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Archives for category: Choices we make
“All governments suffer a recurring problem:
Power attracts pathological personalities.
It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.”
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.
By sending the Red Army to invade Ukraine, Putin had crossed a red line.
The rest of the world noticed.
Some played possum. ‘Let’s stay out of it. And maybe, maybe, get something for ourselves’.
The majority said “No! This is too much.”
Russia does have veto-power in the UN Security Council. Hence the dead-lock.
The Biden led US and the EU had chosen to support Ukraine. And to sanction the Putin regime.
Every day, people are being killed. Soldiers on the front and civilians under aerial bombardment.
Reasonable individuals want the fighting to stop.
Easier said than done.
Putin might say: ‘My bad!’ and tell his soldiers to go home.
Ukraine might agree, on its own volition, with enough of Putin’s demands. And, hopefully, get at least a respite.
Or those helping Ukraine might say: ‘We had enough. From now on, you’re on your own.’
Putin is not yet ready to back off. Ukraine is not yet ready to cave in.
‘Somebody’ is getting ready to act as a mediator.
What are the immediate consequences?
Putin is back. No longer an outcast!
Is the rest of the world ready?
For it to go back? Back to what was going on before WWI but on a far wider scale?
History never repeats itself.
Only keeps teaching a lesson until we actually understand it.
What is the lesson here?
That each tyrant believes they can outwit all other tyrants.
That tyrants are convinced they can outwit democratic alliances.
That, in the end, all authoritarian regimes fail. Abysmally. For the simple reason that inability to accept their own faillings makes all authoritarian leaders incapable of coping with change. Unable to adapt. Unable to evolve. Hence all authoritarian regimes are inherently fragile.
And who suffers the consequences?
We do. All of us. “World Wide Wars”, remember?
“Insanity is doing the same thing
over and over again
and expecting different results”
Rita Mae Brown
First celebrated as a brilliant physicist, Einstein had later been recognized as an ‘all rounder’.
So much so that he was found ‘guilty’ for other people’s words.
Rita Mae Brown?!?
Why bother mention her? If you want ‘to back’ up such an important saying, you’d better come up with a really famous ‘promoter’. Preferably a dead one…
‘And your point is…?’
On January 27, the day when Auschwitz was liberated 80 years ago, I shared this on FB:
Some people took exception. Interpreting this as an allusion to what’s currently going on in the US, they asked me to ‘be specific’.
“I don’t protest the protesters but their particular way of doing it. Without any consideration for the ‘collateral damage’ and turning a blind eye towards the already experienced facts.”
My point being that Hitler didn’t invent antisemitism. Germany wasn’t the first country where large scale pogroms were organized.
Pogrom is a Russian word. “To wreak havoc, to demolish violently”.
The way I see it, ‘pogrom’ is not only a tragedy – for both victims and perpetrators – but also a symptom.
A symptom that something is amiss in the society which allows it to happen.
To protest something is fully justified.
If unhappy about something, one is fully entitled to try to prevent that something from happening. Again…
But it would be ‘unreasonably’ to ‘prevent’ it in a way that will be even costlier than the ‘feared development’. Particularly ‘unreasonably’ if the method had already been experimented!
Those supporting Hitler were ‘protesting’ the Versailles Treaty.
Just as Lenin’s Bolsheviks were protesting what had happened during the czarist Russia.
Hitler and Lenin protested by perpetrating crimes even more heinous than those they were protesting.
They should have known better.
Those who supported them, of course… for it was the supporters who had ultimately experienced the consequences!
After all, one doesn’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand that the simple fact that this time it is the others who are at the receiving end of what’s going on doesn’t make it right. In no way better than what we have experienced. And continue to… The misery experienced by the others does not annihilate ours!
