Archives for category: man as a measure for all things
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The past as a windshield

November 15, 2024 //
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Ego is like dust in the eyes.
Without clearing the dust, we can’t see anything clearly.
So clear the ego and see the world.

Is this a wise thing to do?
To ride a motorcycle without any eye protection? Whatsoever?

We’re constantly being modeled by everything which happens to us. By what we do and by what is being done to us.
We are what our past has made of us.
Our ego is the intersection between ‘what we could have been’ and ‘what the circumstances allowed us to become’.
Which intersection, no matter how wide or narrow, is inhabited by our I-s. By each of us.

Those intersections, where are crammed all the pasts that have already happened to us, are the only places in the world over which we, each of us, will ever be in command.

In each successive moment of our life, in what we call ‘the present’, we have the freedom to choose where we want to be, inside the place where we can be. Inside the intersection I was speaking about just now.
Inside those intersections there’s nobody but each of us and each of our pasts.

Are we comfortable with our past?

Have we digested our past? Have we learned from it?
Have we cleared it?
Have we made it transparent enough? To see the future through it?

Are we comfortable enough with our past?
Comfortable enough to bring it, with us, into the future?

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Categories 1989, awareness, Choices we make, effective communication, In English, man as a measure for all things, skin in the game

On the ‘hows’ of the matter

November 14, 2024 //
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“I mean by a “fact” something which is there, whether anybody thinks so or not.“
“Facts are what make statements true or false.”
Bertrand Russell

What do you see here?
A ‘fact’ or ‘gravity in action’?
Bertrand Russell? Isaac Newton?

Or both?
After all, Earth pulling down yet another apple is (nothing but) a fact.

Yeah, but ‘Earth pulling down apples’ had become a fact only after Newton had figured it out.
And received this name, “fact”, only after Russell had coined the concept.

My point being that some things happen in the special place we call ‘conscious mind’.

“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident:”

The United States, currently the most powerful country on Earth, exists because some people had put it in their minds to make it.
Gravity exists, as we know it, because Isaac Newton had noticed it and described it to us.
Facts exist, as we think of them, because Bertrand Russell had introduced them into our thinking process.

‘Do you imply that apples did not fall down before Newton noticed the process? That people didn’t think before Russell told them how? That the US would have remained a colony if not for the Boston Tea Party?’

I believe you’re fully aware that the question above had sprung up in a mind before being put down on paper… before being tapped on a keyboard, actually…

Of course gravity existed before Newton had described it. Of course people had been thinking for a while before Russell let us in on his thoughts on this subject. And of course I have no idea about what would have happened if those guys in Boston had brewed the tea instead of throwing it in the harbor.

But it is very clear for me, “self-evident” as the Founding Fathers had put it, that some things do happen in a certain manner.
That not all of us think in the same way – god forbid, that would be against our very nature – but all of us think according to some ‘rules’. Hence the results of our thinking are not exactly ‘haphazard’.

The point of today’s post being that my method is ‘thinking’.
I use my ‘conscious mind’ as an instrument. As a scalpel-cum-microscope with which I attempt to study how my mind works.

Being fully aware (?!?) that this process takes place ‘inside my head’. Inside my ‘limited’ head. Limited in both space and time.
That ‘that’ head is made of the same matter – atoms – as the rest of the Universe. Hence some of its limitations.
And that ‘that’ head works ‘inside’ the cultural universe created by the aggregated effort of every human that has ever lived on Earth. Hence another set of limitations.

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Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, Bounded rationality, collective identity, effective communication, In English, man as a measure for all things, skin in the game

Trifecta?!?

November 11, 2024 //
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“Adorno and Heidegger explores the conflictual history
of two important traditions of twentieth-century European thought:
the critical theory of Theodor W. Adorno and the ontology of Martin Heidegger.
As is well known, there has been little productive engagement between these two schools of thought,
in large measure due to Adorno’s sustained and unanswered critique of Heidegger.”

“Doubt everything” instead of ‘trust the scientist until proven wrong’.
‘Illiberal democracy’, whatever that might mean…
“Abolish capitalism”. As if there was any viable alternative!

What’s going on here?!?

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Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, authoritarianism, awareness, Choices we make, effective communication, In English, man as a measure for all things, skin in the game, Trust

Peeping from the other side of the looking glass

November 8, 2024 //
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Indeed, but only a clown has enough gumption to tell the king that ‘he’s got no clothes on’!

