Read what brittanica.com has to say about each of them. Just click their names.
Then tell me why are we, any of the democratic countries in the world, still making business with any of the dictatorial regimes still plaguing the Earth? Why do we continue to harbor any of the yachts owned by corrupt oligarchs? Or their money?
The first reaction, for the ‘average person’, is to ‘love’ this post.
The ‘normal’ reaction, for the ‘fact-checkers’ among us, is to ask ourselves:
Is this actually true?
Heidegger has something really interesting to say about the subject. I’m gonna put it succinctly and bluntly.
None of us knows everything about anything. Not even about the most trivial thing. Because the very nature of our knowledge and of our manner of expressing it – language, none of us is able to ‘put together’ even the simplest ‘absolute’ truth.
Hence, according to Heidegger, we have as many truths as there are people interested on the subject.
‘Then the African Proverb is a ‘lie’?’
Nope.
The African Proverb pictured above is a meta-truth. Heidegger’s truths, as well as those discussed by Popper, all converge towards the ‘absolute’ one. As each of the ‘people interested on the subject’ dig deeper, each of them gets closer to the kernel. Probably none of them will ever get exactly ‘there’ but their respective positions will become ever closer.
Meanwhile, there’s nothing like a ‘meta-lie’. As we had ‘truth’ and ‘meta-truth’. A lie, any lie, is also a meta-truth.
We know – we are under the impression, more exactly, that we’ll never reach ‘the absolute truth’. About any subject, let alone the ‘absolute-absolute’ one. But we can conceive that there is one. Somewhere. At least about individual points of interest.
Do we even have the concept of an absolute lie? What would that be? How could that even be expressed?
This being the reason for some of us being able to come up with so ‘plausible’ lies. They put so much truth into their words that it becomes harder and harder for us to notice that the ‘proposed conclusion’ is misleading.
That, in fact, they are lying through their teeth.
The fact that too many self styled liberals hold on to their ill begotten wealth while distributing a lot of quilt doesn’t obliterate the fact that very few of the ‘self believed’ conservatives share much of their wealth… while seldom admitting any responsibility for what had happened in the past. And continues to this day, in very insidious ways.
As for any attempt at a radical transformation of both economy and society – as in making them actually free for all us – white, black and all the other hues… forget it.
NB. All of us will eventually lose. Everything. Things are becoming too lopsided.
What does ‘worst’ mean in this circumstances? Until now, I was under the impression that ‘critics’ were good. That in a democratic setting, the critics are those who pull at our sleeves when we go astray. That the critics are those who bring us back to the straight and narrow. How can ‘critics’ become ‘bad’? Let alone “worst”…
As many of you already know, I grew up under a communist regime. In Ceausescu’s Romania. That was were I learned to decipher messages transmitted using the ‘wooden language’. Or, in Orwell’s parlance, “newspeak”…
Here’s what I make of Elon Musk’s words:
‘From now on, the “digital town square where matters vital to the future of mankind are debated” is mine. Mine to make what I see fit of it. To “make better” under my own terms. And if you don’t like it, keep ‘barking’. There’s nothing you can do to me. I’m going to make Twitter ‘private’. A.k.a. free from any ‘market interference’. Furthermore, your ‘barking’ will only increase the traffic. Hence the money I’ll be making on the back of your ‘free speech’.’
Twenty four years ago, in 1998, I spent a fortnight visiting Tunisia. I still remember the discussions I had with my wife. In our native Romania, we – the country, not the two of us – already had a couple of malls – which were quite new for us. Each time that we entered a Tunisian suk – also known as a bazaar, we felt like strolling through a mall.
In the Middle Ages, a suk was the property of the local sheik. Even if each ‘stall’ was operated as an individual business, the whole thing was run at the whim of the local ruler. According to the laws of the land, but still at the mercy of the landlord.
Each mall, the building, is owned by a company. And, the business, operated by another. Usually by a chain. Hence the ‘freedom’ of the individual businesses ‘housed’ by each mall is ‘defined’ by the rules put in place by the owners and the operators. Under the laws and by laws valid for the physical location of the building but still at the ‘mercy’ of those who own/operate the mall.
