Ilya Kaminsky, The Deaf Republic.
He has the opportunity.
He feels good doing it.
And he doesn’t care. About the consequences experienced by those affected.
As long as those affected are not able to affect him back, of course!
And if you analyze the whole thing in a dispassionate manner,
this is a perfectly rational behaviour!
There is a difference. Between differences.
There is a quantitative difference and a qualitative difference.
There is a quantitative difference between moral and immoral behaviours/persons. An immoral person is someone who cannot restrain themselves in certain instances. Who knows the difference between good and bad and yet cannot resist. Cannot resist doing the bad thing.
And there is a qualitative difference between a moral/immoral person and an amoral one. The amoral one’s actions are not affected by morals. That person does anything they want to do as long as they is not affected by the consequences of their doings. Regardless of whatever consequences may have to be endured by others.
Which brings us to the difference between bad and evil. Also a qualitative one.
Which difference has nothing to do with the amount of damage caused to the bystanders. And everything to do with the attitude of the perpetrator regarding their actions!
As an aside, I have to remark that we are all ‘bad’.
In the sense that all of us commit bad things. That none of us is able to completely restrain ourselves from doing immoral things. From knowingly performing ‘bad’ things. Bad for ourselves or even bad for other people.
The difference between us, normal immoral people, and the evil amoral ones being simple.
The immoral perform things which are potentially bad. For themselves and for others.
For example we smoke. Which is bad. Both for us and for all those who breathe our smoke. But the damage isn’t obvious. We might die before developing a cancer, right?
And most of us have driven a car after having enjoyed one drink too many. With no intent to commit an accident, obviously.
Meanwhile, the amoral may commit things which will certainly cause harm to other people. Regardless of whatever rationales the perpetrators invent to justify their actions. From Ponzi schemes to terrorism.
I’ve saved the juiciest bite for the end of my post.
While immoral is necessarily bad, amoral is morally neutral. Anything in between necessarily bad and necessarily good.
For instance, using weapons of mass destruction and compulsory vaccination/quarantine are amoral. Both are used with a blatant disregard towards the feelings of all those who have to endure.
The first is ‘a certain killer’ while the latter has saved entire populations… go figure!
The words of Abraham Lincoln to honour the soldiers that sacrificed their lives in order
“that government of the people, by the people, for the people,
shall not perish from the earth”
were spoken at Gettysburg,
but these words apply as well to the countless soldiers
that died for the cause of democracy in the following 150 years.
How about people respecting each-other?
After all, government is supposed to be by the people and for the people…
Those serving in the government come from among the same people, don’t they?
2010
2024
2025
Back in 2020
Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse: Dune
Some people are convinced that all they have to do is to follow the rules.
Other people are convinced that freedom – their freedom, in particular – is the most important thing.
Apparently, these two convictions are incompatible.
Which is not true.
Those convinced that following the rules is the only way to ‘get there’ – wherever that might be – forget one thing. Two things, actually…
That no journey starts until the traveler makes the first step. And decides where they want to go…
Those convinced that freedom is the only important thing forget one thing. One thing only.
That whenever the traveler breaks a rule… there will be consequences!
The fact of the matter being that freedom is a human achievement.
Achieved during the long journey towards the future.
Achieved as a consequence of the process through which we have learned about rules.
‘Rules’ is our definition of ‘possible’. Defines a space where things can happen. As long as the pertinent rules are being observed, of course.
At first glance, flying is possible. For birds…
After learning the pertinent rules – and mastering certain skills – we have learned to fly. But we can continue to fly for only as long as we keep observing the pertinent rules!
At first glance, walking a rope strung between Manhattan’s Twin Towers was impossible.
Not for Philippe Petit. He had the skills and he was crazy enough. He even didn’t ask for permission… Click on the picture and read ‘all about it’. My point being that he remained alive because he had observed the laws of physics. All of them! And because the human laws he had trespassed didn’t involve the capital punishment…
I believe you already understand what I want to convey.
Have a nice week-end.
Trump did what he had promised.
The EU still debates among themselves how to respond.
Britain has already said it will wait for a while.
“Nearly 50 countries want tariff deals”.
“Canada is ‘leading the charge’ against Trump’s trade war with $60 billion worth of counter tariffs on American goods, and is urging Europe to retaliate too, Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly told Euronews in an exclusive interview.” But…
China, on the other hand….
Am I wrong or Trump’s tariffs have been used by the Chinese leaders as an opportunity to position themselves as ‘champions of the free world’? Free from Trump’s version of America…
https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/540/handouts/french/unintconseq.html
“You have got to be kidding me.”
Hillary Clinton
In nature, change happens. It is produced by chance. According to rules but only when chance starts it. No one plans it, if you leave God out of the picture.
And, evolutionary wise, change ‘remains’ if it doesn’t bother too much. If the individual things/organisms affected by change are able to survive.
Please note that if ‘dramatic’ enough, change may ‘alter’ everything. A star changes constantly but at some point it will become a nova. Or even a supernova. Which event will change everything around it…
In a social setting, things are a tad more complicated.