Furthermore, every respectable palace has both a king and a jester.
The jester overpowering the king doesn’t change the palace into a circus. Only refocuses the attention of those paying attention…

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Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, collective identity, effective communication, In English, man as a measure for all things, Mutual Respect, skin in the game, Trust

Go figure…

November 6, 2024 //
1

If it did,
it probably had to happen!

“Trump, a Florida resident, has said he would vote against the ballot measure, after initially appearing to suggest he would vote in favor.” Reuters, 2024-11-06

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Categories awareness, Choices we make, collective identity, democracy, effective communication, In English, man as a measure for all things, skin in the game

Freedom

November 5, 2024 //
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Abstract:

While there has been a plethora of analysis on diverse subjects within Holocaust studies,
there remains some reluctance to engage with women’s unique experiences,
which were largely subsumed under those of men in the decades following World War II.
This article examines how women’s specific experiences, both biological and social, are often denied
or suppressed in research and literature on the Holocaust, even in survivors’ own testimonies,
despite the fact that these are often clearly gendered experiences.
By revisiting key themes from the testimonies of female survivors,
such gendered analyses contribute to a fuller picture of the unprecedented
and relentless killing that the Final Solution’s anti-Semitism entailed.
Nicole Ephgrave
Journal of Women’s History Johns Hopkins University Press
Volume 28, Number 2, Summer 2016 pp. 12-32
10.1353/jowh.2016.0014

Those who had ordered what had happened at Auschwitz and many of those who had actually perpetrated the crimes considered themselves to be free. They did it on their own will.
Their freedom was intact!
And they had chosen, freely, not only to diminish the liberty of other people but to actually defile them…

Individual freedom is something which depends, largely, on each of us. On how each of us ‘digests’ their previous experiences and chooses to operationalize what they have learned.
Social freedom, on the other hand, depends on how we, as a group/community, aggregate our individual choices.

In this sense, the latter one, freedom becomes a space.
A place – THE place, actually – where each of us can put in practice our own individually free choices.

Now, places have rules.
Each place being defined by the rules governing that place. Some of those rules are specific for each space while others come from the ‘previous’ spaces.
For example, we – humans – are both animals and something ‘higher’. As such, we ‘obey’ both the rules governing the biological realm and the laws of each of the countries we happen to live in.
One of the most fundamental rules evident to man is “no good deed goes unpunished”. Otherwise known as the law of the consequence. “Do not be deceived… A man reaps as he sows” Gal 6:7

Everything we do leaves a trace. Influences the future. Creates karma.
How we, each of us, chooses to exert their freedom creates the circumstances in which we, and our children, will have to exercise theirs. Their freedom!
The manner in which the ‘free nazi’ had chosen to exert their freedom – to kill other people – has shaped the future of Europe. And of much of that of the world!

The manner in which we choose to ‘digest’, to interpret, what had happened shapes our future.

Which brings us back to ‘dehumanization’.

Many of us consider that the victims have been dehumanized. Made less human.
Had their humanness obliterated!
By the abusers. By those who had abused both their freedom and their power!
By those who had transformed other humans into victims….

I beg you to reconsider this:
Who had undergone the process of dehumanization?
The victims or the bullies?!?

We, as free thinkers, have the ability to poke fun at whatever happens to us.
To relativize our experiences.
Hence ‘no good deed goes unpunished’. When the utmost importance of the subject begged for a way more formal wording…
Poking fun at things we cannot control is a survival gimmick. By doing this we can, individually, survive in dire circumstances. Specially in situations where our inner values are questioned. When we have to quell what psychologists call ‘cognitive dissonance’. When we are forced – by ‘external factors’ – to do something we would not have done in ‘normal’ circumstances.

In this sense we can better understand the process of dehumanization.
The defiler actually needs to dehumanize the victim. To consider the victim something else but a human being. Otherwise, the defiler would no longer be able to defile the victim.
But what happens when a human being does not recognize (some of) their fellow humans as being their peers?

Who ceases to be human?

