Archives for category: collective identity
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The Media is not to be Trusted?!?

September 3, 2015 //
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A young Syrian boy, who drowned in his family’s attempt to reach Greece from Turkey, lies in the surf near Bodrum, Turkey

OK, I’m cool with this idea.
I’m convinced that all media outlets have their own agenda and that sometimes some of them publish a lot of bogus.

But where from do we get our information about what is going on in the world? If we don’t watch TV and we don’t listen to the radio? Does any of you still buy anything that was printed?
From the web? As in what our friends share on FB? Or Instagram? Or wherever?
And where do they get their facts from?

What we get is a ‘double selection’.

First of all each of the media outlets does make a selection from what they have at their disposal and publish only what fits their respective policies. Then come our ‘friends’. What we get is what our friends share from what the media thinks that we might be interested in.

The ideal situation would be for the media to do its job – present something with real meaning – and for our friends to conquer their biases and gouge things reasonably.

Is any of us in this ideal situation?

I’m not. Hence I watch the news. Not on a single channel, of course,
And I strive to make good use of my brain, each time.

” “After it capsized, the family clung to the boat. Mr Abdullah tried to hold his two children and wife with his arm, but one by one they were washed away by waves.” “

Was all of this made up? Was it inflated to grab our attention?
I cannot possibly know for sure.
Fact is that a lot of people are trying to flee from the Middle East.

And that’s the real news. Some of us need to see pictures like the one above in order to get it.
Could this possibly be the reason for which the media sometimes ‘jumps the gun’?

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Categories collective identity, Frames of mind

We need to make up our minds. Fast!

September 2, 2015 //
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I thought the modern mantra was ‘make as much money as you can, in a legal way – if possible’….
Meanwhile the likes of Trump are lionized for their exploits yet those who are happy to nibble some crumbs from Uncle Sam’s table are treated with scorn!
Is there any real difference between Trump using eminent domain to rob people of their homes and the guys depicted above scamming the federal budget?

Photo: Associated Press

““He has been a proponent of using eminent domain to take property from small property owners and use it to make business and make money for himself,” Paul said. “There was a case of a woman who had lived in a house for 30 years. He built a casino next door and when she wouldn’t sell, he used the government to take it from her.”” Rand Paul, quoted by BostonHerald.com

You may also want to check what Snopes.com has to say about the matter.

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Categories collective identity, corruption, Frames of mind, Money as goal, politics, Psychology

Finally somebody has decided to shed some light on what happened in Greece

August 29, 2015 //
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Taking the mic. Varoufakis. Yves Herman/Reuters Varoufakis in conversation with leading academics as Syriza splinters and election beckons in Greece

The strangest thing of all that happened in Greece is not that ‘the emperor has been naked for sometime already’ but the fact that this has been public knowledge.
Yet everybody still pretends everything is OK.

Click on the picture and read the article in The Conversation.
You can also check my previous post on this subject here.

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Categories Choices we make, collective identity, democracy, Economy

Self driving cars. Where to?

August 28, 2015 //
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The automobile has been both a huge opportunity for the humankind and a sort of a turning point in its history.

Humans have been faced with an extremely interesting provocation during their entire evolution. In order for the community to become stronger its individual members had to become simultaneously more autonomous and more involved in the communal life.

At first the automobile helped with both. It offered the individual the means to travel faster and further – hence it increased individual autonomy – and it drove people to ‘band together’ – to form the corporations that build automobiles, to build roads and bridges, etc., etc.

After some time the automobile had become a mixed blessing. Not only that a lot of people were dying in car accidents but because in his search for increased efficiency man had invented the ‘assembly line’, thus heavily limiting the erstwhile huge autonomy of the very skilled laborers who used to build the first automobiles. Skills, which usually come with an independent mind, were no longer in such high demand and have been replaced by ‘hard work’. And later by sheer automation.

But at least we were still responsible for driving the damned cars. And, for many of us, that was the only really autonomous thing that we were allowed to do without outside supervision. Except for when the missus was in the co-pilot seat, of course. Just kidding, the husbands are the more obnoxious critics when it comes to driving skills, not the wifes. But the fact remains.

Not for long. In a short while not only that we will be transported by our future self driving cars but they, the cars, will have to obey the police first and only then take us where we told them to go.

And all of this in the name of progress…

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Categories Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, Frames of mind, Psychology

If Trump didn’t exist we would have had to invent him.

August 28, 2015 //
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“A top GOP pollster tried to find out why people love Donald Trump – and left with his legs ‘shaking’ “.

His conclusion? Republican Leadership “need to wake up. They don’t realize how the grassroots have abandoned them. Donald Trump is punishment to a Republican elite that wasn’t listening to their grassroots.”

