The standing girl does it for what she considers to be right. The ones taking a knee, do it for what they consider to be right. Then all play, side by side, as a team.
We, the ‘spectators’, take sides. And tear the society apart in the process.
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Well, all knowledge is, ultimately, false. Or, at least, incomplete.
Bearing this in mind, we understand there is no such thing as false knowledge. Only people unwilling to adapt their understanding of things to the newly discovered facts… In this sense, it’s not the false knowledge which is dangerous, it’s those who worship ‘self made idols’! Those who are so convinced that what they know is enough. That their understanding of the world is so right and so complete that it has reached ‘perfection’. That their Weltanschauung is, hence, ‘sacred’. ‘Worship-able’, if you’ll allow this word.
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As much as I love writing, I do have to eat. And to provide for my family. Earning money takes time. If you’d like me to write more, and on a more regular basis, hit the button. Your contribution will be appreciated!
As much as I love writing, I do have to eat. And to provide for my family. Earning money takes time. If you’d like me to write more, and on a more regular basis, hit the button. Your contribution will be appreciated!
One of my FB friends shared this meme and created the ‘opportunity’ for an interesting conversation.
“Say the same about the antics of parading gay pride activists…if you dare.”
I couldn’t resist: “Gay activists parading peacefully are no threat for anybody. ‘Activists’ who actually whip other ‘activists’ during a parade… Same thing here. You really want/need to make your point? OK, take your 9mm Beretta for a walk. But an AR-15?!? Common…”
I have the ‘bad’ habit of proofreading my comments before hitting enter…
That was when it hit me!
‘Is this for real? Was the guy actually ‘open carrying’? Was it staged? Could it be that the guy just bought it? Had it repaired? Or any other situation, but trying to make a fool of himself?’
OK, open carrying a gun in a public setting is… an exaggeration. For me, at least. But this is besides the point.
The point being that we’ve reached the stage where appearance is more important than substance. The point from which we no longer carry guns for protection but to make a point. The bigger the ‘gun’, the more important, for us, the point we’re trying to make.
The more preposterous the meme, the more convincing we feel ourselves to be…
I’m afraid FB got us where it needs us to be!
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The above phrase makes a lot of sense. Every beating which had become ‘public knowledge’ does make life ‘easier’ to those men who are known to be ‘peaceful’. In a sense…
On the other hand, every beating which becomes public knowledge but the beater isn’t chastised for his actions makes life harder for everybody. For women. The beaten ones are discouraged from making their plight public. Those not beaten yet are taught that being beaten isn’t such a big deal. For men. Those who already do it, feel no compulsion to stop. Those who would do it feel encouraged to ‘experiment’. Those who would like to do it but cannot – for whatever reasons, feel frustrated. Those who abhor it feel ashamed for belonging to the same gender. And discouraged from doing anything about it. For the entire species. Violence become normalized. Socially accepted. Expected, even… Mothers and fathers don’t teach their sons that this is an unacceptable behavior while teaching their daughters to not be ‘surprised’ if it happens. All the more so when children witness their mother being abused while nobody does anything about it. Not even the abused mother… Not even when the abusive husband abuses the children along with the mother…
So what ‘awards’ are we talking about here? What’s the real meaning of “All men benefit from the actions of violent men”? Or the real meaning of the phrase is that there is no such thing as a really good man?
Another logical ‘extension’ would be ‘All people benefit from the actions of thieves. This is why locks are being built and the police is being paid’. For humans are, by definition, nothing but sinners… right?
How about doing something about the whole situation instead of peddling in double edged memes? Because the only explanation for women – along with children and peaceful men, being abused is the lack of social reaction whenever a beating – or any other form of abuse, becomes public knowledge.
Respecting other people’s opinions means respectfully telling them how wrong they are – when they are, of course, instead of shouting, in their faces, about how stupid they are – in that precise moment.
In this sense, this meme is, actually, inflammatory. Nobody who has paid some attention in high-school – and has maintained a working eye-sight, will ever opine about something like this. Only those who 1. don’t see/know the difference between a ‘factor’ and a ‘base’ and/or 2. don’t care enough to pay real attention – and want to get it over with, would fall prey to this ‘ruse’.
Using this example to demand ‘stop the antiscience movement’ is, in fact, disrespectful! And counterproductive. It will only deepen the chasm between those who believe in science and those who see the ‘science peddlers’ as being arrogant know-alls.
According to a certain George Herbert, 1640, “For him who will, ways are not wanting“. According to those who have spent their lives observing natural phenomena, ‘Where ever there are enough resources present, something will happen’.
Morally speaking, there’s a huge difference between those two. When we need to apportion merit – or blame, we do need to know whether something was a natural occurrence or the consequence of somebody’s actions.
But following a more practical approach… people would better prepare themselves to deal with the aftermath of that something taking place, regardless of what/who had caused it.
Let me put it in a simpler manner. An investigator will/should do everything in their power to determine the cause of a fire. But that will be possible only after the blaze has been put down by the fire-fighters.
I expect most of those people have been jolted by some recent developments pertaining to their field of expertise…
In a sense, this is a ‘natural’ development. We’ve been purposely transforming tools into weapons since … before we parted ways with our closest cousins, the chimpanzees.
But it’s for the first time that we’ve developed weapons powerful enough to kill every human being on Earth. And capable of achieving their given task without human assistance.
