Imagine an ‘outside observer’. From, say, Sirius. Who had just arrived. Didn’t have enough time to become familiar with what’s going on here.
Thailand. Ballots had been cast in November. A party had lost. And pretends, without proof, that the elections had been rigged.
“In his first public comments after the coup, Gen Hlaing sought to justify the takeover, saying the military was on the side of the people and would form a “true and disciplined democracy”.” GETTY IMAGES
When the parliament was about to be convened, and the electoral results formally confirmed, the backers of the loosing party – which had happened to be the army, declared martial law and annulled the electoral results. The leading general announced in public that the measure had been adopted in pursuit of a ‘real and disciplined democracy’.
The US. Ballots had been cast in November. The looser pretended, without proof, that the elections had been rigged.
When the parliament was convened to certify the results, a mob had stormed the House of the Parliament, at the bidding of the loosing President. Order was finally restored and the dully elected President installed into office.
What would the ‘outside observer’ think about our planet? About us…
What if their job is to asses whether we should be allowed to roam the Galaxy? To be entrusted with some very powerful technological ‘secrets’. Which would help us solve some of our very stringent problems. Feel free to name a few…
Well… Money doesn’t get spoiled as easily as bananas do…
On further consideration, money can be understood as a tool with many uses. Hoarding, for instance. Bananas, among other things …
And, as with all other tools, the responsibility for its use falls squarely on the user, not on on the tool itself. Tinkering with the tool won’t change that, ever.
My point being that monkeys would also hoard bananas if bananas were hoard-able. There’s nothing wrong with that. For as long as the hoard is meant to feed the hoarder till the next crop, of course.
Hoarding is bad only when done for its own sake.
And this is something for philosophers to study, not for scientists. The teachings of the Chicago School of Economics had been very scientific yet following them was what brought us where we are now. Into a very uncomfortable cul-de-sac…
Blindly following them… mislead precisely because of their scientific nature!
From none in particular. From all of them, since all viruses are nothing but information!
‘Huh???’
Most biologists consider viruses to be something ‘in between’. Not exactly ‘life’, since they cannot replicate themselves, but something more than mere matter.
Only this approach sets very straight limits to how we understand life itself. Or should I rather use ‘narrow’ instead of ‘straight’? ‘Narrow’ as in ‘not wide enough’ minded?
“Information which perpetuates itself”.
Does this sound right for you?
We. humans, are individual human beings. ‘Social’, indeed, but, nevertheless, individual. It’s our individual-ness which sets us apart from our nearest cousins. Chimps and bonobos. It’s our individual-ness which sets the parameters of our world-view. That being the reason for our attempt to define life as a characteristic of the individual organisms which happen to be alive.
This being the moment when I feel the urge to direct your attention upon a seminal book.
Hmmm… the Origin of Species…
If evolution is about ‘Species’, then what about life itself being more about species than about individuals?
What about life being more about the process through which information is passed along from one generation to another than about an individual organism being alive or not?
In this sense, ‘virus’ would belong to the realm of the living, right?
I challenge you to try an experiment. Click the illustration bellow, copy the link and post it to your favorite social media. Then observe the likes you’ll get. I wasn’t surprised to notice that many people on the right side of the political divide were quite fond of it’s spirit…
That there’s not much real difference between the radicals. Between the radical members of both parties. Both are so convinced that they ‘know better’ that neither have any qualms trying to impose their vision upon everybody else. Both are so convinced that they are right that they ‘hate’ all other authority but their own. And they hate each-other’s guts… only that comes with the territory…
Let me start with the beginning.
I grew up under a communist regime. Drowning in propaganda. The education system was finely tuned to raise us, children, as ‘the New Man’. All cultural effort – culture was ‘sponsored’ by the communist state and heavily censored, was meant to achieve the same goal. Immediately after the communist regime had grabbed the absolute political power, the legislation had been altered to reflect the ‘new reality’. And then used to convince the people to change their behavior according to the new rules. According to whatever the new masters had in mind … So that they could control everything. That nobody else could have exerted any authority. That nobody else could have had any real influence over anything.
