Perfection is absolute. Hence unattainable.
Yet chasing it constantly improves the reckless who attempt it… simultaneously keeping their pride at bay.
Success is relative. Hence always reachable.
All you have to do is beat all your opponents. Preferably to a pulp.
The only limitation being that you are expected to remain inside the rules.
Only nobody says anything if you bend them. No matter how ‘creatively’.
Authoritarianism, of all ‘flavors’, depends on the ‘father figure’ being absolutely convinced that he is well above the rest. And it is this height which enables him to despise the rest, to the tune of not caring, at all, about how they feel about things.
‘I’m calling the shots, because I can, and the rest of you would better suck it up!’
Democracy, on the other hand, depends on people relying on each other. Enough of them are convinced that none of them is above error. Regardless of their ideological convictions, people who are convinced that democracy works are willing to accept advice from their peers. Or, at least, they listen carefully to what their peers have to say about issues.
The key word here being ‘peers’.
Nobody pays real attention to ideas coming from below or from above. If from below, that idea has to be almost obvious to pass the filter while everything coming from above is interpreted as an order. And executed if there’s no alternative or stalled/ignored whenever possible.
Both authoritarianism and democracy have proved themselves useful.
No war has ever been won by a democratically led army and no authoritarian regime has ever resisted for long. Meanwhile no democracy has ever crumbled as long as it has retained enough of its democratic spirit.
Yes, there are many examples of democracies becoming corrupted and eventually failing. Only this had happened after the democratic spirit had vanished into the smoke of ‘politics’.
Let me remind you that Alexandre the Great, one of the most admired generals and state-men of the world, was educated by Aristotle. Who was the favorite pupil of Plato. The esteemed philosopher who had invented the concept of ‘priest-kings’ – specially educated individuals who were meant to rule the rest.
Needless to add that Plato had witnessed Pericles simultaneously building the Parthenon and burying the Athenian democracy.
While Aristotle (384-322 BC) had lived long enough to witness his pupil conquering the entire ‘civilized world’ and dying an abject drunkard.
Greece, one of the places which had nurtured an enormously important part of the human culture, never fully recovered from the consequences of Plato’s ideas being put in practice.
Are we going down the same chute?
Is this the proper manner in which to engage those ‘on the other side of the isle’?
Well, this is yet another perfect example of a sentence simultaneously true, false and indeterminable …
First of all, it is indeterminable simply because we’ll never know, let alone ‘for sure’, everything ‘under the sun’.
It is obviously false because we continuously discover things previously unknown to us. From another trench on the bottom of the ocean to a new satellite circling around Jupiter. Not to mention the huge number of materials and gadgets which have not ‘seen the light of day’ until the moment they have been invented by us. And they might have been made starting with raw materials which had previously existed… but denying their novelty would be shortsighted… to say the least.
And it is obviously true because no matter how many things we have discovered/invented, we have remained practically the same. We entertain the same passions and fears, we continue to behave in certain ways…
And the worst part is our refusal to learn from past experiences…
We’ve experienced the malignant consequences of the extreme ‘propaganda’ used by the nazis during WWII.
By the communist regimes trying to build ‘the new man’.
And we’re currently ‘repackaging’ the same king of destructive propaganda into ‘fake news‘…
Are we nuts?
Specially that we already know that what we learn actually changes our brain…
Until some two and a half centuries ago, there were two kinds of people.
Those who did, because they could, almost all that crossed their minds.
And those who had to suck it up, because that was all they could do.
OK, there had been, for a few millennia, a Middle Eastern religion whose teachings suggested that all humans had been created equal – because all of them had been made to resemble their creator,… but not very many people used to bother with this interpretation…
From that moment on, all of us have started to ‘have rights’. To express our opinions about things, to carry arms…
And we eventually made full use of those rights… by publishing porn magazines, by buying, for our own protection, AR-15s…
Some American states, Florida among them, have recently stated that people have the right to ‘stand their ground’. Or, more exactly, to defend the ground where they happen to be at any one moment. Using deadly force, if necessary. As if it that ground were their castle.
A few days ago, a guy had parked his car on a spot reserved for people with special needs. Right in front of a convenience store. He went in, accompanied by his five years old boy to buy something, leaving his woman and his other children in the car.
Another guy, apparently having ‘the right’ to park in that spot – the first one didn’t, came up and engaged the woman about the whole situation. The driver came back from the store, exchanged some words with the ‘challenger’ and then shoved him to the ground.
