The malicious has made an option. Had chosen. Willingly! And, supposedly – according to the hypothesis being discussed here, knowingly.
The ‘stupid’ just stays put. Until the relevant information penetrates his ‘thick skull’. It’s not his fault that those who attempt to convince him are not skillful enough.
And if the ‘stupid’ happens to be in a ‘powerful’ position… (hence his inability to understand fast enough is liable to produce considerable damage) who needs to be chastised?
The ‘stupid’ himself? Who presumably ‘doesn’t have a clue’ about what’s going on? The malicious who had made the whole situation possible? The ‘lazy bystandards’? Who had allowed this to happen? Out of carelessness?
Or those who are liable to suffer the consequences? Who had understood what was going on but…
On the other hand… Could Dietrich Bonhoefer – a renowned pastor and theologian, utter such ‘simplistic’ words? So callous?
I’m not exactly old. Only old enough to continue to check my email. From time to time…
For reasons outside my knowledge, this morning I’d found – in the ‘promotions’ section’ a link to a ‘common sense with Bari Weiss’ article. The title was apealing, the name rang a bell – even though I had no idea about who the person was, so I read it.
My reaction was intense enough to start writing. Not before looking her up…
The point being that she is basically right. Enabling is a powerful phenomenon. But she is also basically wrong.
Powerfull it might be, only enabling is not necessarily malignant. As she implies.
Enabling is done by people with means. Powerfull and or resourcefull enough for their actions to be effective. What the enablers choose to enable… is something else.
And the consequences of enabling depend on the enablers’ choices!
Things might come up right. Or wrong.
The kind of enabling curently predominant in America has been detrimental to the society at large. Leading to the enablers becoming irrelevant. Just as Weiss advertised. Trump has been supplanted by those who had occupied the Capitol – after being enabled by him, while on the other side of the political divide things aren’t going any better. Cultural cancellation isn’t going to end up well.
But enabling can lead to different outcomes. Depending, of course, on what is being enabled.
Take Germany, for instance. Yes, nobody knows who its President is. Only the country, as a whole, functions far better than many of those whose Presidents are on everybody’s lips. Simply because the German enablers had chosen to enable the ‘right’ kind of behaviors.
Miruna Gritu, așa o cheamă pe prietena berzelor din Sibiu, este atât de cunoscută în lumea iubitorilor de animale încât atunci când un cetățean din Biertan a găsit doi pui de urs, a sunat-o pe ea. Nu la Garda de Mediu. La Asociația Prietenii Berzelor!
După cum înțelegeți din context, aceasta s-a dus la Biertan. Pe drum a tot dat telefoane până când a aflat că la Zărnești există un sanctuar pentru urși. Așa că a luat puii – deshidratați și foarte slabiți de diaree, și i-a dus la Zărnești. Între timp a fost sunată de cineva de la Garda de Mediu. Invitată la sediu. Și amendată cu 10 000 de lei. Pentru că a transportat urși fără să fi fost autorizată în acest sens.
Garda de Mediu este o înstituție care se ocupă cu ‘ocrotirea mediului’. Urșii fac, evident, parte din mediu. Garda este obligată să se ocupe de bunăstarea urșilor. Obligată să aplice legile. Pentru simplul motiv că dacă s-ar apuca oricine să transporte urși unde li se năzare, urșii ar avea de suferit. Împreună cu restul mediului.
Miruna Gritu se ocupă și ea tot cu ocrotirea mediului. Cu ocrotirea aceluiași mediu… Berzele pe care le oblojește Miruna Gritu nu sunt cu nimic mai prejos decât urșii care tocmai au fost protejați de Garda de Mediu.
Și atunci?!?
Cum putem ieși din situația asta? Ce era să facă comisarul de la Garda de Mediu? S-o lase în pace pe Miruna Gritu după ce aceasta tocmai încălcase legea? Ce exemplu dădea? Pe de altă parte, cam câte berze poate să îngrijească Miruna Gritu cu banii aia?
Am să închei cu o altă serie de întrebări.
Care este amenda minimă pentru transportat urși fără autorizație?
Și, mai ales, cum rămâne cu sustenabilitatea? Facem ceva pentru ea, pe bune, sau ne ‘acoperim cu hârtii’?
Avem o biserică vandalizată – cea din parcul IOR, o reacție extrem de ‘intensă’ a ‘proprietarului ultim’, una mult mai ponderată a ctitorului – care este și preotul paroh al acestui lăcaș duhovnicesc, și o încercare de analiză.
