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101 years ago…

January 7, 2015 //
0

“Shooters storm Paris headquarters of satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, which has stoked Islamist anger over its depictions of the Prophet”

In 1914 WWI started just because European countries had backed themselves into so tight corners that they weren’t able to ‘leave them behind’ and ‘come up into the open space where some mutual ground could have been found’  while the entire ‘house’ ‘went up in flames’.

So what do we do now, a century later?

Some people heap ‘fun’ (?!?) on the ‘others’ and ‘the others’ reply with bullets.

Regardless on which side of the many divides that crisscross our society (societies) each of us belongs to we all try to find explanations, and culprits, for what is happening. Only none of the explanations that have been proposed until now has been found acceptable ‘for the other side’.

I propose something else.

If we look closer all this can be boiled down to (mutual) ignorance intensified by intolerance and arrogance.
While real people bleed in the streets some callous puppeteers/mindless ‘activists’, from all sides, laugh contentedly in their hideouts and plan new ways to prod the rest of us into even more reckless extreme actions.

There are two ways out of here.
We can fight it off, like the Germans and the French did. But they needed 150 years of gruesome warfare (from the Napoleonic wars to the end of WWII) to understand that there were no insurmountable differences between them.
Or we could try something new.

All we need is some mutual respect. The rest would come naturally.

Read more: 12 killed in attack on offices of French newspaper | The Times of Israel http://www.timesofisrael.com/10-said-killed-in-attack-on-offices-of-french-newspaper/#ixzz3O96OfXZa
Follow us: @timesofisrael on Twitter | timesofisrael on Facebook

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Categories Psychology, The kind of world we live in

Catsbook.

January 7, 2015 //
0

Nature.com  tells us that “Mice infected with toxoplasmosis lose their instinctive fear for the smell of cats — and the parasite’s effects may be permanent.”

Now what on Earth… You pretend to be running a blog about how people think and now you come up with wild stories about rats?!?

Well… the problem is that Toxoplasma Gondi, the parasite that is ‘behind’ all this has somehow found a way not only to influence the behavior of the rats it has infected but also to make sure that the alteration remains in place even after the infection was cured.

So what do we care if a bloody parasite manages to twist the simple minds of rodents? Permanently even?

“In humans, studies have linked Toxoplasma infection with behavioural changes and schizophrenia. One work found an increased risk of traffic accidents in people infected with the parasite2; another found changes in responses to cat odour3. People with schizophrenia are more likely than the general population to have been infected with Toxoplasma, and medications used to treat schizophrenia may work in part by inhibiting the pathogen’s replication.”

OK, OK, ‘correlation is not causation’, I know that, but don’t you find it ‘fascinating’ that behavioral patterns could be permanently altered from the outside the brain by something having a ‘material’ nature? Learning, acquiring new information, also involves something from outside the brain but ‘information’ doesn’t have a ‘material’ nature, right?

And something else. Don’t you find it rather interesting that so many people post pictures of cats on their FB walls?

http://www.nature.com/news/parasite-makes-mice-lose-fear-of-cats-permanently-1.13777

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Categories Psychology, The kind of world we live in

Cancer as a matter of bad luck.

January 3, 2015 //
1

The recent shift on how both the scientific community and the press relate to cancer is just another proof that we are currently undergoing a subtle change in the way we understand the world.

Yes, we continue to be fascinated with the notion of ‘the primordial cause’ and to go way out into the improbable in search for that cause while we still tend to ‘forget’ – or even actively chose to neglect – that most things, cancer included, usually are the result of a string of events and not of a single occurrence. Identifying only one event in that string as ‘the cause’ is rather ‘dense’, don’t you think?

Yet, despite of all of the above, this development has a bright silver lining. For the third time in the history of science and for the first in the history of popular media lady luck is being presented as a valid scientific explanation of anything. This very fact is a huge step towards a new understanding of how vast the world really is and of what we, mere human beings, might or might not be able to do/understand in/of it.