The challenger drew his gun and shot the offending driver, despite the fact that he wasn’t in any immediate danger – after shoving the challenger to the ground, the bully had retreated a few paces.
According to Florida statutes, what had happened was nothing more than ‘self defense’, a.k.a. ‘holding your ground’. Furthermore, the gun involved in the incident was registered and the owner had a permit to carry it around. No charges was pressed.
Which makes me wonder…
We have these “unalienable rights”… including that to ‘pursue our happiness’ … but do we really need to press them on… regardlessly?
The ‘bully’ parked where he was not supposed to because he wanted to buy an ice-cream for his toddler – I’m imagining things here, I confess.
The ‘shooter’ wanted to use his right to park there, so he confronted the woman he found in the wrongfully parked car.
The bully returned to his car and, perceiving a threat to his family, used his right to defend it.
The shooter eventually ‘stood his ground’ and walked scot-free…
You see, I not trying to make any fine point here. To contest the concept of ‘standing your ground’ or the idea of people carrying heat when shopping for groceries…
I’m just wondering… what happened to the concept of ‘rights’? Why some of us have arrived to see them as obligations?
The whole thing might have started as the deceased parked in the wrong place…. but if the shooter had chosen to call the cops instead of confronting the guy… he wouldn’t have had to shoot the ‘bully’ in front of his children….
Being alive means being able to interact with the environment.
In various manners.
From the prosaic – ingesting food and… you know what I mean, to the sublime – what ever that means for each of us.
Including the ‘prosaic’, our reactions to whatever ‘inputs’ challenge us from our exterior, a.k.a. environment, are based on what we feel. And this is valid for all living things, no matter how simple or how complex. All of us have different manners in which we get information about what’s ‘outside’ and react to what we find out.
‘Not all reactions have been born equal’…
Plants react differently from animals, insects react differently from fish, reptiles from mammals, humans differently from all others, men differently from women…
Yet there is some order in all this complexity.
Reactions can be classified into three large categories. Mechanical, learned and intentional, a.k.a. ‘self supervised’.
All of us pull our hands when we touch a red hot iron. Or at least tend to…
All of us, grown-ups, have learned to swallow the sip of too hot coffee we have carelessly took. If in public, of course…
And, sometimes, the brave among us go, ‘barehandedly’, into a burning house in order to save those inside. Knowing that they might get hurt. Knowing that fame is short lived but a scar is forever. Knowing that any attempt to save someone’s children might end up leaving some other children without at least one of their parents.
You see, the mechanical reactions are the same all over the living world. They are inbred into our own nature/DNA and are meant to help each individual to survive and thus preserve the species to which it belongs. Furthermore, the mechanical reactions are based solely on sensations, hence their ‘mechanical’ nature. A certain input elicits one, and only one, response. A hot iron elicits a drawn hand… or, at least, a huge amount of attention.
For a reaction to become ‘learned’, ‘somebody’ has to transform a sensation into a perception. To remember a past experience, to compare it with the present and to react more or less in the same manner.
Without necessarily/actually ‘thinking’ about the matter.
In fact, no brain is even needed for this.
Credit: Audrey Dussutour (CNRS)
But, now that we’ve discovered that even some of the most simple life forms can learn – and ‘teach’, can we pretend that any of them are driven by intentions?
Or these are reserved for us, the most ‘evolved’ of the animals? The only ones not only able to ‘observe ourselves in the act of observing‘ but also able to share the observations with their peers.
The only ones able to devise both goals and ways to attain them. The only ones – or so we like to pretend, able to imagine and compare various scenarios about the future…
Then why are we still killing each-other? Hating each-other’s guts? Take advantage of our ‘peers’, whenever we see the opportunity?
What good does any of us see in this?
Don’t we ‘see’ the harm we cause in others?
Haven’t we ‘learned’ anything from our history?
Now, that some doctors are not only able but also willing to perform sex/life changing surgery, the subject has spawned a rather hot debate.
The ‘inputs’ being ‘sex’, ‘gender’ and ‘how each of us feels about it’.
Feels about what?
Well… this is the tricky part.
The what of the matter isn’t so simple…
There are so many things that might be felt here…
How each of us feels about the sex they have been born with.
How each of us feels about the gender role assigned to their particular sex by the particular culture into which they have been born.
How each of us feels about those who have enough courage/money to assume another gender/change their sex.
Please note that while neither the society nor the individuals have anything to do with the birth sex, both the society and the individuals are instrumental in shaping all those feelings.
