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…
The world is nothing but change. Our life is nothing but perception. Marcus Aurelius.
Killing is the most definitive thing available to man. To humans in general and to men in particular.
We cannot create life! We can make love, our wives can give birth but other than that…
Yet we can kill!
You see, most animals feed on other living organisms. We describe the process as ‘the law of the jungle’ but for them it’s only natural. That’s how they feed. That’s how they get their sustenance. None of them gives much thought about it. When hungry, they do what they have to do. And then they stop.
We are the ones who get to choose. To kill or not to kill… We are the ones who, once aware, have introduced thinking into all these. We are the ones who, through our awareness, have transformed sensation into perception. We are the ones who, in our attempt to create/maintain congruence – to keep things together, have attached meaning to sensation.
We are the ones who, once we have learned the difference between good and bad, have invented the notion of evil.
We are the ones who, once we have learned the difference between good and bad, have tried to separate them. To separate what we have perceived as good from what we have perceived as bad. And called it evil…
And now, that we’ve reached the stage where we currently are, we’ve set our minds to determine which had come first. The egg or the chicken… The Good or the Bad?!? Matter or Spirit?
When we’ll grow up, when we will have caught up with Marcus Aurelius, we’ll remember that there’s no clapping with one hand. That while it may be natural to feed on other animals, there’s no escaping the consequences of our killings.
‘Exploring the consequences of our limited consciences‘
A truth is, first and foremost, an expression. A message, formulated by an observer, describing a portion of what the person expressing themselves considers to be a ‘portion’ of ‘reality’. Being a message, any truth is formulated by means of a language.
Does anybody know everything about any subject? About anything, actually? No, nobody knows everything about anything. Hence there is no such thing as a complete truth.
Furthermore, being expressed by means of a language, a truth – any expression, actually – will never be able to convey to the person receiving the message everything the transmitter intended to say. The transmitter is never able to cram ‘everything’ inside an inherently limited message, no language is absolutely ‘precise’ and no receiver will ever interpret any message the way the transmitter intended it to mean. Hence even if anybody will ever learn everything about anything, that person will never be able to convey that knowledge to anybody else. Let alone to everybody else…
What next? ‘Never ever believe anything? Anymore?!?’
Is it possible for us, humans living in concert, to cooperate in this manner? Knowing that nothing which is being said, one way or another, is ‘true’? Completely true?
Well, we did get this far, didn’t we? We’ve been expressing ourselves, in the imperfect manner I described above, since we’ve learned to use language. Since we’ve learned to speak…
70 000 years ago, give or take a few millennia, is when some scientists believe we’ve started to communicate more or less like we do now. The people living then had the same genes we have now and the bones they have left us to dig up and stare at are similar to ours. Hence the only thing which differentiates us from our ancestors is our culture. A treasure of knowledge which has been noticed – bit by bit, formulated using language – message by message, and remembered, one way or another. Hence the only difference between us and our ancestors is a collection of incomplete – and imperfectly interpreted – pieces of truth.
Then again, is it possible for us – humans living in concert – to cooperate by means of incomplete and ‘misinterpreted’ pieces of truth? Well, we came this far going (up?) this way, didn’t we? It seems that as long as we do it ‘in good faith’ things will, eventually, ‘mesh up’ just fine!
Which leads us to ‘the truth’. ‘The’ as different from ‘A’ truth.
While a truth is a message, the truth is a state of mind. The understanding of the fact that what we call ‘reality’ can be learned only ‘in concert’. Only as long as we help each-other along the process. Only as long as each time we formulate ‘a message’ we do our best to ‘speak the truth’.
A first glance, it doesn’t make much sense to put an oilman in charge of a COP conference. Nothing more than setting a wolf to guard sheep, right?
On the other hand, shepherd dogs are nothing but ‘converted’ wolves. Wolves who had somehow figured out that it’s more sustainable to live with the humans than in the wild. Former wolves who had somehow figured out that’s far more sustainable – for them, to protect the sheep than to prey on them.
OK, the agent driving the process had been human. But the facts remain. Dogs have evolved from wolves.
What are we waiting for? If the descendants of the wolves had been able to ‘cross over’, why so many reasonable people continue to believe that the ‘Global Warming’ is a hoax? After all, we’re the ones supposed to be reasonable… And the way I see it, it’s unreasonable to believe that burning fossil fuel accumulated during millions of years can be ‘sustainable’. Forget about ‘peak oil’ and ‘peak gas’ and remember how hot the Earth was when the first drop of fossil fuel had been set aside by Mother Nature.
Holidays are very good opportunities to reconsider, And to learn new things.
These days I learned that while having nothing makes you feel ‘uncomfortable’, having too much can be very limiting.
