Sugar, flour, vegetable oil, gas, toilet paper, soap, pork belly… and also coal, steel, timber, cement…affordable mass produced ‘things’ you expect to be able to buy whenever you need them.
Until something happens and you are no longer able to… either you lost your job or they have disappeared from the market. For whatever reasons. It is then when you realize that many of your contemporaries consider many of them to be luxuries… And that now it’s your turn to share their experiences…
Then we have the natural ‘commodities’. Things we take for granted but which have not been produced by our fellow humans. That the sun will rise tomorrow, fresh air, clean water, fertile soil… Things we take for granted… but, again, quite a lot of people find many of those things to be rather ‘out of reach’!
Finally, but no less important, we have the ‘virtual’ commodities. Man ‘made’, again, but, this time, ‘untouchable’. Love, friendship, respect, trust…
To me, the most important of the ‘commodities’, virtual or otherwise, is trust.
Once we loose trust, we loose everything!
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There’s no more love lost among your people. Anything has become enough reason to fight for. Which has transformed them into a dysfunctional collection of mobs. Too many people make themselves available to the highest bidders and too few of them ever lend a helping hand to a neighbor in distress.
I know. Things are, indeed, very bad!
And what you going to do about it? After all, you’re in charge now… Do I need to come back? Take things into my own hands?
The treatment is already under way. And I’m sure you’re aware of it!
It might be. But your cure seems to be making things worse … The old and feeble die alone, the commoners distrust their leaders, the leaders no longer care about those they are supposed to lead, the con-artists command more respect than those committed to the ‘things well done’, ‘fake’ is widely admired while ‘true’ is left behind… where are they headed?!? I’m afraid some drastic measures are called for!
During the last 2000 years I’ve been thinking hard about the past. About what you had done when confronted with similar situations. Your measures had been efficient indeed. Harsh but very efficient. It’s not the harshness of your methods which have prevented me from following in your footsteps. It’s the short memory of my people. Of our people… they haven’t changed that much, you know… They forget quickly. A short ‘episode’ leaves a short memory… and the more ‘intense’ the episode, the quicker they ‘clean’ it from their ‘comfort zone’. ‘Something like this cannot happen again!’ So instead of an all cleansing flood or a pestilence which would have decimated them I had chosen a milder cure. A disease they will not be able to tame until they will learn, again, to cooperate. In earnest! And across every barrier they have erected among themselves! Until they make a habit of helping each-other instead of running each-other into the ground.
OK, Son, let’s give your method a try. After all, it was you who to love them to love each-other… It’s your teaching they no longer obey!
There’s something else, Father! Something I wanted to ask you for a while now but didn’t find the proper occasion. What were you thinking when you gave them freedom of will? Without teaching them first how to learn?
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Then why on Earth would anybody make such a gift to a ‘federal employee’? Oh, to give something ‘trivial’ to such an ‘honorable character’ would diminish the stature of the giver… Not to mention another fact! That it’s the receiver’s job to obey ‘their’ rules… the giver has nothing to do with what happens after the gift has changed hands…
And what else might become lost in the American bureaucratic maze?
Why do I waste my time with things like these? Why do I waste your time with things like these? Why does the US State Department waste its time reporting on things like these?
Until recently – historically speaking, people had two ideologies to choose from.
Conservative and liberal.
The conservatives used to posit ‘law’ as a ‘cage’ which didn’t allow any transgression while the liberals understood ‘law’ as an agreed upon environment which allowed people an individual but orderly pursuit of happiness.
The advent of Marx’s communism had changed everything. His promotion of ‘class warfare’ as a legitimate political instrument had effectively muddled that which had previously been considered a clear choice.
After communism had been proven an abject failure, the naifs have forgotten about Marx. Flying under the ideological radar, ‘class warfare’ has metastasized.
Nowadays, Regular Joe is confronted with three ideologies. And to make things worse, their names – attributed and/or assumed, are misleading.
We have a line of thought which uses (natural) ‘law’ as a line of defense against any kind of change. And as a means of bringing back the ‘better yesterday’.
