What kind of communism had Przemyslaw Babiarz, the Polish journalist, experienced? And where, since the Polish people did not enjoy what had been dished to them by the communist rulers?!?
What a waste of energy…. John Lennon had invited us to dream! The communists, the real ones, had acted worse than the worst robber barons. What I had experienced under communist rule, in Romania, had nothing to do with what Lennon had invited us to dream about. Comparing Lennon’s dreams with the crimes committed by the communists is narrow minded to say the least. Firing a guy for airing a ‘less than inspired’ statement and pretending to do it in the name of “Mutual understanding, tolerance, reconciliation” is nothing short of idiocy! For it gives ammunition, and plenty of it, to those who wish to torpedo any mutual understanding and tolerance that still survives.
Having a name for ‘it’ means that we’re aware of it’s existence. We’re still using it, though. It is wise?
We’re not the first ones to use the method. The HIV virus has somehow ‘learned’ to hide itself inside our immune system. Not only to ‘bend the rules of life’ – all viruses do that for a living – but to bend the very rules of immunity! But we are the first ones to use ‘it’ knowingly!
Not fully aware of the consequences but nevertheless on purpose!
How did we get here?
By ‘gaming’ the laws of nature! Our ancestors believed flying was reserved for birds. By making good use of what we’ve learned about the ‘system’, we’ve been able to overcome many of our limitations. We’ve also overcame our common sense…
We forget our planet is limited. Vast but still limited. We also tend to forget that our knowledge/understanding is also limited. We’ve become so confident in our ability to game the system that we tend to ignore the two facts I’ve just mentioned.
Even worse, we’ve given up ‘the brotherhood of man’. We’ve become humans by talking to each-other. By hunting together. By tilling the earth together. Then we’ve started to fight. For the same earth we’ve been tilling together… We’ve invented ‘capitalism’. A manner of doing business which relies mostly on trust. On the rational expectation that the partners will rather fulfill their respective parts of the deal than becoming known as fraudsters. About the same time, we’ve also invented ‘democracy’. A social arrangement relying on mutual respect.
At least one of his classmates perceived him as ‘an outcast’ while another – and his high-school counselor – perceived him as being ‘bright’. Neither ‘saw it coming’.
So why would a very young adult attempt to assassinate a very well known, and very well guarded, public figure?
Let me rephrase the question. Why would a 20 years old male with a steady job, who had graduated from high school two years ago “with a $500 prize for maths and science“, attempt to shoot somebody out, from a distance, given the fact that he wasn’t trained for it. Nor exactly talented in this domain…
Are we sure this was Crooks’ main target? To assassinate a former, and possibly future, President of the USA? Or was he trying to end it all? Once and for all?
What were the odds for him to get away with it? To survive after shooting the first bullet? He was unanimously described as being ‘smart’…
What drove Thomas Mathew Crooks to the conclusion that his life was no longer worth living?
According to the English lore, “there’s more than one way to skin a cat”. According to the cat, ‘who cares about how I lose my coat? I’ll end up dead anyway!’ According to the fur tanners, ‘the manner of skinning the pelt is of utmost importance for the end-result of the operation’.
Whom to believe? Specially since all of them seem to be right…
Well, truth has a marked tendency for being complicated. Hard to comprehend in its entirety and even harder to express in a concise manner. Meanwhile we, conscious human beings, have a marked tendency to notice only what we’re interested in. To notice only what we care about…
In fact, the manner in which we notice things speaks volumes about who we are. About how we relate to what we call ‘reality’.
The white colonists inhabiting a certain area in Northern America had become ‘Free Americans’ after fighting the British. Only after they had freed themselves through battle! A. Philip Randoph had fought for his freedom. And for human rights.
All this fighting leads to a bout of pondering. Are we free together? As in ‘all of us’ and ‘once and for all’? Or our freedom is defined against other people? Who might try to steal our liberty from us?
What is freedom, after all? A zero sum game? Where liberty is up for grabs but in limited supply? Or a ‘grace’ we impart with and upon our fellow human beings? Something to be jealously guarded or something to be collectively and cooperatively maintained and enhanced?
And one final question. Why would anyone attempt to steal other people’s freedom? When history gives us plenty of evidence that whenever freedom was out to be shared people were happy while whenever freedom was in short supply the entire society eventually crumbled under it’s own weight…
What is going now in China – and in Russia, for that matter – has nothing to do with the ‘left’. With what is understood as “left” in Europe… Instead, it has many similarities with fascism. ‘Corporatist’ states imbued with revindicative nationalism.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb has introduced the concept of “Skin in the Game“. In short, it is about the fact that the decisions made by people who do not directly and immediately ‘enjoy’ the consequences of their choices have a high probability of being bad. A phenomenon that is accentuated as bad decisions are not immediately sanctioned by those who suffer.
