What happened to our capacity to compromise? When did life become nothing but a zero sum game?
Our capacity to compromise – in the good sense of the word – has diminished when religion – the thing which keeps us together – has been split into religions.
And it completely drained out when we’ve become too confident in our ability to think things over.
We’re so confident now that our solution/decision is not only better than any other but the only one possible that we’re no longer capable of considering a compromise.
While religion taught us to respect and trust each-other, religions have split us into factions. Our intellectual arrogance has done the rest.
Your previous actions that were done in error now have consequences. Karma.
My father has cancer. And an eye problem. The cancer is being treated in a public hospital while the eye problem is taken care of at a private facility. In the last couple of days we have visited them both.
Besides the obvious differences there’s a huge, and overpowering, ‘common ground’. The money problem.
No, not the money you have to fork out if you want to be treated in a private facility. The fact that money has been elevated to goal status.
Functionally speaking, health-care is a ‘social function’. By helping each member to remain healthy, the society – as a whole – preserves it’s overall health. It preserves it’s functionality. It’s ability to survive and to thrive. By helping my father with his medical conditions, the society makes it possible for me and my family to remain productive. Instead of taking care of him – which we can’t do properly – we can continue to do what we’re good at.
And no, the subject of this post is not ‘who should pay for health care’. There is no ‘free’ anything so everything has to be paid, one way or another. The problem is the fact that money becoming the main goal has consequences.
Instead of trying to maintain the well being of the population – in an economically sensible manner – the health industry is focused on making profit. Instead of trying to maintain the well being of the population – in an economically sensible manner – the public health system is focused on being ‘thrifty’. The consequences are similar. Overworked doctors, crowded waiting rooms, impatient personnel, long waiting hours, irritation… And no spare capacity to cover ‘mass emergencies’!
Unfortunately, things go way deeper than this.
Do you remember what else ‘surfaced’ in the winter of 2020?
Put two and two together and it becomes a lot easier to understand how and why a huge number of people ended up believing that COVID-19 was a scam. A scam concocted by Big Pharma to convince us to buy their products…
In retrospect, what happened doesn’t make much sense, does it? So many people who had died because so many of us didn’t have enough trust in masks and vaccines… So many of us were convinced that we were being played! For money…
Because it had already happened!
“These consumers were getting a raw deal. They were being exposed to Mylan’s price increases and excluded from the market forces that might cushion them. They were getting ripped off. And it’s no wonder they got angry.”
Well, last time I checked, there were more than a dozen onions in my cellar. And since my cellar is orbiting the Sun… along with the rest of the Earth…
As for who says what about who made what…
This morning I had to shovel some snow. I live near a kindergarten so the sidewalks should be clean. Along with the snow, I also had to shovel some dog turds.
Snow coming down from the sky and dogs dropping turds are natural occurrences. People shoveling snow so that other people may walk on the sidewalks is de rigueur. Also de rigueur is to pick up the turds dropped by the pet you take out at least twice a day.
People have a clear idea about who is responsible for the dog turds on the side-walk. Even if they were dropped by dogs, the responsibility lies with the owners. It’s the owners who have raised the dogs, who take them out to poo and who ‘forget’ to pick up the droppings.
In the last couple of centuries, people – well, some of them – have also developed a rather clear understanding regarding the snow. Regarding the water coming down from the sky. About evaporation, clouds, condensation… etc. God is no longer held responsible for these matters.
Which brings us to the real subject.
There is a guy, Richard Dawkins, who tries to demonstrate there is no God.
And here we go again… I have at least a large china teapot. And since my house, along with the rest of the planet, does follow an orbit in the solar system…
More about who made what, if you care about the subject, can be found here:
And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, toknow good and evil. Gen 3:22
Why are we doing all this?
?!?
You heard me. ‘Why are we doing all this?’ Everything that we do.
Is anything wrong with you?
No. Not anything that I know of. Only this question which has arisen on it own. Why don’t we just stop? Stop doing everything that we do…
But doing what we do is the reason for our existence… Otherwise we would not exist. At all! The world itself would have been different. Completely different!
So what?!? Do you really care about the world? What’s in it for you? For us… What benefit do we have from the world being as it is? Or at all…
I’ve been struggling for a while to understand why God is still relevant for us. Why so many of us continue to believe in him and why so many of us struggle to demonstrate he doesn’t exist. Why so many of those convinced he doesn’t exist blame him for so many of our own follies…
Because we’re ‘escape artists’!
So many of us continue to smoke. Since not everybody who smokes develops a cancer or dies of COPD – Chronic Obstrusive Pulmonary Disease, those addicted to nicotine find ways to rationalize their habit. For it’s simpler for them to hope they are among the lucky ones than to accept the fact that they’ve acted foolishly for so long. I know what I’m talking about, I’m one of these people.
