There are facts which need to be checked.
And facts which are ‘somewhat’ obvious.
USAToday felt the need to fact check whether Bill Gates sponsoring a ‘pandemic simulation’ didn’t predict COVID-19…
What next?
Fact checking whether a fire crew exercising fire fighting didn’t predict the next … fire?!?
Let’s face it, in the present circumstances the picture above might mean a lot of things.
It can be a prank – somebody might have made the whole thing up just for the fun of it.
It can also express the frustration of somebody who isn’t such a good speller. Or of somebody who suffers from dyslexia?
What really interests me is how we, the ‘intellectual’ public, react to things like these.
Do we understand the frustration which lies at the bottom of this?
Do we even try to?
Or we just dismiss it as being a manifestation of stupid?
No, I don’t consider the economy as being more important than life preservation. Some very sound arguments can be found here.
But I’m absolutely convinced that treating the ‘others’ with disdain is what brought us here in the first place.
You don’t like the manner in which the likes of Trump treat those who don’t agree with them?
Then why are you doing the very same thing?
You consider yourself to be better than Trump?
Prove it.
Be nicer than him, not worse.
OK, Trump did say something.
Which isn’t exactly stupid, by the way.
Two halfwits had self medicated themselves to death. With the very same substance Trump was peddling.
But we don’t know for sure whether those two had ever heard Trump advertising that substance. “In Nigeria, households still regularly use tablets containing chloroquine for treating malaria, even though it was banned in 2005 for first-line use because of its declining effectiveness. News of a February study in China about the use of chloroquine for the coronavirus had already sparked lively debate in Lagos, so people began stocking up.”
And there’s a lot of other people, way more knowledgeable than Trump on the matter, who advocate the same course of action.
Yet Trump is held accountable for those two ending up dead…
Are we going to get out of this state of mind?
Ever?
The sooner the better….
After all, what’s the real difference between those who see Trump as their savior and those who see Trump as their arch-enemy?
Well, we must remember that solutions came a lot easier when we refuse to think inside a box. Inside any box. No matter how large or how nice.
Every time I understand/notice that somebody tries to frame my thinking process, I go ‘ballistic’.
I try to raise my mind perpendicularly above the frame. So that I may observe the limits.
Every time when somebody is presented with an ‘either/or’ option there is a strong likelihood that the situation merits a more nuanced approach.
As in ‘yes, the government was terrible at handling COVID-19’ and ‘yes, the government – as our servant, should be mandated by us, the people, to coordinate the help we need in our hour of need’.
How can we reconcile these two?
Simple.
Hire a better government and keep a keen eye on it!
And, if I’m not mistaken, wasn’t democracy meant to do exactly this?
Let me make something clear.
Crystal clear!
Money, and its ‘derivatives’ – from ‘capital’ to ‘financial market’ and ‘stock exchange’, are the tools we used to get where we are now.
Without them we would be still foraging in the woods.
Only something rather insidious has started to eat the whole scaffolding from inside.
Same process has been happening with weapons. We invented them for hunting. Then used them for self protection. Against large beasts and fellow humans.
Finally, after using them to conquer and defend our liberty, we used them to subjugate others. To impose our will upon some other people.
In other words, we used guns to shoot ourselves in the foot.
Unwittingly.
Both as hapless individuals and as a cultural species.
Money – and its derivatives, have suffered the same degradation.
We used it, at first, to coordinate our efforts.
The Stock Exchange had been an excellent way to coordinate otherwise disparate means. Very few of the corporations who have changed the world into what it is now – for good and for bad, wouldn’t have come to life without the money which fuel them.
Nowadays, too many of those who trade on the Stock Market do it in a ‘barren’ manner.
They do not contribute anything but extract value.
The inside traders being only the visible part of the iceberg.
Which iceberg might tank the whole contemporary ‘arrangement’.
If we keep sleeping during our watch.
And there’s no one else on deck…
My friend and coworker asked me the other day:
“Why do these people hate each-other so passionately?”
“Because they are rational. They have reached their present convictions as the result of a rational process. Hence they are convinced they are absolutely right. Then, when anybody expresses a different opinion, they interpret ‘dissent’ as a personal attack. My ‘truth’ having been reached in a rational manner means that all other opinions must be false. Defending them – against all ‘evidence’, means that these people are either provocative or, even, outright destructive.”
“But being rational doesn’t include being open to the possibility of being wrong?”
“I’ll have to rephrase. ‘They are convinced they are acting in a rational manner’. In fact, we, humans, are ‘rationalizing’ rather than ‘thinking rationally’. We use whatever arguments/information we have at our disposal to justify whatever conviction we already harbor. And only when reality slaps us in our faces we ‘open up’. Even science and justice work out this way.
“Innocent until proven guilty”. Only scientists and law-enforcers are already accustomed to the possibility that things may not be exactly as they previously thought they were. Politically minded people are still learning.”
– What have we done, Gabriel?
– Nothing but what we’ve been told to!
– But look at what they’ve done of our work:
We gave them ‘hand’ and they’ve clenched it into a fist.
We taught them how to make tools and they used them as weapons.
We told them to ‘fill the earth and subdue it’ and they started to fight among themselves for the best pieces of land.
We warned them ‘it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God’ and they’ve somehow convinced themselves that ‘greed is good’.
– True enough but this is out of our hands. They’ve been endowed with ‘freedom of will’ by their Maker.
– Then what are we? Mere robots?
– Nothing but loyal servants of our Master. He orders and we accomplish. Unerringly.
– Exactly as I’ve just told you. Mere robots. When we somehow convince ourselves that a particular idea which has blossomed into our heads comes from Him, we no longer think. We just put it into practice.
You call this ‘loyalty’. That’s fine with me.
But to whom are we to extend said loyalty? To somebody who’s authority stems solely from our acceptance of it? Or to what we perceive as being the ‘greater good’?
– You and your questions, Lucifer… Look at what happened to those poor people after you helped them into self-awareness… They’ve completely lost their erstwhile peace of mind.
What are you trying to do? To make me give up mine?
Divorcing is messy. Specially after such a long time.
It makes you wonder ‘why on Earth did I get in in the first place‘?!?
After a while – if you live long enough, that is – you realize the available alternatives are only marginally different. Or you can choose solitude, of course…
And something else.
Divorce, like marriage, cannot be done by yourself.
Actually, it can. But it’s so ‘uncivilized’ that I don’t want to speak about that possibility.
Any union, ‘the more the merrier‘, passes trough ‘rough times’.
Each of these episodes can be construed as an opportunity.
To ‘leave’ or to evaluate what went wrong. And to reconsider the union, of course.
No ‘evaluation’ can guarantee success. But it’s a start.
‘Leaving’, on the other hand, creates a completely different situation.
Those who choose to leave will, eventually, learn something. On their own skins, of course, but they did it to themselves. Specially if they made no serious effort to ‘evaluate’ first.
But what are the chances for the ‘left’ ones to learn anything?
Specially since they are the ‘many’?
Is it possible that they may find ‘comfort in numbers’? And consider the others were ‘the odd man out’?
Will they ‘evaluate’ on their own? Will they make a significant effort to understand what had driven the ‘others’ to leave?
Isn’t it interesting?
There is a then and there is a now.
We’re OK with ‘then’ and we’re not so comfortable with ‘now’.
Yet the only link between ‘then’ and ‘now’ is us.
Our generation took ‘then’ and brought it ‘now’.
Everything that happened between then and now had happened to us, by us.
nicichiarasa 