And, as you might know, the communist regime – most of them, anyway, had eventually crumbled. Under its own weight.
Which teaches us two things.
That whenever a system is run in an authoritarian manner, mistakes keep piling. One on top of the previous one. Constituting the dead-weight which will eventually sink the ship. That no artificial ‘New Man’ will ever survive for long. Yes, you may ‘legislate behavior’ – even against the true wishes of the general population, only the ‘new’ arrangement will not last for long. For a ‘legislation’ to be able to survive for any substantial amount of time it has to reflect the ‘true heart’ of those called to put it into practice. To ‘follow the rules’. That you ‘can restrain the heartless’ but for only as long as the ‘heartless’ remain a small minority.
Want to ‘change’ something? Then open people’s eyes first. Only that way they’ll eventually open up their hearts.
‘What about the spat between AOC and Ted Cruise? Where’s the link between what happened with GameStop and MLK’s attempt to regulate behavior?’
Both AOC and Ted Cruise hate the fact that there are independent agents. Besides them, of course. That there still are people who call their own shots. Private companies they cannot control, media venues, independent authorities… The ‘AOC’-s and the ‘Ted Cruise’-s of this world hate each-others guts but have more or less the same convictions.
That they are right – and everybody else is wrong. And that there must be a way! That there must be a way, a ‘rational’ way, in which their righteousness may be imposed upon the rest of the world.
That ‘rational’ way implying two things. Control over the ‘material’ resources and control over people’s minds.
That’s why the communists had ‘abolished’ private property. That’s why the (no longer free market) contemporary capitalists are OK with extreme wealth polarization. As long as they on the right side of the ‘in-equation’, of course… That’s why education has become such a hot subject. That’s why control over the legislative process has become so important. Why controlling the markets – controlling them, not preserving their freedom, is paramount…
The only bright thing in this whole mess being that the two sides still hate each-other’s guts. Which gives us some more lee-way.
Time to understand that for progress to be possible we need to take care of our roots. To ‘conserve’ them! Time to remember that ‘pruning’ needs to be done carefully.
That we have to ‘cut’ only what’s ‘wrong’, not everything we don’t like.
How to tell those two apart? ‘Humility’ comes very handy in these moments…. Freedom isn’t for free. Nobody is free by itself, only together. Those who really want to be free must start by respecting each-other. That’s how mistakes are avoided. By asking for a second-opinion. By listening to what others have to say on the matter. That’s how normalcy is being defined. And preserved. How we learn what’s ‘wrong’. How to tell what works from what needs to be pruned.
I cannot wrap this up before giving you a fine example of how ‘propaganda’ works. It starts with cutting up the truth. By actually pruning it to fit the purpose. Then let’s our already primed brains to do the rest.
“Crows are the hominins of the bird kingdom,” “Like our own ancestors, they evolved proportionally massive brains by increasing both their body size and brain size at the same time, with the brain size increase happening even more rapidly.” Dr. Jeroen Smaers
Crows have also witnessed our evolution.
All life transforms its habitat. Living things actually pass ‘segments’ of their habitat through their digestive systems. Digest them. Consume the useful components and discard the rest. And, finally, excrete whatever their metabolism had turned the useful components into. Urea and carbon dioxide, to name but a couple. For us, mammals. Other living creatures contribute something else to their environments.
I don’t know anything. I don’t know everything hence, logically, I cannot pretend to know anything.
Seems odd, since I obviously know something… to type, for instance!
Indeed, only the key word here is ‘logically’. From a logical point of view, you either know something or you just don’t.
Not very reasonable… This line of thinking leads up, fast, into a dead end!
As soon as I realize I know ‘nothing’, I must stop! I can no longer ‘do’ anything. Because I cannot control – in an absolute manner, each and every consequence of any of my actions. Further more, there is no justification for me to continue thinking. Again, because I will never be able to achieve ‘knowledge’.