From now on, the “digital town square where matters vital to the future of the mankind” are ‘freely debated’ by us will be owned and operated by yet another one of Elon Musk’s enterprises. Who, for now at least, promises to welcome his “worst” critics, whatever that might mean.
And an after thought. A way shorter translation of Musk’s words might be: ‘Freedom of speech means being able to say ‘those who criticize me are bad people”. With the corollary that some are worse than others…
Homo Sapiens Sapiens is a species of cultured animals simultaneously capable to place a highly sophisticated IR telescope on an orbit around their native planet, the Earth, and to reduce a country to a pile of rubble.
Interestingly enough, the technology used to accomplish both, the rocket, has been imagined a little more than a century ago. By, among others, Herman Oberth.
He had built his first rocket as a school project, when he was 14. About then he also came up with the concept of a multistaged rocket. Lack of resources convinced him to study medicine. After only two years he was drafted into the German Imperial Army to serve during WWI. Initially as a foot soldier and then moved to a medical unit. In that period he found enough “spare time” to conduct experiments which had later enabled him to present “designs of a missile using liquid propellant with a range of 290 km to Hermann von Stein, the Prussian Minister of War.“ During WWII he had worked at Peenemunde, were he was awarded a decoration for bravery during an aerial attack, and then at the German WASAG organization developing solid fueled anti-aircraft rockets.
Between the wars he had contributed to a series of experiments in Germany. For one of which he was helped by an 18 years student. Werner von Braun.
Humans, as a species, have harbored the same ‘amount’ of brain for the last 200 000 years. That was when the Homo Sapiens had arrived. But that brain had produced something only about 70 000 years ago. That’s why the second Sapiens was added, by us, to the name of those living since that time. To underline the fact that humans had become ‘fully’ conscious only ‘recently’. That having a big brain was not enough. That becoming fully human also implied self awareness. Wisdom…
Apparently that’s not enough. After experiencing, first hand, the horrors of WWI such a creative mind as Herman Oberth’s was still capable of building offensive weapons for Hitler. After experiencing, first hand, the horrors of WWII such a creative mind as Herman Oberth’s was still able of joining an extreme right political party…
After experiencing, first hand, the horrors of WWII at the hands of the nazi, the modern day, post communist, Russia is capable of inflicting the same kind of horrors to their close cousins, the Ukrainians.
When are we going to become Sapiens enough to stop this insanity? To concentrate our creativity exclusively towards ‘elevating’ purposes?
It was shared on a FB-wall and somebody had commented that “Institutionally they are not your friends.”
My ‘jerked’ comment was:
“Institutionally, cops should be your ‘last resort’ friends.
The fact that too many of them are not, and the fact that too many of us consider them, as a category, to be unfriendly, is proof of how dysfunctional our society has become.
Cops used to be ‘unfriendly’ when I grew up. In communist Romania. When the cops were used, by the communist state, to preserve their power. The communist power over the entire society.
In the free countries of today, the cops are the sole barrier separating our persona and private property from the hands of the criminals.
Without their presence…
Or, putting it the other way around, we have but the cops we deserve. Train and motivate them properly and you’ll have good cops!”
At a second glance, I had an inkling. Is it possible for the whole thing to be nothing more than a ‘marketing campaign’? Organized by the only people interested in increasing litigation?
Interested in altering the relative stability of our political establishment?
The police, by properly performing their duties – the world over, not only in the communist countries, contribute to the political stability of those respective countries. For the police to properly perform their duties, there must to exist a proper trust between the general population and the police itself. The population must see the police as their friends of last resort while the police must see the general public as both their employer and their responsibility. The population must be open in their relationship with the police while the police must treat respectfully every individual, including the suspects and the convicts.
In the communist regime I grew up, the police couldn’t fulfill its duties. Exactly between there was a ‘trust’ barrier between the general public and the police. Between the oppressed and the armed hand of the oppressor. The communist regime I grew up under, in Romania, had eventually collapsed. Exactly because of the malignant mistrust between the general public – The People, and the government. The police being nothing but a portion of the government itself.