The first two instances when this has happened – Charles Darwin mentioning the role of hazard in biological evolution and Schrodinger using his famous cat to explain the intricacies of subatomic physics – the general public (and a considerable portion of the scientific community) somehow managed to avoid grasping the huge importance of hazard in nature and, frightened, found solace in the welcoming arms of God.

This is the first time, in my knowledge anyway, that God was not mentioned, yet, in connection with such an important subject for us all.

Good news, isn’t it?

For those who want to find out more about chance and cancer these two recent articles are a good starting point into the matter:

“Majority of cancers occur because of random mutations…” offers a succinct presentation of the development while
“Are two thirds of cancers really due to bad luck” brings welcome clarifications on the limits of the scientific method – statistical analysis – used by the authors of the original study.

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Categories Psychology, The kind of world we live in

Liberty: what is it, definitions, uses.

December 29, 2014 //
3

Very few notions are simultaneously evident and hard to grasp. Liberty is one of them.

If we look around it is self evident that some things are freer than others.
For instance wheel-chairs can be moved a lot easier than table chairs on a flat surface but are harder to be carried up and down the stairs or on rugged terrain. Or, on a different level of discussion, chained dogs are less free than stray ones.
Yet nobody in his right mind wastes a thought on whether wheel chairs might be concerned about their lack of ‘upward mobility’ while some of us, but not so many, do think about how come the vast majority of chained dogs usually come back after having accidentally been set free and wonder about why dogs which have grown up on their own can indeed become good companions but would never accept to be tied down for very long.

So what is this ‘liberty’?

Is it objective – a fact that exists irrespective of our will or wish – or nothing but a construct of our busy minds?
And how many kinds of liberty are there? After all the freedom ‘enjoyed’ by the wheel-chairs is a lot more different from that enjoyed by dogs than the latter is from that experienced by us, conscious people, right?
I’ll come back to this at the end of my post.

Three definitions of freedom are currently in fashion.

– Being free means being able to do whatever my (fucking) mind/imagination comes up with!
– “Liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others.” (William Allen White)
– “Freedom is the consciousness of necessity” (Karl Marx)

You’ll notice very easily that they all have some things in common yet each of them is slightly slanted towards the central pillar of the philosophical school it belongs to.

The commonalities are there precisely because all three definitions are about the same thing while the different slants come from the different scopes of those philosophical schools – each of them, or more precisely the figure head of each school, having their ulterior motives behind the apparent explanation/definition.

Hence different uses.

Yes, liberty has uses. Otherwise why bother? Without our ability to consciously use our freedom there would be no difference between us and the dogs I mentioned earlier!

So what could be those different uses?
Nietzsche – you recognized his ‘ghost’ behind the first definition, didn’t you? – used the notion of freedom to explain the reasons for which he coined the concept of the Uebermensch. He went berserk afterwards, maybe after realizing that what he did was nothing but giving theoretical explanations about why the likes of Genghis Han and Pol Pot did what they did throughout the entire human history. Simply because there was no one to stop them. For the moment at least.
Most of the libertarians continue the natural trend that was so brilliantly described and then completely misunderstood by Marx – that human history is nothing else but the story of how the individual human being became progressively more and more autonomous from the community to which it belongs and how the entire community became more and more viable exactly because of this process.
And finally the totalitarians, of all ‘flavors’, use the concept of ‘assumed necessity’ to cloak the fact that all their teachings are nothing but ‘propaganda’.

OK, let me keep my promise and come back to ‘what is liberty’.
Since I couldn’t find a philosophical explanation to suit my ‘necessities’ I’ll try a different tack.

“You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care nor your nights without a want and a grief. But rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound.”
(Kahlil Gibran)

Am I trying to convince you that liberty is something that has a simple psychological explanation? Believe in it and that’s sufficient cause for it to exist?

Yes and no.

Individual liberty has indeed an important personal/psychological component. Until a person understands what liberty is and assumes for itself that ‘state of grace’ that person cannot be free.