Yet so many things are being done around me… From the sun rising in the morning to the ant helping its mates to dig a nest. From the electron ‘flying’ around the nucleus of a Hydrogen atom to a man developing a computer application. How can all these actions be performed when nobody, not even the ‘performers’ themselves, is able to determine the ultimate consequence of what’s going on? How can so many thoughts be ‘spun’, and books published, when the ‘thinkers’ themselves – well… some of them, actually, are fully aware of their intellectual limits?
What drives this frenzy?
And, if I may allow myself a thought, why ‘logic’? How can such a ‘paralyzing habit’ survive?
“How absurd to imagine that something we can make could actually deliver us from problems we could not free ourselves from!” Dr. Allen Ross, Dead Idols or the Living God
According to Abraham Maslow, people’s lives are ‘staged’. During the first four, each individual ‘must’ – ‘inside’ whatever circumstances Mother Luck had granted them, provide for their ‘needs’. Only after they had reached the fifth stage, individuals have the opportunity – but no ‘obligation’ other than that each of them impose upon themselves, to ‘reinvent’ their own personae. Maslow had used ‘self-actualization’ to describe the process.
In religious terms, the whole thing is known as ‘coming to peace with oneself’.
No more ‘absurdity’ here! There’s so much each of us can do in order to move ‘forward’…
‘And where is this famous ‘forward’?!? How are we, individually and/or collectively, to determine which is the ‘good’ direction?!?’
Is our ‘imagination’ good enough to come up with a solution for the “problems we could not free ourselves from”?
Is ‘induction’ a comprehensive enough solution? Or ‘too much of a good thing’ will never fail to become ‘bad for you’?
Confused?
Let me put it another way.
‘One size fits all’. How many times have you been really satisfied by such a ‘solution’? Do you really think an ‘idol’ fashioned by a carpenter – by the most talented carpenter, even, will ever satisfy the needs of at least one blacksmith?
‘But how about the idols fashioned by Plato’s king-priests?’
To answer this question – this excellent question, if I may say so myself, we must turn back to Dr. Allen Ross’ Dead Idols. To the difference between the Dead Idols and the Living God, to be more precise.
‘Criterion for what?’
If you pay close enough attention to what’s written above, you’ll notice that not passing the falsifiability test doesn’t mean than an assertion is false! Far from it, actually! Not passing the falsifiability test – ‘if a claim is compatible with all and any states of affairs’, only means that that claim is both ‘true’ and unscientific! Simultaneously true and not scientific!
‘And what has any of these to do with God?!? With the Living God or with any of the Dead Idols humankind has built for itself? And later discarded?’
I’m afraid you’ll have to come back for the answers. Or, to put it differently, I’ll gladly welcome you back!
This was one of the favorite slogans shouted by the anti-communist protesters in Romania’s ‘Piata Universitatii‘. And the anthem used by those who opposed the regime which had ‘confiscated’ the political power after 1990.
The only problem with this notion being that it doesn’t make much sense. Not on the ‘face of it’. Not in any rational way…
You see, most individuals would choose life against any other ‘alternatives’. When ‘the going gets tough’ most of us would accept almost any compromise in order to stay alive.
I’m not offering any examples. Use your own ‘imagination’.
Let me explain what ‘being a communist’ meant in Romania during Ceausescu’s rule.
First of all, in 1989 the ‘party’ was 4 million strong. 18% of the population were ‘proud’ carriers of the red membership card! Were all of them ‘die hard’ communists? Not at all! Most of them had accepted to become members simply because they had no other alternative. Without the party’s ‘approval stamp’ one could not ‘accrue’ any significance. Nada! Nothing! Could not get any promotion. Get an education higher than the equivalent of a college degree. Go visit a foreign country – not even a communist one! Nor could you move out from your parents home! Not easily, anyway. To be granted your own apartment, you had to submit an application to the relevant authority. Which application had to ‘checked’ by the relevant party official if you were to have any chance of success. Which ‘relevant party official’ was way more likely to approve your application if you were already a ‘member’. And so on.