I can agree with that but this is only the tip of the iceberg. According to Lowell Weicker, former Republican Senator and independent Governor, there is a “total disconnect…between reality and Republican Party”.
Most civilized people believe that democracy is ‘good for you’ but only a few of them are able to differentiate between bona fide democracy – a political space where all things are discussed openly and which is dominated by a hefty dose of mutual respect among those involved – and ‘mob rule’ – where a portion of the electorate is manipulated into voting for one party/candidate or another.
Mob rule sucks. It divides the society into barricaded compounds that hardly exchange any information. Business slowly grinds to a halt because of mutual distrust and the nation dissolves itself into a collection of individuals too concerned about their private interests to notice what is going on around them.
Real democracy works. Not because more brains think better than one  – that is not necessarily true – but because all ‘brains’ make mistakes. And if the brain at the top goes around unchallenged those mistakes might have huge repercussions for the entire society. During the negotiation phase of a democratic process (otherwise known as the electoral campaign) there are huge chances that most of the potential mistakes will be pointed out and eventually purged. But that happens only if the process is really free. If not, if the public discourse is hijacked by special interests or if the public itself suffers from (temporary?) blindness  things do not go as smoothly as they are supposed to happen.
And here comes Donald Trump.
It’s very hard to say on which side of the things he really is.
Until recently he was saying that he funds his campaign with his own money so that nobody will be able to ask anything from him ‘afterwards’. Now he says he’ll accept donations, big and small.
OK, people can have second thoughts. I have no problem with that. Not even when somebody flips a lot.
I have a big problem though with the con artists who say what the people want to hear instead of honestly speaking up their minds.
In this sense both Lowell Weicker and Frank Luntz, the GOP pollster, are right. The Republican elite has primed their grass roots so hard against the ‘liberals’ that no dialogue seems possible between the two sides. And when dialogue dies out, misunderstanding promptly catches up from behind.
I’m afraid that people who are happy that Trump voices, very loudly, some topics that have either been neglected and/or mismanaged, don’t understand that he doesn’t do it with the intention of solving any of them but because he knows that this is the sure way of mesmerizing the public.
Maybe all this is for the better. The neglected subjects are out in the open and must now be addressed.
Just as important, the pundits, on both sides of the political divide, should have understood by now that it’s high time for them to clean up their act.
Or get replaced by the Trumps of this world.
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Categories Choices we make, collective identity, corruption, democracy, fail better, Frames of mind, limited rationality, Mutual Respect, politics

Two of the most common misconceptions of today.

August 21, 2015 //
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huge errors

a. Asking your broker for advice. If he had any reliable understanding of the market he would have been trading his own money for his own profit, not your money for a lousy commission.

b. That you can buy your way out of every situation you’ve got yourself into. You will, eventually, use all the canned goods and ammo you were able to buy. And no, buying huge amounts of any of them won’t help either. The more goods you have the more ‘attractive’ to the thieves you become so you’ll have to hire a lot of guards. Who, at some point, might decide that they don’t need you to tell them what to do: they have the real power and all that you really have under your ‘command’ is the receipt for the goods. What good will that do for you in a lawless world?

How about becoming your own man? Learn to make your own trading decisions, to grow your own food and to become a person who is respected for his ability to help those around him, not for what he owns. Canned goods, ammo, whatever…

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Categories Choices we make, collective identity, Frames of mind, Psychology

A democratic conundrum.

August 16, 2015 //
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                                                                                                                                                             Rebecca Cook/Reuters

Donald Trump is making big headlines in his bid to conquer the White House.
Covering this subject the Atlantic published a very pertinent question posed by Conor Friedersdorf to Trump’s supporters:
“You’re right to mistrust conventional politicians. But why do you think he’ll treat you any better?”

This is one side of the entire development.
If we dig a little deeper we have to observe that the person who actually occupies the Oval Office – or any other public office, in no matter which democratic country, is important indeed but even more so is the fact that that person has to be voted by a majority in order to accede to that office.

In other words, America has a little over 300 million inhabitants. There must be better contenders out there.
Better than either Trump or Clinton!
What’s keeping the ordinary Americans from recognizing and bringing some of THEM to the fore of the American politics?

PS. Click on this link and read the comments, besides the article. As always, they are are at least as revealing as the article itself, if not more so.

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Categories collective identity, democracy, Frames of mind, politics, Psychology

Theology of rape?!?

August 13, 2015 //
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ISIS Enshrines a Theology of Rape Claiming the Quran’s support, the Islamic State codifies sex slavery in conquered regions of Iraq and Syria and uses the practice as a recruiting tool. Written by RUKMINI CALLIMACHI; Photographs by MAURICIO LIMAAUG. 13, 2015

This is not as much about a particular religion as it is about the dominant religion of a certain place loosing its ability to fulfill its mission.
By ‘religion’ I understand the set of ties that transforms a certain population into a community, the rest is ritual.
When those ties no longer do what they are meant to do – make the individual feel that he belongs and therefore impart a certain sense of safety – many members of that erstwhile community start to loose their marbles.
Some kill themselves, pretending to be martyrs who die for a sacred cause, some others rape the innocents that happen to cross their paths.
The fact that some ‘religious leaders’ use the teachings of a particular religion to encourage these abominations only proves that the so called leaders are nothing but fraudsters that feed on other peoples’ misery.
More than a hundred years ago Emile Durkheim, one of the founding fathers of sociology, had wrote ‘Le Suicide’ and fully explained all this. Maybe what we need is to re-read it. All you have to do is follow the link.
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Categories Choices we make, collective identity, Frames of mind, Social justice

Gang Rape

July 29, 2015 //
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dolce-gabbana-gang-bang

Some 30 years ago I stumbled upon a book by Desmond Morris.

