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Retribution

December 18, 2024 //
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The Government you elect
is the Government you deserve.
Thomas Jefferson

We are currently convinced that ‘an eye for an eye’ is an excessive – abusive, even – form of justice. But in its time, it was a very progressive principle.
Do not exert more punishment than the original damage.
NO MORE than an eye for an eye.

We don’t need more chaos. We need more consideration!

The likes of Trump are turning the tables on all of us!

Yes, some of those pushing left-side issues have jumped the shark. Not in the sense that the issues themselves were worthless but in the manner used to pursue them.

The likes of Trump have done nothing else but appropriated that very same manner of conducting business.

““The late Phyllis Schlafly, whom I worked so closely with, used to say, ‘If you get to claim and frame the argument, you almost certainly get to win.’ In other words, if you take their framing, it’s a woman’s right. Are you gonna put women in jail? No. It’s about a baby. Now, what do we do? Frame the argument. Own the argument,” he said.”

Recognize the lingo? The line-up of arguments?

Only this time the method is used by Ed Martin. The Trump nominee who wants to jail women for having abortions.

While the hard right argues for a blanket ban and the hard left argue for a no holds barred policy regarding abortion, real people have a hard time trying to lead a normal life. The extremes keep pushing for their stated goals while we’re stuck in a kind of limbo.
Watching them as if mesmerized by their antics…

Consideration rather than more chaos would come in handy at this point!

https://edition.cnn.com/kfile-ed-martin-rnc-platform-committee-anti-abortion-exceptions/index.html

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Categories 1989, authoritarianism, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, effective communication, In English, man as a measure for all things, skin in the game

Sustainable

December 15, 2024 //
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It’s the ‘vengeance’ part which spoils the whole thing.

Evil is to be resisted, of course, only this is better done in a sustainable manner.

WWI was won for nothing. The vengeance part in the Versailles ‘peace process’ had spoiled the whole thing.
Hence the war had to be won again.
During the process, the winners had become wiser. Some of them, at least.
The peace process had been inclusive this time.
The North Atlantic region, the end result of that peace process – no scare marks needed this time, is one the most successful stories of human development.

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Categories 1989, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, effective communication, evolution, In English, man as a measure for all things, skin in the game

Not that complicated…

November 30, 2024 //
0

There’re no blinder people
than those who don’t want to see…

Attempting to determine who ‘made that’ is similar to trying to find out which came first.
The chicken or the egg…
As if one was possible without the other…

Yeah, it’s labor which makes each thing.
And it’s capitalism which makes things possible…

Capitalism is a setting. A way of doing business.
Labor is a process. Through which some things – ideas included – are transformed into solutions.

If you want to plant a tree, you have to dig a hole.
If there was no shovel around – no capital available – you’d have to dig the hole using your bare hands. And dig the sapling out from the forest. Still bare handed.
If you happen to live in a capitalist setting – you may borrow a shovel and a sapling, if you didn’t have them already. And start an orchard.

The interest is too high? Capital has become too concentrated/expensive?
It happens from time to time. Usually just before a major crises.

Is there anything that might be done? To mitigate this boo-bust cycle?
Make sure the market remains actually free. That no one becomes too powerful.
Too powerful for our own good.

The Sherman Antitrust Act “makes it illegal to monopolize, conspire to monopolize, or attempt to monopolize a market for products or services“.
The Clayton Act “aims to promote fair competition and prevent unfair business practices that could harm consumers.“

Actually simple… if dully implemented …

And don’t fool yourself.
Socialism is nothing but state-run capitalism. A bunch of con-men take over the government and make all the decisions. Everything of value – all capital – theoretically belongs to the people and all the meaningful shots are called exclusively by the big shots who control the government.
Fascism, the other ‘alternative’ experimented during the XX-th century, is very much similar. Property remains, theoretically, private but the major calls are also called by the big shots who control the government.


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Categories 1989, Bounded rationality, collective identity, evolution, freedom, In English, man as a measure for all things

“peut on rire de Dieu?”

November 22, 2024 //
0

“Dans tous les cas,
la seule « condition » est de le faire
dans les limites de ce que permet la loi”
Aurel, dessinateur de presse au Canard enchaîné

Would you poke fun at a volcano?
No? Because it doesn’t make any sense?
But would you poke fun at people who, 800 years ago, prayed to a ‘volcanic god’ asking for ‘mercy’?
Why? Only because (we currently know that) ‘it doesn’t work like that’?!?

