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Fugazi

September 29, 2021 //
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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?

“Fugazi can be used to describe a situation as “fucked up” or to describe an item as fake.“

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.

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10220264321259677&set=a.10200798952597626
https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/fugazi/
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Manifesto.pdf
https://www.britannica.com/topic/democracy/Democracy-or-republic

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Categories 1989, authoritarianism, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, effective communication, evolution, In English, man as a measure for all things, manipulation, Mutual Respect, Psychology, skin in the game, The kind of world we are building for our children, Trust

Truth. The One

September 26, 2021 //
1

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.

Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, effective communication, evolution, In English, limited rationality, man as a measure for all things, Mindset, Mutual Respect, Psychology, religion, skin in the game, teleology, Trust

Becoming

September 26, 2021 //
0

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.

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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, Mutual Respect, Psychology, religion, skin in the game, teleology, time

Mandatory

September 21, 2021 //
4

Isn’t it rather strange?

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?

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Categories alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, biology, Bounded rationality, Chance, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, effective communication, In English, limited rationality, man as a measure for all things, Mindset, Mutual Respect, Psychology, skin in the game, time

Truth, take one

September 15, 2021 //
1

What is truth?
Which is THE truth?
Is this true?

One word, three questions…

‘Truth’ is a convention.
You cannot understand ‘truth’ without ‘lie’.

Watch the video.
Go on, I won’t go anywhere!

It’s irrelevant for the current discussion whether the drongo lies consciously or has just developed an ‘ordinary’ skill. Equivalent to that of feeding itself by ‘fishing’ worms. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwVhrrDvwPM.

It’s enough for me that both us and the meerkats are able to notice that the drongo did lie. And, at least once, did sound the alarm about a real danger.

Hence it is possible, for both us, humans, and the meerkats to tell lies from truths.
Again, I have no idea whether the animals do it in a conscientious manner.

All I know is that we, humans, did coin the concept of ‘truth’. And that of ‘lie’.
And we not only coined the concepts but also attached names to each of them.
We agreed among ourselves to name them truth and lie, respectively.

In fact, we have made an agreement. A gentleman’s agreement… About when to use each word.

And a subsidiary one. About when we must definitely tell the truth and when a lie is acceptable.

http://perflensburg.se/Berger%20social-construction-of-reality.pdf

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Categories alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, evolution, In English, man as a measure for all things, man induced fragility, Mutual Respect, Psychology, skin in the game, teleology, Trust

MY body, MY temple

September 14, 2021 //
0

Don’t you dare to tell me how to take care of my body!
Or that I should wear those face diapers of yours and that I should accept to be immunized!
According to my book, my individual right to be the sole master of my body trumps your collective right to survive a pandemic. And, by the way, this whole Covid thing is a fraud.

On the other hand, the same book I’ve already mentioned gives me the right to deny all women their right to determine what happens to their own wombs. I infer from reading that book that an unborn fetus is a person – even before it had overcome the viability threshold and despite Roe vs. Wade.
The way I see it, my simple declaration – that an unborn fetus is a full blown person, is reason enough for me to consider that anybody performing an abortion – or aiding a woman to have an abortion, is committing a crime.
And being witness to a crime is detrimental to my well being. To my spiritual well being, in particular.
Hence whenever I learn that an abortion has happened, I’m entitled to receive damages.

“Anyone who successfully sues an abortion provider under this law could be awarded at least $10,000. And to prepare for that, Texas Right to Life has set up what it calls a “whistleblower” website where people can submit anonymous tips about anyone they believe to be violating the law.”

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Leonardo_da_Vinci-_Vitruvian_Man.JPG
https://www.https://www.npr.org/2021/09/01/1033202132/texas-abortion-ban-what-happens-next

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Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, authoritarianism, awareness, biology, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, effective communication, evolution, feminism, In English, man as a measure for all things, Mutual Respect, Psychology, Rule of Law, skin in the game

Getting together.

September 13, 2021 //
0

A bunch of ideologically motivated criminals got together and perpetrated a horrible act of terrorism.
A group pf courageous passengers got together and partially foiled the terrorists’ plans.

Both the terrorists and the courageous passengers eventually died.
The terrorists died killing people while the heroes died saving lives.
The terrorists didn’t reach their ultimate goal – the US is still standing proud.
The heroes did achieve their goal. The hijacked plane crushed in a field, far from the target the terrorists aimed to destroy.

Doing something alongside others isn’t enough.
For that something to end up well, the goal must be wholesome!

“On the face of it, the two men couldn’t have been more different: Bingham was 31 when he was killed; Judge was 68. Bingham, a former college rugby player with a 6-foot-5, 220-pound build, was a gay public relations executive with an active dating life. Judge was a kindly Franciscan friar who was “selectively out,” according to longtime friend and LGBTQ activist Brendan Fay.