Yet no individual can be free by itself. Besides the primordial condition of having to be born first, in order for an individual to become a consciously free person it needs to be raised into a fully functional adult with a sophisticated enough understanding of the world around it. It needs to learn at least a language which he/she will use both to communicate with its peers AND to think, about freedom amongst other things. It also needs to learn the necessary skills for survival – from how to walk, eat and drink to how to earn its keep. Only after these ‘prerequisites’ – or, in Gibran’s terms, ‘cares’, ‘wants’ and ‘griefs’ – are met, the individual may try to ‘rise above them naked and unbound’.
And even then it would be extremely helpful if it had an example to follow. Spartacus, for instance, tried to become free precisely because he was in close contact with people who considered themselves to be free – his master, for one. Now consider the state of those third or fourth generation of African slaves who toiled the ground in the deep South, born in a barn to a slave mother, who came in contact exclusively with fellow slaves and with some white ‘supervisors’, half drunk most of the time and who from time to time sexually assaulted their mothers. Or even the situation of the modern children who come to this Earth only because their parents want to get free housing and some more food stamps from the government.

The way I see it ‘liberty’ is something that has two ‘parents’. On one side there is the ‘community’, the environment into which each individual is born and where it is raised. On the other side it’s the individual itself who, at some point of its coming of age – if the circumstances provided by the community are right, understands what freedom is and decides to ‘declare’ its personhood/freedom.
Personal contribution is indeed huge. In particular circumstances that declaration might be made ‘in petto’ (for itself only) or, contrastingly, in plain knowledge that it could lead to that person losing its life.
I’m thinking now of the free spirits of the Antiquity – for instance of Epictetus, who had freed his mind long before he was ‘freed’ from slave-hood – and also of the freedom fighters who streaked the skies of human history: the early Christians who professed their creed even though they knew that it would lead to they being fed to the lions to the lonely Chinese man who single-handedly stopped, for a while, the tanks charging the Tienanmen Square in 1989.

In any case both conditions must be met simultaneously. The individual itself must reach first a certain level of ‘intellectual sophistication’, with the help and in the environment provided by the community to which that individual belongs, and then that individual must do its part: ‘open its wings and start flying on its own’. No further than the ‘natural limits specific for that community’, of course, but nevertheless bearing full responsibility for the outcome of its acts.

Or, in a different spelling, freedom – just as language and consciousness – cannot be achieved by any individual on itself nor be maintained/developed without the willing and ‘jealous’ diligence of all those involved.

And the sooner we understand, individually and collectively, that the well being of both individual members of the community and of the community itself depend on each of us developing its own liberty and on each of us respecting the liberty of all the others, the brighter our future will be.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1563915/Freedom-and-Necessity

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Categories Psychology, Respect Mutual.

Are we going backwards?

December 18, 2014 //
0

New York Times has published recently an article about various unexpected effects of automation. The way I see it the whole thing can be boiled down to:

“Artificial intelligence has become vastly more sophisticated in a short time, with machines now able to learn, not just follow programmed instructions, and to respond to human language and movement.

At the same time, the American work force has gained skills at a slower rate than in the past — and at a slower rate than in many other countries. Americans between the ages of 55 and 64 are among the most skilled in the world, according to a recent report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Younger Americans are closer to average among the residents of rich countries, and below average by some measures.”

The point is that ‘classic’ automation freed the individual from the repetitive chores that transformed man into a machinery, as depicted by Chaplin in ‘Modern Times’, and allowed him to pursue more challenging/interesting ways to ‘make ends meet’. The current phenomenon turns the tide in exactly the opposite direction, demeaning the individual to the role of a ‘servant’ for the almighty machine. That’s why people become less and less skillful and, even worse, less and less proud about what they do for a living.

Dangerous situation.

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Categories politics, Psychology, Respect Mutual., The kind of world we live in

Cine ii salveaza pe salvatori?

December 18, 2014 //
0

Accidentul de pe lacul Siutghiol ne ‘trage de maneca’ cu privire la foarte multe lucruri.

