My wife loves flowers. Cut, potted, our house is full of them.
She’s also very good at taking care of them.
I like playing with a camera.
I’m not as good as she is. None of my pictures convey the true beauty of her flowers…
Yesterday, when shooting some close-ups, something hit me.
We modestly cover up our bodies while with shameless naivety proudly display the sexual organs of the plants we grow for this very purpose.
Becoming mature implies giving up a lot of things.
A lot of the erstwhile held convictions.
No matter how they had happened to accure on you.
For instance, growing up means giving up the widely held belief that growing old will, eventually, ‘open up’ your mind.
That living long enough will transform each of us into a wise person.
Living is nothing but an opportunity.
What happens during that time depends heavily on ‘Lady Luck’.
And, of course, on what each of us is able to make of the opportunities presented by the afore mentioned Lady Luck.
In dear memory of Petre Anghel,
my Teacher,
who had passed away before we had the chance to finish discussing this subject.
The freer some people allow themselves to feel about expressing their opinions, the more others might understand.
OK, Obama, Clinton and Biden should hone their communication skills.
The media was uncharacteristically spot on.
Trump would be happier and happier if more and more Americans would adopt this ‘way of life’.
And those who are OK with this are happy to use a skull as their defining symbol.
What clearer message do you want?
I’m old enough to remember how things looked like when watched on a black and white TV set…
Still think this is funny?
I feel the need to disagree vehemently!
The malicious has made an option. Had chosen. Willingly! And, supposedly – according to the hypothesis being discussed here, knowingly.
The ‘stupid’ just stays put. Until the relevant information penetrates his ‘thick skull’.
It’s not his fault that those who attempt to convince him are not skillful enough.
And if the ‘stupid’ happens to be in a ‘powerful’ position… (hence his inability to understand fast enough is liable to produce considerable damage) who needs to be chastised?
The ‘stupid’ himself? Who presumably ‘doesn’t have a clue’ about what’s going on?
The malicious who had made the whole situation possible?
The ‘lazy bystandards’? Who had allowed this to happen? Out of carelessness?
Or those who are liable to suffer the consequences? Who had understood what was going on but…
On the other hand… Could Dietrich Bonhoefer – a renowned pastor and theologian, utter such ‘simplistic’ words? So callous?
I’m not exactly old.
Only old enough to continue to check my email. From time to time…
For reasons outside my knowledge, this morning I’d found – in the ‘promotions’ section’ a link to a ‘common sense with Bari Weiss’ article. The title was apealing, the name rang a bell – even though I had no idea about who the person was, so I read it.
My reaction was intense enough to start writing.
Not before looking her up…
The point being that she is basically right. Enabling is a powerful phenomenon.
But she is also basically wrong.
Powerfull it might be, only enabling is not necessarily malignant. As she implies.
Enabling is done by people with means. Powerfull and or resourcefull enough for their actions to be effective.
What the enablers choose to enable… is something else.
And the consequences of enabling depend on the enablers’ choices!
Things might come up right. Or wrong.
The kind of enabling curently predominant in America has been detrimental to the society at large. Leading to the enablers becoming irrelevant.
Just as Weiss advertised. Trump has been supplanted by those who had occupied the Capitol – after being enabled by him, while on the other side of the political divide things aren’t going any better. Cultural cancellation isn’t going to end up well.
But enabling can lead to different outcomes. Depending, of course, on what is being enabled.
Take Germany, for instance.
Yes, nobody knows who its President is. Only the country, as a whole, functions far better than many of those whose Presidents are on everybody’s lips. Simply because the German enablers had chosen to enable the ‘right’ kind of behaviors.
PS
Frank Walter Steinmeier
Attempting to value individualism over collectivism is similar to trying to establish which came first, the chicken or the egg.
Having experienced both – collectivism and individualism put in practice as political principles, I have noticed that neither extreme is capable of working in a sustainable manner.
Communist regimes had fallen one after another.
Fascist regimes did the very same thing.
Pirate republics could never resist for long.
Coming back to what is happening in the US, I’m afraid very few people are aware of how much collective thinking had been embedded in the American Psyche. The good kind of collective thinking…
Americans go to church. A place where you go to to be together, not alone.
Americans used to help each-other. Charity used to be a big thing. Slowly, it had become a dirty word.
And so on.
Individuals can not exist on their own. They need each other to survive. And to thrive.
Collectives can not last for long unless the individuals who constitute them do respect each-other. Help each-other maintain and develop their individuality.
As simple as that.
I had recently shared this image on FB:
Yesterday I got a notice from FB:
I presume this was the ‘consequence’ of some artificial intelligence employed by FB doing its job.