Despre cât se poate de evidentul ‘dublul standard’ cu care sunt judecate prea multele dintre spețele aflate la judecata publicului a vorbit Sorin Cucerai.
Că singurii care ar avea ceva de câștigat din toată tărășenia asta ar fi doar cei din AUR… poate pe termen scurt. Foarte scurt… Oamenii ‘de rând’ sunt mult mai inteligenți decât au impresia foarte mulți dintre ‘analiști’… pot fi ‘stârniți’ – în anumite condiții, dar își revin destul de repede. Alții care ar putea încerca să tragă oarece spuză pe turta proprie sunt cei din ierarhia BOR. Care au și făcut acest lucru…
În realitate, singurii care au ceva de câștigat – tot pe termen scurt dar ‘ceva’ mai ‘palpabil’, sunt proprietarii trusturilor de presă. Adică rating și atenția publicului. Care sunt două lucruri destul de diferite, dacă stai bine să te gândești…
Și acum, că am ajuns la trusturile de presă, voi începe prin a nota că reacția cât se poate de ponderată a părintelui paroh Adrian Niculcea a fost consemnată de cotidianul sportiv Fanatik. Poate că a apărut și în alte publicații. Cert este că goagăl l-a scos în față pe Alexandru Năstase. Iar goagăl nu minte… la chestii din astea!
‘OK, un Fanatik cu mintea la cap! Altceva?’
O întrebare.
Dacă cel în cauză ar fi fost un ‘țăcănit’ normal – un zâmbet pentru oximoron, vă rog, așa după cum sugerează părintele Niculcea – ce să facă și el, atunci poliția l-ar fi găsit în doi timpi și trei mișcări. Dacă cel în cauză ar fi fost un LGBT – la fel de ‘tâmpit’ precum restul comunității, după cum sugereaza Vasile Pănescu, ce să facă și el, atunci poliția l-ar fi prins într-un timp și cel mult două mișcări.
Având în vedere că nici un suspect nu a fost prezentat publicului … putem începe să speculăm.
Agentul 007! Agent provocator. Pus de cine știe cine… Poliția ascunde rezultatele cercetărilor. Din varii motive…
Vă rog să notați că ipotezele astea pot fi valabile și simultan!
‘Păi bine mă! Ai promis o întrebare și ai turnat o droaie de ipoteze. Care mai de care mai ipotetice!’
Uite și întrebarea.
De ce a fost aleasă tocmai biserica la care slujește părintele Niculcea? Biserică ctitorită de chiar părintele paroh. Care părinte paroh are o poziție ‘oarecum’ diferită față ce cea expusă, cât se poate de apăsat, de Vasile Bănescu!
Cine e Vasile Bănescu?!? Purtătorul de cuvânt al Patriarhiei. Al exact acelei Patriarhii care „ar fi bine să-și tempereze declarațiile”!
Zicea cineva ceva despre un protest antimască… Da’ măștile alea de pe suflet … pe alea când le scoatem?!?
În fața ‘judecătorului suprem’ va fi mult prea târziu… vom fi făcut deja tot răul de care am fost capabili!
I’m not a very social person. I don’t know that many people.
Those I know belong to three categories. People I’ve met, people I’ve kept in contact with and people I’ve got drunk with. Since I don’t ‘go under’ easily, you can imagine that those belonging to the third category are not ‘legion’.
On the other hand, Romania hasn’t been hit that hard by Covid. Only 22000 dead.
I’m not going to tell you how many of the people I’ve ever met – or even kept in contact with, are now dead. Because of Covid, of course. I’m only going to mention that two of those with whom I’ve enjoyed more than a ‘merry evening’ are no longer with us. Because of Covid. I’ve known them well and I’m certain it wasn’t a bogus diagnosis.
Let’s get serious. I know how many of you are fed up with how the authorities – all over the world, have bothched ‘it’ up. I know how many of you are fed up with how greedy Big Pharma, and the healthcare establishment, have been during the last 50 years or so. I know how many of you are longing to get back to ‘normal’. I know all these because I’m fed up too. And I too am longing to raise a glass with my surviving friends.
Please note that during the previous peak it had been reached a 7 day moving average of some 8 000 daily new cases. And a 7 day moving average of some 165 daily deaths. Right now we are at a 7 day moving average of 5500 new daily cases and an average of 100 daily deaths 165/8000*100=2.06% 100/5500*100=1.82% Better, but still! And we shouldn’t forget that the hospitals are not yet running overdrive….
