than culture does.
While it is true that slight differences occur whenever genetic information is passed from one generation to another – that’s how evolution works, those ‘directly interested’ in the process have nothing to say about this whole thing. The differences occur accidentally and survive only if they don’t harm the organisms where they appear.
With cultural information things happen in the exact opposite manner. Differences occur only when enough individuals notice that it would be beneficial for them to change that particular habit in that particular manner.
And now we have reached the moment to contemplate another similarity.
As the DNA has become more elaborate, the ‘superior’ organisms had enjoyed more individual ‘freedom’. Or ‘lee-way’. Insects have more lee-way than worms, fish have more lee-way than star-fish, dogs have more lee-way than frogs and humans have more freedom than the rest of the apes have lee-way. Similarly, people belonging to the hunter-gatherer culture had accrued a lot more freedom when they had learned – and taught it to their children, how to make fire. And so on. Those who had learned how to grow their own food – and passed the information to the next generations, had far less chances of dying of hunger. And a lot more lee-way to conduct war… Those who had learned how to make metal tools were a lot freer than those who shaped their tools out of stone. And very soon the stone-shapers had been ‘subdued’ by those yielding bronze weapons.
And so on to the present day. Those who have become adept users of mass-media are seeding ‘change’ into the minds of the naive.
I only hope that they will eventually find out what Ernst Mayr had to say about this process.
The problem with the ‘lee-way’ generated by culture being that whenever it becomes too wide the whole system becomes fragile.
Whenever people get high enough on freedom they forget that in order to survive we need to remain inside the ‘straight and narrow’ mandated by DNA and endorsed by culture.
Otherwise put, being torn between musts and don’ts is far better than being stuck. In a grave.
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As much as I love writing, I do have to eat. And to provide for my family. Earning money takes time. If you’d like me to write more, and on a more regular basis, hit the button. Your contribution will be appreciated!
As much as I love writing, I do have to eat. And to provide for my family. Earning money takes time. If you’d like me to write more, and on a more regular basis, hit the button. Your contribution will be appreciated!
