Many people interpret Darwin’s Evolution as ‘the survival of the fittest’. Ernst Mayr, What Evolution Is, made is crystal clear that ‘evolution is not as much about the survival of the fittest as it’s about the demise of the unfit. Read the book, it’s well worth the time. https://www.scribd.com/document/358382958/Ernst-Mayr-What-Evolution-is-PDF
The fact that we have so many, and so conflicting, views on such a simple natural law as the law of evolution means that… we don’t know shit!
Hence Samuel Adams was right. Since we know basically nothing, none of us should have ‘authority’ over others. Each of us should be free. To do as they please. To follow exclusively the ‘laws of nature’.
Which one of them? Darwin’s – as some of us have chosen to interpret, or Mayr’s?
‘Survival of the fittest’ or ‘The demise of the unfit’? ‘I’m stronger than you so move over’ or ‘If you don’t agree with our commonly shared values, please find another place to live?’ ‘Free against all else’ or ‘free together with everybody else’?
There are so many of us who consider that ‘if you can’t pull your weight, you don’t deserve to live’…
On the other hand, there was a moment in time when the Brits had abolished the institution of debtor’s prison… And a second moment, no less significant, has been the Marshall Plan.
You see, for whatever reason, an individual or a business might fail. Sometimes, even a whole continent might fail…
Until recently – historically speaking, debtor’s prison was abolished in 1869 and the last war reparations had been extracted after WWI – it was a matter of ‘one strike, you’re out’. One mishap, for what ever reason – bad luck was enough – and you were practically reduced to ‘servitude’. If somebody else didn’t bail you out, your chances of getting out ‘alive’ were very slim. No matter whether you were an individual, a business or even a country.
Interestingly, the first who was allowed the protection of bankruptcy was the business sector, countries came next – but only if they were sovereign states, while individuals are not yet completely out of the woods.
Now, where would any of you prefer to live? In the XIX-th century Britain or in the XXI-st century Britain? Ceteris paribus. As in ‘conserving all other ‘variables’ ‘. Given the fact that hot water was practically absent in XIX-th century Britain, I’d prefer the present century anytime.
Was ‘bankruptcy’ the only explanation for the economic take-off which happened after the second half of the XIX-th century? Probably not but it surely helped. Just as the present day Europe owns a lot to the Marshall Plan.
Then why aren’t we extending a more helpful hand to more of those who have ‘stumbled’?
If I’m on the ‘right’ side, why would I make it easier for the other guy? If on the ‘wrong’ side, why not just switch sides? Why would I bother to straighten the tree? Against the wishes of those who have a lot to lose in the process?
From the other side of the looking glass, things are a lot simpler.
‘Fiat justitia, ruat caelum’ is a warning, not a behest.
‘Make sure that justice is served, unless you want the heavens to fall on your shoulders’ is what any open minded reader of history makes of this ancient adage…
The fact that we concentrate our attention on what justice means for each of us is a measure of our individualism. Of our nearsightedness…
Our respective individualities, each and everyone of them, have grown into what they are now in a social context. None of us can exist for long, let alone protect and develop their individuality, in solitude.
We need the others. We, each and everyone of us, need to belong. To a community.
To a functional community! To a community where each individual is cherished. Where each individual can develop its potential.
Where each individual has the opportunity and the tools to develop their potential. For his own good, in concert with the main interest of entire community.
Survival. Things remaining as they should be.
Us toiling here, on the surface of the Earth. The heavens perched safely up there.
Justice must be served if things are to remain as we, each and all of us, need them to be.
This morning I almost blew my top. I was listening to the radio. A usually decent station. Usually decent and, like all of us, imperfect.
The news anchor was interviewing an ‘expert’. An Ivy League Professor of International Relations and other blah-blahs. I’m not giving their names because I want them forgotten, not even more famous than they already are.