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Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, effective communication, In English, man as a measure for all things, skin in the game

Next

October 14, 2024 //
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“The World Health Organization explains QoL
as a subjective evaluation of one’s perception of their reality
relative to their goals as observed through the lens of their culture and value system.“

Until not so long ago, all people were busy surviving.
‘Waking alive to see another day’ wasn’t taken for granted.
Food was scarce, illness was plenty and war was a constant presence. And these were shared by all. From kings to their last subject. “Although (Queen) Anne (of Great Britain and Ireland, 1702-1714) was pregnant 18 times between 1683 and 1700, only five children were born alive, and, of these, only one, a son, survived infancy.”

And this need to survive didn’t stop at death.
Since most people were convinced that, one way or another, there was life after death, they were also concerned about redemption. It doesn’t matter what you believe in, if your belief includes any kind of an after life … you need to prepare yourself for it. Either to avoid reincarnation or to ascend to heaven/escape going to hell.

This commonality insured that all people had something to share. A common ground.
Which made it possible for them to see eye to eye regarding at least something.
Which common understanding of one thing made it possible for them to live in a (sort of) community. Together!

Nowadays…
Too many of us continue to have a hard time foraging for the essentials. Continue to survive.
While others have it differently.

Haven’t experienced hunger. Nor need. And their most dangerous experience is speeding on the highway. Dangerous in the sense that they may pay a fine if caught ….
Surviving has been replaced by searching for a better quality of life!

Which is fine!
One should make the most of the opportunities present, right?

But do we really know what we’re doing?
The consequences of our actions?
Specially since surviving was a team effort while ‘quality of life’ is a solitary quest… With nobody in attendance – except for the occasional life coach – to warn us when we ‘jump the shark’.

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Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, In English, man as a measure for all things, skin in the game

Hiding behind words

October 9, 2024 //
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“And the Lord God commanded the man,
“You are free to eat from any tree in the garden;
 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,
for when you eat from it you will certainly die.””

As you might already know, I grew up under communist rule.
The regime described itself as being democratic and promoting freedom. Freedom for all!

The day to day practice, the life we had to endure, proved those words were blatant lies.
Nobody but the dictator was free and the communist democracy was a sham. As soon as anyone opened their mouth – nobody was crazy enough to open their mind! – however slightly, their words were met with extreme caution!
This way I became accustomed with ‘double talk’ before even knowing the book existed!

In a sense, being aware of the fact that words are able to ‘transport’ anything – from abject lies to sublime – is a step further. For the individual. For a society…
When each individual member of a society doubts everything heard or read, that society does have a problem! Disseminated disbelief precedes dissolution.
When individuals no longer trust each-other, things go south fast. Society wise!

Freedom has three dimensions.
‘Phusical’, personal and institutional.
Phusis is the ancient Greek term for ‘growing’ and ‘becoming’. My point being that some things are free in a naturally occurring manner. Also, the phusical freedom is naturally limited. Birds are free to fly only inside the lower strata of the atmosphere.
Personal freedom resides inside our individual minds. Is learned by each individual as a result of social interaction. Is limited by what each individual internalizes during their ‘potty training’.
Institutional freedom is the cultural product of social interaction in a given historical context. I’ll leave aside the fact that history is heavily influenced by geography.

Back in my communist experience, freedom was ‘make believe/belief’. We pretended to be free – otherwise we would have gone nuts – to the tune of convincing ourselves that life was worth living. Otherwise we would have died trying to escape. Furthermore, we convinced the ‘others’ – the ever present ‘political surveyors’ – that we were at least content with what was going on. With how our lives were unfolding.
Our pretenses were the opportunity on which ‘the party’ – the communist party – had built its edifice.
The opportunity grabbed and put in practice by the dictator. Which dictator was the only one enjoying actual freedom. Institutional, personal and, certainly, a lot more phusical freedom than the rest of us.

Another crass example of double talk is how the Americans use the term ‘liberal’. For the Conservative Americans ‘liberal’ is a cuss-word while the Liberals are proud to be called in this manner but the word does have the same meaning for both of them. It includes everything on the left side of the political spectrum, communists included.
The problem with this whole thing being the fact that the communists – the ones inspired by Marx, anyway – are amongst the most conservative political operators ever. No communist has ever changed anything in Marx’s Communist Manifesto. Or doubted anything written by Lenin. No communist has ever accepted that institutional communism, the one that failed, was far more than a crime. A huge error!

Anything familiar?

And what has any of this to do with the First Lie?
With the first lie, perpetrated by the Founding Father at the very beginning of the most important Book?
Which Book is supposed to be read literally by certain individuals having a certain political orientation?

