Basically, Adam Smith and Ayn Rand had the same thing in their minds.
How society works and how individuals meet their needs in a social context.
And both of them had reached the same solution. That capitalism was good.
Unfortunately – for Ayn Rand’s fans, any similitude between them stops here.
Adam Smith had described a reality. Something which had evolved, naturally, in the cultural milieu to which he had happened to belong.
Ayn Rand was trying to push a social model.
The fact that what Rand was trying to push was very close to what Smith had described is, indeed, important. But the difference between something which had evolved naturally and the very same something which had been imposed, by force, is also important.
Let me give you an example.
Christianity. Much of what we have today – from ‘human rights’ to the very concept of ‘science’, has it’s roots down in the principles exposed in the Bible. South America is, now, a Christian territory. Populated by people who had immigrated as Christians and by people – just as Christian as the first category, who had been born to parents having other beliefs. Parents who had been forcefully ‘conversed’ to Christianity.
It’s easy to notice that people in South America don’t fare as well as those in Europe, North America or Australia. Why? They are Christians, South America uses the same capitalism and the same democracy as the rest of the ‘civilized’ world… why are the results so different?
Don’t bring ethnicity into discussion! The explanation is simple and has nothing to do with ethnicity.
While in Europe, North America and Australia Christianity and capitalism had evolved naturally – in the sense that they had occurred in Europe and had been translated by the European immigrants to North America and Australia, in South America – and in other places, Christianity and capitalism had been forcefully imposed by the immigrants upon the much larger local populations.
Just as Communism had been forcefully imposed by the Lenin led Bolsheviks upon the Russian People.
Forget about the fact that communism had failed, no matter how hard some people have tried to make it work, while capitalism works for real – when used properly. My point is that whenever somebody tries to force something upon somebody else, the results will never rise to the expected level. No matter how good that ‘something’ might be.
Are you familiar with ‘you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink’? Leading it to water is enough. Whenever somebody becomes ‘enthusiastic’ enough to try to force a horse to drink, the results …. no matter how skillful the ‘enthusiast’ might be…
And there’s another ‘small’ thing which makes a hell of a difference. Adam Smith’s main point was that the whole society benefits from the functioning of the free market. Where each ‘agent’ competes with the others towards meeting his own goal. Which competition – as long as it remains free, results in everybody – well, almost, having a better life. Ayn Rand’s point being that the free market is there only for the benefit of the ‘strongest’. Which is in line with Lenin’s view on the matter… ‘The Bolsheviks merit to lead the revolution because they are the strongest…’
Driven by hunger, trained by habit and enhanced by hope.
That’s how we, humans – a.k.a. conscious animals – operate.
Hunger must be satisfied. Animals do it instinctively. They can be trained, some of them, only that training is based solely on memory and reward. Their individual contribution to the end result is small.
Humans do it conscientiously. As in ‘on purpose’. They identify first the available food sources – according to their training, rank them – according to their acquired tastes and to the relative ease with which food can be obtained from each of them, and proceed to feed themselves only after all these steps had been performed. However perfunctorily. It is easy to notice that here individuals have a lot more lee-way. Their contributions to the process can be substantial.
In all of those three phases. And beyond.
When choosing.
When ‘training’ others how to choose.
And when determining that we’ve had enough. That time is ripe to let others feed themselves.
Why are all these people fleeing? From their own country? Because the Taliban have arrived?
What made these youngsters – very much similar to those above, to choose the Taliban side of the conflict? And what made the Taliban ultimately more successful than the ‘democratically elected’ Afghan Government? The Americans deciding it was time for the Afghan People to stand on their own two feet?
As I said at the beginning of the post, we, humans, have a lot more lee-way than the rest of the animals. None of us is entirely free but each of us has some agency. Some power to influence the destiny of other people. When exercising that power we’re all influenced by our previously received conditioning and by the present circumstances. When pressed by ‘urgent considerations’ very few of us remain aware of the fact that present day decisions set the scene for what’s going to happen tomorrow. When pressed by what we consider to be ‘urgent’ we forget about ‘primum non nocere’. When caving in to urgency we forget that we are the ones going to live with the consequences of our present decisions.
The Afghans flee their country because they have lost hope. The Afghan soldiers have caved in because they have lost hope. The Afghans who have joined the Taliban have done that because they felt there was no other hope.