Taleb’s observation only confirms the fact that all dictatorships/authoritarian regimes have collapsed. Without exception! Alternatively, it is very easy to see that democracies ONLY last as for long as they manage to maintain their ‘functionality’. That is, for as long as people can – and undertake – to voice their grievances. And for as long as people listen to each other. Respectfully! In vain, some shout about being ‘hungry’ if nobody listens/cares ..
Returning to the idea of ’leadership’, yes, countries are led. By some who consider themselves/are considered to be ‘elite’. ‘Led’ only from the operational point of view, however… Countries are living things, ‘natural selection’ still has the last word! Ernst Mayr, a biologist, said that ‘evolution is not about the survival of the fittest, but about the disappearance of those who cannot find their ‘right’ place. The misfits. ‘. That’s right, countries have big problems if/when they don’t manage to take down the ‘misfits’ who happen to have clambered into power. Why countries don’t succeed to do this in a timely manner? How did they clambered there in the first place… Everything starts when the popular dissatisfaction reaches a critical level. Which dissatisfaction is engendered when the members of that country no longer care for each-other. When mutual respect has disappeared.
I will conclude by returning to the major difference between communism and fascism. Both of them appeared in situations when enough dissatisfied people were ‘wandering aimlessly’ while looked down by the rest of the society. Some low-life profiteers seized the occasion and ‘grabbed the helm’. Profiteers who have been able to operationalize the dissatisfaction festering in the society. And the lack of vision of those who hated the others. I repeat myself, both communism and fascism had appeared when various sections of the society despised, and sometimes hated, the ‘others’. The minor difference consists in the fact that the proto-communist dissatisfied looked up without having any chance to get there, while the proto-fascist ones wanted to return to where they had once been. The Russian muzhiks dying during WWI versus the unemployed German workers who had just lost WWI.
This being where the difference appears. The difference which makes it hard to recognize what’s going on now in Russia/China as being a form of fascism. Both the Russians and the Chinese have a lot better lives now than they had under communist rule. Statistically and from the material point of view! Psychologically speaking… Those who live in well-established democracies – people who respect each other – have a greater tolerance for ‘insecurity’. Each of them knows they can rely on the others. In that environment, failure is temporary. People try as many times as they need to succeed. Or that’s how it used to be… In communism, we had learned – the hard way, that one was not allowed to make mistakes. When Russia and China switched to ‘capitalism’ and people saw what could happen to them – to make mistakes while trying – they had become frightened! And, at least some of them, chose to return – especially psychologically, in the past. Where they felt safe…
On the other hand, we must keep in mind that fakes are also facts. They exist, don’t they? Even more so, fake facts do engender consequences! In fact, it’s these very consequences which impart fact-hood to ‘successful’ fakes.
Also, it is high time for us to understand that this undermining might occur ‘naturally’. Due to our attention being distracted rather than ‘intentionally misguided’.
Socrates and Bertrand Russel, both, knew everything there was to be known in their respective times. Socrates and Bertrand Russel, both, had enough guts to acknowledge their doubts. To themselves and to the rest of us.
On the other hand, Russell presents us with a very interesting riddle. Is it possible for a naturally occurring thing to become a vice?
Humans, and their pets, also get fat. Humans – some of them and alone, this time – like to get ‘high’. Exclusively on naturally occurring substances, until recently.
Humans are the only animal species – known to ‘man’ – displaying a certain kind of consciousness. Self-awareness, as defined by Humberto Maturana. Also known as ‘Human Consciousness’.
So, consciousness drove us to become vicious? To eat too much? To drink alcohol? To use drugs? To introduce other animals to drugs? In the name of science…
The way I see this, consciousness didn’t drive us to become vicious. Only made it possible.
Being aware of ourselves – being able to observe ourselves ‘in the act’, according to Maturana – has added ‘purpose’ to the whole thing. Animals do experience pleasure. Pet your pet and then call me a liar. Animals have even learned from us to ask for pleasure. Many of our pets beg for food and to be petted. But most wild animals – with the exception of pentailed treeshrews, whatever they might be – shun alcohol. While capable of learning to ‘douse their angst’ from us. In captivity… Which makes us the only species which has learned to behave viciously on its own. By itself…
To over indulge on purpose. Do you have a better definition for vice?
Which brings us back to Russell’s “intellectual vice”.
Which intellectual vice does have two aspects. Overconfidence in one’s own intellectual prowess and over-reliance on other people’s expressed opinions, despite those opinions having a very slim chance of being true. The point being that the second aspect is a ‘simplification’ of the first one. The opinions believed despite being unrealistic do match the biases entertained by the believer. By the ‘vicious’ believer, albeit the second aspect is less vicious than the first one. Where the overconfident should have known better.
To over-think on purpose. To convince yourself of your own rectitude… on your own or with the help of others…
Greeks, the Ancient ones, has been the first people which had allowed its culture to waste its civilization.
By considering their neighbors as being ‘barbaric’, the Ancient Greeks have isolated themselves from the rest of the world. From the rest of the reality. Shutting themselves out from the exterior, they turned their attention towards their own interior. Towards themselves. Found differences among themselves. Ranked themselves. And ended up fighting among themselves.