Since sex/gender is too ‘hot’ right now, let me take a parallel road.
Many of my friends are glad when I invite them to dinner. To a home cooked dinner.
Their appreciation has driven me to improve my cooking skills, over time.
Yet in my culture, men are not supposed to cook – if they are not professionals, of course.
Which I’m not.
Yet very few people, if any at all, see anything strange here.
That being the social construct part.
On the other hand, cooking implies certain individual characteristics. For instance, I find it harder when my nose is running. I have to do it ‘mechanically’. It also demands a lot of patience and the ability to plan in advance. Not to mention the fact that one needs both hands.
My point being that cooking, and gender, is based on a certain physical configuration – both hands, a working nose – a certain state of mind AND a lot of study/social conditioning.
My real point being that every ‘social construct’ is based on ‘nature’.
Just as no builder will ever be able to build anything without ‘bricks’, no society will ever be able to build anything out of nothing.
And just as all builders have to adapt their plans to what they have at their disposal, all social constructs will be limited by ‘human nature’ – how ever adaptable and ingenuous it might be.
Now it’s the moment to remind you that other cultures have dealt differently with this matters. Driven by different kinds of necessity.
Confused?
You’re not alone…
“A blonde was playing Trivial Pursuit one night… It was her turn.
She rolled the dice and she landed on Science & Nature.
Her question was, ‘If you are in a vacuum and someone calls your name, can you hear it?’
Have you stopped laughing?
Gave it a thought?
Her answer wasn’t so ‘out of tune’, was it?
‘If you are in a vacuum and someone calls your name, can you hear it?’
For those who haven’t yet seen my point, consider this.
If you find yourself in ‘outer space’ without a breathing apparatus, would you really care about anything else?
If ‘someone’ was in ‘outer space’, inside a breathing apparatus this time, would their calls be audible outside the apparatus?
If inside a breathing apparatus, could you hear anything if the comm were out? Or ‘out of tune’ with that used by ‘someone’?
And you thought she was asking whether the vacuum ‘cleaner’ was on or off, didn’t you?!?
OK, this guy’s stool has four legs… nobody’s perfect…
A few days ago, while talking with a good friend of mine – Lucian Stefanescu, we convened that God has a lot in common with a chair.
Three legged, four legged… take your pick.
Let’s imagine we are part of a thought experiment.
One which allows us to travel through time.
Some ten or twenty thousand years ago, neither ‘God’ nor ‘chair’ existed at all.
The concepts, I mean.
In those times, people were just as able to sit as we are now. And they probably did it. On rocks, on logs…. which ever happened to be around when they felt the need/had the time to rest their feet….
Until somebody had the bright idea of picking up a big enough boulder, carried it to the fire and sat on it. Effectively inventing the very concept of chair.
Same thing goes for God.
I have no way in which to ascertain whether God exists outside our minds or not. Or who of our ancestors had come up with this idea. Or when.
The point being that our faith in Him has been enough for God to produce so many consequences. For our version of God to become real. To shape the very world we’ve built for ourselves.
You see, ten thousand years ago, in pitch black darkness, no one could have stumbled upon a chair while walking through the cave they called home. They could have stumbled upon rocks which happened to exist over there… but not upon any chairs.
Until some of the rocks had been used as such!
Nowadays… it’s not so unusual to trip over a chair. Even in broad daylight. Simply because we’ve build so many of them.
Same thing goes for God.
Ten thousand years ago, we didn’t have the concept yet.
Now, we have to deal with the consequences of us having already ‘killed’ Him.
According to Britannica.com, language is “a system of conventional spoken, manual, or written symbols by means of which human beings, as members of a social group and participants in its culture, express themselves. The functions of language include communication, the expression of identity, play, imaginative expression, and emotional release.”
Since we’re already dealing in conventions, I’m going to ask you to consider this:
How about we redefine language as ‘any manner in which information is transported across space and or time between two entities which have the possibility to interpret, act and or otherwise intervene on/influence the message, the situation described by the message or both at the same time’?
You’ll surely notice that the second definition is more inclusive that the first, of course. And you’ll also notice the differences. Which aren’t that dramatic, after-all…
– ‘Conventional’…
‘Classic’ languages – English, Chinese, French, Urdu, German, etc., are more the result of ‘natural evolution’ than of any ‘straightforward’ convention… while Esperanto, the most conventional of the spoken languages, didn’t make it too far.