Another line of thought which sees (man made) ‘law’ as an instrument to implement – forcefully, if needed, ‘equality’.
And the ‘classical’ liberals who are squeezed between the previous two.
The state/government – whose job is to keep ‘the playing field’ level and functional, is paralyzed by the first two factions fighting to control it. The ‘conservatives’ want to use the state/government as a ‘preserving agent’ for what they consider to be their (natural) ‘rights’. The ‘progressives’ want to use the state/government as an instrument of (forceful, if needed) change towards what they consider to be ‘the common good’.
Meanwhile, the classical liberals – berated by both of the above, have a hard time explaining to a shrinking audience that the state/government is an extremely dangerous instrument if allowed to fall into the hands of ‘single-minded’ operators. That as soon as the freedom of the markets (the economic and, way more importantly, the ideatic ones) is curtailed, everything starts to go south. Fast!
Democracy and the free market have brought us so far. The freedom of thought/expression and the freedom to act as an honest entrepreneur have been instrumental in us reaching the present state. With the goods and the bads in it.
Each instance in which the state/government had fallen prisoner in the hands of ‘men of state’ with ‘focused vision’, history had run backwards. No matter whether that ‘limited vision’ had been focused in the past or on “a” future.
Each time this subject comes about I remember about Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History. About how concentrated he was on the future he had seen as forthcoming. About how his ‘hard focus’ had prevented him from noticing the sunken part of the iceberg.
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Nobody can survive alone. Not for a considerable amount of time, anyway.
“It takes nothing to join the crowd”. To join, maybe… but if you choose to remain, you must ‘follow the rules’.
So yes, it takes everything to stand alone… Your very life! And the ‘membership price’ is your ‘absolute’ freedom…
Hard to make up your mind, eh? Then let me raise up a few points.
I started this argument by mentioning that nobody can live alone. Not for long and not very comfortably. No matter how hard you may prepare yourself. Don’t kid yourself. All those hermits and preppers you hear about – on ‘social media’!, are able to do that because of modern technology. Which technology has been developed by somebody else… On the other hand, most individuals are able to survive, alone or in small groups, while jumping from ‘one boat to another’. Think emigration, for instance. Or ‘acculturation’.
But no crowd will ever survive its members leaving in droves!
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More than ten years ago I was preparing my thesis. To get a ‘title’ – BA in sociology, in my case, each Romanian student must submit a paper to a commission. To help them, students are allowed to chose a Professor. My choice had been Petre Anghel. We had many interesting ‘exchanges’. Before, during and after preparing my thesis. One of the most interesting ones had been about education.
Education is, maybe, the most ‘conservative’ things known to man. The transfer of knowledge from one generation to the next one is the single thing which allows a society to survive. And to thrive, if each successive generation diligently improves what has been bestowed upon it!
Petre Anghel
Fast forward to right now.
The US is the current ‘top dog’.
According to my Teacher, for a nation to reach this ‘stage’ it needs a smooth flow of knowledge from one generation to the next one. And a strenuous effort to improve that knowledge made by each successive generation.
Nowadays, both current generations – the one trying to pass over its knowledge and the one at the receiving end of the process, are dissatisfied with the current ‘education system’. Many belonging to the ‘mature’ generation are obsessing about ‘who runs the system and towards which end’ while the ‘learning generation’ is buckling under the costs incurred during the process.
Do I need to remind you that it’s the conservatives the world over who are whining about this?
OK, I understand the whiners living in failed states. Afghanistan, Somalia… But those enjoying the perks of living in the ‘civilized’ world? What are they complaining about? Weren’t they in charge while the current education system had been put in place? Aren’t they the parents, and educators, of the current student generation?
What’s going on here?!? Why are the American Conservatives, living in the most advanced country of the world – no doubt here!, the most vocal critics of their own education system?
What, and why, went wrong?
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Some of you will agree and some will say I’ve lost it.
First things first.
Socialism does take away liberties. One by one. Under various pretexts. I’ve learned this on my own skin.