Who will have to make do in these circumstances? When are we going to take responsibility for our own fate? When are we going to start building our own hopes?
Bearing in mind that we have only one Earth at our disposal? And that if we play our cards right, the sky is the only limit?
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Most steps ‘forward’ had been made at the expense of those daring to put one foot in front of the other. Fernao de Magalhaes and Marie Sklodowska Curie had been but two of the examples.
But what kind of ‘moving forward’ is to find yourself shackled en route to a plantation in the ‘Brave New World’? Or nuked?
That’s the whole point. How do you balance the urge to explore with the need to survive?
What convinced Fernao de Magalhaes – and his men, that it was a good thing – for them, at least, to climb aboard those primitive ships and attempt to reach the Indies by sailing towards the ‘wrong’ direction? What made Marie Sklodowska Curie – and other scientists, overcome barriers previously considered insurmountable in their quest for knowledge? Putting themselves, and us, in great danger?
Fast forward to the XXI-st century. Following in the steps of de Magalhaes, Bruno and Curie, we’ve explored almost all corners of the Earth, peered into the womb of the Universe, named the entire table of Mendeleev, and reached the present state of civilization. In doing so, we’ve changed the composition of the atmosphere we breathe, polluted the water we drink, exhausted the soil which grows our food and, the worst, have soured whatever mutual understanding ever existed among ourselves.
After some 75 years of relative peace we’ve become more callous than ever. Judging by what’s being said on TV, shared on social media… and, most importantly, by how we react when our fellow human beings are in danger. Or in need…
We refuse to wear a mask – because it doesn’t offer perfect protection and it has been mandated by the government. We refuse to give up fossil fuel – because ‘it has not yet been scientifically proven beyond any reasonable doubt that all the global warming has been produced by us’. We refuse to pay taxes – because they are ‘theft sanctioned by the government.’
All these in the name of ‘defending our God sanctioned liberty’…
We steal much of the help we send to those in need. We pay those who work for us as little as we can, regardless of the consequences. And we declare, nonchalantly, that ‘greed is good’. We continue to notice the skin color of those we interact with. And to pass judgement on them starting from this ‘piece of information’. We continue to consider that women should ‘behave properly’ and ‘mind their own business’.
We allow ‘spin doctors’ into our minds. We welcome them, even. And let them ‘fine tune’ our biases…
How are we going to survive this huge amount of ‘progress’? That which we’ve brought upon our own heads? When are the ‘spin doctors’ going to realize the Earth is finite? Not flat. Limited!
What are they going to do when the shit they’ve sown into our heads will finally hit the fan? Where are they going to hide?
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Twenty years ago I was watching, on TV, the towers being destroyed.
I still remember, vividly, the people falling from the buildings I had visited 6 short years before they been torn down by terrorists. The buildings which were replaced by a huge gap in the Earth when I took my family to visit New York. The only other place in the world where I would live beside my home town, Bucharest, Romania.
I’m watching now desperate people trying to board a plane in Kabul’s airport as the American troops are pulling back.
This instantly brought back to my memory another famous image.
We can discuss at nauseam about the significance of these pictures. Because significance is something we attach to things and we impart to events.
I prefer to turn my attention to realities.
Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon, in 2018.
The only difference between Afghanistan and Vietnam being that the Viet-Cong were communists. And the link between them the fact that the American planners have understood nothing from the first debacle.
And yes, parallels are also something which is up to us to notice. Us, who have witnessed the events and who are free to attach significance to each of them.
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‘I need a gun to protect myself from those who do not obey all of God’s words but I don’t need a mask to protect me from any of God’s creations. Even from a virus’.
‘A mask protects both of us, regardless of who wears it. And if we both do it, the benefits are bigger for both of us. On the other hand, if you decide to trust our immune systems that will dramatically increase the chances that both of us will get the disease. Actually, your confidence in our immune systems/God is similar to shooting guns blindly. Statistically there are not that many chances to hit someone, right? Unless you do it in a public space… That’s why we need to wear a mask in public and to keep all guns away from the hands of those who might use them indiscriminately.’
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‘Survival instinct’ compels us to eat, avoid being eaten and fornicate.
To keep us on the straight and narrow, Mother Nature has invented the ‘stick and carrot principle’.
