The truer the lie,
the harder it is be recognized.
It is true that many fighters die during a war.
That many castles are built, after the war, by the profiteers.
But, when won by the right people, wars also bring freedom!
For those who deserve it.
Archives for category: Trust
“Dans tous les cas,
la seule « condition » est de le faire
dans les limites de ce que permet la loi”
Aurel, dessinateur de presse au Canard enchaîné
Would you poke fun at a volcano?
No? Because it doesn’t make any sense?
But would you poke fun at people who, 800 years ago, prayed to a ‘volcanic god’ asking for ‘mercy’?
Why? Only because (we currently know that) ‘it doesn’t work like that’?!?
OK, forget about the volcano.
Would you make fun of Shoah? Also known as the Holocaust.
No, because it’s illegal? Otherwise you would have mocked a tragedy?!?
It’s not illegal to fall down.
And impossible to ‘ignore’ gravity. Just as impossible as it is to ignore a volcano!
We laugh our eyes out when clowns pretend to fall.
Nobody laughs at a volcano.
Hence it is us who choose what is funny and what isn’t. Just as it is still us who choose whether to obey the law or not. We’re talking about the human laws here, not about the natural ones…
Which brings us closer to the gist of this post.
For the believers, God is everything. Both the entire world and their reference point. Without their God, the world loses its meaning. Without their God, the believers lose their bearings.
Making fun of God, of any god, is no different from making fun of a volcano.
‘You’re making absolutely no sense. No sense whatsoever.
A volcano is a real thing. Sometimes too real, even. While God, all gods, …
Nonsense. Absolute nonsense!’
Do you have faith in vaccines?
Why? Because they work? Because they save a lot of lives?
Despite vaccines being rather expensive and despite the fact that some guys have become obscenely rich as a consequence of people needing vaccines, and other medicines, in order to survive, right?
Have you ever made fun of vaccines? Of obscenely rich people, no matter how they got their money?
Do you understand how religion works?
How religion actually works… Psychologically, sociologically, etc.
No more than you understand vaccines?
Or you just consider religion to be a hoax while vaccines are a scientific fact?
Why? Because you have been told so by reputable people? By people in whom you have absolute trust?
So.
You trust doctors to the tune of allowing them to mess up with your immune system.
And you trust those thinkers who try to convince us not only that God doesn’t exist but also that religion is the “opiate of the masses“. “An ideological tool that legitimates and defends the interests of the dominant, wealthy classes in the population.” According to Marx, that was. Karl Marx. The guy advertising the advent of the communist happiness uber alles…
Let’s backpedal for a while.
You’re OK with vaccines and hate the fact that some people get way too much money for selling those vaccines. You’re OK with the idea of making fun of rich people but not of vaccines. Because vaccines save lives while obscenely rich people are… well… obscene!
Let’s get back to religion.
Making fun of vaccines doesn’t make sense. To you. To us, actually. Because they’re not funny. Because they are a scientific fact. And because they save lives.
Making fun of God also doesn’t make sense. For the believers. For those who truly believe in God.
For those who have a different understanding of the world than we do.
What would you think about people who dismiss vaccines?
The scientific concept of vaccination, not a specific vaccine.
You consider them…?
From your point of view, their reference point is way out of this world? That they have lost their bearings?
That they actually deny the reality? Your/our reality?
That’s exactly what also happens when people make fun of God. Of any god.
Those who believe in God – in the particular god which is the target of the joke but also in all other gods – feel queasy. ‘Sea-sick’. Their world and their bearings are being put into jeopardy. Which puts them into a very difficult position.
There are only two ways out of their conundrum.
To consider the jester as being clueless. As having no idea.
Or to consider the jester as an ‘agent provocateur’. To consider the whole thing as being an insult.
You have a concern and you want to express it? As the law allows you to do?
How about doing it in a considerate manner?
In an efficient manner! In such a way as to get through…
Insulting people, or being considered clueless, doesn’t help if you want to be heard by the other side.
If you want the other side to listen, carefully, to what you need to say.
“If you’re an academic (like me),
Epstein has a particularly uncomfortable example
of how people in a perfectly comfortable profession like mine
can be happy and yet still itch with ressentiment about others
whose talents seem more valued than our own.
“Why does some ignorant lawyer have enough money to buy a villa in Tuscany
when one knows so much more about the art of the Italian Renaissance?
What kind of society permits this state of things to exist?
A seriously unjust one, that’s what kind.””
Our worst enemy..., Tom Nichols
Aaron Mostofsky, the guy pictured above, “has worked as an assistant architect in New York“.
Which means he must have at least some idea about the ‘art of the Italian Renaissance’, right?
And now I wonder. His ressentiment had been seeded in his soul during college? Earlier?
Popper, Karl Raymund, had witnessed the entire XX-the century. Both WWs and their aftermath. The advent of the USSR, that of the III-rd Reich and that of the Red China. And the defeat of the imperialistic Japan. Him insisting that collectivism – as put in practice by the fascists and by the communists – leads to a very dark cul-de-sac is spot on and perfectly aligned with what history teaches us.
But who has enough time to read nowadays … we glance at the internet, catch a meme … interpret it according to our own weltanschauung… and then storm the Capitol!
Because the individual is above the state. “An end in itself”…
The teachers/parents should have done a better job? At explaining what Popper had in mind? At teaching the next generation that you don’t ransack the Capitol whenever you don’t like the outcome of an election?
Which teachers?
Which parents?