OK, forget about the volcano.
Would you make fun of Shoah? Also known as the Holocaust.
No, because it’s illegal? Otherwise you would have mocked a tragedy?!?

It’s not illegal to fall down.
And impossible to ‘ignore’ gravity. Just as impossible as it is to ignore a volcano!
We laugh our eyes out when clowns pretend to fall.
Nobody laughs at a volcano.
Hence it is us who choose what is funny and what isn’t. Just as it is still us who choose whether to obey the law or not. We’re talking about the human laws here, not about the natural ones…

Which brings us closer to the gist of this post.

For the believers, God is everything. Both the entire world and their reference point. Without their God, the world loses its meaning. Without their God, the believers lose their bearings.
Making fun of God, of any god, is no different from making fun of a volcano.

‘You’re making absolutely no sense. No sense whatsoever.
A volcano is a real thing. Sometimes too real, even. While God, all gods, …
Nonsense. Absolute nonsense!’

Do you have faith in vaccines?
Why? Because they work? Because they save a lot of lives?
Despite vaccines being rather expensive and despite the fact that some guys have become obscenely rich as a consequence of people needing vaccines, and other medicines, in order to survive, right?
Have you ever made fun of vaccines? Of obscenely rich people, no matter how they got their money?

Do you understand how religion works?
How religion actually works… Psychologically, sociologically, etc.
No more than you understand vaccines?
Or you just consider religion to be a hoax while vaccines are a scientific fact?
Why? Because you have been told so by reputable people? By people in whom you have absolute trust?

So.
You trust doctors to the tune of allowing them to mess up with your immune system.
And you trust those thinkers who try to convince us not only that God doesn’t exist but also that religion is the “opiate of the masses“. “An ideological tool that legitimates and defends the interests of the dominant, wealthy classes in the population.” According to Marx, that was. Karl Marx. The guy advertising the advent of the communist happiness uber alles…

Let’s backpedal for a while.
You’re OK with vaccines and hate the fact that some people get way too much money for selling those vaccines. You’re OK with the idea of making fun of rich people but not of vaccines. Because vaccines save lives while obscenely rich people are… well… obscene!

Let’s get back to religion.
Making fun of vaccines doesn’t make sense. To you. To us, actually. Because they’re not funny. Because they are a scientific fact. And because they save lives.
Making fun of God also doesn’t make sense. For the believers. For those who truly believe in God.

For those who have a different understanding of the world than we do.

What would you think about people who dismiss vaccines?
The scientific concept of vaccination, not a specific vaccine.
You consider them…?
From your point of view, their reference point is way out of this world? That they have lost their bearings?
That they actually deny the reality? Your/our reality?

That’s exactly what also happens when people make fun of God. Of any god.
Those who believe in God – in the particular god which is the target of the joke but also in all other gods – feel queasy. ‘Sea-sick’. Their world and their bearings are being put into jeopardy. Which puts them into a very difficult position.
There are only two ways out of their conundrum.
To consider the jester as being clueless. As having no idea.
Or to consider the jester as an ‘agent provocateur’. To consider the whole thing as being an insult.

You have a concern and you want to express it? As the law allows you to do?
How about doing it in a considerate manner?
In an efficient manner! In such a way as to get through…
Insulting people, or being considered clueless, doesn’t help if you want to be heard by the other side.
If you want the other side to listen, carefully, to what you need to say.

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Categories alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, effective communication, In English, Mutual Respect, Psychology, religion, teleology, Trust

Who is in charge here?!?

November 16, 2024 //
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“Facts don’t care about your feelings.“

It’s the act which does the trick.

It is the fact that it was you who had determined whether to keep them or not as they were given to you which actually affirms ‘it’.

Simple, actually, if you consider it with an open mind…

And here’s another question.

How wise is it for people to not care about other people’s feelings?