Forget to eat – or eat something ‘unbecoming’, to you or to your species, you’ll soon be in pain. After a nice meal, you’ll feel good.
Somebody else takes a bite of you? From a tiger to a mosquito? You’ll be in pain. Slap the mosquito, con the tiger into a trap or, the creme de la creme, gain the upper hand in a bare knuckles encounter and you’ll certainly feel good.
Orgasm? Does it ring a bell? OK.
‘Stick and carrot’ worked fine. After all, it has been the engine of evolution. ‘Demise of the unfit’ made it so that only those who were able to survive in a certain environment passed their ‘comme il faut’ to the next generations.
Until consciousness came around, that is. Consciousness as we understand it…. long discussion. Soon.
“And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil”
And what did we do with all this knowledge?
Transformed our need to eat into gluttony? Because ‘it tastes so good that I can’t stop eating it’? Transformed our need for safety into the habit of exploiting others? From harnessing beasts to our plows to using child labor to mine the coal used during the Industrial Revolution? Simply because we could? Some of us, anyway… Demeaned love making to prostitution? Because orgasm, like money, is fungible? Feels the same, no matter how it was obtained?
Why? What drove us to reach such horrible pinnacles? What made us steer in this direction after we’ve developed the ability to ‘observe ourselves observing‘?!?
What’s going on here?
“God Arraigns Adam and Eve
And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden. And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself. And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.
And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:
And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
The Punishment of Mankind
Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.
And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;
Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
And Adam called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of all living.”
Let me rephrase what you’ve just read.
God, the father, learns that his creation – the man he had created in his own image, has become “one of us”. When Adam hides his nakedness from his creator, God understands man has become aware.
Was he proud? Like most parents are when their children ‘grow up’?
OK, let’s forget about God for a minute. Let’s see what our forefather, Adam, had done when confronted with the consequences of his acts. Does he own up? Behaves like a man? Or blames his woman? What about Eve? Is she the real man in the house? or passes the blame along the food chain? Good thing the serpent wasn’t asked to explain himself…
How about God? The omnipotent and omniscient God… does he own up? Omniscient as he was, he must have been fully aware of what was going to happen in the given circumstances… After all, who doesn’t know what will happen if you point something out to a ‘child’ and then tell them that something is off limits… God – the one we wrote about in the Bible, solved the situation by blaming all involved. The serpent for doing what he was supposed to do, Eve for choosing to listen to the serpent and Adam for trusting his woman. Then, to avoid things becoming even worse, he banished Adam and Eve from Paradise.
Yep! All three, God, Adam and Eve – as described by those who had written the Bible, do whatever they can to protect their conscience. Each of them had made decisions, which had proven to be… well, detrimental to their own well being, and now they need to go on. To survive their own decisions!
In this type of situation, the grown-ups take stock, maturely, then take responsibility for their acts. As the first step of the long march out of the dangerous situation into each they had led themselves. By making bad – or inappropriate, choices.
But this is possible only after the individuals have conquered fear.
Fear cannot be conquered alone. That was the Bible written for. As a walking stock. And it served us right. By stating that ‘man had been created in the image of God’ it tells us that we are equal. And each of us is endowed with a divine spark. Hence worthy of respect!
But as any other walking stock, the Bible can take us only this far. From now on we must walk on our own. We must assume our individual – read ‘limited’, nature, shed our fears and find our own ways. Bearing in mind, of course, that only those who fit are meant to survive.
Our go round in circles, knocking at gates which have never been open. Or going to.
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As much as I love writing, I do have to eat. And to provide for my family. Earning money takes time. If you’d like me to write more, and on a more regular basis, hit the button. Your contribution will be appreciated!
As much as I love writing, I do have to eat. And to provide for my family. Earning money takes time. If you’d like me to write more, and on a more regular basis, hit the button. Your contribution will be appreciated!
Universal healthcare is anathema to many people. ‘The government has no business to spend my tax money subsidizing other people’s health!’ Hence hose who cannot afford a doctor should either die peacefully or accept charity….
And when a private company sponsors a health care effort that company is perceived, by the same ‘many people’, as having ‘ulterior’ motives…
That’s what I consider to be a ‘perfect’ conundrum.
A self made trap!
