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We should have known better ii

March 8, 2016 //
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Read the comments to any article that deals with the European Community and you’ll certainly find something to this tune:
“This is the end of the EU”

That might happen anytime, of course, but I’d still like very much to know why so many contemplate this possibility with so much glee? And I’m not talking here about those who think they have something to gain from a weaker Europe. Putin, for instance. Or Erdogan.

Why so many ordinary Europeans are so angry towards the very idea of a closely knit European Union?

How about reading the entire history of this continent as a long story of individuals striving hard to become more and more autonomous?

Some would say that Europe was about individuals becoming free, and I can agree with that. Only that freedom had strings attached.

“My freedom stops where your freedom begins”.

Meaning that none of us is really free unless each of us respects the liberty of all the others. That our individual liberties depend on each-other. Well, that’s the definition of autonomy, not that of ‘absolute freedom’ but let’s not be bogged down by words.

In fact what helped Europe become what it is today is an unique combination of ever growing individual freedom made possible by an ever stricter respect for the rule of law.

This was not at all a smooth process.

From time to time some individuals garnered a lot of liberty for themselves precisely by depriving all other of theirs and sometime even succeeded in writing this into law. For instance, until 1848 it was still lawful to own slaves in France.

Another type of ‘garnered’ freedom is what happens in a dictatorship. The dictator and his henchmen are freer than the rest of the people, but none of them as free as the people living in a truly free country. And Europe had witnessed a considerable number of dictatorships.

Which all eventually failed.

But something lingered in the collective memory of the Europeans. Their disdain for being told what to do. Their mistrust for rules imposed from above, for regulations that did not have the opportunity to become evident, through the passage of enough time, for those called to follow them.

This is why the ‘enthusiasm’ with which “l’aquis communautaire” was peddled by the Brussels bureaucrats to the new entrants has been met with such reticence.
This is why the measures being practically imposed by the more powerful members of the Union to the rest of the gathering are met with such scorn.

Very little real consideration is being given to the manner in which these measures are adopted and then communicated ‘from above’  and, simultaneously, very little attention is paid, by those called to put them in practice, to what their real effect would be – if they’d be applied in earnest.

And, unfortunately, there is no real shortage of callous political mavericks who eagerly try, and sometimes succeed, to capitalize on these misgivings.

As if we didn’t know any better.

 

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Categories authoritarianism, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, corruption, democracy, Frames of mind, freedom, limited rationality, Mutual Respect, Rule of Law

Manipulation 101

January 31, 2016 //
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I published yesterday a post on this subject. In Romanian.

Today I stumbled upon another article which uses almost the very same manipulative tools. In English this time.

legal public urination

“Of all the things one could think of that New York City needs more of, public urination doesn’t immediately come to mind. But New York’s City Council, which is so far left it almost collides with the right, is about to make it happen thanks to it’s Speaker, a Puerto Rican nationalist who supports terrorists and rejects the Pledge of Allegiance.”