‘Cause I don’t expect facts to care about feelings. Mine or anybody else’s…

Categories awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, effective communication, In English, man as a measure for all things, Mutual Respect, skin in the game, Trust

On the ‘hows’ of the matter

November 14, 2024 //
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“I mean by a “fact” something which is there, whether anybody thinks so or not.“
“Facts are what make statements true or false.”
Bertrand Russell

What do you see here?
A ‘fact’ or ‘gravity in action’?
Bertrand Russell? Isaac Newton?

Or both?
After all, Earth pulling down yet another apple is (nothing but) a fact.

Yeah, but ‘Earth pulling down apples’ had become a fact only after Newton had figured it out.
And received this name, “fact”, only after Russell had coined the concept.

My point being that some things happen in the special place we call ‘conscious mind’.

“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident:”

The United States, currently the most powerful country on Earth, exists because some people had put it in their minds to make it.
Gravity exists, as we know it, because Isaac Newton had noticed it and described it to us.
Facts exist, as we think of them, because Bertrand Russell had introduced them into our thinking process.

‘Do you imply that apples did not fall down before Newton noticed the process? That people didn’t think before Russell told them how? That the US would have remained a colony if not for the Boston Tea Party?’

I believe you’re fully aware that the question above had sprung up in a mind before being put down on paper… before being tapped on a keyboard, actually…

Of course gravity existed before Newton had described it. Of course people had been thinking for a while before Russell let us in on his thoughts on this subject. And of course I have no idea about what would have happened if those guys in Boston had brewed the tea instead of throwing it in the harbor.

But it is very clear for me, “self-evident” as the Founding Fathers had put it, that some things do happen in a certain manner.
That not all of us think in the same way – god forbid, that would be against our very nature – but all of us think according to some ‘rules’. Hence the results of our thinking are not exactly ‘haphazard’.

The point of today’s post being that my method is ‘thinking’.
I use my ‘conscious mind’ as an instrument. As a scalpel-cum-microscope with which I attempt to study how my mind works.

Being fully aware (?!?) that this process takes place ‘inside my head’. Inside my ‘limited’ head. Limited in both space and time.
That ‘that’ head is made of the same matter – atoms – as the rest of the Universe. Hence some of its limitations.
And that ‘that’ head works ‘inside’ the cultural universe created by the aggregated effort of every human that has ever lived on Earth. Hence another set of limitations.

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Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, Bounded rationality, collective identity, effective communication, In English, man as a measure for all things, skin in the game

Peeping from the other side of the looking glass

November 8, 2024 //
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Indeed, but only a clown has enough gumption to tell the king that ‘he’s got no clothes on’!

Furthermore, every respectable palace has both a king and a jester.
The jester overpowering the king doesn’t change the palace into a circus. Only refocuses the attention of those paying attention…

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Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, collective identity, effective communication, In English, man as a measure for all things, Mutual Respect, skin in the game, Trust

Go figure…

November 6, 2024 //
1

If it did,
it probably had to happen!

“Trump, a Florida resident, has said he would vote against the ballot measure, after initially appearing to suggest he would vote in favor.” Reuters, 2024-11-06

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Categories awareness, Choices we make, collective identity, democracy, effective communication, In English, man as a measure for all things, skin in the game

Freedom

November 5, 2024 //
0

Abstract:

While there has been a plethora of analysis on diverse subjects within Holocaust studies,
there remains some reluctance to engage with women’s unique experiences,
which were largely subsumed under those of men in the decades following World War II.
This article examines how women’s specific experiences, both biological and social, are often denied
or suppressed in research and literature on the Holocaust, even in survivors’ own testimonies,
despite the fact that these are often clearly gendered experiences.
By revisiting key themes from the testimonies of female survivors,
such gendered analyses contribute to a fuller picture of the unprecedented
and relentless killing that the Final Solution’s anti-Semitism entailed.
Nicole Ephgrave
Journal of Women’s History Johns Hopkins University Press
Volume 28, Number 2, Summer 2016 pp. 12-32
10.1353/jowh.2016.0014

Those who had ordered what had happened at Auschwitz and many of those who had actually perpetrated the crimes considered themselves to be free. They did it on their own will.
Their freedom was intact!
And they had chosen, freely, not only to diminish the liberty of other people but to actually defile them…

Individual freedom is something which depends, largely, on each of us. On how each of us ‘digests’ their previous experiences and chooses to operationalize what they have learned.
Social freedom, on the other hand, depends on how we, as a group/community, aggregate our individual choices.

