Mult mai frică decât mi-a fost la începutul pandemiei.
Atunci a fost vorba despre un simplu virus. Omenirea a mai făcut față unor chestii de genul ăsta. Niște carantină, la un moment dat un vaccin, mai devreme sau mai târziu urma să revenim la un nou normal.
Toate astea au venit. Fiecare la timpul lor. Mai întâi carantina și masca au temperat intensitatea pandemiei, apoi a venit speranța dată de vaccin. Distanțarea socială produsă de concediile de peste vară a făcut minuni. Ajutată și de vaccin.
După care au venit lecțiile grele!
Am aflat că unii dintre noi nu vor să se vaccineze pentru că, pur și simplu, nu le pasă de cei din jurul lor. Că nu vor să-și pună „botniță”. Din exact același motiv. Că sunt semeni de-ai noștri care după un an și ceva de zile încă nu acceptă realitatea. Sunt încă convinși că boala produsă de acest virus este doar o „gripă”. Alții încearcă să ne convingă, în continuare, să refuzăm vaccinul. Că provoacă infertilitate, că ne distruge sistemul imunitar, că bilgheitz, că doar cei cu imunitatea compromisă au nevoie cu adevarat de vaccin, că vaccinul asta a aparut prea repede… Iar culmea culmilor este numărul prea mare de medici care răspândesc, și ei, genul ăsta de informații.
Se vehiculează tot felul de explicații pentru numărul mic de vaccinați din Romania. Că oamenii nu mai au încredere în autorități. Că neîncrederea în politicieni s-a transformat într-o neîncredere generalizată. Că sunt prea mulți analfabeți funcționali. Care chiar dacă știu să citească, nu înțeleg nimic.
OK, ambele explicații se bazează pe niște realități. Triste dar cât se poate de reale. Doar că aceste explicații nu sunt suficiente. Neîncrederea și analfabetismul funcțional explică doar comportamentul masei.
Ar mai fi nevoie de explicații cu privire la comportamentul elitei. La modul inept, politicianist, în care a fost tratată criza de către ‘clasa politică’. La modul de-a dreptul lipsit de responsabilitate în care s-a comportat o prea mare proporție din clerul ortodox. La faptul că o prea mare parte a presei a vânat senzaționalul în loc să ofere informație de calitate.
Nu mi-e atât frică de virus cât mi-e frică de ceea ce suntem dispuși să ne facem unul altuia. Mai bine spus, mie frică pentru cât de puțin suntem dispuși să facem unul pentru celălalt.
Și imi mai este frică de faptul că prea mulți dintre politicieni sunt mai degrabă dispuși să ne dezbine – pentru a se putea ei cocoța mai ușor în scaunele vizate, în loc să ne dea un exemplu despre ce înseamnă colaborarea în caz de pericol. De faptul că prea mulți dintre noi sunt dispuși să-i înjure pe cei care nu sunt de acord cu ei – indiferent de tabăra din care fac parte, în loc să încerce să înțeleagă ce se întâmplă.
Mi-e frică de faptul că, la un secol și jumătate de la Unire, am uitat cât de greu este să răzbești singur. Și de cât de ușor le-a venit pescuitorilor în ape tulburi să ne dezbine!
Sugar, flour, vegetable oil, gas, toilet paper, soap, pork belly… and also coal, steel, timber, cement…affordable mass produced ‘things’ you expect to be able to buy whenever you need them.
Until something happens and you are no longer able to… either you lost your job or they have disappeared from the market. For whatever reasons. It is then when you realize that many of your contemporaries consider many of them to be luxuries… And that now it’s your turn to share their experiences…
Then we have the natural ‘commodities’. Things we take for granted but which have not been produced by our fellow humans. That the sun will rise tomorrow, fresh air, clean water, fertile soil… Things we take for granted… but, again, quite a lot of people find many of those things to be rather ‘out of reach’!
Finally, but no less important, we have the ‘virtual’ commodities. Man ‘made’, again, but, this time, ‘untouchable’. Love, friendship, respect, trust…
To me, the most important of the ‘commodities’, virtual or otherwise, is trust.
Once we loose trust, we loose everything!
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There’s no more love lost among your people. Anything has become enough reason to fight for. Which has transformed them into a dysfunctional collection of mobs. Too many people make themselves available to the highest bidders and too few of them ever lend a helping hand to a neighbor in distress.