” “Under a package of bills New York’s City Council will consider to ease enforcement of quality-of-life offenses that lawmakers say clog the courts and have been disproportionately enforced against minorities, urinating and drinking in public would no longer be treated as crimes.
According to the New York Times, one liberal official who sponsored this change noted it was designed to help minorities “reach their full potential.” So not being able to legally pee in public is what’s holding minorities back?”
“Not only is this train of thought disgusting, it is demoralizing to minorities. How is encouraging offensive, anti-social behavior helping them, or anyone, to “reach their full potential?” “
 Now can someone explain to me how can decriminalizing something be interpreted as an encouragement towards that something?
And what’s the use of making it a crime to urinate or to drink in public? A crime? Something that will be written into your rap sheet and follow you all your life?
Let’s imagine for a moment that you are a 19 year old who had one too many beers. And had to take a leak. A cop happens to be in the area. Now tell me what are the chances that he’ll look the other way if you’re white? And if you’re black?
Do you understand, at least now, what the ‘liberal official who sponsored this change’ meant by ‘helping the minorities reach their full potential’?
Who’s going to give a real chance to a ‘minority’ with a criminal record? Who has the time to check that his only crime was ‘public urination’? Or that he had a beer in front of his porch? Not exactly in front of his porch, because he used to live in a ‘public housing facility’ but you get the general idea…
Reality check no 1.
How about providing some places where people can relieve themselves? Porta-johns for instance? Or functional public rest-rooms in all New York subway stations?
Reality check no 2.
Under the new legislation public urination would be still considered a misdemeanor, “Cops would have discretion to issue civil or criminal summons” but “The proposal would remove the possibility of permanent criminal records for public urination and violating park rules, mostly treating them as civil offenses, along with public drinking, littering and excessive noise.”
Now I’m wondering what the author meant by “But New York’s City Council, which is so far left it almost collides with the right, is about to make it happen thanks to it’s Speaker, a Puerto Rican nationalist who supports terrorists and rejects the Pledge of Allegiance.“?
What has the Pledge of Allegiance have to do with anything? What’s the relevance of the Speaker’s ethnicity, beyond the fact that belonging to a minority increased her awareness of the way the minorities are treated by some of the law enforcement officers?
And how come a ‘supporter of terrorism’ has been elected Speaker in the first place?
What’s going on here?
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Categories Choices we make, collective identity, corruption, democracy, effective communication, Frames of mind, human rights, limited rationality, manipulation, Mutual Respect, Politically induced fragility, politics, Psychology, Rule of Law, Social justice, The kind of world we live in, yes but

“An Important Distinction: Democracy versus Republic”

January 16, 2016 //
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Our nation did not become great because our form of government was created as a socialist, communist, or any form of democracy; it was specifically created as a constitutional republic.

I’ve been trying for some time now to figure out the origin of this huge confusion.

Yesterday, during an exchange on this subject, a FB friend of mine used this link to prove her argument:

“An Important Distinction: Democracy versus Republic“

 

And there it was, laying in plain sight, THE explanation I was too blind to find it by myself.

“It is important to keep in mind the difference between a Democracy and a Republic, as dissimilar forms of government.“

Come again?!?

Since when democracy has become a “form” of government?
If you want to discuss about forms of government you have basically two: republican and monarchic. In a republic the head of state is changed from time to time, sometimes in a more or less democratic manner, while in a monarchy it is customary for that head of state to be replaced only after his death and by a person which has already been known for quite a while.

That was not what you had in mind? You meant what kind of interaction exists between the governed and the government?
‘Cause only in this realm we may speak about the difference between democracy – where the population has a say about its fate – and dictatorship – where the rulers don’t give a damn about the wishes of those who allow themselves to be ruled from above.

Don’t believe me?
Then please consider the British Empire. It is headed – nominally – by a monarch who has had no power for the last two hundred years or so and has NO – absolutely NO – constitution. Yet its democratic traditions can be traced down to the Magna Carta – a ‘compact’ signed in 1215 between the King (John of England) and his ‘free subjects’.

I used ‘ ‘ around ‘free subjects’ to highlight the fact that this is an oxymoron AND that the basic function of Magna Carta was to solve that oxymoron.
It actually doesn’t matter much what was written in that compact. The very fact that the King – erstwhile considered an almost divine person who until then had absolute power over his subjects and the land under his control – sat down at the same table with some of his erstwhile subjects and by his own signature conceded that they were “free” (‘all free men have a right to justice and a fair trial‘) signifies the dawn of a new kind of interaction between those at the no longer opposed ends of the society.

OK, things didn’t evolve smoothly. The Magna Carta wasn’t enforced in earnest until a lot later but still, the bird was out of the cage.

My point being that until we understand that the difference between ‘republic’ and ‘democracy’ is the same as the one between apples and oranges – and that we should stop comparing them – we are stuck.

So, am I somewhat implying that John Adams was wrong?