De fapt stiam cu totii ca cei care ar trebui sa ne salveze in momentele critice nu au suficiente mijloace sa faca acest lucru si, mult mai grav, nici macar nu sunt suficient de bine organizati. Pana la urma mijloacele materiale sunt si in functie de posibilitatile economice ale unei tari pe cand organizarea e aproape pe gratis, nu?

Si cu asta am ajuns acolo unde ne doare cu adevarat. La atitudinea pe care o avem noi.
Inainte de a putea rezolva o anumita situatie cel care incearca acest lucru trebuie sa adopte o atitudine potrivita pentru ceea ce are de facut, nu?

Si noi ce facem? Nu cumva in loc sa analizam ceea ce s-a intamplat cu adevarat ne dam de ceasul mortii in incercarea de a scoate cat mai multe foloase politice, fiecare in functie de tabara din care face parte, din aceasta tragedie?

Inca ceva. Cu aceasta ocazie a iesit din nou la iveala tendinta noastra de a pune problemele cu care ne confruntam in poala ‘omului providential’ pentru ca apoi sa-l lasam sa se descurce singur. Si bineinteles ca la prima ‘scapare’ il vom taxa la sange, chiar daca pana atunci nu l-am ajutat cu nimic.

Asa am facut si cu Emil Constantinescu. l-am ales ca sa ne ‘scape de Iliescu’ si apoi l-am parasit cu totii in ghearele politicianistilor. El, saracu’, a dat vina pe ‘securisti’… ce era sa faca, sa ne bata obrazul?

In 2012, pe vremea cand incepuse deja sa ni se acreasca de hahaiturile lui Basescu, aveam nevoie de un pretext pentru a rabufni. Pana atunci Raed Arafat fusese un personaj destul de putin cunoscut in realitate si care se bucura de o oarecare notorietate cu accente romantice, ca unul dintre putinii ‘romani’ care a reusit sa faca ‘ceva bun pentru ceilalti’ si asta doar pe baza unei determinari acerbe. Adica exact personajul perfect pentru a starni imaginatia colectiva.
Nu cred ca el si-a dorit vreodata rolul de stindard/pretext pentru caderea guvernului Boc sau ca macar s-ar fi imaginat intr-un asfel de rol… Si s-ar putea sa nu fi reusit sa faca fata foarte bine noilor provocari, ma refer acum la cele de natura politica. Realizarile sale de pana atunci dovedisera entuziasm, determinare si un anumit gen de capacitate organizatorica – acela care reuseste sa coordoneze alti oameni entuziasti si astfel sa doboare bariere birocratice. Noua pozitie in care a fost pus necesita mai putin entuziasm si mai multa anduranta/rezistenta la frustare, la fel de multa determinare si un cu totul si cu totul altfel de capacitate organizatorica si putere de motivare – aceea de a reincalzi entuziasmul unor birocrati pentru ‘lucrul bine facut’, nu de a canaliza un entuziasm deja existent, ca pana atunci.
Iar toate astea ar fi trebuit luate in calcul de cei care au incercat sa se foloseasca de numele si renumele sau… El ce sa faca, a acceptat pozitiile ce i-au fost oferite tocmai pentru a putea sa continue proiectul sau de suflet. Pe care l-a adus intr-adevar pana la un nivel remarcabil de dezvoltare, in ciuda tuturor piedicilor care i s-au pus – probabil ca si din cauza modului sau relativ intransigent de a se comporta – si a mijloacelor inerent limitate pe care le-a avut la dispozitie.

Si acum ce facem? Ne repezim din nou cu capul inainte in incercarea de a-l folosi ca pretext in lupta politica? Din nou fara a lua in considerare in nici un fel datele concrete ale problemei? Macar atunci aveam scuza ca el insusi era un fel de mit, in mare parte necunoscut. Acum stim bine ce a facut, cum actioneaza, ‘cate parale face’…

Iar intrebarea din titlu nu se refera doar la persoana lui Raed Arafat. In general ‘salvatorii’ sunt persoane care fac fata riscurilor mai bine decat noi astialalti, oamenii de rand. Dar numai unui anumit gen de riscuri, cele ‘intamplatoare’. Cum ar fi sa ti se defecteze elicopterul deasupra apei. Sau sa cazi cu avionul in munti. Nu a renuntat nimeni dintre ei, chiar si dupa ce a fost clar ca, odata cazut, esti fiul ploii. Ei stiu mai bine decat noi care sunt posibilitatile reale ca cineva sa fie salvat in conditiile din Romania si nu se asteapta la minuni.

