At some point, there were way more driven/ridden horses than wild ones.
Currently, there are substantial numbers of cows, chicken, pigs and so on raised by humans and almost no wild brethren of the above mentioned animals. Same with quite a number of plants.
Are we even aware of the whole situation?
Why?
Because so few of us are still needed when it comes to ‘raising food’?
I’m afraid we’re very soon going to face the consequences.
Directly!
Neo-liberalism – a ‘folly’, to be polite – was, and continues to be, a reaction to an all-encompassing left wing etatism. A reaction to the overbearing attitude of the government. Of too many of the governments around the world.
The fact that neo-liberalism has ‘gone too far’, way too far ‘in the right direction’, doesn’t excuse etatism. One folly doesn’t justify another.
Since Milei’s Argentina is a particularly poignant example of neo-liberalism, I may very well point out that ‘it takes two to tango’…
As for the root of all our problems… that’s ideology itself. Left, right… each and everyone of them. Each of every pre-scripted attitudes we tend to adopt when trying to cope with the excesses we need to survive on a daily basis.
We no longer examine the factual reality whenever we need to figure something out. To solve a problem. To cope with a situation.
We check what ‘our’ ideology has to say about the subject…
‘Evolution is not as much about the survival of the fittest
as it is about the demise of the unfit‘.
Ernst Mayr, What Evolution Is
As an engineer, I’m more concerned about consequences than fascinated by explanation.
OK, explanation – as in understanding the process – is necessary when trying to improve things. To fine tune. To ‘increase efficiency’…
But ‘survival wise’… sometimes it’s enough to bring things back to square 1. To repair. Specifically when the thing which no longer works used to make wonders.
Passeist? Anti-progressive?!?
No, as I already mentioned, I’m just a ‘don’t fix it if it’s not broken’ engineer. And currently … IT is broken.
Democracy doesn’t work anymore. Not like it used to, anyway!
If we want to fix it, we don’t necessarily need to understand what happened. Only to return democracy back to where it was.
For that, we need to understand what democracy is, not what had happened to it.
Looking back, we notice that all authoritarian regimes had failed. Crumbled under their own weight, usually, and failed abysmally when attacked from outside. Usually, again.
While no democratic regime had ever failed as long as it had managed to conserve its democratic nature.
‘But the Pharaohs have run Ancient Egypt for three millennia, give or take. In a very authoritarian manner…. they were absolute monarchs, you know!’
Not so fast. During those three millennia, The Ancient Egypt had been run by 33 dynasties. By 33 different authoritarian regimes… When each of those dynasties were no longer able to run the country – when each regime fell under the weight of its own mistakes, with or without ‘outside’ contribution – another dynasty, the next one, took over. ‘Usually’ not in a nice manner…
Same goes for all other authoritarian regimes!
While under a democratic regime, whenever those at the helm of the government start behaving badly, or commit too many mistakes, they are changed in a peaceful manner.
So, basically, democracy is a social arrangement which is able to change itself. To adapt! To what happens inside or outside it.
While the authoritarian rulers do their best – or worse? – to conserve their own power/position at the helm, the democratic regimes contribute to the survival of the entire society.
For as long as they manage to conserve their true democratic nature. Their openness. Their ability to depose those who overcome their welcome at the helm of the government.
Corruption kills.
Sometimes literally.
Some ten years ago – 2015, October 30 – a fire broke out in a Bucharest night-club.
64 people died on the spot, including 4 members of the band. “The day we give is the day we die” was one of the tunes Goodbye to Gravity played that night.
The inquiry had determined that corruption was the main cause for what had happened. Safety certificates issued outside any norms, dysfunctional health care, unresponsive authorities… Massive popular protest forced the prime-minister to resign.
Things are better now, in Romania, but only slightly. Too slightly…
The point being that we’ve been warned.
Lord Acton: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.“
Frank Herbert: “It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.“
Both were right.
Power both corrupts and is a magnet for the corruptible!
Hence we need to keep it in check…
Nothing moves without power. We need it. To make things happen.
We also need to survive. To remain alive after things will have happened!
In order to do that, we need to understand something.
About the thing which may derail the whole thing.
About corruption!
Current events – Andriy Yermak resigning his post in Ukraine and Federica Mogherini being detained – are hailed as being ‘flaws’. As highlighting the weakness of Ukraine and the EU, respectively. Their ‘unworthiness’.
I forcefully disagree.
Corruption, like decay, is a natural thing.
Let me put it in a different perspective.
Decay may happen in an abandoned fridge. A closed space in which all kind of ‘unnatural things’ will happen if left unattended.
Decay naturally takes place in a forest. Where ‘no longer living’ organisms ‘turn back to dust’.
A fridge – which is a dead thing, specially when abandoned – is incapable of managing anything. Including a process of decaying.
A forest – which is a meta-living organism, if you’ll allow this expression – thrives as long as natural processes can take place. Decaying being one of the most important ones.
Same thing goes for societies.