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Not at all. All I’m saying is that he used a poetic license and that the quote is not only incomplete but also used in a misleading way.

“I do not say that democracy has been more pernicious on the whole, and in the long run, than monarchy or aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy; but while it lasts, it is more bloody than either. … Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty. When clear prospects are opened before vanity, pride, avarice, or ambition, for their easy gratification, it is hard for the most considerate philosophers and the most conscientious moralists to resist the temptation. Individuals have conquered themselves. Nations and large bodies of men, never.”

OK, he made the same confusion between ‘forms’ of government and social relationships between the people and those in power, only this is an understandable mistake. But, to his merit, he made it amply clear that it is the very “passions” of the people that “when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty”!

This is precisely the job that every constitution – not only the republican ones – is called to fulfill. Or a powerful enough tradition – please remember that the British ‘Empire’ has no constitution to this day.

Coming back to the notion of democracy I must add that it might not work properly, no matter how well written the constitution that presides over the process, unless the people who uses this form of collective decision making entertains the proper mental and moral attitude.
If the entire society isn’t permeated by enough mutual respect among its members then what Adams had warned us against is about to happen – regardless of any constitution. Or even under the cloak of the existing one.

You see, proper democracy works because it creates a frame where all those interested in the matter – all stake-holders – have the opportunity to express their grievances. This way the society is able to find out what doesn’t work properly and to take the appropriate measures.
But if there is not enough mutual respect going on around, things may become ugly, eventually. Just as Adams told us. When mutual respect weans out we stop caring about anything else but our own personae and ‘passions’ are no longer ‘checked’.
Society no longer acts like an organism and people become divided into smaller ‘mobs’ whose leaders fight each-other – sometimes under a democratic disguise – for followers.

That’s when democracy ceases to be a venue for a civilized debate about ideas and become an arena for the bloodiest sport of them all. Politician-ism.

That’s when some people start thinking like this.
democracy, bikes

Or even like this:
jbs_3

Let me tell you something.
I’ve been living under a republican regime for all my life. Only for the first 30 years that republic was a communist one. It even had a constitution – and at the first glance it wasn’t such a bad one. But believe me, you don’t want to experience that kind of republic.

What you really want is true democracy, the one where people respect each-other. It doesn’t matter if that happens in a republic or in a kingdom. It is enough that it works, and for that to happen it is enough for the people to ‘check their passions’.

And mind you!  Whenever 51% of the voters band together to confiscate the bikes that the others have acquired through honest means, that’s no longer democracy but mob rule. Something that could very easily degenerate into communism. That’s what you want to avoid, not bona fide democracy.

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Categories authoritarianism, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, corruption, democracy, effective communication, Frames of mind, human rights, limited rationality, Mutual Respect, politics, Psychology, Rule of Law, Social justice, The kind of world we live in, Transparency, Trust

“Property”.

January 1, 2016 //
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For some time now I’ve been wondering how come so many people who define themselves as being Christians – “Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.“, Matt 19:24 – are so passionately defending the very concept of (private)”property”.

Could it be that Marx was right after all: “Private property is the result of alienated labor.” ?!? And so many of us have been wrong for so long?

“The right to private property is the social-political principle that adult human beings may not be prohibited or prevented by anyone from acquiring, holding and trading (with willing parties) valued items not already owned by others. Such a right is, thus, unalienable and, if in fact justified, is supposed to enjoy respect and legal protection in a just human community.”

Trying to understand the source of this dichotomy I adopted a two pronged strategy. First I looked up the word itself and then I tried to deepen my understanding of the entire concept.

It’s absolutely obvious that ‘property’ comes from ‘proper’.
‘Proper’, in its turn, has two basic meanings: ‘fit for use‘ and ‘pertaining to one individual‘. The first one has evolved into ‘propriety’, “the state or quality of being correct and proper” while the second has become ‘property’, “thing owned“.

So, do all these etymological arguments make it any easier for us to accept that respecting each others’ right to private property is what introduced a certain degree of functionality in the human society?