‘Is there any chance for this conflict to end in a negotiated manner?’ ‘Yes, if/when both sides will find a mutually acceptable solution. For example, if the Ukrainian side would accept a referendum in Donbass – and in Crimea, and if the Russian side would accept UN inspectors to validate the process. This would be in line with the general accepted policy of self-determination and ….’
OK, and where’s the difference between what Putin keeps saying and what I’ve just heard?!?
Two non-Ukrainians telling Ukraine what to do…
I’m going to set aside, for now, what these two – wait, three! – people are saying. That Ukraine, the Ukrainian People, should give up a piece of their land. My immediate interest lies in ‘who these three guys think they are’?!?
OK, only those who don’t want to see haven’t yet found out that Putin is a dictator. But for a renowned Ivy League Professor to elaborate a scenario according to which the UN would supervise a referendum where an occupied population would have the opportunity to vote whether they want ‘their’ aggressor to maintain its control over the already occupied territory….
Would that distinguished Professor be comfortable with a referendum – equally supervised by the UN, taking place in California? Which California had already been occupied by Mexico? For which referendum, the Californians were asked where they want to live? Whether Mexico should continue its occupation or should the Mexican army retreat behind the internationally recognized border?
No, I don’t think the Professor has been paid by Putin. Or ‘compensated’ in any other way by the ‘red Satan’. I just consider he was not paying real attention to what he was saying. He had just opened his mouth and verbalized what his mind was churning. The current ‘events’ have disturbed his pleasant existence to such a degree that he really needs this ‘fly in the ointment’ to ‘fly away’.
He is so ‘driven’ by his ‘need’ that he is no longer ‘patient’. He just can’t ‘stop talking’ for long enough to realize how fast Putin’s propaganda machine will make ‘good’ use of his ‘verbalizations’…
‘See, the good Professor confirms what our Beloved Leader has already done. It’s the Ukrainians who are not reasonable! They should first change their leadership then come back into Mother Russia’s arms.’
When are we going to understand?
Don’t tell others what to do unless you are prepared to ‘take advice’ yourself… And, for your own good, don’t trade your future freedom for your present comfort!
– If ‘no government’, then who would pay for the army we need to defend ourselves?
Ooops… you’ve just answered the ‘why does Russia ‘encourage’ the trolls who push ludicrous libertarian ideas’ question. Which trolls attempt to achieve two things at once. Weaken the concept of free government and give libertarian-ism a bad rep. Transforming libertarian-ism into yet another form of extremism.
Let’s get serious and try to find an answer to ‘why, and how much of it, do we need government?’
The boring one would be: ‘Whenever one government falls, another one takes over. The interregnum is always bad so… let’s get used to it’.
‘Getting used to it’ works only for very short expanses of time. Left on its own, all ‘government’ becomes sloppy. So sloppy that it soon becomes such a burden that even the most ‘used to it’ lose their patience. Government, all of them, need to be kept on a tight leash. Otherwise it will soon cease to perform as intended.
– But if you have to keep it on a tight leash, why bother with any in the first place? Can’t we do without such a bothersome pet? What’s the point of the whole thing, anyway?
Instinctively, we’re against ‘government’ for two reasons. It costs us a lot and it used to represent the interests of the ruler.
Until 10 000 or so years ago, we didn’t need ‘government’. People were living more or less like the modern day Sun People still do. In the Kalahari desert… small bands roam the place, living of the land. The bands are small – so that they might find sustenance, they don’t have any ‘private’ property to protect, hence they don’t need government. Neither did our ancestors.