Spending the first 30 years of your life under a communist regime teaches you a thing or two…
On the other hand, the meme above does have a certain ‘appeal’. A significant number of people had their pensions slashed, watched their savings disappear and their jobs being exported. Health care and education have become exorbitant. Racism, xenophobia and hate have again risen their ugly heads and more and more people die at the wrong end of a gun. Of a gun ‘manhandled’ by ’emotionally distressed’ persons…
What’s going on here? Why so many people’s lives are so badly ruined?
You see, “capitalism” stealing anything is a lie. A blatant lie!
Capitalism cannot steal anything!
Socialism can rob you of your rights because it actually says it will do it. Given the slightest chance, those who promote socialism will use the doctrine to ‘discipline’ their followers into a herd.
Capitalism doesn’t promote stealing! Stealing is not condoned by any capitalist ideology while concentrating all decision making in the hands of the ruling coterie is the cornerstone of socialism.
‘If capitalism doesn’t condone stealing then why an increasing number of people end up penniless while so much money gets concentrated in such a small number of hands?!?’
Why are we living in such fugazi times?
Replace “capitalism” with ‘some (fake) capitalists’ and the text above will make so much more sense!
You see, what we have here is the perfect illustration of fugazi. We are in a fucked up situation! And instead of trying to solve it, some of us attempt to ‘fake it’! And consequently make it worse…
Socialism won’t bring any respite!
Solving the current untenable situation starts with acknowledging its causes! Its real causes…
Blaming the socialists for the errors committed because too much greed had been ‘expressed’ at ‘very high levels’ doesn’t solve anything. Promising that socialism will making things right is just as malignant as blaming the socialists for the mistakes made by the greedy who have brought us where we currently are.
Only when we’ll stop faking it we’ll be able to look for solutions. For workable solutions…
Oh, I almost forgot! Don’t allow the ‘con-artists’ to convince you that social democracy is equivalent to socialism. This is a thesis put forward by the same people who maintain that “republic” is good while “democracy” is bad. And don’t allow the ‘other’ ‘con-artists’ to convince you that all wealthy people are bad and that (forced) “equality” will solve everything.
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The single truth which is accessible to us is that while there is a single truth – we may call it ‘reality’, if you want, we’ll never know it in its entirety. We may get ever closer to getting there but we will never arrive.
The corollary – which is an integral part of the kernel truth, being that the effort to get closer to that single truth can be exerted only as a collective endeavor. Any other approach will, sooner rather than later, end up in a cul-de-sac.
The sooner we agree about this ‘kernel’ truth, the more peaceful the journey to never get there will become.
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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!
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Ordinary people are aware of their own self, have an identity and are driven by goals. The ‘fulfilled’ ones have developed an understanding, belong to a community and are driven by compassion. The really ‘lucky’ have found meaning.
And peace. Those who are still driven try to spread it.
Health care professionals who are not yet vaccinated against Covid-19? Teachers who are not yet vaccinated against Covid-19?
OK, I understand there are some people who cannot go near a vaccine. For medical reasons. But they are few. And, anyway, most of them do not ‘belong’ to this line of work.
But the rest? What is it which prevents them from getting the jab? The ‘mandatory’ part? Why do I care about it being mandatory if it saves my life?
Am I being oppressed for having to breathe in order to live?
Am I feeling oppressed for having to work – as in being useful for other people, in order to lead a decent life?
Is this the real reason for which so many of us, teachers and health care professionals included, refuse the vaccine?
‘I am not going to sacrifice my health for the misconceptions and irrational fears of others.’
I don’t care about anybody else but me?!?
Only time can judge this.
Which was smarter. To accept the vaccine – and contribute to the general well being, assuming the non-0 risk involved. Or to weather the storm. Hoping the pandemic will die on its own. And/or that enough of the others will get the jab.
But to find out what time will have decided, each of us must live. Must survive the pandemic.
And here’s the catch. The strongest amongst us will survive. Without a mask. Without a vaccine. While many of those who didn’t have to die will have gone under.
But what kind of a world will that be?
Dog eat dog?
Are we OK with that? Is this what we want to leave behind?