In this sense, the ‘natural’ languages – those which have evolved ‘on their own’, without any intentional intervention from those who use it, are not that far away from the ‘classic’ languages. Birds have ‘vocal’ manners of sending distress and ‘sexual’ signals; monkeys and apes also; even social insects, ants and bees, dispose of an entire array of chemicals, sounds and gestures used to convey freshly gathered information from one individual to another.
– ‘by means of which human beings, as members of a social group and participants in its culture, express themselves’.
Really? What’s all this brouhaha about ‘expressing one’s self’? A call for help, ‘expressed’ in any way, shape or form, remains a call for help… regardless of the manner in which it has been expressed. Articulated language, Morse code, sign language or a simple sob. Same thing is valid for a warning call. Most of the times, the caller does it ‘instinctively’ and not to gain any ‘social points’ by ‘expressing’ their care for the rest of the ‘cultural community’ ‘conversant’ in the language used to make the call. The magpie in the video above is one of the exceptions, not the rule. Otherwise, the whole signaling ‘industry’ would have been abandoned long ago… due to the very evolutionary forces which have made language what it is today.
– ‘The functions of language include…”
Isn’t this funny?!? ‘The functions of language include…’ How about ‘some of functions we, users of language, have been able to identify are… “.
Or even ‘some of the uses we’ve been able to put language to are …’?
Quite a lot of confusion… isn’t it?
But language was supposed to make things clearer, not muddier… right?
Tell that to those dogs… the ones sent chasing ghosts by the fake distress calls ‘jokingly’ (?!?) emitted by the magpie in the video at the top of my post…
So…
– ‘Spoken’ language.
Or should I call it ‘extemporaneous’? The way I see it, most ‘spoken’ language is uttered on the spur of the moment… or used to be, anyway.
Nowadays, spoken words can be carefully prepared long time in advance… even made to ‘faithfully’ mimic an impromptu message…
– ‘Written’ language.
While ‘spoken’ messages’ have been used, extemporaneously, for a huge amount of time – and not only by humans, as I mentioned earlier, ‘writing’ has been a late invention. Ours.
Or, at least, this is how we like to believe…
The most important characteristic of ‘written’ – as opposed to ‘spoken’, being ‘verba volant, scripta manent’. ‘Spoken words fly away, written words remain’!
The earliest scripts, both cuneiform and hieroglyphic, were used to ‘transport’ information through time. At first, to conserve data rather than what we currently call ‘complex information’. Inventory and ‘identity’ rather than information which may – or even has to, be interpreted in order to make sense. The early cuneiform clay tablets contained ‘cargo manifests’ and only later some of them had been used to ‘conserve’ the Story of Gilgamesh.
– ‘Operational’ language.
Aren’t you tired of that magpie yet?
Have you even watched the video?
Did you notice how the dogs reacted to the fake distress calls? For the umpteenth time, probably…
For the purposes of the present post, it doesn’t matter whether the magpie actively/conscientiously makes fun of the dogs or just acts out of some sort of an instinctive boredom… something akin to the bright spots we sometimes see when ‘confronted’ by a pitch-black environment. It also doesn’t matter whether the dogs are actually fooled every-time they go out to chase the invented fox or they do it because they experience the same kind of boredom like the one which ‘fuels’ the magpie.
For me, all that counts is the consistent manner in which the target reacts to the message transported through the use of this particular kind of language. It is this kind of consistency which determines the ‘operational’ nature of certain languages.
And now, let’s get to the ‘fun’ part.
The calls emitted by the magpie can be construed as being ‘spoken’, right?
They are of a ‘vocal’ nature, are fleeing by definition – unless someone records them using some artificial devices… yet they are also ‘operational’… since the dogs faithfully execute what they are ‘told’ to do…
Now, if we think of it, most natural languages are ‘operational’ indeed.
Ants and bees use them to direct ‘practical’ action, not to ‘express themselves’…
Calls used by most animals relate to avoiding danger, signaling food or ‘expressing’ sexual ‘desire’… and have little or no connection with anything else.
In this respect, the magpie is an exception, not the rule. And even here, the message is ‘formulated’ ‘operationally’. Simply because magpies don’t ‘know’ any other kinds (uses) of language.
We, humans, have bucked the trend only in the sense that we’ve developed kinds of languages lax enough to allow ‘thinking’.
I’m sure that all of you have noticed that when considering the pros and the cons to something you think using a language, right?
A language ‘lax’ enough to accommodate ‘what if’!
Something which doesn’t ‘fit’ in the ‘language’ used by most nursing babies to ask for more milk…
