Archives for posts with tag: history

Communism

August 1, 2024 //
0

The Polish state broadcaster on Saturday suspended
a television journalist who, during the Olympic Games opening ceremony,
reacted to a performance of John Lennon’s “Imagine” by saying it was a “vision of communism.”

Communism is perfect!
Communism is the perfect lie…

Communism was ‘invented’ by Marx and proposed as the only solution to a real problem.

The problem with communism as a practical solution is that it cannot be put into practice!

Humans, both at individual and social level, need freedom.
Without individual and social freedom, individuals regress to an animalic state and societies fail. Abysmally!

According to Marx, communism was the only solution for what he had perceived as a problem.
According to Marx, when a critical mass of people belonging to the middle class will become destitute, they will accept to be led out of their predicament by ‘the communists’. But since the rest of the society continues to enjoy their perks or to ignore the dangers ‘lurking in the future’, in order to achieve their goal – communism for everybody, including for the unwilling, the communists will have to institute the socialist dictatorship. As a transition phase to communism. A phase in which the unwilling will be convinced.
According to history, no dictatorship – including the socialist – has ever survived. Has ever achieved its goal.

Communism, at least for now, is unattainable. For the simple reason that humankind has not yet learned how to survive dictatorship. How to live without freedom.

On the other hand, communism is very alluring.
For the idealists amongst us…
Communism is a very suitable subject for dreaming. A very nice thing to have, albeit impossible to achieve…

Since the idealists are hard to convince, let me speak to the practical minded amongst you.
John Lennon invited us to dream. To dream a world with ‘no possessions’ and with ‘no need for greed or hunger’. What’s not to like in this dream, except for the fact that it can’t be put in practice?
Hunger is natural. Why eat if not hungry?!?
Greed is also natural.
Who doesn’t like/want more of what they consider to be pleasant?!? The wise amongst us?
How do we become wise? As wise as each of us is able to become…
By interacting with others? By learning from them? And from the consequences of those interactions?

Property – possessions – is a tool.
A tool society uses to make order. If each of us knows what they are able to use for what purpose things go smooth. There’s no need for outside intervention. Granted, this is valid for only as long as each – well, at least most – members of the society have enough to eat, where to sleep and what to protect their backs with.
Without the order construed by the society, collectively, using the tool known as ‘property’, how are the people going to cooperate?!? To interact? To learn, even…

How about we wake up?
Sleep is essential and dreaming a normal part of it.
But we also need some wake up time!
Pun intended…

Tags , , , ,
Categories 1989, authoritarianism, awareness, Bounded rationality, democracy, freedom, In English, man as a measure for all things, Mutual Respect, skin in the game

Evolutionary speaking….

November 20, 2023 //
0

‘Evolution is not about “the survival of the fittest”.
Evolution is about the demise of the unfit!’
What Evolution Is, Ernst Mayr

It’s not ‘what doesn’t kill you’ which may make you stronger.
You are! That guy….

But only if you learn enough from the experience!

Tags , , , , ,
Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, effective communication, evolution, In English, man as a measure for all things, Mutual Respect, Psychology, skin in the game

But do we read it right?

November 4, 2023 //
0

Let me put it the other way.

We make history.
We write history.
We read the history we wrote about the things we’ve done.

Then we keep ruminating about what we (don’t) learn from and about history…

Are we nuts?

But is there anything to be learned from history?

Yep!
What happens when we fail to learn from the mistakes which keep shouting at us from the history books our ancestors had written for us. Had written to warn us…

Tags , , ,
Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, altruism, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, colaborare, collective identity, complementary ways of attending knowlege, effective communication, In English, man as a measure for all things, skin in the game, teleology

Matter. Time. And us…

May 21, 2021 //
0

Time is but the consequence of matter/energy interacting with itself.

The post continues after this message.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time donation

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

As much as I love writing, I do have to eat.
And to provide for my family.
Earning money takes time.
If you’d like me to write more, and on a more regular basis, hit the button.
Your contribution will be appreciated!
Another very efficient way to help would be to share my posts.

As much as I love writing, I do have to eat.
And to provide for my family.
Earning money takes time.
If you’d like me to write more, and on a more regular basis, hit the button.
Your contribution will be appreciated!

As much as I love writing, I do have to eat.
And to provide for my family.
Earning money takes time.
If you’d like me to write more, and on a more regular basis, hit the button.
Your contribution will be appreciated!

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

There was no time to speak about before matter divorced energy.

Nobody was actually aware of time passing by until we started counting Sun’s revolutions.

Earth turning round the Sun is matter interacting with itself.

We, humans, are a consequence of evolution. Of matter interacting with itself.

History – the times be bothered to record, is a consequence of human interactions.

Environment is the consequence of the living things interacting with the rest of the planet.
The current state of our ‘backyard’, the Earth, is, increasingly, the consequence of our interaction with the environment.

Time might be passing its own.
We used to count it.
Nowadays, we’re the ones driving it.

Tags , , , , , ,
Categories awareness, Chance, Choices we make, cooperation, evolution, In English, man as a measure for all things, physis, re-definitions, skin in the game, The kind of world we are building for our children

The ‘biological’ history of mankind

July 28, 2020 //
0

Culture is to human communities what DNA is to biological species.