As soon as people ‘invented’ agriculture – raising ‘tame’ animals at first and working the land soon after, things had changed dramatically. The advent of agriculture brought two things. An increased productivity and private property. Soil has not been born equal. Both pastures and arable land can be good, passable or bad. People wish to have the best. Those who already have it are willing to defend it and those who don’t are willing to steal it. Increased productivity means that those who produce are able to hire people to protect their ‘means of production’. Their property. As a consequence of fighting for it, some people accumulate more and more of it. More and more ‘means of productions’ – property, means an ever increasing need for ‘management’ and an ever increasing need for ‘protection’. Soon you have a very ‘wealthy’ owner – the lord of the place, call it what you like or use the name given to him by his subjects, the people who perform the day to day management of the ‘whole-sale property’ and those who protect it from ‘marauders’. Both the ‘managers’ – read ‘government’, and the ‘protectors’ – read ‘army’, used to be under the direct supervision of the local lord. For a while – for as long as the lord kept everything in balance, everybody was happy. The ‘peasants’ were happy because thy were safe, the ‘managers’ were happy because the wise lord used to appreciate their work and ‘compensated’ them accordingly, the ‘protectors’ were happy because they were well fed and taken care of. According to this article, the great Egyptian had been built by willing people, not by slaves. https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2003/07/who-built-the-pyramids-html But soon enough, the lord had become estranged from his people. Government had become an instrument used to extract more and more wealth from the peasants while the army was used to protect the government against the people and, whenever possible, to increase the property of the ruling lord by stealing some from the neighboring ‘lords’. The ’empire’ was born.
But this development could take place only in certain circumstances. Where those below the ruling lord had nothing more to do than to obey. Where the best subject was the disciplined one. Where autonomous thinking and imagination were frown upon by the ruler. Where one mind was enough. Whenever the ‘environment’ mandated the individuals to remain relatively autonomous, proto-democratic forms of self government had been experimented. From the nomadic pastoralists of the Central Asia to the sailing communities in Ancient Greece and Medieval Scandinavia. Those driving herds or sailing ships need to be a lot more independent-minded that those who just tile the earth. No offense intended here! Simple observation will notice that where the geography of the place had allowed it, somebody had ‘built’ an empire. The Nile Valley, the Middle East, the Russian plain, China, Mexico… Where ever the geography of the place was fragmented enough by sail-able sea, proto-democratic forms of self-management had been developed. The sailing Ancient Athens versus the land-locked Sparta, Medieval Scandinavia versus Medieval France…
Fast forward to present day. When we have two forms of government. The more or less democratic ones. Those under whose ‘guidance’ discussions like the present one can happen. And the more or less authoritarian ones. Which actively discourage autonomous thinking.
Mind you, there are no ‘perfect’ governments. There’s no perfectly democratic arrangement anywhere on Earth. Because we are imperfect human beings. And there’s no ‘perfect’ authoritarian government. Because no government can survive for long if it attempts to centralize the decision power. The closer a government gets to being perfectly authoritarian, the smaller is the crisis needed to topple it. Unless it is supported from the out-side but that’s another topic.
So. It is fairly simple to understand how authoritarian governments fail. Too much ‘stiffness’ makes it impossible for authoritarian governments to evolve. To find solutions for whatever challenges pop up constantly.
But what can go wrong with the collective forms of self-rule? With the participative forms of social self management? Otherwise known as democracies? Lack of enough popular involvement. Due to a sense of apparent safety, initially. And to a feeling of apparent impotence, soon after. Lack of enough fore-sight. Those who should know better become distracted, for whatever reasons. Too much opportunism. More and more of the ‘insiders’ use ‘the power of the government’ to fulfill their own, private, goals instead of making sure that ‘government’ works properly.
And what does that mean?
A government works properly when the community which self manages itself using that particular (form of democratic) government survives in the long run. When those momentarily working inside the government make things happen for the community at large. When people, both inside and outside the government, follow, in spirit, Kennedy’s words.
Am I being naive? Maybe… But wouldn’t it be a nice thing to have? A nice thing to chase, anyway?
And what better way to chase ‘it’ than voting for people who at least pretend to be honest? Who at least make the ‘right’ noises? Whom we can hold accountable whenever they break their promises? Instead of voting for those who promise barrels and barrels of ‘pork‘? https://grammarist.com/idiom/pork-barrel/
Ideological pork or hands-on pork, I don’t know which is worse…
– I thought we were talking about a glass ceiling, not a glass bottom…
You see, we have to deal here with the difference between depth and thickness.