WE?!?
https://www.amazon.com/Our-Own-Worst-Enemy-Democracy/dp/0197518877
When do you stop cleaning something? How do you determine it is clean enough?
When do you stop cleaning the living room? When there’s no more visible dirt, right?
When do you stop cleaning an operating room? You follow the procedure and you check using the appropriate methods and apparati, right?
When do you stop cleaning the operating room where your child will have their life-saving surgery? I’m afraid the surgeon will have to drive you out of the room. You’ll never declare it clean enough….
My point being that we’re rational only as far as there’s nothing personal involved in the choice we have to make.
And as soon as we’re personally invested in the whole thing, we suddenly start to rationalize.
To find rational arguments which favor the position we’ve already adopted. The decision we’ve already made.
My child deserves the best!
Which is true, of course. For as long as we really know what’s good for them…
What capitalism has to do with any of this?!?
Well, most of the ‘hoarders’ rationalize their habit by ‘blaming it’ on their children.
“I have to take care of their future”.
In their attempt to control the future, the hoarders convince themselves that amassing capital will shield them, and their children, from insecurity.
Which is partially true. If the hoarded capital is sustainable…
I no longer have a home or expensive things, but I have someone who will clean my room, prepare food and change my bedding, measure my blood pressure and weigh me.
I no longer have the laughter of my grandchildren, I don’t see them growing, hugging and arguing. Some come to me every 15 days, some every three or four months, and some never.
I don’t bake cakes, I don’t dig up the garden. I still have hobbies and I like to read, but my eyes quickly hurt.
I don’t know how much longer, but I have to get used to this loneliness.”
“Author unknown”
Every time I read something like this over the internet – more and more often – I remember that it was us.
We have raised our children into what they are today.
We have amassed vast amounts of financial capital – fiat money – believing that our children will be grateful.
We had not been there when they were growing up. We had not been there when they were learning things.
And now we are the ones who don’t understand why there are no more bonds between us. Between us and our children. Why our children see the world differently from how we do it…
Is it to late?
Or should I say “straight”?!?
After all, not everything that comes from the right is ‘right’.
Not everything that comes from the left is ‘wrong’. Or good…
And even ‘straight’ has always been complicated but nobody seemed to care!
Neither ignorance or education can do anything.
On their own. Education is a process and ignorance a mere situation.
It’s what the educated choose to do with their knowledge that makes the difference!
The key words in the statements above are “I always believed” and “It seems”.
It’s not ignorance that’s going to willingly destroy anything and it was the educated which had always ‘produced’. Moved things towards carefully chosen goals. ‘Rationally’ chosen goals, according to the latest fad.
Everything there is is the consequence of something initiated by educated people. The good, the bad and even the very ugly!
‘Another biased and inconsiderate post.
You completely dis-consider the ignorant. Assuming they are impotent and inconsequential.’
I’m afraid somebody else is assuming things.
First of all, there are no ignorant. Only the actual idiots are ignorant and they cannot do much. We, all the rest, start learning from the first minute of our life. Each according to how lucky we are.
Secondly, even the highest educated ignore most of the existing knowledge. But that doesn’t make them ignorant. The most important thing a person must learn before calling itself ‘educated’ is that nobody, that person included, will ever know enough.
Thirdly, all action is initiated from a piece of information. One starts to look for food after realizing they are hungry. After transforming a feeling into a resolution and making a plan to fulfill that resolution. A reaction – like pulling back your hand from a hot stove – doesn’t need much thinking indeed. But that’s only a reaction. Not at all a carefully, supposedly rationally, chosen goal.
“Facts don’t care about your feelings.“
It’s the act which does the trick.
It is the fact that it was you who had determined whether to keep them or not as they were given to you which actually affirms ‘it’.
Simple, actually, if you consider it with an open mind…
And here’s another question.
How wise is it for people to not care about other people’s feelings?
‘Cause I don’t expect facts to care about feelings. Mine or anybody else’s…
He was my friend. We trusted each-other.
He was huge. 150 pounds of muscle. Pitch black.
Some people feared him. Specially when seeing him for the first time.
He had earned the respect of many. Canine friends in the park. People who had come in contact with him.
Respect is a tricky thing.
Fear is simple. Not that different from love. Somewhat contrary…
Trust is simplish. After enough time spent together, you learn whether you can trust the other.
Respect, on the other hand….
You cannot respect something/somebody which/whom you find repulsive.
You can ‘trust’ a bully to make your life miserable but you cannot respect them.
Do you fear a bully?
Not necessarily. You don’t need fear to avoid a danger. You only need to understand what’s going on.
Then what is ‘respect’?
Something you learn about. While trust is something you learn to.
Trust is something to be rather felt while respect is something you experience with your mind. First and foremost.
Furthermore, nobody fakes trust. Unless presented as ‘respect’.
Why have I chosen an animal to illustrate this post?
Because ‘fear’ is what drives awareness. Fuels conscience. And, as far as evidence suggests, it is widely felt in the animal kingdom.
Our family. Our only home in this world!
“Doubt everything” instead of ‘trust the scientist until proven wrong’.
‘Illiberal democracy’, whatever that might mean…
“Abolish capitalism”. As if there was any viable alternative!
What’s going on here?!?
Indeed, but only a clown has enough gumption to tell the king that ‘he’s got no clothes on’!
Furthermore, every respectable palace has both a king and a jester.
The jester overpowering the king doesn’t change the palace into a circus. Only refocuses the attention of those paying attention…
nicichiarasa 