In this sense, the latter one, freedom becomes a space.
A place – THE place, actually – where each of us can put in practice our own individually free choices.

Now, places have rules.
Each place being defined by the rules governing that place. Some of those rules are specific for each space while others come from the ‘previous’ spaces.
For example, we – humans – are both animals and something ‘higher’. As such, we ‘obey’ both the rules governing the biological realm and the laws of each of the countries we happen to live in.
One of the most fundamental rules evident to man is “no good deed goes unpunished”. Otherwise known as the law of the consequence. “Do not be deceived… A man reaps as he sows” Gal 6:7

Everything we do leaves a trace. Influences the future. Creates karma.
How we, each of us, chooses to exert their freedom creates the circumstances in which we, and our children, will have to exercise theirs. Their freedom!
The manner in which the ‘free nazi’ had chosen to exert their freedom – to kill other people – has shaped the future of Europe. And of much of that of the world!

The manner in which we choose to ‘digest’, to interpret, what had happened shapes our future.

Which brings us back to ‘dehumanization’.

Many of us consider that the victims have been dehumanized. Made less human.
Had their humanness obliterated!
By the abusers. By those who had abused both their freedom and their power!
By those who had transformed other humans into victims….

I beg you to reconsider this:
Who had undergone the process of dehumanization?
The victims or the bullies?!?

We, as free thinkers, have the ability to poke fun at whatever happens to us.
To relativize our experiences.
Hence ‘no good deed goes unpunished’. When the utmost importance of the subject begged for a way more formal wording…
Poking fun at things we cannot control is a survival gimmick. By doing this we can, individually, survive in dire circumstances. Specially in situations where our inner values are questioned. When we have to quell what psychologists call ‘cognitive dissonance’. When we are forced – by ‘external factors’ – to do something we would not have done in ‘normal’ circumstances.

In this sense we can better understand the process of dehumanization.
The defiler actually needs to dehumanize the victim. To consider the victim something else but a human being. Otherwise, the defiler would no longer be able to defile the victim.
But what happens when a human being does not recognize (some of) their fellow humans as being their peers?

Who ceases to be human?

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Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, effective communication, In English, man as a measure for all things, skin in the game

Consequences

October 7, 2024 //
0

“And what’s in it for us, ordinary people?”
My 90 years old father, commenting the news just running on TV

Nothing but what we can make of it.

The Earth was circling the Sun since the very beginning. Way before Bruno ‘discovered’ the phenomenon. Again…
The egg was sending ‘chemical signals’ since … who knows when. We, all of us, have been born without any knowledge on this matter.

Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake.
He wasn’t the only one to face the consequences of his discovery. The lives of everybody else have been changed by his discovery. And the way we understand the world!
Sooner or later, somebody will find a way to use the information about ‘how the egg works’. To make some money out of it, to help people… or even to make an ‘ideological point’. “Yet another male dominated fantasy about the creation of life…”

So, Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake as a consequence of his discovery?!?

Nope!
Bruno was burnt at the stake as a consequence of what we, the people, have made of his work.
Well, not exactly us but our ancestors. And not exactly we, the ordinary people, as the ‘bright minds of the day’. They had to be bright since ‘they’ were the ones running the show, right?!?

OK, so ‘those who know how to weave a story are those who order around those who know the facts’.
According to Yuval Noah Harari.
And, again, what’s in it for us?

Nothing but what we can make of it.

For as long as we’ll continue to chase power, ‘political power’, things will continue as they were.
As we’ve conditioned ourselves to expect them to be.

But, hopefully, when the next Giordano Bruno will tell us things can be spun the other way around, we’ll know better than to burn him at the stake. Alive. Again!

Power can be exercised in many ways!
The more sustainable of which being in favor of the general public.
‘For the long term benefit of the self aware social organism’ instead of ‘for how the public has been led to believe by the spin doctors’.

When will we be able to figure this out?
When those who know how things work will spill the beans out-front instead of choosing whose arse to lick.
After all, the egg encourages the most suitable sperm, not the most enchanting one…

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Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Choices we make, collective identity, effective communication, evolution, In English, man as a measure for all things, skin in the game, teleology
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