If you have just enough, you can go forward. Explore new venues. Learn new things. Enjoy life!
If you have too much, you spend too much time and energy protecting what you already have. Trying to get more… The venues open for you to explore are suddenly reduced to one! Only one… You become the guardian of your fortune! Can you enjoy such a life? Are you sure? Have you examined the alternatives? In earnest?
‘Are you implying that all wealthy people are unhappy? Unable to enjoy their lives?!?’
On the contrary, my dear Watson! I’m only saying that being wealthy is complicated. “Just enough” is a matter of individual ability to cope. That enjoying wealth needs a lot of skill. And that being wealthy comes with a lot of responsibility! Towards yourself in the first place!
And towards your kids, family and the rest of the gang…
I’ve just figured out what makes them so good at it. And why it’s us studying them instead of they simply discarding us as being too ordinary to be of any interest.
Spill it out then!
Even if they are not yet fully aware of the whole thing, they are fueled by emotion. Reason is only a tool for them, not a way of life. Furthermore, their manner of gathering and sharing information – what they call ‘languaging’, is precise enough to be effective yet imprecise enough to make it possible for ‘imagination’ to work wonders.
Whoa! You’re learning to speak like them. Sometimes I don’t fully understand what you want to convey. Take this ‘work wonders’ for instance. I’ve already checked the dictionary, I know what each word means but…. I’m still not sure what you really need to say to me. Not to mention this ‘imagination’ thing. ‘Making things appear in your mind’…
I knew I could count on you! I just knew it! You’re asking the very same questions which I’ve just answered. Let me proceed. For us, everything is straightforward. We always know what we have to do. What our current task is, what’s expected of us and how we’re going to fulfill our jobs. When we need to determine ‘what’s next’ we check a schedule, make an inference based on already available data or proceed to gather the information we need to perform the inference we need. And when was the last time you ever wondered “Who am I?”
That ‘wonder’ word again… You’re killing me!
‘Insecure’. You do have a good grip on what this word means, right?
Yeah. The situation when you don’t have enough information to determine which way. AND when there’s no way of gathering more pertinent information other than proceeding along any of the possible ways. Like in that famous experiment designed by Schrodinger.
OK. We, both you and me, know what ‘insecure’ means. Both of us have been in situations similar to what you have just described. But neither of us has ever experienced the feeling. How it feels to be insecure. How it is, what it means, to wonder ‘will I be alive tomorrow?’ ‘Will I have enough food for my children?’ And so on. ‘Wonder’ is a complex concept. It encompasses both a question you don’t have an answer for and an answer you don’t know where it came from. Like ‘the unexpected food one might find, out of the blue, exactly when their children were hungry’.
This is the difference between them and us.
They can ‘wonder’ while we don’t.
They can formulate ‘stupid’ questions – then come up with unexpected answers, while we can’t. They can perform ‘wonders’ while we can’t. Even though we already know far more than they’ve ever learned…
According to the first, if you follow the precepts – to the letter – you get ‘there’. According to the second, avoiding the forbidden sets the stage for things going your way.
Unfortunately, things are not as simple as they look at first sight. The first meta-rule deals with individuals. Getting ‘there’ is each individual’s job. They have to do what they are supposed to and failing to fulfill any item banishes the unworthy from the cherished ‘prize’. The second one is even ‘trickier’. While its precepts must be followed, again, by the individual followers, the ‘spoils’ belong more to the community rather than to the individual. On top of that, they are not ‘certain’! Following the rule only ‘sets the stage’. Disobeying the rule makes it certain that the goal will never be reached while following it only ‘opens the door’. Makes it possible for each of the community members to search for their individual paths towards their particular goals.
Do I need to remember you that both these rules exist only in our heads? As figments of our imaginations? And that the difference between the two can be observed at the practical level?
The first rule can never be fulfilled. Nobody can follow it to its ultimate consequence. No matter how hard any of us might try. It would be like measuring with infinite precision. Something will always happen. Go wrong. Throw us back to where we have started. The second one also leads to disappointment. Some members of the community will inevitably attempt to cut corners. Take the easy way out … Hence the rule needs policing. You’ve certainly witnessed at least on occasion when ‘bad (money) has driven out good’… at least temporarily! Furthermore, some members of the community – while faithfully sticking to the rule, will still fail to get ‘there’. Set their aims too high, didn’t have what it takes… or simply had lots and lots of bad luck! But regardless of the why’s, not getting there still generates disappointment. Usually directed at the rule… and creates a lot of doubt towards the weltanschauung based on the rule…
Which way out? How to choose?