‘But aren’t you contradicting yourself?
At the beginning of your post you suggested that ‘property’ might not be as good as advertised and now you say that the ‘right to private property’ is ‘good for you’?
Will you make up your mind, for Christ’s sake?’

Now, that I’ve reached the conceptual stage of my analyses, I must bring to your attention the fact that a right is nothing but an opportunity while each (piece of) property is a thing – even those  which are not of a ‘substantial’ nature. ‘Intellectual property’, for instance, is a ‘measurable thing’ even if you cannot put your finger on it while the ‘right to intellectual (or any other kind of) property’ is (an infinite) something which patiently waits for (a rightful) somebody to make (proper) use of it.

Maybe this is what Christ tried to tell us in the first place. That it’s not property itself that stands between us and our salvation but our (improper) attitude towards it. That it’s not the object of our property that is the problem but how we make use of our right to private property.
After all Christ told the “young rich man” “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” (Matt 19:21). ‘Go sell, give and THEN follow me’, not ‘come help me ABOLISH the very right to private property’, as Marx used to preach to his followers.

To understand the difference between what Christ and Marx said about this subject let’s see how these two relate to the notion of ‘Man’.

In Christ’s book God took a lump of dirt and ‘made Man in His own image’ while in Marx’s narrow materialistic vision “it is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but, on the contrary, their social existence that determines their consciousness.”

Basically both of them start with the same ‘materiel’ – the mundane ‘star dust’ that Mendeleev distributed throughout his table – but what a difference at the end of the ‘assembly line’!

adamevebefore

Being made ‘in His Own image’ not only means that all Men (and Women) are created equal but also that each of them shares in His Divine Nature. Hence the origin of our free will, of our ability (‘right’, opportunity) to be saved. Compare this to how Marx described the human society:

“The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.

The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.

The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on ideas or principles that have been invented, or discovered, by this or that would-be universal reformer.

They merely express, in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing class struggle, from a historical movement going on under our very eyes. The abolition of existing property relations is not at all a distinctive feature of communism.”

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As somebody who has lived for 30 years under communist rule let me translate this from ‘Newspeak‘ into plain English:
‘History suggests that those who figure out the inner workings of this world  have, from time to time, the opportunity to take over the show. Now is one of those moments. The ‘fat cats’ have been so greedy lately that the regular people are growling under the very heavy yoke that has been placed on their shoulders.  That’s why we have the opportunity to unsettle the ‘old’ from their positions and to plant our fat asses in their comfortable chairs.
And the first thing we must do in order to achieve that goal is to abolish the right to private property. People are so fed up with what was going on lately that they’ll go along. They have grown to hate so much the ‘greedy plutocrats’ that most of them won’t notice that in the (revolutionary) process they’ll lose the very last shrouds of personal autonomy they still have. Without the right to dispose of the results of their own labor they’ll be at our mercy’.

Who was right between the two?

Well… Both, unfortunately.

The communists did run the show, at least for a while. And we all know to which results.
On the other hand it seems that in the longer run miss-using the right to private property is indeed a powerful drawback. The already too long sequence of economic crises caused, ultimately, by nothing else but our own greed has indeed given birth to a generalized state of psychological malaise.

I don’t know about what’s gonna happen in the next world – or if it exists at all – but I’m sure that if we don’t learn, fast, how to use, properly, the right to private property things will become too hot for our own good in this one.

The only one we are sure about.

Further reading.
During my research for this post I found this very interesting take on the same subject:

“Zwolinksi argues that libertarians are right to support private property, but also that private property is more complicated than we sometimes think.”

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Categories 1989 and the Global Financial Crisises., authoritarianism, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, corruption, Frames of mind, human rights, limited rationality, Money as goal, Mutual Respect, politics, Psychology, religion, Rule of Law, Social justice, The kind of world we live in, Trust

Saudi, not Islamic, justice in action.