The Naked Ape.

I read it overnight because next day it had to be returned to its owner. Books published in their original languages were hard to come by in communist Romania…
Little did I know at that time that my interests will slowly shift from Mechanical Engineering to Sociology and then on to decision making… Anyway…
In that book Morris tries to convince us that women have so many periods because in this way they are a lot readier to receive their mates, thus ensuring a tighter bond inside the couple. In turn this is beneficial in an evolutionary sense because a tightly knit couple is better suited for raising the kind of slow growing children that is characteristic for the human species.
In short Morris proposes that monogamy was a step forward in human evolution.
I tend to agree with him and I even have a further argument. Imagine what would happen if a small number of alpha males would ‘corral’ – one way or another – most of the available nubile women, as it’s the case with the chimps or the gorillas. Do you think the rest of the males would be able to cooperate in any way towards the survival of the community they belong to or they’d be constantly obsessing about how to get laid?

Which brings me to my subject.

Emile Durkheim used suicide as a pretext to introduce us to his theory about social solidarity and the social function played by what we consider to be a crime.
Durkheim’s research had led him to see suicide as an individual decision but one which is heavily influenced by the cultural medium to which the decision maker belongs. More over, the same line of thinking produced his conclusion that a society must keep a fine balance between ‘solidarity/intolerance’ and ‘laisez-faire’. One that is too intolerant drastically reduces its own ability to adapt to changes that occur in its ‘environment’ while those that do not care about the fate of their members will eventually auto-dissolve.

What if incidence of rape was to be studied in the same light?

Bill Cosby – a man who, let’s face it, could have had legions of willing women – is accused  to have drugged and raped some 40 women in more than 30 years before anything came to public notice.
Jimmy Savile, a British “larger-than-life character”, used “his celebrity status and fund-raising activity to gain uncontrolled access to vulnerable people across six decades” and to unabashedly rape them.
Rape not only occurs randomly in war time but has also been used as a weapon:
“Sexual violence is also used to destabilize communities and sow terror”.
Meanwhile France – Durkheim’s own Motherland – has become the stage for some 7000 ‘tournantes’ every year. The English term for ‘tournant’ being gang rape.

As Durkheim said more than a hundred years ago suicide is indeed an individual act/decision but it’s incidence is heavily influenced by what happens around that person.
Same thing is valid for rape. A rape appears at the intersection between the history/experience/upbringing of the rapist, the social/cultural milieu in which he lives and his ‘on the spot’ decision.

Sex sells.
“It’s been said that as human beings, we have a lizard or reptilian brain that responds to certain primal urges. Food is one. Sex and reproduction is definitely another. This underlying, pre-programmed disposition to respond to sexual imagery is so strong, it has been used for over 100 years in advertising. And the industry, while abusing it more and more, would be foolish to ignore the draw of sexual and erotic messaging.”

How far are we willing to go in order to make a sale? As far as Dolce and Gabbana went when they published the picture above?

Morris said that our first step towards humanity was to change our very physiology in order to promote (at least an apparent) monogamy. It seems that we are now altering our culture in order to sell more…

Gang Rape taken to the next level… Manipulation went wild…

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Categories Choices we make, collective identity, corruption, evolution, Frames of mind, Money as goal

What’s going on here?

July 19, 2015 //
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“Muslim Marine Murderer’s father sexually assaulted wife and beat son”

A Facebook friend of mine shared this Daily Mail article with the following comment:
“Sad… well educated, accomplished, but lost spiritually… perfect for being radicalized…”

I was haunted by this ever since Mohamed Atta and his gang of terrorists forced us to consider it.

What made them snap?

It couldn’t be their religion.
First of all mainstream Islam, like all other bona fide religions, does not condone senseless murder.
Secondly only a very small minority of the Islamic immigrants become ‘radicalized’.
Thirdly, some of them even turn on their own people.

What if they use religion, Islam in this case, as a pretext for destruction rather than a way to connect with the others? As religion was meant to – reliegare, in Latin, means ‘connecting to’.
What if for them religion is more about ritual than about true spirituality?

I’ve slowly reached the conclusion that what these guys are doing can be interpreted as a form of ‘assisted suicide’. They are pissed off by what has happened to/around them, they blame it on the ‘society’ and they just want out. So they commit suicide and exact vengeance at the same time.

Maybe we need to pay closer attention to what the classics have taught us.

Emile Durkheim, Suicide.:

“Suicide is used by Durkheim as a means of demonstrating the key impact of social factors on our personal lives and even our most intimate motives. The book succeeds brilliantly, both as a technical study of suicide and as a fundamental contribution to this broader issue. Students of sociology will continue to be required to study this book, which will remain on the sociological agenda for many years yet to come.” Anthony Giddens.
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Categories collective identity, Frames of mind, Mutual Respect, religion
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