On the other hand, let’s face it, this is a very rational attitude! Given some private companies’ past behavior…
See what I mean? ‘Ulterior motives’ are wide-spread enough to having become normalized. ‘Greed is good’ sits high on the social pedestal. People can no longer imagine any of their peers being driven by other motives but the immediate profit. But the immediate financial profit!
Mind you, I’m not pretending Pfizer has suddenly morphed into a virgin knight riding a white horse and sacrificing itself on our behalf.
All I’m saying is we’re in a dire and immediate need to reevaluate our priorities!
The self made trap is 3D, you know…
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The difference between us and the rest is that we can choose. People – humans, that is, are capable of deciding things while the rest of the animals use simpler mechanisms of determining the way forward.
The ability to decide has consequences. The most important being ‘responsibility’. The most common being ‘blame’.
When confronted with ‘uncomfortable’ consequences of the decision making process, people get to choose between blame and responsibility. Between apportioning blame – and feeling better, and determining responsibility.
I’ve long ago given up ‘blame’. Because blame is driven by emotion. Hence blinds the blamers. Prevents them from checking all the angles. Prevents them from getting as close to the reality as possible.
Let’s go back to the current pandemic. A large number of people have not yet been immunized against Covid -19, despite the vaccine being widely available. In certain ‘jurisdictions’…
Because each of the yet unvaccinated has chosen to pass the opportunity? Or because so much ‘dubious’ information has been floated around that it has almost drowned the sensible voices?
Should we blame the as yet unconvinced or should we ask ourselves what’s going on in the heads of the ‘gaslighters’?
Facts are clear.
WSJ is a highly reputable source, the information is old enough – if ‘fake’ it would have already been ‘debugged’,… Then why isn’t this being hammered down our throats? Constantly?
The vaccine which had been used was Chinese?
Let’s make the same experiment using one of ours! It has been already done? Let’s hear about it!
We are in the middle of a pandemic. Which will continue until we’ll build ‘herd immunity’. Which can be achieved through vaccination or by surviving the disease. Surviving the disease takes longer and costs way more than the vaccine. Lives lost, money spent for health care and money lost because of business interruptions. And if we don’t build herd immunity fast enough, the virus might mutate into a new one. And we’ll be back to the square one.
The only section of the society which has anything to gain from our reticence to get the vaccine is BigPharma. They are the ones who will eventually come up with a vaccine for the new strain of virus. They are the ones providing the treatment given to the infected patients. They are the ones providing the tests.
Want to give the finger to BigPharma?
Go out there and get the jab!
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None of us had been asked for their ‘informed consent’. Yet all of us are cramped together on Space-ship Earth towards the place where ‘no man had ever gone before’.
Now that this very suggestive image has been published, what is our voyage going to morph into?
Hell on Earth, as so many apocalyptic movies/novels have advertised?
Or are we going to heed to the present ‘wake-up call’? As we already did so many times before?
We have managed to eradicate, through vaccination, the smallpox. Polio, measles, diphtheria, rabies and so many other diseases are no longer a real danger. For those of us who had been vaccinated or have access to the relevant vaccines.
Yet faced with the current challenge, COVID 19, we have ‘doubts’…
Some of us have doubts about getting the vaccine, others about making the vaccine available to the entire ‘crew’.
What’s going on in that collective brain of ours?
What’s the rationale behind making the polio vaccine available for everybody, practically for free, while that for COVID is still out of reach for most of those who need it? Given our current industrial prowess… Why is it so hard to understand that given enough time SARS Cov 2 will certainly mutate far enough from the original version to evade the current vaccine?
The fact that the authors above are working the equity angle speaks volumes. Equity is, indeed, very important. Only it relates more to ‘metaphysics’ than to the immediate reality.
Equity has to do with the perceived reality while people die in the immediate one. The perceived reality will end up haunting us, indeed, only we have to survive the current situation in order to get to that stage.
The real problem with the lopsided access to the Covid vaccines being that while we ‘race to secure doses’ the virus has the opportunity to mutate out of our ‘control’. Our concern with ‘equity’ somehow blinds us to the fact that ‘cutthroat’ is no longer a metaphor. The longer it takes for us to understand that the entire crew of the space-ship Earth must be immunized the longer it will take for us to get ‘out of the woods’.
Why had our parents been able to eradicate small pox and almost do the same thing to polio? While we’re still dragging our asses? And not exclusively about COVID… When we have so much information about everything?