It transports vital information from one generation to the other. Hence providing a venue for survival.
Furthermore, both culture and DNA can change in time. Hence providing a venue for evolution.

The difference between culture and DNA being, of course, the fact that culture is way more fluid than DNA.
DNA changes only once for each generation – what you get at birth is what you’re taking to the grave, while culture is in constant flux.
No individual organism has anything to say about their genetic information but almost every human is capable of learning almost anything.

Now for the historical part.

Stage one.

Veneration of the elders. The elders were the depositories of the common knowledge. Hence everybody took good care of the ‘data bases’.

Stage two.

Somebody learned to write.
Elders were no longer indispensable. More and more information could be ‘warehoused’ in alternative ways.
A structure was needed to manage the new ways of dealing with the vital information.

Stage three.

The state is born.
At first the structures which insured that culture was passed from one generation to another had been rather empiric: kingdoms, monasteries, etc.
Soon after the Enlightenment things had become more rational. Cultured people became nations and the academic scholars gave us the state. As the structure charged to make sure that culture and people stay together. Hence providing for the nation’s survival.

States who had been in constant contact – read rivalry, kept each-other fit. Or else.
States ‘removed’ from reality – geographically, by becoming too powerful to care or both, had experienced a natural decay. The people at the top of the food chain had forgotten about those at the bottom and those at the bottom had lost faith in their leadership.

States too weak to survive – for various reasons, have succumbed while those too powerful for their own sake have eventually imploded.

Psychology to the rescue.

Culture is more fluid than DNA for a reason.
DNA follows exclusively the laws of nature while culture is heavily influenced by us.
We, men, are the measure of all things.
All life heavily transforms the place it inhabits.
So do we, humans. Only we do it willingly. On purpose, that is.

Now, that we have amassed so much information – about life in general and about how we relate, as agents, to the entire process, we have reached a reckoning moment. What next?

Are we going to choose the path of the cuckoo or that shown to us by Hokule-a?

Tags , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories 1989, arrogance, authoritarianism, awareness, biology, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, complementary ways of attending knowlege, cooperation, effective communication, fail better, In English, limited rationality, man as a measure for all things, Mutual Respect, Psychology, skin in the game, teleology, The kind of world we are building for our children, Trust

History of Thinking. Short Course.

January 20, 2019 //
0

– History is the story of what we remember of what had happened, right? Based on our shared individual recollections, the ‘written sources’ we have at our disposal and our interpretation of any other material traces we might have found… and properly preserved…

– Yep!

– Then no history, no matter how diligent and well intended the historian, will ever be the actual representation of what had really happened, back then!

– Well, you seem to be quite familiar with Heidegger’s work.

– I can’t say that. Popper’s injunction that science is more about being prepared to acknowledge your ignorance than about really knowing is enough for me.

– Then we might be soon delivered from History, after all.
When enough people will share your attitude/paradigm – that no matter how hard we’ll ever try we’ll never know anything for sure… it will be impossible for any would be dictator to pretend they have the ‘right’ answer for any problem we might encounter.

Tags , , , , , , ,
Categories arrogance, authoritarianism, Bounded rationality, Chance, Choices we make, cooperation, Frames of mind, freedom, limited rationality, man induced fragility, Mutual Respect, Psychology, The kind of world we are building for our children, The kind of world we live in

The Past. Resource, ballast or both at the same time?

August 2, 2016 //
1

 

quote-we-learn-from-history-that-we-learn-nothing-from-history-george-bernard-shaw-52-49-23

Funny, isn’t it?

Or yet another reminder that constantly cracking jokes about everything and everybody is not exactly the best thing to do… Let’s compare the relative importance of the British Empire during Shaw’s coming of age – the period when he developed his habit of cracking jokes about everything, no matter how serious the subject, with the fact that Scotland is seriously planning a second independence referendum.

Or let me remind you of another Brit who enjoys cracking annoying jokes:

3727584669

Not funny anymore?

OK, let me try another tack.

What if

caaf122f196e61ec72335fd6ee6b0981

Could it be that the problem resides with us?

That this is basically a matter of what we do with whatever (history) has been passed to us by our forefathers? That what has been passed to us does have its own importance but that we can’t do very much about it?
History can only be rewritten but never changed…
We, on the other hand, can and should learn to deal with the dynamics of this world.

 

learning_from_history

How come ‘those who do study history are doomed to stand by helplessly while everyone else repeats it’?

Could it be that some of the ‘students of history’ are doing something wrong?
Misunderstand the very lessons they try to impose on the others?

Cracking annoying jokes about the matters at hand instead of honestly helping others to reach intellectual autonomy and then respectfully allowing them to develop their own interpretations of things?

 

Tags , , , ,
Categories arrogance, Choices we make, collective identity, democracy, effective communication, Frames of mind, limited rationality, Mindset, Mutual Respect, Psychology, The kind of world we live in, Trust

“The Story of Your Enslavement”

August 19, 2013 //
1

Fright of death enables ‘human farming’.

Tags
Categories Psychology