November 30, 2015 //
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“A woman who was violently gang raped in Saudi Arabia has been sentenced to 200 lashes and six months in jail after being found guilty of indecency and talk to the media.”
If we want to understand what’s going on there we have realize that we are dealing with a absolute dictatorship which uses Islam as a crutch, exactly as the soviet style dictators in the so called ‘popular democracies’ were using ‘scientific materialism’ – their term for the communist doctrine.
The job of the Saudi ‘justices’ is to maintain ‘the order’ as they see fit – the kingdom as it is and the Saudi family in power, not at all to dispense justice as we know it.
In order to do that they use, ‘creativelly’, the most powerfull tool they have at their disposal: the faith shared by the majority of the inhabitants of the kindom.
It even doesn’t matter for them that in the process they are ruining any chance of a decent life for the majority of their conationals.
At first their only goal was to retain the graces of the ruling family – just as minions everywhere behave in the presence of a powerfull figure.
In time things have evolved in a malignant manner. I’m afraid that nowadays the House of Saud itself has become the prisoner of the erstwhile minions, just as every dictator eventually becomes the prisoner of his guards.
“Please note: The rape victim and her male companion were pardoned by the late King Abdullah in Dec 2007.“
And this is a comment that can be read at the bottom of the article I was quoting:
“I’m a bit confused by this story. At the bottom it says that the rape victim and her companion were pardoned by King Abdulla in 2006. Is this a new development? Wasn’t she pardoned? (Not withstanding the idiocy of the Saudi laws, I don’t understand what’s actually happening here….)”
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Categories altruism, authoritarianism, Choices we make, collective identity, corruption, Frames of mind, gender roles, human rights, Mutual Respect, Politically induced fragility, politics, Psychology, Rule of Law, Social justice, The kind of world we live in

Diesel-gate

October 1, 2015 //
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OK, VW couldn’t figure out how to balance the ever stricter polution norms with the public demand for simultaneously more powerfull  and cheaper to run/cleaner diesel engines so they decided to fake it. And it seems they were not the only ones to do that.

This development poses some questions.

– What were they hoping for? Did they really think that something like this could have gone unnoticed for ever?
– What were the regulators thinking? That it’s possible to solve pollution by simply changing some norms?
“Moore’s Law” (“overall processing power for computers will double every two years” has been valid, for a while, in a very young technological field.
Internal combustion engines have been around for more than a century, they are rather old. Everybody knows that it is hard to teach new tricks to an old horse yet we tried to clean exhaust gases well beyond the reasonable instead of radically changing the technology. Computers seemed to be able to help, but only for a while…

Could this be just another ‘application’ of the Peter Principle? “Managers rise to the level of their incompetence?” GM was, sometime ago, the No. 1 Automobile Company. It recently went through a painful bailout. Toyota, the next champion – its methods were studied at the most prestigious management schools – was hugely embarrassed lately by a technological failure.
OK, you might argue that what went on at VW was an ‘upfront’ fraud, not at all an ‘honest’ mistake. Indeed but still a mistake, even if a potentially catastrophic one. Mainly for the shareholders, of course, but also for the rest of us.
A certain dose of distrust towards established authority is healthy for the society, as a whole, while too many proofs of the established figureheads behaving callously generate a diffused disrespect for the law which is really bad for everybody.

In fact what happened at VW is exactly what people tend to do when they do not see any way out of a certain situation.
When they don’t really think that anything bad can happen to them, regardless of whatever they do.
Or both.

So. Is there anything to be learned from here? Except for the oldest lesson history keeps teaching us: ‘reaching the top is easy, staying there is the really tough job’?
Maybe.
Toyota says that transparency, “both inside and outside the company“, is a good way towards avoiding this kind of mistakes. “You have to be able to listen to your customers, not just hear them.“

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Categories authoritarianism, Choices we make, Money as goal, Mutual Respect, Psychology, Rule of Law, The kind of world we live in, Transparency
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