Who is interested in the collapse of the democratic regimes? Who is mostly interested in wedging apart the government from The People?
Putin advisers ‘too afraid to tell him the truth’ on Ukraine: US official “Putin didn’t even know his military was using and losing conscripts in Ukraine, showing a clear breakdown in the flow of accurate information to the Russian president,” the official said.
There are two ‘things’ which collide here.
Dictators tend to drive away really competent people and those remaining tend to put the entire blame on the ‘guy on top’.
As many of you already know, I grew up in the communist Romania. Ruled by Nicolae Ceausescu, the dictator who ended up being shot on Christmas Day, 1989.
At 28, I was already familiar with the notion of ‘yes-people’. Decision makers who ruled our daily lives were surrounded by people who provided the ‘right’ answers, effectively isolating the decision makers from the reality. This ‘development’ being the fundamental explanation for how all dictatorial regimes, including the communist ones, ended up in abject failure. For ‘how’, not for ‘why’ – but this is another issue.
After Ceausescu was toppled, I was absolutely flabbergasted when I first heard
‘He didn’t know what was going on. Had his close advisers kept him in touch with the real situation, he would have taken the proper decisions to rectify things’
Really?!?
Who had selected his ‘close advisers’?!?
Who prevented him from asking ‘a second opinion’? From stepping out of his office and ….
Who, step by step, had ‘created’ the ‘atmosphere’ which had driven all those unwilling to lick where ‘he’ had spat to flee, living ‘him’ surrounded by sycophants?
Sycophants attempting, after Ceausescu had been toppled, to pile all the blame on his shoulders…
I’m afraid we are witnessing a replay, with Putin as the lead character.
Russian films were ‘readily’ available. Some of them were good. Really good.
Besides going to the movies, I was an avid reader. I must confess that the ‘great Russian classics’ didn’t impress me. No special reason. But I did read a lot of Russian literature. About the partizans fighting the Nazis during WWII, about the communists fighting for freedom – for their version of freedom, in the early ‘920-ies, some Sci-Fi novels about the happy lives the Russians were going to live in the next millennium.
This morning I was listening to the radio. The news bulletin was, of course, about what’s going on in Ukraine.
A refugee, a woman who had fled accompanied by her young daughter – her husband and her son remained at home to fight, was speaking in her native language. I know that Ukrainian is different from Russian. But for my ears they sound very much the same.
Imagine what I felt.
I grew up associating the Russian language with the struggle for freedom. With the promise of a better world.
As I learned things… my understanding of history had become more ‘nuanced’. The Soviet Union had collapsed after Afghanistan. The regime finally got what was coming to it. As Putin crushed Chechnya, killed Litvinenko, ‘peacefully’ occupied Crimea … things were no longer ‘nuanced’…
But this!
They say that an image is worth a thousand words… I’m no longer sure about that!
There is so much violence paraded in front of our yes that our ‘retina’ has become calloused.
Hearing that brave woman trying to convey her tragedy in a language I associated in my childhood with the promise of liberty really did it for me.
This time the oppressor itself was speaking Russian. Russian soldiers were doing the very same thing the Russian people had experienced during the WWII. And they were doing it to their ‘brothers’.
Russian soldiers were turning Kyiv into rubble! Kyiv, the birth place of the Rus-ian people…
All this conveyed in a language which, for me, sounds very much the same as the language I had associated in my childhood with the quest for freedom.
I wept.
Hoping the Kremlin will learn to understand tears. Maybe not the present ruler but at least the stony walls…
Nothing special inside but it illustrates well enough the point I’m trying to make.
At first, Putin’s words are summarized and then proven ‘wrong’. Misleading. Or plain false. In the next section of the article, the author – Paul Kirby, like many more before him, attempts to divine what Putin will do. Starting from the same words which have just been proven false and/or misleading.
?!?
No, the author is not ‘dense’. He simply does what he was trained to do.
We, here in the land of democracy, understand language as a medium for negotiation. And negotiation as an exchange where we let our needs be known, in earnest. As an exchange where we ‘trade’ information with the goal of finding the best mutually acceptable solution for whatever problem we attempt to solve. In this sense, a negotiation is a form of cooperation. And compromise is something which both sides find beneficial.