Open societies – the ones known as democracies – are no more and no less ‘corrupt’ than the closed ones. The ones usually known as autocracies. In the sense that those in powerful positions are equally tempted by corruption. Equally tempted to misuse their power…
The difference being that the open societies deal with corruption in an open manner. Above the board. In public. In a court of law.
While autocracies deal with the corrupt people only when the autocrat allows it. Only when the autocrat feels that a particular act of corruption is detrimental for his own well being…
So.
Every time an open society exposes an act of corruption, that society becomes stronger.
While autocratic regimes are corrupt from top to bottom. By definition. Very much similar to an abandoned fridge brimming with ‘hairy’ things.
Winning the war is not enough.
At the end of WWI, the vanquished was left to her own devices. After having been saddled with huge war reparations. The US – whose President, Woodrow Wilson, had been the brain behind the League of Nations – went back into its ‘splendid isolation’.
Adolf Hitler rose to power. Conquered the western part of Europe and then attacked the Soviet Union, convinced that the US would not intervene into the conflict. Convinced that ‘Western Civilization’ had become weak. That the good life enjoyed by those living there had ‘mellowed’ the people. Read ‘castrated’.
Japan was convinced that attacking the US was a good idea. For more or less the same reasons used by Hitler to convince himself that America wasn’t going to fight back.
America had to fight on two fronts. For otherwise all her partners would have been conquered. For otherwise America would have been left alone…
Any resemblance with the current situation, when America seems to be extracting herself from the European front and when Russia has been left to her own devices after loosing the Cold War, is purely coincidental. And since there’s no such thing as a coincidence…
Doing business is not enough.
America and Nazi Germany did a lot of business.
Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union did a lot of business.
The EU and the US did a lot of business with Russia.
WWII is ample proof.
Winning a war is useless unless followed by a workable peace. Which comprises the integration between the victor and the vanquished.
Yet winning the war comes first.
Any attempt to integrate an unrepentant aggressor is doomed to fail.
1938 Munich Agreement and 2014 Crimea should be enough.
Things – every’thing’, actually – are/is relative.
Relative to the agent evaluating each of those things.
Accordin’ to Einstein, that is.
He was the one who taught us to use whatever reference frame suits our needs.
Do you reckon anybody wasted any time or energy thinking about freedom before the advent of slavery?
Me neither.
Forget about the fact that, in those times, people didn’t have much time left for abstract thinking. Finding food and enjoying it with friends kind of drains your energy when you have to do it yourself… The point being that, in those times, everybody was free. Hence ‘had’ nothing to compare freedom with… No lack of freedom, no reason to speak/think about it.
No reason to notice the thing and no reason to coin the concept…
Hunter-gatherers have no use for ‘property’. Personal objects are just that and everything else either belongs to Mother Nature or to the entire group. And this goes without saying. Or thinking about it. People share everything as a matter of fact and common sense discourages the others to use anybody’s personal objects unless in an emergency.
Agriculture – either herding animals or growing crops – changed everything. Property, both as a concept and as an everyday manner of dealing with ‘things’, was invented and introduced in daily use. Productivity increased dramatically. Which made it possible for people to have ‘spare time’. For thinking.
And for planning…
‘The neighbors have better crops. Let’s go take some for us. And while we’re at it, let’s take some of their women too’.
The first slave was probably the first person to long for freedom…
‘Cheap’ slave work coupled with the increased social productivity induced by a markedly improved technology for obtaining food meant that some individuals could afford the luxury of thinking.
The Ancient Athenians had both slaves and philosophers. The slaves did whatever was needed to be done while some of the ‘beneficiaries’ had enough time, and energy, to let their minds ‘free’. To roam free in search for meaning.
To coin the concept and to explore freedom…
Relative “To whom”? To us!
We’re responsible for freedom and freedom is relative to us.
We have invented it. We’re the ones using it. In the sense that we’re the ones who need to notice that freer communities fare a lot better than the less free.
So freedom is relative both to those thinking about it and to each particular community.
To each particular community which puts freedom into practice!
The answer you get depends on the question you try to answer…
‘Art’s uneasy alliance with capitalism’…
‘the greed Bansky graffitied against’!
I gather from Chapman’s words that Bansky has a grudge with greed, not necessarily with capitalism itself.
And I wonder how ‘art’ and ‘capitalism’ may ever enter into an alliance. However uneasy…
Both art and capitalism are, first and foremost, concepts.
On a more practical level, both can be construed as ‘places’.
Art is the place where people so inclined ‘do their thing’.
Capitalism is a social arrangement. The current manner in which most social organisms – nations, in modern parlance – run their economies. Organize the constant exchange between them, nations, and their environment. As well as the economic relations which exist between the individual members of each society.
OK, artists do need to eat… to wear clothes, to use a shelter… Artists are involved in the economic life of the society at large. So artists do have capitalist ties with the rest of the world. Organic ties, not agentic ones. The artists’ need to eat does not depend on their will. Only their greed, in as much as they allow that sentiment to manifest itself.