A ‘coat of paint’ has a certain thickness – we know where it starts and where it ends, while a sea has a certain depth. We know it’s there, we know where it starts – at the surface of the water, but we’re never exactly sure where it ends. How deep it actually is!
Another way to put this would be to compare the depth of human consciousness with the thickness of the cerebral cortex. The depth of the reality we perceive using our brain and the thickness of the cerebral tissue where this perception takes place. The depth of the reality we, humans, have built during our history inside the relatively shallow portion of the Earth where we feel at home.
We use a small number of phonemes to communicate among ourselves. A relatively small number of words to convey hugely complicated concepts. Two digits, 0 and 1, to build artificial intelligence… inside a wafer thin ‘slab’ of doped silicon.
– OK, enough introduction. How about making in clear what you really meant? A glass ceiling or a glass bottom?
Whether it is a glass ceiling or a glass bottom is a matter of perspective. A matter of where you are when looking at it. Above or below. The only thing which really matters being the fact that you see it despite of it being made of glass. Despite it being transparent.
Transparent to our eyes but not to our conscious mind.
– But if it’s already transparent, why is it such a big thing to break through it? We already know what’s behind/above it…
Seeing is not the same thing as knowing… just as 0 and 1 scribbled on a computer chip is not enough to make an intelligent computer…
After reading this interview for a second time, I asked myself: ‘Why are you paying so much attention to this guy?!? After all, he doesn’t say anything new…’
Then it hit me!
“Russia” and “we” are two different things.
Russia, the country, cannot indeed afford to “lose”. To ‘lose it’, to be more precise. Russia will survive, no matter how many more ‘mistakes’ the morons currently running it will commit.
“We”, on the other hand, are the ones who can. And eventually will. Lose. Everything.
And the longer those “we” are allowed by Russia itself to run the Kremlin, the worse it will be. For everybody. Us – the rest of the world, included.
‘But when will this nightmare end?’
That I don’t know. All I know is that it will eventually do that. End.
Look at the picture above. When have you seen anything more British than that? OK, fake British. Make-believe British. But British nonetheless.
That was which hit me. That during its entire history, Russia had tried to emulate Britain. The Russian elite has for ever tried to rise itself to ‘British standards’. From Peter the Great to Putin. All the while convincing the Russian People that the road they were trundling on was unique…
The sooner the ordinary Russians will figure out that they have been misled – and enough of the elite will understand that British-ness is good only for the Brits, they will make peace. Among themselves. With the their Ukrainian cousins. And with the rest of the world!
The guy in the blue T shirt is being questioned by the Ukrainian police about his activity on ‘social media’. You probably guessed already what kind of ‘activity’ we’re talking about…
Which brings back painful memories.
During my childhood, in communist Romania, you could get arrested for listening to Radio Free Europe. Or for speaking against the communist rule.
In present day Russia, you’ll soon enough be arrested if you use the word war in relation to what is going on in Ukraine.
In Ukraine itself, you can be arrested for publicly supporting Putin’s actions.
The worst thing being the fact that there still are people out there who consider Putin is right and the Ukrainians – those who do nothing but defend their country, should be ‘left alone’.
To be ‘left alone’ to what?!? To be bombed away by Putin? So that we may continue our ‘peaceful lives’?
Peaceful only until Putin – or someone equivalent, will ‘change his mind’?
The guy above hasn’t figured out yet, in spite of the bombs falling over his head, that there’s no such thing as ‘peaceful life’ under dictatorship! Any kind of dictatorship… Nor have any of those who continue to defend Putin’s actions!
Or use their ‘freedom of speech’ in an attempt to sow doubt about the matter.
Read what brittanica.com has to say about each of them. Just click their names.
Then tell me why are we, any of the democratic countries in the world, still making business with any of the dictatorial regimes still plaguing the Earth? Why do we continue to harbor any of the yachts owned by corrupt oligarchs? Or their money?
nicichiarasa 