Change, social change, is initiated. By individuals. Not necessarily according to a plan and almost always ignoring the end results. But it is always initiated by somebody.
And is allowed to stay. Or not…
By those experiencing the consequences. According to what they make of it.
Again, even in the social setting there are rules. Just as in nature. But while the natural rules are enforced by nature itself, the social rules need to be enforced. By people. By those who end up experiencing the consequences of the afore mentioned rules being enforced properly. Or not…
What am I babbling about?
You’re not comfortable with a bragging pussy-grabber signing presidential orders in the Oval Office?
How comfortable were you when Clinton got away with “I did not have sexual relations with that woman!“
You’re not comfortable when ‘US national-security leaders’ establish a private group on a social network to share sensitive data?
How comfortable were you when a Secretary of State had established a private e-mail server to handle official messages? And got away with it…
Do I need to continue?
“If the only tool you have is a hammer,
you tend to see every problem as a nail”
Abraham Maslow
I was arguing in the previous post that we think using images stored in our memory. While we are convinced that we deal with real ‘objects’… ‘Hammers’ versus ‘nails’…
As you should have already noticed, Abraham Maslow had said more or less the same thing sometimes in the first half of the previous century… Well, he was a ‘clinical’ psychologist while I’m nothing more than an engineer. He was interested in how our mind works, I’m interested in the consequences of how our minds work. If you understand what I mean…
‘And what about the pretext you used for today’s post?’
Free market capitalism is nothing but an environment. Man made, for sure, but also ‘natural’. As in ‘evolved’ to the present state as opposed to ‘designed’ in the present state.
Free market capitalism doesn’t do/cause anything. People toiling in this environment do whatever happens here.
Gravity doesn’t cause any falls.
Gravity pulls us, all of us, towards the center of the Earth.
Regardless.
Of us walking sober in the middle of the town versus skating ‘under the influence’ on a thin iced lake in the middle of nowhere.
Sometimes reading about history is not enough.
You might need to live at least some aspects of it…
I’m sure most of you are familiar with this notion.
With the notion that war is an art and that Sun Tzu was at least a notable teacher. In this domain.
And the second place goes to
Now, that we have established whom we consider to be the THE greatest experts on war, would you be so kind as to tell me when was the last time that China – or Germany, for that matter – had vanquished their opponents? After their respective treaties on war had been compiled…
My point being that a really ‘successful’ war ends with both parties understanding that there’s no point in fighting one.
That whenever the winner starts boasting about their exploits, that war has been fought for nothing. The winner might have won the war but they certainly had lost the peace.
My secondary point – and, maybe, the more important one – being that we tend to treat the current war using the knowledge gathered during the previous one, Which seems rational, right?!?
Yeah… well… The only successful war in our recent history – and only partially at that – was WWII.
WWI was fought for nothing. At the end, the victors had copied the actions of those who had won the previous wars. Imposed hefty reparations upon the vanquished. Hence the advent of Hitler.
WWII was not only terrible but also widespread. France, Germany, Italy, the Central Europe and, to a central extent, the Great Britain have been so thoroughly destroyed that people there did learn their lesson. No more war. Hence a completely different approach to peace than after WWI.
Inclusion of the former aggressor instead of punishment.
The next global war was the Cold one.
Fought mainly between the two WWII victors who had not directly experienced war. The US and the USSR.
What?!?
Well, just think about it.
France, Germany, Italy and so on had been occupied. Experienced hot war on a first hand manner for years on end. Great Britain had not only fought but had also been bombarded.
The US had fought in the war but only Hawai’i had directly experienced it.
And when it comes to the USSR the situation is… complicated. The eastern part of the WWII had been fought mainly in Ukraine and in the western part of Russia proper. The only main city directly affected by war was Sankt Petersburg/Leningrad. The rest of the Russian Federation had experienced less disturbance than western Ukraine in the present conflict.
And what did the free world do after the Cold war had been concluded? Specially the Americans?
Boasted? About their exploits?
How was the loser treated?
The westerners tried to do what the allies had done after WWII? Integrate the loser into the ‘brave new world’? Without understanding that the loser had not accepted its status?
We don’t get what we deserve,
we get what we put up with.
How did we get here?
Then
What is Truth?
Pilate
Well, there are two kinds of truth.
The one you feel with your shin when you hit a coffee table.
And the one you feel in your heart when those present laugh at you hopping on one leg while caressing the hurt one.
Which two kinds of truth divide us, people, into two categories.
Those trying to patch ‘an ever-changing truth’ out of many individual pictures – each of them the consequence of a ‘shin’ happening to connect with a portion of the ‘outside world’. Which people are currently known as ‘scientists’.
And those trying to reach ‘the truth’. By thinking, by divination, by… God only knows what any other means… Philosophers, theologians, quacks…
I was trained as an engineer.
To notice needs and to design solutions while evaluating the possible consequences of those needs being met by the proposed solutions. Which places me squarely into the first category.
nicichiarasa 