Ce nu cred ca vor accepta, si asta s-ar putea sa-i demotiveze/demobilizeze, este sa fie folositi ca munitie politica sau ca pretext pentru aranjamente de culise. Vad ca unii incearca sa foloseasca acesta tragedie nu doar in lupta politica propriu zisa ci si in incercarea de a reincalzi ideea privatizarii intregii activitati de salvare. Acum nu se mai multumesc doar cu medicina de urgenta… Bineinteles ca se pot imagina tot felul de scenarii de cooperare cu firme private dar asta doar ca o forma de back-up sau de capacitate de linia a doua…

Ce rost are ca peste costurile, mari, pe care le presupune activitatea de salvare, sa mai adaugam si profitul intreprinzatorului privat? Genul de oameni care fac cu adevarat performanta in domeniul asta sunt motivati mai degraba de realizarile pe care le au decat de bani… De ce simtim oare nevoia sa manjim totul? Poate ca banii n-or avea miros, chiar si cei obtinuti de Vespasian din taxa pe pisoar, dar nici chiar asa… N-ar fi mai bine sa lasam acest domeniu celor pasionati de ‘adrenalina’ si nu celor preocupati mai degraba de soldul contului de castig si pierdere?

Si sa nu uitam ca salvandu-i pe salvatori ne salvam pe noi.

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Categories aici sunt banii dumneavoastra, politica, Psychology, Respect Mutual., Tara din care traim

Si, ca intotdeauna, mortul e singurul vinovat.

December 14, 2014 //
1

Remus Florescu constata indurerat in Adevarul ca:

“Articolul publicat pe 4 decembrie pe siteul adevarul.ro – „Adevăruri greu de acceptat despre sexul anal“- a avut, în câteva zile, peste 63.000 de afişări. Materialele „grele“ – anchete, analize, reportaje – cu asemenea performanţă pot fi numărate pe degete pe parcursul unui an de zile. Pe de altă parte, un material de analiză în care întreaga reţea de corespondenţi din ţară a fost pusă la muncă pentru a găsi cele mai paradite spitale, intitulat „După 25 de ani: spitalele României în care ajungi doar ca să ai unde să mori. Bolnavi trataţi cu gândaci, toalete insalubre şi aparatură bună de aruncat“ are puţin peste 1.000 de accesări. Cum este posibil acest lucru pe un site quality, cum ne place să credem că este adevărul.ro, în condiţiile în care după venituri, sănătatea îi preocupă cel mai mult pe români?”

Apoi continua sa ne convinga ca nu a inteles nimic punand, retoric, o intrebare si mai grea doar pentru a-si oferi prilejul de a concluziona ‘mortul e de vina’:

“Cred că mai importantă decât întrebarea de mai sus este următoarea: care este mesajul pe care succesul acestui material îl transmite ziariştilor care conduc publicaţia „Adevărul“, dar şi ziariştilor care scriu la ziar, şi pe care se pune, în permanenţă, presiune din partea oamenilor de vânzări care cer: afişări, afişări, afişări? După părerea mea, presiunea aceasta a început să se vadă. Şi asta pentru că cititorul are întotdeuna dreptate, nu-i aşa? Dacă asta cere, asta îi dăm. E ca în politică, alegătorul are întotdeauna dreptate.”

Discutia e evident lunga, de la rolul presei in societate si cum ar trebui ea sustinuta din punct de vedere financiar pana responsabilitatea individuala a jurnalistului.

Astazi ma voi opri la ultimul dintre subiectele de mai sus.