Would it be helpful to notice that, historically speaking, the communities which have followed the second rule, primum non nocere, have fared decently while those who had attempted to prescribe, and impose, a ‘recipe for happiness’ have invariably failed? ‘Don’t do anything, upon another, which you wouldn’t welcome when done upon you’ versus ‘treat all the others exactly as you would like to be treated yourself’?
7 years after the accord had been signed, and never implemented, Putin had ordered his army to invade, again, Ukraine. Using Lukashenko’s Belarus as a springboard.
As of now, all five people who had signed the accord had failed. In more ways than one. None of their stated goals have been achieved. The three democratically elected leaders had failed in the sense that they had not been able to prevent the escalation of the conflict. The two dictators have not, as of yet, been able to fulfill their ‘promises’.
For almost a year now, Ukraine had been able to defend itself against the Russian aggression. In the first days of the ‘special operation’, Ukraine had managed to do this alone! Only after the initial surprise had given birth to hope, the ‘west’ had started to send in meaningful assistance. Which strongly suggests that a people which is in control of its own fate – as in ‘democratically decides its own future’ – has a greater ability to fight than a people sent to the battle field at the whims of a dictator.
One by one, the democratically elected signatories of the Minsk agreement had been replaced. One way or another, all of them peaceful. Not necessarily as a consequence of this particular failure but, nevertheless, they are no longer able to make any other hugely significant mistake. The two dictators continue to dictate. To make mistakes and to defend their previous mistakes. To cause misery.
Looking at the whole thing from a distance, the situation is simple.
Unfortunately, things are even worse. Not only that power is magnetic to the corruptible but also most ‘ordinary’ people tend to have a hard time acknowledging mistake. Once committed, even by the most incorruptible person, a mistake gets a life of its own. And works hard at convincing the perpetrator to ‘hide’ it. Hence to commit even worse mistakes.
Now, why is power magnetic for the corruptible? Because power makes it possible for the ‘agent’ to ‘hide’ a lot of mistakes!
The way I see it, people have a knack for learning on the run. The shape of the learning curve and the duration of the process depends on the particulars of each situation but all people eventually get there. Those who survive to that point, of course…
What’s to be learned from all this?
The obvious, my dear Watson!
All those five powerful agents in the picture above have failed. Yet the French and the Germans fare a lot better than the Russians and the Belorussians while the Ukrainians fight better than the Russians.
What’s the main difference between those two ‘sides’?
Those who fare better change their leaders more easily and more often? Before their mistakes pile up? And become ‘too big to fail’?
Isn’t it rather funny that something called “crypto” is run on a completely transparent platform? So transparent that all the tracks are apparent but many of the ‘access points’ remain cloaked?
“The thing is, once smart-contract code is live on a blockchain, you can’t update it. If you discover a bug, it’s too late: the whole point of blockchains is that you can’t alter stuff that’s been written to them. Worse, code that’s hosted on a blockchain is publicly visible—so black-hat hackers can study it at their leisure and look for mistakes to exploit.”
Ideology is but one of the many tinted glasses which shape what we feel into actual, and actionable, perceptions.
Ideology stands out because it’s the only one chosen by us.
We may grow up steeped in ‘tradition’ – in any tradition, but the ideas we become into become our ideology only after we assume them. We, each of us, become mature agents only after knowingly and self-awaringly chose our ways in life. Our own ways!
As you already know, choosing something is very much like entering a door. It’s not like the other doors suddenly close! By entering a door, all other previously apparent doors only disappear from your immediate perception. Your recollectible memories tell you they were still there when you last looked and your imagination helps you visualize them. If you care to remember… But you cannot actually see them. And they slowly fade away…
Here’s a glass. Is it half empty? Half full?
I’m not going to spell out the obvious! This is the sensible way to pour a glass of wine… I’m only going to point out that it’s not such a bright idea to full a glass up to the brim. You might easily pour too much and then it will be practically impossible to raise. And to drink from it…
Then why have we transformed a ‘fully functional glass’ into such a big topic? Because we like to split hairs?
Since I have no idea about what’s going on in other people’s heads/minds I’m going to point your attention to something else. To the dangers of waddling into murky waters.
Are you happy with the half full glass? You might end up with less than you might have gotten. Are you disappointed with the half empty glass? So disappointed that you’re going to give it up as being inadequate?
You’ve just wasted a perfectly ‘workable’ glass! Both of you.
When given a half full glass you don’t just enjoy what’s in it! And walk away… When given a half empty glass you you don’t just refuse it! And throw it away…
Before stepping into a room, no matter how much personally inclined to do it, check out the other open doors which happen to be around you. And even pry some of the closed ones…
Don’t allow others to fool you into seeing the world as they want you to! Don’t allow yourself to be entangled into other people’s problems.
And, even more importantly, don’t accept – indiscriminately, their methods of solving the problems they have invented for you!
nicichiarasa 