What made the anti-vaxxers of those times less powerful than the current ones?
What makes me so sure the erstwhile anti-vaxxers had been less powerful? Small pox had been eradicated, right? I had measles. Before the vaccine had been made available. Never heard about anybody having measles until very recently.
Whoa! What’s going on here? Israel, the country, had made a huge effort to save its people from the misery caused by Covid! Why would the Ultra-Orthodox community need any extra-effort to let itself be immunized?
Why was Israel’s manner of thinking closer to that of our fathers’ than to ours? What makes us so similar, in this respect, to the Ultra-Orthodox?
Well, our fathers had to fight for their rights. And Israel for its place on the map. We, and the Ultra-Orthodox, had our rights granted to us.
Our fathers had to cooperate among themselves in order to get through. Israel had survived, and thrived, as the consequence of a coordinated effort.
We are cocooned in our bubbles. We have become spoiled brats. One way or another.
We really need to start thinking outside our respective comfort zones.
For no other reason that mutinies tend to make matters worse. It so happened that during the last 80 years no major conflict had disturbed the peace on our ship. No thanks to us. We haven’t done anything special. Being aware that a conflict between the major powers would have ended in MAD doesn’t count as ‘doing anything special’. During the last two generations we sorta lost our bearings.
Hopefully we’ll wake up to the fact that the next disturbance will no longer be a ‘top down’ event. Think about it. Ever since the French Revolution – the last bottoms up upheaval, all other ‘disturbances’ had been the consequence of somebody planning for them. Initiating them.
30 years ago, the socialist lager had crumbled. Under its own weight. Nobody had planned that event. Nobody had planned for that event! The democratic world had been stunned by the speed with which things had unfolded.
The socialist lager had crumbled for the simple reason that the people living there had become pissed of. Pissed of by the growing distance which separated them from those living in the ‘capitalist’ world.
Some of that distance has survived to this day. But it’s shrinking! Fast!
Unlike the distance between the ‘civilized’ world and the ‘developing nations’.
This ‘cutthroat race (among nations) to secure doses’ while so many ‘civilized’ people share-antivaxxer propaganda only adds insult to the injury felt by those who don’t have access to vaccines. And demonstrates how far off we have distanced ourselves from the ‘hard core’ reality.
Are we going to make anything of our present predicament?
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As much as I love writing, I do have to eat. And to provide for my family. Earning money takes time. If you’d like me to write more, and on a more regular basis, hit the button. Your contribution will be appreciated!
Pigs have orgasms. What?!? And why does it even matter?
Orgasm consumes a lot of energy. By itself, not what it takes to reach it! And it somewhat incapacitates the individual experiencing it.
Try evading an aggressor while having one…
Then how could they have survived? The orgasmic pigs… experiencing orgasm must produce an evolutionary advantage to compensate the costs incurred, right?
The way I see it, orgasm – as well as all other ‘pleasures’, is the reward for a job well done. For having sex, for eating, for doing the right thing…
Or used to be!
Those which/who naturally/naively experience pleasure are quite different from those who, and some ‘which’, experience pleasure for it’s own sake.
With an entire gamut of consequences…
Having a drink with friends versus drowning your sorrows in booze. Experience a gourmet dinner versus ‘digging your grave with your own teeth’ out of sheer boredom. Feeling high after successfully climbing a mountain versus just feeling ‘high’.
Why are we doing this? Why do we put the cart before the horses?
I’m afraid that for us, humans, boredom is only the circumstance. The circumstance in which we happen to choose. ‘Cause ultimately it’s us who do the choosing.
Yes, we are under an immense pressure. To conform. To obey the rule. To do what is expected of us.
But is it right? Is it really good? And, above all, is it sustainable? At any level…
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As much as I love writing, I do have to eat. And to provide for my family. Earning money takes time. If you’d like me to write more, and on a more regular basis, hit the button. Your contribution will be appreciated! Another very efficient way to help would be to share my posts.
As much as I love writing, I do have to eat. And to provide for my family. Earning money takes time. If you’d like me to write more, and on a more regular basis, hit the button. Your contribution will be appreciated!
As much as I love writing, I do have to eat. And to provide for my family. Earning money takes time. If you’d like me to write more, and on a more regular basis, hit the button. Your contribution will be appreciated!
nicichiarasa 