I really can’t wrap this thing up before noting that the First Lie didn’t hold.
The serpent convinced the woman to eat, she passed the fruit along to her man and thus we’ve all became able to ‘tell good from evil’. To a degree, of course.
And nobody died! Not immediately, as a consequence of them eating that darn fruit.

“And the Lord God said,
“The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil.
He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat,
and live forever.”
 So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden
to work the ground from which he had been taken“.

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Categories 1989, authoritarianism, awareness, Bounded rationality, effective communication, In English, man as a measure for all things, Rule of Law, skin in the game, Trust

Consequences

October 7, 2024 //
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“And what’s in it for us, ordinary people?”
My 90 years old father, commenting the news just running on TV

Nothing but what we can make of it.

The Earth was circling the Sun since the very beginning. Way before Bruno ‘discovered’ the phenomenon. Again…
The egg was sending ‘chemical signals’ since … who knows when. We, all of us, have been born without any knowledge on this matter.

Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake.
He wasn’t the only one to face the consequences of his discovery. The lives of everybody else have been changed by his discovery. And the way we understand the world!
Sooner or later, somebody will find a way to use the information about ‘how the egg works’. To make some money out of it, to help people… or even to make an ‘ideological point’. “Yet another male dominated fantasy about the creation of life…”

So, Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake as a consequence of his discovery?!?

Nope!
Bruno was burnt at the stake as a consequence of what we, the people, have made of his work.
Well, not exactly us but our ancestors. And not exactly we, the ordinary people, as the ‘bright minds of the day’. They had to be bright since ‘they’ were the ones running the show, right?!?

OK, so ‘those who know how to weave a story are those who order around those who know the facts’.
According to Yuval Noah Harari.
And, again, what’s in it for us?

Nothing but what we can make of it.

For as long as we’ll continue to chase power, ‘political power’, things will continue as they were.
As we’ve conditioned ourselves to expect them to be.

But, hopefully, when the next Giordano Bruno will tell us things can be spun the other way around, we’ll know better than to burn him at the stake. Alive. Again!

Power can be exercised in many ways!
The more sustainable of which being in favor of the general public.
‘For the long term benefit of the self aware social organism’ instead of ‘for how the public has been led to believe by the spin doctors’.

When will we be able to figure this out?
When those who know how things work will spill the beans out-front instead of choosing whose arse to lick.
After all, the egg encourages the most suitable sperm, not the most enchanting one…

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Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Choices we make, collective identity, effective communication, evolution, In English, man as a measure for all things, skin in the game, teleology

Survival

September 27, 2024 //
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Survival of the fittest?!?
No, only the demise of the unfit!
Ernst Mayr, What Evolution Is?

An end in itself…

For whom? For the concerned individual?
For the philosopher pondering the concept?
For the ideologue promoting the idea?

And who determines ‘the interests of the state’?!?

“Plato suggests, and all later collectivists followed him in this point, that if you cannot sacrifice your self-interest for the sake of the whole, then you are a selfish person, and morally depraved.”

Since there’s no better judge for ‘sustainability’ than mere history, let’s ‘look back’.

Whenever the powerful of the day considered that everything belonged to them, and that the collective wasn’t worth any consideration, that ‘arrangement’ soon ended in chaos. From Alexander the Great to Saddam Hussein. Hitler, Stalin, Ceausescu…
Whenever the meek had accepted everything which came from ‘above’, very soon the ‘arrangement’ also ended in chaos. The Khmer Rouge experiment, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, communism being instated in the Eastern Europe by the Soviets…

As a rule of thumb, individuals can exist only as members of a collective.
None of us can birth itself (?!?)
None of us can educate itself ON ITS OWN. OK, one might teach itself to read. And then devour a whole library. But for that to happen, somebody else must have invented the letters first!
None of us can develop into a conscious human being without living with other human beings.

Furthermore, the same rule of thumb states that collectives which value their individuals, all of them, fare a lot better than the highly ‘hierarchical’ ones.
In this sense, Popper was right. ‘Individualistic’ societies – the collectives which ‘see individuals as ends to themselves’ – fare better than the collectives which allow, for a while, their temporal leaders to lure them into obedience.

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Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Bounded rationality, Culture, effective communication, evolution, In English, man as a measure for all things, skin in the game
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