Doesn’t make much sense but…
For whatever reason, I made a screen capture of the notice and shared it on FB.
A friend asked me about the original post.
I looked it up and it was no longer there!
I searched FB for the picture… and there it was. Shared multiple times by multiple people. Sometimes with the accompanying text, sometimes baren.
And, at least once, bearing a very similar warning:
I’m not questioning FB motives for fact checking the information on its walls.
That’s a good idea.
Only I’m not so sure the ‘artificial’ intelligence FB uses to implement that idea is intelligent enough for the task….
Meghan and Harry had a chat with Oprah.
Which had eventually been broadcasted on TV.
Basically, there was nothing new nor really interesting there. For me, anyway.
Yet there’s a lot of reaction.
I don’t really care about the reason for which the royals have treated Markle the way they did.
About the reason which convinced the couple to speak up.
The individual reasons for those who comment on the internet to do it as each of them had chosen to do it.
There are two points I need to make here.
The fact that they are rich and famous doesn’t change the fact that the oppression they’re speaking about is real….Maybe they experience it differently… maybe they have it easier when speaking about it… but opression continues to be dealt. Among us, by people like us.
And, secondly but just as important, those three weren’t discussing about mere oppression.
They were talking about racist oppression!
Could this be the reason for so many people taking issues on this subject?
I fully agree with Sowell but the fact that Sowell is right doesn’t change the fact that we’re the ones responsible for present day racism.
While shooting this, something dawned on me.
I’m more familiar with Manhattan than with the town where my wife was born. Where my mother in law still lives…
I had visited New York on three ocassions. I had spent there three, maybe four, weeks. In total!
I’ve driven to Dej, my better half’s birthplace, for at least 50 times. And mind you, getting there from Bucharest, by car, takes about the same amount of time as that spent in a plane flying from Bucharest to JFK…
In NYC, I used to stay at my late uncle’s. In Garden City. Almost every working day, I took the early train into Penn Station and wore my soles out criss-crossing the island. Alone, the first two times, accompanied by my wife and little son during the last ocassion.
Whenever we come to visit my in-laws we almost never leave the house. Except for buying groceries. To go to the cemetery. Or, rarely, to visit some derelict castle …
Why?
Does it really matter?!?
Do we actually need explanations for everything?
Why can’t we just wonder? Specially at the strange things which happen to us…
Or, more exactly, when we realize how strangely we had behaved ourselves for such a long time!
Imagine having a festering boil. On your ass, for good measure.
You may take to the doctor, for treatment.
Or you may wait, hoping your organism will be strong enough to heal itself.
This being your call.
Nobody else but you has anything to say about this situation.
Let’s say you have chosen to go to the hospital.
Once there, the matter has gotten somewhat ‘out of your hands’. You still have the last word but the doctor calls the more important shots. Pun indended, of course.
He can simply open up the boil, put you on a course of antibiotics and send you home.
He might decide to check you up and see whether the boil is a symptom of something deeper.
He might attempt to rip you off by ordering, all at once, a host of complex tests and of fancy treatments.
Or all at once.
Cut up your boil, set you on a course of antibiotics, order a decent set of tests and still rip you off.
‘Is there a point to all these?’
Yep!
How the ‘good’ doctor will choose to treat you is the consequence of how you have chosen him. And of how the community you belong to had chosen to organise its health system.
But the more consequential decision, whether to go to the doctor in the first place, is yours.
I’m not going to analyse the factors you have to balance – we’d go back to how the community you belong to had chosen to organise its health system.
I’m only going to parade the possible outcomes.
A nice scar on your butt and a decent tab for you – or for your insurer, to pick up on your way out.
Acompanied, hopefully, by an otherwise clean bill of health.
A nice scar, and a clean bill of health, accompanied by an outrageous invoice.
These being the ‘good’ outcomes.
The doctor might find out, after reading the test results, that you also have, say, a blood disease. One perfectly treatable by modern medicine. But which would have easily killed you if you had waited much longer.
The doctor might also find out, after reading the test results, that the boil is the symptom of an incurable disease. One which will kill you for sure. Only now you’ll die in the relative comfort of the available paliative treatment you can afford.
Or you might choose to nurse your boil at home.
Get out fine. And a lot cheaper!
Die of an apparently unrelated disease six months later.
Or pass out because of a sepsis which had eventually became untreatable. Due to your own prevarications….
‘And what has the boil on my ass to do with Covid?!?’
Covid is a boil on our collective ass.
We might decide to treat it ‘on the go’, hoping that on the ‘other side’ our lives will return to normal.
Or we might decide to use it as an opportunity!
An opportunity to clean up our act….
nicichiarasa 