Similarly, it’s a lot simpler to use God as a scapegoat than to accept full responsibility for your destiny. The less control/resources you have, the simpler it is to ask for God’s help. To lay your fate in his hands.
‘He must have had his reasons. The fact that I don’t know what they are doesn’t change anything. He’s in charge, I can do nothing but accept my fate!’
Same thing for the disbelievers. It’s simpler to blame (a) God, or (a) religion for aberrant/abhorrent behavior than to accept that human beings can be manipulated – in certain conditions – into such behavior. Into such inhuman behavior.
‘If they could have been manipulated in such a manner then I might be manipulated in the same manner. This is not acceptable. It’s their God/religion which is at fault. Something like this cannot happen to me. I don’t belong to any religion – or to a different one, so I’m immune to all this.’
How many times have you been hit by something you didn’t see coming?
Not very often… for the simple reason that these encounters use to end up badly! Bent fenders, broken bones… Hence we pay attention. Or get killed… end of story!
But how many times have you experienced bad consequences, really bad consequences, after misjudging a situation? After a ‘doesn’t matter’ uttered nonchalantly?
There is an old ‘rule’ which maintains that even a broken watch may be accurate. From time to time, if it retains its arms… Twice daily, to be precise!
Same thing is valid for people. From time to time, each of us will utter something which actually makes sense!
Sort of, anyway…
The catch being that in order to ‘prove’ the temporary accuracy of the broken watch you need one in good working order. Or, alternatively, you need a good understanding of time.
Same thing with Peterson’s uttering. On the face of it, the phrase is catchy. In fact, it’s just as useful as a broken watch. What solace will be felt by the victim of a tough tyrant when that person realizes that no tyrant, however tough, was ever capable of ‘achieving’ anything without the compliance of the weak? Without the compliance of those who had done, in their weakness, what the tyrant had told them to do…
So yes, broken watches are, sometime, accurate. And yes, Petersen is right to tell us that both tough and weak people can wreak a lot of havoc.
But neither of these two pieces of trivia will be useful to us until we’ll understand it’s up to us to put them to good use. To understand the temporary nature of the accuracy displayed by the broken watch and the fact that no man, however tough, becomes really dangerous unless condoned, or even helped, by ultimately hapless weaklings.
The things we believe are what we have in common with those who promote them.
Well, nobody ‘blindly’ beliefs anything published in the media! We use our cognitive biases in order to do that.
The media publishes the things we like to hear. To sell advertising space, to please their sponsors… While those who actually do this, the journalists, appease their consciences with ‘we have to give them what they want’. ‘Cause we actually do ‘buy’ their stuff…
And we believe the things we read in the kind of press we ‘buy’ because we no longer bother to keep in check our cognitive biases!
Who has anything to gain? From this vicious circle spinning faster and faster?
Nobody, really! But we all have something to lose.
Everything, actually!
When was the last time you met a dead person who regretted anything?
I’ve been watching this, on and off, for three days now. And I still can’t make up my mind. Whom to admire more.
The one who performs what he believes to be normal. And somehow manages to include, into that normalcy, the negative feedback he is been dished out by the most powerful agent in his world. Or the other one. Who pursues his side of normal. Who finds in him to investigate when he realizes the two normals don’t fit. And the courage to make amends.
Thank you Elvis Naçi for this conundrum. I’m a better person now. Now that I’ve stated my impotence.
Regardless of our individual beliefs, it would be rather naive to consider there’s nothing but the here and now. Internet wisdom
What have you done since graduating into awareness?
Worrying about tomorrow?
Welcome to being a human. And how do you assuage your fear?
Put your faith into an exterior agent? Trust your fellow humans to bail you out if necessary? Make sure you’ll never depend on anybody else but you?
Each of these three strategies presumes differently about what happens outside yourself.
The more responsibility you transfer to the outside agent – currently known as God in certain circles – the more serene your life. You don’t have to change anything except putting your faith in the outside agent of your choice. If that works for you. Only by transferring the ultimate responsibility to ‘the outside’, no matter how hard you continue to do whatever you were doing before the epiphany, you embrace the fact that your fate is determined outside of you. If you expect your mates to do ‘the right’ thing, you must prime them first. You have to behave in a manner conducive to ‘community’. You and those around you. The community itself has to behave as a community. To make sure you’ll never depend on anybody else, you need to know everything that might happen to you. In fact, you have to know everything.
Each of these three strategies, or any combination thereof, mandates that there are things happening beyond here and now. Beyond what each of us might know and control.
nicichiarasa 