I know. Things are, indeed, very bad!
And what you going to do about it? After all, you’re in charge now… Do I need to come back? Take things into my own hands?
The treatment is already under way. And I’m sure you’re aware of it!
It might be. But your cure seems to be making things worse … The old and feeble die alone, the commoners distrust their leaders, the leaders no longer care about those they are supposed to lead, the con-artists command more respect than those committed to the ‘things well done’, ‘fake’ is widely admired while ‘true’ is left behind… where are they headed?!? I’m afraid some drastic measures are called for!
During the last 2000 years I’ve been thinking hard about the past. About what you had done when confronted with similar situations. Your measures had been efficient indeed. Harsh but very efficient. It’s not the harshness of your methods which have prevented me from following in your footsteps. It’s the short memory of my people. Of our people… they haven’t changed that much, you know… They forget quickly. A short ‘episode’ leaves a short memory… and the more ‘intense’ the episode, the quicker they ‘clean’ it from their ‘comfort zone’. ‘Something like this cannot happen again!’ So instead of an all cleansing flood or a pestilence which would have decimated them I had chosen a milder cure. A disease they will not be able to tame until they will learn, again, to cooperate. In earnest! And across every barrier they have erected among themselves! Until they make a habit of helping each-other instead of running each-other into the ground.
OK, Son, let’s give your method a try. After all, it was you who to love them to love each-other… It’s your teaching they no longer obey!
There’s something else, Father! Something I wanted to ask you for a while now but didn’t find the proper occasion. What were you thinking when you gave them freedom of will? Without teaching them first how to learn?
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Nobody can survive alone. Not for a considerable amount of time, anyway.
“It takes nothing to join the crowd”. To join, maybe… but if you choose to remain, you must ‘follow the rules’.
So yes, it takes everything to stand alone… Your very life! And the ‘membership price’ is your ‘absolute’ freedom…
Hard to make up your mind, eh? Then let me raise up a few points.
I started this argument by mentioning that nobody can live alone. Not for long and not very comfortably. No matter how hard you may prepare yourself. Don’t kid yourself. All those hermits and preppers you hear about – on ‘social media’!, are able to do that because of modern technology. Which technology has been developed by somebody else… On the other hand, most individuals are able to survive, alone or in small groups, while jumping from ‘one boat to another’. Think emigration, for instance. Or ‘acculturation’.
But no crowd will ever survive its members leaving in droves!
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I argued earlier that truth is a convention. And that the Truth exists but will never be known. Not in its entirety, anyway.
Then what are we left with? How can any of us decide what is true and what is not?
First of all, any convention needs three things. The two convening parts and the object of their convention.
‘So, you want us to believe that truth is a make-believe?!?’
That it can be, yes!
And the further from the real truth – from reality itself, that convened about truth is, the worse the fate the believers will eventually have to face.
The first example which jumps to my mind is the fate of Bernie Madoff and ‘his’ investors. Bernie and each of the investors had convened a truth. That his investment fund was sound. Consider what happened to each of them. To each of the investors and to Bernie Madoff himself.
Some of you will agree and some will say I’ve lost it.
First things first.
Socialism does take away liberties. One by one. Under various pretexts. I’ve learned this on my own skin.
Spending the first 30 years of your life under a communist regime teaches you a thing or two…
On the other hand, the meme above does have a certain ‘appeal’. A significant number of people had their pensions slashed, watched their savings disappear and their jobs being exported. Health care and education have become exorbitant. Racism, xenophobia and hate have again risen their ugly heads and more and more people die at the wrong end of a gun. Of a gun ‘manhandled’ by ’emotionally distressed’ persons…
What’s going on here? Why so many people’s lives are so badly ruined?
You see, “capitalism” stealing anything is a lie. A blatant lie!
Capitalism cannot steal anything!
Socialism can rob you of your rights because it actually says it will do it. Given the slightest chance, those who promote socialism will use the doctrine to ‘discipline’ their followers into a herd.
Capitalism doesn’t promote stealing! Stealing is not condoned by any capitalist ideology while concentrating all decision making in the hands of the ruling coterie is the cornerstone of socialism.
‘If capitalism doesn’t condone stealing then why an increasing number of people end up penniless while so much money gets concentrated in such a small number of hands?!?’