Pai cu cat e mai ‘quality’ site-ul ‘adevarul.ro’ – si chiar e, mai ales in comparatie cu multe din celelalte – cu atat mai putin ‘banali’ sunt cei care il viziteaza, nu? Si atunci DE CE ar citi o analiza amanuntita despre ‘cele mai paradite spitale din Romania’? N-am studiat jurnalismul dar o regula de bun simt spune ca un articol de presa (asta oricum nu e ‘o stire’) va avea cu atat mai mult succes cu cat prezinta un subiect mai interesant, sau macar mai exotic. Nu?

Si ce o fi interesant in legatura cu ‘bolnavi tratati cu gandaci, toalete insalubre si aparatura buna de aruncat’?!?

‘Nu te intereseaza sanatatea poporului’?!?

Ba da, bineinteles ca ma intereaza. Si pe cititorii vostri, quality sau nu, ii intereseaza cel putin in aceiasi masura ca pe mine.
Numai ca noi deja stim, mai bine decat ‘intreaga retea de corespondenti din tara’, care e situatia din spitale. Ati facut analiza aia degeaba.
Nu o citim pentru ca nu aduce nimic nou, cel putin pentru cititorul de rand. Noi ne tratam aici, nu la Viena, asa ca stim foarte bine cum sta treaba.

Nu prea stim cum e, si nici nu ne vine sa incercam doar asa de curiozitate, ‘sexul anal’.

Cu alte cuvinte alegem sa citim ceva despre un subiect pe care nu il cunoastem si nu despre ceva in care suntem deja ‘doctori’.

Nu suntem nici tampiti si nici dezinteresati. Problema e ca voi nu ne intelegeti si noi nu stim sa ne exprimam.
Dar inca nu am murit!

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Categories Culture, Pamflet, Psychology, Respect Mutual., Tara din care traim

Marx misled us horribly

December 12, 2014 //
0

‘We already know that, why are you bothering us?’

“labour-power can appear upon the market as a commodity, only if, and so far as, its possessor, the individual whose labour-power it is, offers it for sale, or sells it, as a commodity”

“labour is not a commodity”

OK, reconcile these two declarations… The first belongs to Marx himself while the second is an integral part of the 1944 Philadelphia Declaration made by the International Labor Organization… And if any of you has any doubts about the ILO thinking not being heavily tainted by Marxism please check this out: “the war against want requires to be carried on with unrelenting vigour within each nation, and by continuous and concerted international effort in which the representatives of workers and employers, enjoying equal status with those of governments, join with them in free discussion and democratic decision with a view to the promotion of the common welfare.” Not exactly the Communist Manifesto itself but too close to it for my comfort.

So is it or is it not?

No it isn’t. Not even Marx ever thought it was.

When Marx speaks of labor power as a commodity he only wants to demonstrate the need for the worker to be free in order for the system to function. For him this is the difference between feudalism – when the peasant (the worker of those times) was heavily dependent on the land owner – and capitalism – where the possesor of the labour power is free to sell ‘his commodity’ to the higher bider – is the existence of the free market where commodities – including ‘labour power’, which is traded as if it was a commodity – are exchanged. And the fact that the market is free also determines individual freedom of both the worker and the capitalist, seller and buyer of the labour power.

But this trading of labour power as if it was a commodity doesn’t transform it into a real commodity.

In fact labour is more a form of communication than anything else.
By labouring the worker transforms something into something else, usually in a way that is not so easily reproduced, not even for low skilled jobs. Had it been possible to automate the working process we would have used exclusively robots or morons. Do you really think a robot or a moron could flip burghers at McDonald’s? Are you sure you’d like that to happen?

Confused?
It’s not that complicated. Marx had an insight – that human history is nothing but the story of the individual man enjoing more and more autonomy – and then blew it. He took it upon himself not only to speed up the history of the mankind but also to lead us (even against our will) where he thought that we should finally arrive (communism). Rather arrogant, don’t you thing?
In time that arrogance seems to have mellowed somewhat (or became more conceited?) but it is still very much alive: ‘the war against want requires to be carried…to the promotion of the common welfare’….

What is that ‘the common welfare’? Can something like that ever be determined? Even in a ‘democratic’ way?!?