Then why would anyone refuse to become a member?!?
Thirty years later, I finally figured out the real meaning of the whole concept. For you to get the whole picture, I must introduce you to a few more verses.
“Bum better than traitor Hooligan better than dictator ‘Good for nothing’ better than activist And dead better than a communist!”
By now, I’m sure most of you already had your Eureka moment.
‘Better to be dead than an ‘active’ communist’!
You don’t know what ‘activist’ exactly meant in communist Romania?
For starters, a ‘regular’ communist was just a ‘member’. You did have some ‘potential perks’ but you had to ask for them. And you were never sure your wishes were going to come true. The activists, on the other hand, were paid for their efforts. Their ‘well compensated’ job was to put in practice whatever the party had decided. What the brass had decided, actually… To convince the regular members – and, through them, the rest of the population, that whatever the brass had decided was ‘in the people’s best interest’! And to inform the higher-ups about the real situation ‘in the field’.
In a nutshell, it was the party activist’s job to keep the party together!
‘OK, to keep the party together… that makes sense… but … whose interests were promoted by the almighty party? And why had the whole thing collapsed like a house of cards?’
Let me answer your second question first. The whole thing had collapsed like a house of cards because there was no other alternative.
Because there was no alternative to ‘the’ party!
Because those at the top had drifted away from reality. Because those at the top had been driven away from reality by those below them. Who had been acting in a rational manner! Who in their right mind would contradict a powerful figure?!? Specially when there’s no alternative? When you, the ‘middle man’ see no way out? What alternative do you have but to become an yes-man? Who utters only what the higher-ups want to hear and keeps mum about everything else?
See what I mean? Do you finally understand Frank Herbert’s message? Do you still wonder why all authoritarian regimes eventually succumbs, being eaten from inside out by corruption?
‘Now you’ve lost me! Are you implying that by actively promoting ideas, and acting as a back-bone for a political party, one becomes an ‘accomplice’? An enabler?!?’
Well, let me answer your first question now! ‘Whose interests were promoted by the almighty party?’
On the face of it, the main ‘beneficiary’ was ‘the people’. Practically… the people had become ‘hungry’. ‘Hungry’ enough to applaud when the dictator had been assassinated on Christmas Night in 1989 …
You see, every established system tends to put its own survival before anything else. Every individual member of the system wants to conserve its position. Which is a reasonable thing. The problem with ‘single’ parties being what I’ve mentioned above. The party slowly drifts away from reality for the simple reason that there’s no competition to keep them ‘moored’. ‘No real alternative in sight’ allows any ‘single system’ to construe their own ‘alternative’ reality. Made of “alternative facts”.
So! You may promote whatever ideas you want. How ever actively you want to do it. Be the back-bone of any political party – or any other organization, you see fit.
But don’t be surprised that if you promote the ‘flat Earth alternative‘ you’ll eventually fall over.
Two days ago, I did a very stupid thing. I cleaned it, then I forgot to turn it back on.
A small freezer.
This morning, after throwing everything away and while washing the plastic containers, I realized – again, how much we depend on each-other.
The freezer itself was made by somebody else. The electric current it uses comes into my home as a consequence of many people cooperating for this purpose. The food I cooked and stashed away had been grown by an unknown number of toiling individuals and distributed, then sold, by yet another legion. The garbage I made on this occasion will be disposed of by yet another team of hard working people.
A good place to start understanding what Covid had done to us is the cemetery.
A man had died. A good man had died. Of old age. Covid had nothing to do with it.
But his beloved wife, and one of his daughters, could not attend his funeral service. They had tested positive while he was in hospital.
On the other hand… On my way home, I stopped by to see an old friend. He lives alone and has a rather frail health. No relatives and, due to his relativelly old age, only a couple of able-bodied friends. It’s a good thing that we have phones. If I’ll ever be quarantined simultaneously with his other friend, he’ll depend exclusivelly on delivery services….
nicichiarasa 