That’s why I’ll continue to wear a mask, to keep my distance, to wash my hands. That’s why I’ve put myself on the waiting list. I’m sure you have a prety clear idea which list I’m talking about.
See you on the other side!
And I pray those who are no longer with us will rest in peace.
“First day of class. The law school teacher entered the room and asked a student sitting in the first row: ‘What’s your name?’ ‘Nelson.’ ‘Get out of my class and never come back!’ Everyone was scared and outraged but no one dared to speak up. ‘Very well!’ said the professor after Nelson had left. ‘Let’s start!’ ‘What do we have laws for?’ The students were scared but they tentatively answered the questions. ‘So that order may be maintained?’ ‘No!’ ‘For us to fulfill?’ ‘No!’ ‘So that trespassers might be punished?’ ‘No!’ ‘For justice to be made?’ ‘Finally! And what is justice?’ The students were already pissed off but they continued. ‘When human rights are upheld?’ ‘Not bad. Elaborate!’ ‘To differentiate good from bad?’ ‘Then was I right to throw Nelson out?’ Silence. ‘I want an answer!’ ‘No…’ ‘You might say and injustice had been committed?’ ‘Yes…’ ‘Then why nobody did anything about it?’ ‘What do we want laws for if we don’t have the will to uphold them? Each and everyone of you needs to speak up whenever you witness injustice being done! All of you! Always!’ ‘Go bring Nelson back! After all, he’s the real teacher. I’m nothing but a student here!’ ‘We should all learn that whenever we don’t defend our rights, our dignity vanishes.’ ‘That dignity is not negotiable’!” I’ve just read this on somebody’s FB wall. And a couple of comments. “‘But why did you have to throw Nelson out?!? Couldn’t you have simply explained your point? Lousy teacher… you just enjoyed playing God!’ ‘There is a small difference between explaining ‘something’ to somebody and making the same somebody actually feel that ‘something’. The same difference which exists between a lump of clay and the same lump of clay after God had breathed soul into it’.“
There’s an entire literature discussing which animals – besides us, humans, are able to use tools. Most authors also make a clear distinction between the animals which just pick an object and transform it into a tool by using it as such and the animals which actually transform the future tool according to the intended use.
The difference between using a twig ‘as it was found’ and sharpening it first with the teeth.
This morning, watching some birds while having my breakfast, I just realized that the vast majority of them are superb tool makers. Them birds, I mean. Not just the heavily publicized Caledonian Crows….
I repeat. Most of them. Most of them are superb tool makers.
Most birds are nest builders. In fact, they not only build houses, of sorts. They are building uteri. Or uteruses, if you prefer this spelling. Places where eggs are laid and cared for.
Tocmai ce m-am împiedicat pe FB de un text. Cineva, de fapt nici nu contează cine, ‘dă din casă’. Și dă la o parte orice urmă din perdeaua care mai acoperea ‘onoarea’, acum de nereparat, a unuia dintre cei mai cunoscuți ‘cărturari’ contemporani.
Nu mă interesează numele pentru că treaba e, de fapt, mult mai groasă. Citind comentariile, mi-am dat seama că ne-am făcut-o cu mâna noastră. Adică singuri.
Diverși – unii la fel de cunoscuți precum protagoniștii iar alții cât se poate de anonimi, cel puțin pentru mine – discută situația. Găsesc nuanțe. Iau partea unuia sau altuia.
Atunci mi-am adus aminte de Băsescu. De tirada ‘autocritica’ cu care l-a înfundat pe Năstase.
Băsescu avea, într-un fel, dreptate.
Rezultatele scrutinului prezidential din 28 Noiembrie 2004
Doar într-un fel. În 2004, ne-am comportat ca și cum am fi fost, într-adevăr, blestemați. Ca și cum cineva ne luase mințile. Ne pusese un văl pe ochi.
90% dintre noi – adunați procentele din dreptul primilor trei clasați, am votat cu niște foști comuniști.
N-am avut pe altcineva pe cine să votăm? Asta e altă problemă. Cert este că 90% dintre noi – unii cu bucurie iar alții călcându-și pe inimă, am fost în stare să votăm niște foști comuniști. La 15 ani ‘după’ …
Iar acum, la 30 de ani și la altă scară, ne amuzăm de ‘ciondănelile’ dintre diverși ‘lideri de opinie’.