Which brings us back to Bansky…
I understand from Chapman’s words that Bansky has a grudge against greed!
Which is fine by me…
Some other people, quite a few, have developed a grudge against capitalism itself.
Google ‘anti capitalist art’.
Click ‘images’.
Most of the ideas present there are valid. Many of those yielding a lot of power, a lot of ‘capitalist power’, do behave badly. Are too greedy. Disrespectful. Towards other people and towards the environment.
But should we toss the baby out with the dirty bath water?
“WE ARE GOING TO CONTINUE TO FOCUS ON SOLVING PROBLEMS
FOR HARDWORKING AMERICAN TAXPAYERS”
“LEADER JEFFRIES“
(You might want to read my previous post before this one.
If you haven’t already done that, of course…)
Democrit’s atoms come with a clear cut set of rules. ‘Trapping’ them into a very predictable ‘future’. ‘If conditions are such and such, each of them atoms will do this and that’.
Furthermore, and as far as we know, that set of clear cut rules is valid everywhere. Was since the start of time and will remain valid for as long as the world will remain ‘as such’.
Our current understanding of the world – leaving aside various religiously motivated cosmogonies – actually depends on that set of clear cut rules being consistent over space and time.
At some point in time, and space, another set of rules had appeared. Even if we weren’t there to notice the event… Meaning that that appearance was a natural occurrence. We don’t yet know how that happened – not exactly, any-way – but we are satisfied that the first set of rules didn’t have to be broken in order for the second to appear. We consider that no miracle was necessary for life to happen. That happenstance and the first set of rules are a sufficient explanation.
This second set of rules is somewhat laxer than the first one.
It still traps those who have to obey it into a certain behavior but those respecting it enjoy a way wider ‘lee-way’ than Democrit’s atoms. The second set of rules makes it possible for evolution to happen.
While the individuals involved – atoms in the first case and individual living organisms in the second – don’t have any say in the matter, the first set of rules is consistent in space and time while the second one depends on the specifics of each region of the space and evolves in time.
Still trapped, but differently. The limitations pertaining to the first set of rules are drastic – life needs a very ‘narrow’ ‘window of opportunity’ in order to remain viable – yet the second set of rules ‘enshrines’ a certain amount of ‘individual freedom’. In the sense that individual living organisms do have a certain say when it comes to their own survival while the individual species have the ability to adapt to whatever changes happen where they have to survive.
Very recently – in the cosmological time-frame – yet another set of rules. Opening yet another space/place. Consciousness.
Not unlike a Matryoshka…, the first set of rules ‘opens’ the space where everything happens. Exists, but somehow ‘insulated’ when it comes to the passage of time.
The second set of rules opens a ‘narrower’ space. Narrower in the sense that life needs a very ‘narrow’ set of temperature, atmospheric pressure and the presence of certain substances. But a lot wider in the sense that the individuals involved have a certain autonomy and a certain sensitivity in the passage of time.
The third set of rules, the one opening up the space we call ‘consciousness’ is ‘written on the go’.
It does have a certain consistency.
For the simple reason that it is ‘written’ by statistically similar ‘authors’.
Take language, for example. One of the sub-sets belonging to the third set. It is shared solely by members of a single species, wielding more or less similar brains. OK, different languages have appeared in different geo-historical conditions but every human being who happens to be alive is potentially able to learn any of the languages ever spoken on Earth…
This third set of rules is usually referred to as ‘culture’. In the wider sense of the word. Information which is passed from one generation to the next one. Information which, shared among the members of the living generation, makes them conscious human beings.
I know, this is a startling manner of looking at things.
Please allow me to shed some light on the matter from another angle.
We have – we have noticed, more exactly – a ‘First Set of Rules’. FSR, let’s call it. Ingrained into the building blocks of the ‘real world’. Which rules will, hopefully, remain as they are for the entire foreseeable future… otherwise life, as we know it, will cease to exist in a jiffy.
We have also noticed, while attempting to understand ‘life’, a SSR. Second Set of Rules. Describing/making possible what we call life. Which life is, by nature/definition an evolving process. Hence the rules themselves not only allow a certain lee-way but also are bound to be rewritten whenever possible. Whenever the ‘altered version’ doesn’t jeopardize the survival of the individual harboring that version.
And whenever the accumulated alterations happen to be beneficial … a new rule is in place. Or a new species, according to the biologists.
The TSR is a work in process. A lot more so than the SSR. In the sense that each individual ‘rule’ – piece of information added to the corpus of work usually known as culture – has been put there teleologically. On purpose. Never fully aware of all the implications but always as the consequence of a conscious act.
This being the moment when I remind you that this blog is about “exploring the consequences of our limited conscience”.
https://books.google.ro/books/about/What_Evolution_Is.html?id=i8jx-ZyRRkkC&redir_esc=y
https://constructivist.info/1/3/091 regarding self awareness/consciousness
nicichiarasa 