Allowed themselves to be conquered.
First by home grown tyrants. Pericles, Alexander the Great… And then by foreign emperors. Persian, Roman, Ottoman…
Establishing a pattern. And constituting a warning.
Every time when people become complacent, somebody will seize the opportunity.
Every time people will stop – for whatever reasons and under whatever pretexts – respecting each other in earnest, scheming con-artists will step in. Identify the situation and taking the opportunity to deepen the differences between the people into chasms. Into unbridgeable chasms which make it impossible for people to reconnect. Unbridgeable chasms which destroy the community. Rendering it to the mercy of tyrants. To the mercy of tyrants who constantly lurk in what we call reality and which, under ‘normal circumstances’ – a.k.a. ‘democracy’, are kept in check. In a normal, functional, social setting. By a functional community.
The fact that all tyrannies end up badly, for all those involved, is no consolation.
And all these – social settings, democracies, tyrannies, etc, – are as real as it gets. Only this level of reality is being created by us. By us, people. By ‘the people’ who not only creates the reality but also has to make do with the consequences derived from the reality it has created for themselves. Knowingly or ignorantly.
“Only freedom of speech with repercussions isn’t anything special. That has existed throughout every dictatorship. If we consider freedom of speech as a value, it must be something else.”
Whenever somebody opens their mouth, they reveals things about themselves.
That’s a repercussion.
Whenever somebody acts upon information gleaned this way, those acts also have repercussions.
The repercussions belonging to the second category are the ones which ensure that, in the end, every dictatorship ends up in failure. In abject failure.
Out of fear, everybody shuts up. So nobody yells anymore ‘The emperor is naked. And about to be run over by a bus’. So the emperor, and his henchmen, end up hanged by an angry mob. Process usually called retribution. Or revolution?
““We are not extremists. We are just angry,” explains Lazar Potrebic, a 25-year-old from a Hungarian minority in Serbia who is entitled to vote.
He – and many of his peers – are worried about the future, and feel that the more traditional parties are not listening to their concerns.
“We feel like our needs are not being met. People our age are taking really important life steps. We’re getting our first jobs, thinking about starting a family…but if you look around Europe, rent prices are going through the roof – and it’s hard to get work.”
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Of course the feeling of not being listened to when you’re young, of not being part of the equation, is nothing new. But many of the parties on the far right are actively courting the young vote, says Dave Sinardet, a professor of political science at the Free University of Brussels.
“The radical right channels anti-establishment feelings,” he told the BBC. “They have a bit of a rebellious vibe – especially when it comes to their anti-woke agenda – and that appeals to young people.””
Electrons ‘work’ in certain ways. Science has recently figured out some of those ways. The point being that electrons keep to themselves. One spins in its direction, the other spins in the opposite direction and no more than two electrons fit in the same ‘orbital’.
People’s minds also work in ‘certain’ ways. Not as ‘rigidly’ as the electrons but still ‘useful’ for those who know how to exploit this phenomenon.
By constantly pestering people with certain messages, you get to convince at least some of them. You get to divide them into (political) camps. You get them to fight among themselves instead of cooperating. You get to lead them into battle. And after the battle has been won, by no matter which side, you get to lead the winning party. At least for a while, but that is another subject.
And all lies, aka as ‘half truths’/alternative facts, start from something real. Capitalism, for as long as the people remain awake, works. As advertised. Socialism, on the other hand, doesn’t. It had failed, abysmally, whenever and wherever it had been experimented.
But there’s a caveat.
‘Capitalism’ is a rather clear-cut concept. Property belongs mainly to the individuals and individuals trust each-other enough to do business among themselves. Usually – but not always – capitalism is associated with ‘free market’ and democracy. With freedom to act – inside the confines of the law – and freedom to speak up. I’ll say this again! For as long as the people remain awake, the market continues to be free and democracy still functions, capitalism works. Sustainably. But only for as long as the people remain awake…
‘Socialism’ is rather vague. From ‘public’ (instead of private) property associated with central planning of the entire society to softer versions which sometimes pay lip service to democracy. The central idea of ‘socialism’ being that society comes first and the individual is only a cog. Who wants to be a cog? Those who see no alternative… Those who, once in a certain set of circumstances and exposed to a certain propaganda, succumb to the Sirens’ song.
The point being that in order to impose ‘socialism’ to a society you need to lure (enough of) the people into an ‘altered state of consciousness’. To make them believe a certain set of rules. To make them behave according to that set of rules.
The interesting part, as usual, comes at the end. There is a ‘social arrangement’ where property remains private but where the people behave in a ‘certain’ manner. As if they have been made to believe a ‘certain’ – as in ‘forcefully unified’ – set of rules.
That social arrangement is just as fragile as ‘socialism’. Again like socialism, it has already been experimented. Both had failed. Abysmally. History is our witness.
The ‘other’ always failing social arrangement is usually called ‘fascism’. In Germany, it has been known under the name of ‘NAZIonal socialismus’.
nicichiarasa 