Had Marx refrained himself at studying the effects of increased individual autonomy on the workings of the human society he would have been considered the undisputed thinker of the second millennium and we’d have been sparred from witnessing (or experiencing) the horrors of communism…  I know, I know, counter-factual history is not acceptable… just saying…

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Categories politics, Psychology, Respect Mutual., The kind of world we live in

Thinking outside of the box

December 12, 2014 //
2

Quite a popular mantra nowadays, don’t you think?

Whenever somebody tosses you a problem without also giving you the tools to fix it and you dare ask for instructions about how to fulfill your new task, you’ll inevitably get this very helpful ‘advice’… And most often it’s your boss who does this, right?

So?

Ever tried Google-ing it?  Wikipedia has, of course, an extensive entry about this notion. Lifehack.org has a decent list of 11 to do-s on this topic, only many of them are things you’d better do in advance…

But what can a man do in a hurry?

First of all stop searching desperately for a solution.
Most of us entertain the idea that the human brain is a well honed tool that only needs to be pointed at the target, fed the pertinent information and, presto, it will provide a solution if pressed/enticed hard enough.
The problem is that something inside that tool (part of our subconscious) has been conditioned during our formative years to stay inside a set of limitations/comfort zone. Don’t do this, don’t touch that, don’t lie…

While staying inside the rules is, usually, a very helpful rule of thumb – specially when it comes to survival situations where you don’t have time to consider the matter – sometimes you really need to do exactly the opposite. Drinking your own piss, for instance.

Whoa! Another quack… I’m out of here!
Hold your horses and keep on reading. Or, even better, click on the highlighted link and find out about how a guy saved himself by simultaneously braking two taboos. Not only the one about drinking your own urine but also the one about ‘not hurting yourself’.

And by reading that article you’ll also understand a lot about the inner workings of the human mind.

So, what do we have there?
A guy wants to convince us that drinking pee is wrong for us. To do this he needs to grab our attention so he brings in Aaron Ralston, a well know character who had his hand pinned down by a fallen boulder, waited awhile to be saved, drunk his own urine during some of that time and, finally, when he got tired of the entire situation, cut himself free, leaving behind his right palm.
Do I still have your attention? My post is about thinking out of the box and I’m trying to illustrate my point by using an article about how bad it is to drink urine, which uses as an attention grabber the story of a guy who did drink his own piss and cut his hand in order to free himself…

A box in a box which lies inside another box… Yep. that’s it, you got it.

The first thing you need to do when having a hard time trying to find a solution is to understand that no matter what you think about your current situation you ARE in a box. In fact not in only one box but deep inside the bowels of a regular Matryoshka.

matryoshka

Feeling desperate? That’s OK. Now that you don’t have anything more to loose than your shackles you’ll have an easier time.

Being ‘inside’ a box is not that bad. The point is that you need to be aware of this fact and to choose yourself which box is the right one for you instead of allowing some ‘strangers’ to box you where ever they want you to be.

So all that is left to be done is to look around, identify the walls of the box you are currently in, the limitations imposed upon you by those walls and how those limitations might prevent you from solving your problem. Finally, look for a way to accede into the wider box. Don’t be afraid nor dream that you’ll ever get out into the open, the walls I’m speaking about are constantly being build by our very own minds.

And this is good. Out there there is no order we can speak of. It’s the Unknown and we are rightfully afraid of it. That’s why we conquer any new ground piece by piece, precisely by building a wall immediately after we have a glimpse of understanding about something.  Usually this process takes place unnoticed by our consciousness. We have a moment of grace, the old wall becomes transparent, we see something behind it and we imediately build another wall a little further. Both to protect the new acquired knowledge and to defend the realm of the familiar from the dark forces of the unknown.

The problem with this process is that most of the time the walls are opaque. Not only the exterior one, most of the interior ones stay opaque for most of us even after they have been breached numerous times. And much of their opaqueness come from nothing else but our own fright.