For people conversant in ‘dictatorian’, ‘compromise’ is something to be shoved down the throat of the weaker side. The bigger the power differential, the harder to swallow becomes the ‘compromise’.
Doesn’t make much sense? To us, democrats? Because we know that shoving things down the throat of now weaker people doesn’t work on the longer time frame?
‘Assuming’ is the worst thing a negotiator may make.
We keep assuming that dictators are rational. Even worse, that they follow the same ‘ratio’ as we do. That we – as in we and them, see the same world and have ‘slightly’ different goals. And express those different goals in the same manner. Using the same kind of language.
We are wrong.
We, the democratically minded, are trained – conditioned is a truer word, to consider ‘the other’ as being equivalent to us. At least some of the others, but that’s another discussion. We actually ‘know’, in our bones, that we cannot ‘do’ anything by ourselves. That we exist only in cooperation with those around us. That everything we have ever accomplished was the result of a common effort.
People conditioned in dictatorial regimes see things rather differently. They don’t cooperate, they just obey. Their existence does not stem from the common effort but from following orders. Language is not at all a medium where information is being passed between equivalent agents but a two way conduit. Orders are flowing from top to bottom and acknowledgments crawl from bottom to the top.
‘And what about ‘information’?!? How does it travel among those people?’
Piecemeal. Exclusively on a ‘need to know’ basis. Nobody ‘volunteers’ any information unless expressly asked about it by a superior.
This is why dictatorships end up crumbling under their own weight.
That’s why we don’t understand, for real, what Putin attempts to communicate. That’s why he is extremely annoyed right know.
Putin no longer understands what’s going on. Let aside the fact that nobody around him dares to volunteer any information – which would be contrary to what Putin wants to hear. My point being that Putin had been accustomed to having his way.
I’m not going to enumerate all the things he had done. Things we should have reacted against… As in ‘reacted’, not meowed meekly. As a consequence, he had grown accustomed to shoving things down our throats…
Suddenly, we have stopped swallowing! Without giving him a ‘reasonable’ reason… A reason he could understand!
Do you remember what I’ve told you? A few moments ago? That dictators don’t care about those who are weaker? Nor about the long term consequences of their decisions? That dictators are concerned exclusively with their own survival?
Ever since Putin had ordered his army to invade Ukraine, I keep hearing about what drove Putin to do it. About his dreams of rebuilding the old Russian Glory. About his drive to become the most important Russian personality. About NATO ‘pushing itself’ closer and closer to Russia’s borders. About…
The map above is the last argument I came by. And the last straw… The person who posted the map doesn’t agree with Putin. Not at all. But cannot ‘forget’ the fact that at one time Kiev did belong to Russia.
Well… I’ll be blunt about it!
This person, along with many others, tries to explain what is going on in a rational manner. They attempt to find an objective reason for a subjective decision.
Putin is flattening out Ukraine because he is afraid.
The Soviet Union had survived 1956 Hungary, 1968 Prague, and 1980 Solidarnosc. All of these ‘movements’ had been, somehow, quashed. Dealt with.
The Soviet Union had, finally, crumbled under its own weight after Afghanistan. After a people didn’t cave in. After a people, an entire people, found it in themselves how to resist. How to say no!
Putin had successfully quashed Yeltsin’s oligarchs, the Chechen rebellion, the first Orange revolution, dealt with Saakashvili, helped Lukashenko save his throne and put a lid upon the recent Kazahstani attempt at making a small step towards democracy. And was contemplating the Western Europe planing to give up burning gas and oil.
‘His’ gas and oil…
He had to do something. Otherwise ‘his’ people were going to throw him out.
If Ukraine was allowed to continue on the self determination path, who was going to stop the Russians from following suit?
So yes, the circumstances described by that map are valid. But it is Putin who bears the entire responsibility for what’s going on. And for creating the circumstances in which ‘next’ is going to happen.
Can you imagine what’s going on in these children’s souls?
nicichiarasa 