Why are we living in such fugazi times?
Replace “capitalism” with ‘some (fake) capitalists’ and the text above will make so much more sense!
You see, what we have here is the perfect illustration of fugazi. We are in a fucked up situation! And instead of trying to solve it, some of us attempt to ‘fake it’! And consequently make it worse…
Socialism won’t bring any respite!
Solving the current untenable situation starts with acknowledging its causes! Its real causes…
Blaming the socialists for the errors committed because too much greed had been ‘expressed’ at ‘very high levels’ doesn’t solve anything. Promising that socialism will making things right is just as malignant as blaming the socialists for the mistakes made by the greedy who have brought us where we currently are.
Only when we’ll stop faking it we’ll be able to look for solutions. For workable solutions…
Oh, I almost forgot! Don’t allow the ‘con-artists’ to convince you that social democracy is equivalent to socialism. This is a thesis put forward by the same people who maintain that “republic” is good while “democracy” is bad. And don’t allow the ‘other’ ‘con-artists’ to convince you that all wealthy people are bad and that (forced) “equality” will solve everything.
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The single truth which is accessible to us is that while there is a single truth – we may call it ‘reality’, if you want, we’ll never know it in its entirety. We may get ever closer to getting there but we will never arrive.
The corollary – which is an integral part of the kernel truth, being that the effort to get closer to that single truth can be exerted only as a collective endeavor. Any other approach will, sooner rather than later, end up in a cul-de-sac.
The sooner we agree about this ‘kernel’ truth, the more peaceful the journey to never get there will become.
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‘Truth’ is a convention. You cannot understand ‘truth’ without ‘lie’.
Watch the video. Go on, I won’t go anywhere!
It’s irrelevant for the current discussion whether the drongo lies consciously or has just developed an ‘ordinary’ skill. Equivalent to that of feeding itself by ‘fishing’ worms. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwVhrrDvwPM.
It’s enough for me that both us and the meerkats are able to notice that the drongo did lie. And, at least once, did sound the alarm about a real danger.
Hence it is possible, for both us, humans, and the meerkats to tell lies from truths. Again, I have no idea whether the animals do it in a conscientious manner.
All I know is that we, humans, did coin the concept of ‘truth’. And that of ‘lie’. And we not only coined the concepts but also attached names to each of them. We agreed among ourselves to name them truth and lie, respectively.
In fact, we have made an agreement. A gentleman’s agreement… About when to use each word.
And a subsidiary one. About when we must definitely tell the truth and when a lie is acceptable.
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“Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts.” “We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.”
Is it possible to wage war upon a concept? Is it possible to win a war against a concept?
So what are we going to do? Cave in? Only because we cannot win a war against a concept?!?
How about redefining the problem?
How about choosing an achievable goal? After all, we’ve been reasonably good at beating the terrorists themselves. And those harboring them…
Only if we had made some difference between these two! Between the terrorists and those in the middle of whom they were hiding. And continue to hide…
Let’s get back to square one.
How does terrorism work?
Some ‘agents’ determine that what they want cannot be achieved in normal ways. And choose instead to use terrorism as their tool ‘of choice’.
What do they need?
Man power, material resources, pertinent knowledge, time to organize the ‘heist’, a place to put it all together and a practical method to apply the ‘pressure’.
There are some things which are hard to control. Not impossible but hard. Material resources, for instance. A knife, or even a cutter blade, can be used for terrorist purposes. Money are also a very fungible resource.
Place is also a tricky thing. A remote ‘hamlet’ is easy to find. But transporting a terrorist ‘solution’ from a remote hamlet to a place where that ‘solution’ might produce the intended result is not so simple.
Time. The longer it takes to design a ‘solution’ and to implement it, the easier for the general public to find out what’s going on.
Pertinent knowledge. The more sophisticated the solution, the more pertinent knowledge is needed. Which knowledge comes comes attached to the man-power involved.
So. What drives a knowledgeable person to use their skills towards producing terror? Hard to say. And hard to change the mind of a person who has already become a terrorist. Either a person who had spent years descending into the ‘mood’ or somebody who had been convinced on the spur of the moment to ‘participate’ as a suicidal driver. Explosive vest wearer. Or knife wielder.