This book represents Djuvara’s thesis for his 1974 Doctorat d’Etat.
There are two main ideas which are to be pointed out here. A first one hidden under the distinction he identifies between ‘culture’ and ‘civilization’. The second being the bread and butter of his thesis. That civilizations are initiated in one place, diffused/exported for a while and then replaced – or led further, depending on how one chooses to interpret the facts, by people until then living somewhere on the fringes of the civilization they are replacing/refurbishing.
Nothing really new, right? ‘Cyclical History’ wasn’t invented yesterday. And certainly not by Neagu Djuvara.
Well, Djuvara’s ideas – like everybody else’s, are nothing but ‘overgrowth’. Things which sprung in people’s minds ‘on top’ of what those people had already learned. Found out. Or, of course, both.
In a sense, what I’ve said in the previous sentence is the very condensed abstract of Djuvara’s second ‘main idea’. The first, the ‘hidden’ one, – again, in an extremely abridged version, being that ‘history, as a narrative, is nothing more and nothing less than what historians choose to make of the facts they had learned about’.
Too blunt? Well, first and foremost, I’m an engineer. Not a fancy pen-pusher…
OK. Let’s go further. I’m going to illustrate, briefly, Djuvara’s main thesis by presenting his version of what had happened in Europe. What had started as an European phenomenon, more precisely.
The Roman civilization had grown at the periphery of the Ancient Greece. And, eventually, took over more ‘space’ than the Ancient Greeks. The Russian civilization had grown at the periphery of the Byzantine/Orthodox one and eventually took over. Or, at least, attempted to… The Holy Roman Empire of German Nation ‘recycled’ – or, at least, attempted to, the ‘ancient’ values and traditions. Great Britain had grown at the periphery of Europe until it took over the whole world. At least for a while… The US, which had started as a British colony, had grown into the most powerful nation known to man.
‘OK, I understand what you meant by trailers and trailblazers. Some of those who trail might end up trailblazing. Do you want to add anything? Is there an actual point to your post?’
Yep. As they say about the market, ‘past performance is no guarantee about the future’. The fact that things have happened as they did is no guarantee that they’ll keep unfolding in the same manner.
In a sense, Fukuyama was right, after all… Even if not in the sense he thought it!
According to “The end of history” people – all over the World, had realized the relative merits of ‘liberal democracy’ and ‘capitalism’. Which were going to be put in practice, effectively marking ‘the end of history’. Thirty years past that moment, it seems that things aren’t going in that direction.
I’m I contradicting myself? Who’s right, after all? Djuvara? Since history doesn’t seem to have stopped? Or Fukuyama, but for some other reason? Than the one advertised by him?
‘History, as a narrative, is nothing more and nothing less than what historians choose to make of the facts they had learned about’
Then, if history is ‘man made’, what about the future?
Can we really make it? Predict it?
‘Make it’, for sure! If not us, then who?!?
‘Predict it’… that’s something totally different!
There are signs, though.
First of all, Djuvara had described something which can be compared with fire burning in a savannah. It starts in one place, burns for a while… and then starts up some place else. Until now, no fire – no fire known to man, had burned any savannah so thoroughly that nothing was left for a ‘second’ fire.
Secondly, Fukuyama said that history will end when all humankind will sync. When all ‘civilizations’ will be run according to the same paradigm. According to the liberal democratic and capitalist paradigm, in Fukuyama’s vision. We’re still far from that. Only there is one paradigm which is willing to play that role! To fill those shoes…
The ‘greed is good’ paradigm! Or, if you don’t like to think in ‘monetary’ terms, the ‘my version is the only right one’ paradigm.
The problem being that these two work in concert. They are two facets of something called ‘intellectual arrogance’.
I’ll come back to this notion sometime in the future. Now I’ll end up telling that there’s not much left of the ‘savannah’.
When things were unfolding as Djuvara described them, the planet itself was more or less ‘virgin’. Unexploited. Unoccupied. Human culture used to be diverse. Ideas were developing. Traded. From one place to the other. From one culture to the other.
Nowadays, much of the planet – our home, is occupied by the, more or less, same civilization. And by an increasingly similar culture.
Nothing inherently good nor bad here, mind you!
If we still have no definitive history, then the future hasn’t been written yet. It’s up to us to choose the right trail. For no other reason than the fact that there are very few trails left for us to burn!
nicichiarasa 