But both men showed courage beyond comprehension that day, saving lives and perhaps even souls.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/saint-911-hero-flight-93-lived-different-lives-share-legacy-death-rcna1979

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Categories alternative ways of acquring knowledge, altruism, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, effective communication, evolution, In English, Mutual Respect, Psychology, re-definitions, skin in the game, teleology

The “war on terror”.

September 12, 2021 //
1

“Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts.”
“We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.”

George W. Bush 9/11 Address to the Nation, the Oval Office.

What went wrong?

Why is “war on terrorism” so hard to win? Even by the most powerful nation on Earth?

Let’s start with the beginning.

What is ‘terrorism’?
“The calculated use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective.“
No!
I’m afraid this is only how terrorism works. Or not…
How terrorism is designed to work, more exactly.
Terrorism, before anything else, is a concept. A manner in which some people choose to act. A manner in which some people attempt to impose their will upon those around them.

Is it possible to wage war upon a concept?
Is it possible to win a war against a concept?

So what are we going to do? Cave in? Only because we cannot win a war against a concept?!?

How about redefining the problem?

How about choosing an achievable goal?
After all, we’ve been reasonably good at beating the terrorists themselves. And those harboring them…

Only if we had made some difference between these two!
Between the terrorists and those in the middle of whom they were hiding. And continue to hide…

Let’s get back to square one.

How does terrorism work?

Some ‘agents’ determine that what they want cannot be achieved in normal ways.
And choose instead to use terrorism as their tool ‘of choice’.

What do they need?

Man power, material resources, pertinent knowledge, time to organize the ‘heist’, a place to put it all together and a practical method to apply the ‘pressure’.

There are some things which are hard to control.
Not impossible but hard.
Material resources, for instance. A knife, or even a cutter blade, can be used for terrorist purposes. Money are also a very fungible resource.

Place is also a tricky thing. A remote ‘hamlet’ is easy to find. But transporting a terrorist ‘solution’ from a remote hamlet to a place where that ‘solution’ might produce the intended result is not so simple.

Time. The longer it takes to design a ‘solution’ and to implement it, the easier for the general public to find out what’s going on.

Pertinent knowledge. The more sophisticated the solution, the more pertinent knowledge is needed.
Which knowledge comes comes attached to the man-power involved.

So. What drives a knowledgeable person to use their skills towards producing terror?
Hard to say. And hard to change the mind of a person who has already become a terrorist. Either a person who had spent years descending into the ‘mood’ or somebody who had been convinced on the spur of the moment to ‘participate’ as a suicidal driver. Explosive vest wearer. Or knife wielder.

The above mentioned motives make it hard, almost impossibly hard, to prevent terrorist acts committed by deranged persons, specially when they act alone. Or as a very small ‘team’.

But when we the ‘solution’ has a certain degree of sophistication – terrorist plots, that is, there are many kinds of people involved. Initiators/backers, operatives, facilitators and ‘neighbors’.

It’s hard, almost impossible to change the minds of a determined ‘initiator’. Or of some of the ‘operatives’. The initiators tend to be sociopaths while many of the operators, specially those committing suicide, must be ‘hopeless persons’. Not only clinically depressed but outright hopeless.

But the rest?

Why would anybody back a terrorist plot if there’s another way of achieving a goal? There’s always the sociopathic explanation but not all ‘backers’ are sociopaths. Not in an obvious manner, anyway…

Which brings us to the facilitators and the neighbors.

We have, broadly, two situations.
When the terrorists want to inflict pain in the middle of the enemy territory or when the terrorists want to gain control over a territory.

In 2015 ten terrorists have killed some 130 people in Paris. Wounded a couple of hundreds. And wrecked the lives of many others. Nine of them had been killed by the law enforcement agencies. On the spot or during the next few days. Only one of the assailants has survived and had been apprehended later.
The process has just begun. Besides the surviving shooter there are other 19 other people against which have been brought charges. “some are accused of helping the gang without necessarily knowing the extent of the conspiracy.“
Many of the accused, including some of the assailants, have lived – at least for a while, in Molenbeek, Belgium.
A suburban commune where quite a high percentage of the population feel ‘there’s no way out’.

Are you familiar with the studies which maintain that both people and mice prefer social interaction to using drugs? Statistically speaking, of course. A very few individuals get hooked and cannot give up while the vast majority stop using drugs when conditions return to normal. When the American soldiers had come back from the VietNam war, for instance.

Same thing is valid with ‘terrorism’. Along with other kinds of fundamentalism.

When too many members of a community become despondent some can be ‘converted’, many others will help – even if not engage directly, while the majority will turn a blind eye to what’s happening in their middle.

That’s why the terrorists who had wreaked havoc in Paris had been able to organize themselves in Molenbeek without the police finding out what was going on.
That’s why the Americans had not been able to wipe out the Taliban. And why the Taliban have grabbed back power so quickly once the Americans had decided to pull back.
Because not enough of those living there – in both Molenbeek and Afghanistan, were hopeful about their future.