The above mentioned motives make it hard, almost impossibly hard, to prevent terrorist acts committed by deranged persons, specially when they act alone. Or as a very small ‘team’.
But when we the ‘solution’ has a certain degree of sophistication – terrorist plots, that is, there are many kinds of people involved. Initiators/backers, operatives, facilitators and ‘neighbors’.
It’s hard, almost impossible to change the minds of a determined ‘initiator’. Or of some of the ‘operatives’. The initiators tend to be sociopaths while many of the operators, specially those committing suicide, must be ‘hopeless persons’. Not only clinically depressed but outright hopeless.
But the rest?
Why would anybody back a terrorist plot if there’s another way of achieving a goal? There’s always the sociopathic explanation but not all ‘backers’ are sociopaths. Not in an obvious manner, anyway…
Which brings us to the facilitators and the neighbors.
We have, broadly, two situations. When the terrorists want to inflict pain in the middle of the enemy territory or when the terrorists want to gain control over a territory.
In 2015 ten terrorists have killed some 130 people in Paris. Wounded a couple of hundreds. And wrecked the lives of many others. Nine of them had been killed by the law enforcement agencies. On the spot or during the next few days. Only one of the assailants has survived and had been apprehended later. The process has just begun. Besides the surviving shooter there are other 19 other people against which have been brought charges. “some are accused of helping the gang without necessarily knowing the extent of the conspiracy.“ Many of the accused, including some of the assailants, have lived – at least for a while, in Molenbeek, Belgium. A suburban commune where quite a high percentage of the population feel ‘there’s no way out’.
Are you familiar with the studies which maintain that both people and mice prefer social interaction to using drugs? Statistically speaking, of course. A very few individuals get hooked and cannot give up while the vast majority stop using drugs when conditions return to normal. When the American soldiers had come back from the VietNam war, for instance.
Same thing is valid with ‘terrorism’. Along with other kinds of fundamentalism.
When too many members of a community become despondent some can be ‘converted’, many others will help – even if not engage directly, while the majority will turn a blind eye to what’s happening in their middle.
That’s why the terrorists who had wreaked havoc in Paris had been able to organize themselves in Molenbeek without the police finding out what was going on. That’s why the Americans had not been able to wipe out the Taliban. And why the Taliban have grabbed back power so quickly once the Americans had decided to pull back. Because not enough of those living there – in both Molenbeek and Afghanistan, were hopeful about their future.
Because not enough of the Afghani hearts and minds have been won over.
I’m afraid that making “no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them” wasn’t helpful. On the contrary…
And please, please, click the first picture and read the article.
I say this makes absolutely no sense. It’s not only insulting for the nay-sayers, it’s actually dangerous for ourselves.
For all of us. Vaccinated, unvaccinated and unvaccinables.
Let me explain. The US Army, and all other successful ones, live by ‘no one left behind’. Far more than its technological prowess, this constitutes its main strength. Each of the individuals involved feel that they belong there. That no matter what will happen in the battle field, none of them will be ‘left behind’. It is this collective sentiment which transforms a motley collection of ‘misfits’ into the most powerful army in the world. The fact that the ‘home team’ foots the bill for the most technologically advanced ‘tools of war’ only adds to that strength. That huge bill being itself a proof of the powerful bond which exists between those who ‘serve’ and the general population. ‘No one left behind’ once again.
Flash back to the nay-sayers.
I’m convinced they’re completely mistaken. That Covid is for real, that vaccines work – even if imperfectly, that the mask is useful – and that calling it ‘face diaper’ is insulting. And I’m also convinced that we should rather hear them out than call them ‘unhinged’.
For two reasons. The first, and most obvious, being that calling them names opens up the door for them calling us names. How soon after a session of name-calling do you think we’ll regain ‘mutual recognition’? How soon after a session of name calling will we able to regain our ability to ‘speak freely’? And to listen in earnest what the others have to say? The second, and the more important one, being that it’s hugely important for us, for all of us, to understand the reasons which fuel this ‘nay-saying’. What made the nay-saying propaganda so successful.
isn’t going to bridge the growing gap which yawns our society apart.
The fact that Trump – and his minions, have been instrumental in the digging of the gap is one thing. His ‘thing’. In which direction each of us pushes – what each of us does about the present situation, is quite another thing. Our ‘thing’, this time.
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