What next? How about a weapon capable of assuming a task? Capable of consciously determining – through diligent AI/ML computations, that a certain ‘target’ ‘needs’ to be ‘taken care off’. Which weapon, being a ‘sentient machine’, will come with the built in right to not be turned off.
How did we get here? Stay tuned.
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Yet we perceive it as being ‘exterior’. As including the others but not ‘me’. ‘I’ determine what’s real and what not, hence I’m above ‘mere’ reality.
We perceive ourselves as being distinct from the (rest of the) reality yet each of us continuously shares substance and energy with it. We breathe, eat, drink, excrete. We bask in the sun whenever we can during winter and use wind and water to cool ourselves down during hot summer days.
We feel overwhelmed whenever we think about it yet we constantly chip away at it. We build shelters and roads, we grow crops and raise animals, we dig up minerals and transform them into consumer goods. In time, we had displaced most of the ‘Nature’ we have evolved in and replaced it with ‘Man Made’.
Berger and Luckmann had famously – yet somewhat convolutedly, demonstrated that ‘reality’ was a (social) construct. That what we know about the reality and what we have built based on that knowledge are the consequences of our common effort.
What I’m interested in is the ‘complicated’ manner in which we, each of us, interact with ‘reality’.
We grow up learning about reality. From those around us. During this process, we simultaneously accumulate knowledge and develop the instrument with which we gauge reality. Our consciences. Along with this process we also change, together with our teachers and siblings, the very reality we learn about.
Interesting, isn’t it?
We depend, for our dear life, on something we don’t fully understand. We extract sustenance from it and throw back at it the results of our cravings. Since our individual knowledge is severely limited, we depend on others – our peers, to complement our understanding of what’s going on around us. Yet in our attempts to fulfill our cravings we mislead some of our siblings.
Reality has been shaped by life from the very first moment. Only in those times, the process was driven exclusively by ‘needs’. The living things of yore did change their reality only they were doing exclusively what they had to in order to survive. Nowadays, while the rest of the living world continue to follow the ‘time proven traditions’, we – the conscient, and presumably rational, humans, transform the reality according to our wishes. While we don’t exactly understand what’s going on….
Then how come we’re so snug about the whole thing?
And what’s the meaning of the Adenium Obesum I used to illustrate this post? I live in Romania. The Desert Rose is a native of the Arabian Desert. Yet one grows, and flowers, in my home. Only because I afford to heat my ‘shelter’ during winter. And to spend some of my time caring for it. I don’t really need that plant in order to survive. Yet I’ve changed the reality around me to such an extent that that plant is able to thrive. Almost 4000 km straight North from its native desert…. I’ve been taking care of it for some 4 years now. And I’ve learned only 5 minutes ago that its sap is toxic… What was I telling you about us not being fully aware of our actions?
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As much as I love writing, I do have to eat. And to provide for my family. Earning money takes time. If you’d like me to write more, and on a more regular basis, hit the button. Your contribution will be appreciated!
As much as I love writing, I do have to eat. And to provide for my family. Earning money takes time. If you’d like me to write more, and on a more regular basis, hit the button. Your contribution will be appreciated!
One of the hardest decisions an agent gets to make is to choose between
and
Otherwise put, are we to allow evolution to proceed?
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As much as I love writing, I do have to eat. And to provide for my family. Earning money takes time. If you’d like me to write more, and on a more regular basis, hit the button. Your contribution will be appreciated!
The whole thing raises a poignant question. We have a business here. The sporting tournaments live by selling advertising space. To do that, they need to grab our attention. Given the insistence with which the organizers insist that the athletes have to attend the press conferences, which is the main attention grabber? The ‘athletic prowess’ itself or the ‘big talk’ that follows the actual ‘sports meeting’?
The market had become free. Free for more and more people to search for new ways to meet their needs. This freedom had allowed the market to become efficient enough for more and more people to be able to satisfy some of their wishes, on top of most of their needs.
Agora had become free. So free that politicians had to solve more and more of the real problems encountered by the society at large. Life had become so free that states had become prosperous.
And more and more of the people were happy!
Now, the market is so free that more and more people have started to search for ‘really’ new ways to meet their wishes. Eventually, they came to be known as ‘financial engineers’. The market is no longer the place where people meet to satisfy their needs but the place where some of them accrue huge sums of money while more and more of the rest find it harder and harder to survive.
The Agora is also at its freest. ‘Political marketeers’ have taken over from the ‘the old school’ – and ‘real’ politics have been replaced with ‘give the people what they want’. Political life is no longer about solving problems. It has become a relentless quest for power. Keeping things ‘afloat’ is no longer THE goal, only a cost.
Is this sustainable?
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As much as I love writing, I do have to eat. And to provide for my family. Earning money takes time. If you’d like me to write more, and on a more regular basis, hit the button. Your contribution will be appreciated! Another very efficient way to help would be to share my posts.
As much as I love writing, I do have to eat. And to provide for my family. Earning money takes time. If you’d like me to write more, and on a more regular basis, hit the button. Your contribution will be appreciated!
As much as I love writing, I do have to eat. And to provide for my family. Earning money takes time. If you’d like me to write more, and on a more regular basis, hit the button. Your contribution will be appreciated!
nicichiarasa 