Because not enough of the Afghani hearts and minds have been won over.

I’m afraid that making “no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them” wasn’t helpful.
On the contrary…

And please, please, click the first picture and read the article.


https://apnews.com/article/entertainment-health-talk-shows-newspapers-bc2d6b72e8733f2065ee8979ce2ef9c2/gallery/49c7ef9775ae413492c04b6b2c0bd9e2
https://www.dw.com/en/chaos-at-kabul-airport-as-afghans-try-to-flee-as-it-happened/a-58874510
https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/on-winning-hearts-and-minds-key-conditions-for-population-centric-coin
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-58472506
https://www.goethe.de/en/kul/ges/eu2/ngn/20835708.html
https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/gwbush911addresstothenation.htm

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

If you steel an egg today…

September 1, 2021 //
0

you will steal an ox tomorrow.

Or at least this is how people in Haiti see it…

And maybe the same kind of thinking had motivated this ‘concerned citizen’…

An almost empty beach. Half past five in the evening.
One person – some sources maintain it was a woman, other refrain from specifying this, notices a woman ‘pleasuring’ herself.
That person ‘duly’ records the incident using her phone and then reports it to the police.
The ‘trespasser’ is identified – she didn’t even try to hide, admits to the ‘offense’ and is eventually “booked for indecent exposure and disorderly conduct”.

Remember that only one person had noticed what was going on.
And was hurt in their feelings.
So hurt that they had to alert the authorities.


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Categories alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, effective communication, Frames of mind, In English, Mutual Respect, Psychology

Torn between musts and don’ts

September 1, 2021 //
0

There are some things each of us must do.

Breathe, drink, eat, take cover.

There are some things each of us should do in moderation.

Drink, eat, ‘rest’…

There are some things each of us should never do.

Lie, steal, kill.

The things we must do ‘depend’ upon our DNA.
Unless we do what our DNA tells us to do, we die.

The things we shouldn’t do have been determined culturally.
Our fore-fathers have noticed that not doing ‘those things’ helped a lot.
That communities who taught their members to not do those things survived a lot easier and fared a lot better than those communities who had been ‘lax’ about ‘things’.
Teaching what to do and what to not do across generations transformed learned information into culture.

In time, culture has fulfilled the same function as DNA.

DNA had made it possible for life to exist. For species to survive. And to evolve when needed. When the environment had changed.

Culture had made it possible for communities to survive.
Individuals belonging to each generation didn’t had to reinvent fire each time they were cold. Or afraid. Or hungry.
They just remembered what their ancestors had taught them and put it into practice.

But there’s also a huge difference between DNA and culture.
Both consist of information passed over generations and both are instrumental in the survival of those who depend on that information being put to use.
The difference consists in the fact that DNA actually demands a certain behavior while culture only recommends certain ‘answers’.

There’s more.

DNA is a ‘language’. It has ‘letters’, ‘syntactic’ rules and even means to correct errors.
Culture uses languages as a vehicle.

Both code information using ‘letters’ and ‘words’ but they differ in how that information is passed to the next generation.
DNA passes that information in a way more ‘rigid’ manner than culture does.

While it is true that slight differences occur whenever genetic information is passed from one generation to another – that’s how evolution works, those ‘directly interested’ in the process have nothing to say about this whole thing. The differences occur accidentally and survive only if they don’t harm the organisms where they appear.

With cultural information things happen in the exact opposite manner.
Differences occur only when enough individuals notice that it would be beneficial for them to change that particular habit in that particular manner.

And now we have reached the moment to contemplate another similarity.

As the DNA has become more elaborate, the ‘superior’ organisms had enjoyed more individual ‘freedom’. Or ‘lee-way’.
Insects have more lee-way than worms, fish have more lee-way than star-fish, dogs have more lee-way than frogs and humans have more freedom than the rest of the apes have lee-way.
Similarly, people belonging to the hunter-gatherer culture had accrued a lot more freedom when they had learned – and taught it to their children, how to make fire. And so on.
Those who had learned how to grow their own food – and passed the information to the next generations, had far less chances of dying of hunger. And a lot more lee-way to conduct war…
Those who had learned how to make metal tools were a lot freer than those who shaped their tools out of stone. And very soon the stone-shapers had been ‘subdued’ by those yielding bronze weapons.

And so on to the present day.
Those who have become adept users of mass-media are seeding ‘change’ into the minds of the naive.

I only hope that they will eventually find out what Ernst Mayr had to say about this process.

‘Evolution is in no way about ‘the survival of the fittest’.
It is only about the demise of the unfit.‘

The problem with the ‘lee-way’ generated by culture being that whenever it becomes too wide the whole system becomes fragile.

Whenever people get high enough on freedom they forget that in order to survive we need to remain inside the ‘straight and narrow’ mandated by DNA and endorsed by culture.

Otherwise put, being torn between musts and don’ts is far better than being stuck. In a grave.

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