The Ancient Greeks divided the world in two parts. The Cosmos, which had a certain structure and was governed by rules, and the Chaos, the  frightful rest. The separation between these two places, Cosmos and Chaos, was nothing but one of the walls I keep mentioning and the Greeks never dared look behind it so they didn’t have to face any of the monsters created by their own imagination and set free to roam the Chaos. We, despite our modern belief in science, are no better than they were. Still afraid we wait, wriggling our hands, behind the protection walls we have erected to protect our inquisitive minds from straying into the unknown.

So, next time you feel like taking an exploratory trip into the unknown, start by identifying the walls around you. Both to understand what you have to overcome and to find out where your fall back positions are.

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Categories Psychology, The kind of world we live in

The only real alternative to any extremism is the living center, not the dead opposite extremism!

December 8, 2014 //
6

I came across this extremely interesting article about Hitler being a socialist.

After making his point, impeccably, Daniel Hannan – the author – ends up with: “My beef with many (not all) Leftists is a simpler one. By refusing to return the compliment, by assuming a moral superiority, they make political dialogue almost impossible. Using the soubriquet “Right-wing” to mean “something undesirable” is a small but important example.”

To me this article is nothing but another reminder that the the only reasonable alternative to any extremism is the living center, not the dead opposite extremism.

Every time that the functional equilibrium between the content (because of their affluence, carelessness or both) and the strugglers (people who are on a constant quest for new solutions, irrespective of their motivation) has been breached things tended to become rather ugly before coming back towards normalcy.
Just compare how people around the Mediterranean sea used to live during the four centuries straddling AD 1 with what happened during the next millennium, otherwise known as the Dark Ages.
Why? Just because the Roman emperors used ‘panem et circensis’ as their main political concept and the population obliged. Until things went so far that the whole empire failed abysmally…
Same things happened before the French Revolution and before Lenin and Hitler came to power in Russia and Germany, respectively. Nowadays it is currently happening in Russia and the huge gap between the oligarchs and the modern muzhiks is the sole explanation I need for how come Putin has such a stronghold on the Russian people – he is keeping both categories happy by feeding their imagination with dreams about the Greater Russia and their bellies full with the money he gets from selling oil and natural gas.
For people on both sides of the political spectrum to restart a real dialogue all of them need to understand that the other side has legitimate concerns too.
Nowadays most on the left insist on ‘equality’ while most on the right speak of nothing but ‘individual freedom’. And both of them blame the state. The left accuses the government for not doing enough to promote the sacrosanct ‘equality’ while the right blames the state for infringing on the individual’s right to do whatever it wants…  As if equality (of chances) is in anyway different from individual freedom… As if authoritarianism could exist without the guys at the top enjoying a lot  more freedom than those at the bottom of the social ladder… As if functional social order could be maintained without people cooperating among themselves based on mutual respect, said cooperation  having evolved through time and currently reaching the modern form known as “the democratic state”…
I agree with concerned people on the both sides of the divide that the state could, and has indeed in more than one occasions, represent an extremely powerful repression tool in the hands of callous political operators but the answer to this is to make sure that the democratic mechanisms work smoothly, not to thoroughly dismantle the state itself….  Precisely because a skeleton state is a lot more easily highjacked by the ‘political thugs’ than one which has respected and balanced (hence functional) institutions in the right places.
Now please allow me to end my post by extending the invitation made by Daniel Hannan and urge you, all of you, to stop assuming ‘moral superiority’ based exclusively on ideological motives. Ideology is fine but we should never forget that it is nothing but a tool and it is us who do things and are responsible for both our deeds and our fate.
If ideology is diverse enough as to help us see how complex the world really is then we are better off because of it. If, instead, we use our diverse ideologies as filters to shun whatever ‘the others’ are trying to tell us… then it’s curtains for all of us, together at last… but not in the right place.
PS
To read the article – it is brilliant – you can either click on the yellow highlight near the top of my post or here: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100260720/whenever-you-mention-fascisms-socialist-roots-left-wingers-become-incandescent-why/.
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Categories politics, Psychology, Respect Mutual., The kind of world we live in
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