Archives for posts with tag: hunger

Awareness 3.0

October 26, 2025 //
1

You’re handed a pot.
So heavy, you need to hold it with both hands.
So hot, you want to let go of it.
On your feet?!?

I’ve argued sometime ago that all living organisms act as if they were ‘aware’.
All of them are adept at keeping their insides in, most of the outside out and, most importantly, they are the ones deciding what from the outside goes in and what from their inside goes out. And when!
I call this awareness 1.0. Or life…

We congratulate ourselves over being the only creature wielding ‘self-awareness’. The ‘full fledged’ variety… according to our way of understanding it, of course. “Consciousness”, we call it.
How about ‘awareness 2.0’?

Some of us are involved, heavily, into ‘faking’ things. From building something called ‘artificial intelligence’ to using ‘technology’ to mess up other people’s minds.
They are ‘delving’ in the ‘next’ level. Knowingly but unwittingly playing god.

Life is driven by ‘natural selection’. Or ‘evolution’… as Darwin called them.
‘Happenstance’, if you look at it from another angle.
The process of life/natural selection/evolution depends on it taking place ‘individually’. While evolution is a matter regarding ‘species’ – as Darwin itself had put it – the whole process depends on the fact that each individual organism which belongs to each species is distinct/different from all other members of the same species.

‘Self-awareness’ depends on the existence of other self-aware individuals. Willing to cooperate with the ones developing it. Just as no living organism has been observed, yet, while putting itself together starting from innanimate matter, no individual has ever been observed developing self-awareness with no outside help.
Mind you, while the process involves ‘mature’ individuals helping ‘fledglings’ to ‘fly’, the process isn’t entirely ‘voluntary’. The outcome, the emerging individual consciousness, depends on the actions performed by those helping it but only inasmuch as the result of the natural evolution depends on the actions performed by the previous generation. Achieving ‘self-awareness’ is a ‘natural’ process, not a ‘deus ex machina’ machination!

Awareness 3.0, on the other hand… the ‘artificial’ kind…
In this context, I wish to remind you of what happened when we, willingly but unwittingly, have reduced the natural bio-diversity in certain areas. According to our needs and understandings…

“The Green Revolution’s success also brought serious costs: intensive farming drained groundwater, degraded soil and contaminated fields with pesticides, while wheat and rice monocultures eroded biodiversity and heightened climate vulnerability, especially in Punjab and Haryana.
Swaminathan acknowledged these risks and, in the 1990s, called for an “Evergreen Revolution” – high productivity without ecological harm. He warned that future progress would rely not on fertiliser, but on conserving water, soil, and seeds.
A rare public figure, he paired data with empathy – donating much of his 1971 Ramon Magsaysay Award amount to rural scholarships and later promoting gender equality and digital literacy for farmers long before “agri-tech” was a buzzword.
Reflecting on his impact, Naveen Patnaik, former chief minister of Odisha, says: “His legacy reminds us that freedom from hunger is the greatest freedom of all.”
In Swaminathan’s life, science and compassion combined to give millions that very freedom. He died in 2023, aged 98, leaving a lasting legacy in sustainable, farmer-focused agriculture.“

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn7eln1pm4ro


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Categories alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Bounded rationality, effective communication, evolution, fail better, Frames of mind, In English, skin in the game

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…

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

Predatory instinct?!?

August 28, 2023 //
0

Man has a natural tendency to prey on other people.
This being the reason why humans must be educated
and for which we need a lot of coercive measures.

I strongly disagree.
The first sentence is utterly wrong and the second is brazenly manipulative.

Something which can be educated isn’t ‘natural’. Not in the sense implied above!
People can be educated to eat in a certain manner. As in having ‘table manners’.
People can be educated about what to eat. And what to avoid eating. To avoid eating things which are both delicious and nourishing.
People can be educated even about how much to eat!
But you cannot educate anybody to stop eating!

What is truly natural about ‘Man’ – about all people, actually – is that they need to interact with other people. In order to become full fledged human beings, people need to live among other people.

What can be educated is behavior. How to interact with other people.

People can be educated to cooperate.
Or people can be educated to gang up. And prey on those outside the gang.

Please note that those who gang up in order to prey on others do cooperate among themselves!
Even if that cooperative behavior has a strong hierarchical nature.

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Categories 1989 and the Global Financial Crises, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, authoritarianism, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, effective communication, In English, man as a measure for all things, Mutual Respect, Psychology, Rule of Law, skin in the game, teleology, Trust

H cubed

August 19, 2021 //
0

Driven by hunger, trained by habit and enhanced by hope.

That’s how we, humans – a.k.a. conscious animals – operate.

Hunger must be satisfied.
Animals do it instinctively. They can be trained, some of them, only that training is based solely on memory and reward. Their individual contribution to the end result is small.

Humans do it conscientiously. As in ‘on purpose’. They identify first the available food sources – according to their training, rank them – according to their acquired tastes and to the relative ease with which food can be obtained from each of them, and proceed to feed themselves only after all these steps had been performed. However perfunctorily.
It is easy to notice that here individuals have a lot more lee-way. Their contributions to the process can be substantial.

In all of those three phases. And beyond.

When choosing.

When ‘training’ others how to choose.

And when determining that we’ve had enough. That time is ripe to let others feed themselves.

Why are all these people fleeing? From their own country?
Because the Taliban have arrived?

Why had the 300 000 strong, and well equipped, Afghan Army crumbled when left alone to face the 75 000 strong Taliban insurgency?
Because the Afghan government was corrupt? And because “All the major countries – probably except India – in the region had come to terms with the Taliban government.”?

What made these youngsters – very much similar to those above, to choose the Taliban side of the conflict?
And what made the Taliban ultimately more successful than the ‘democratically elected’ Afghan Government?
The Americans deciding it was time for the Afghan People to stand on their own two feet?

As I said at the beginning of the post, we, humans, have a lot more lee-way than the rest of the animals.
None of us is entirely free but each of us has some agency. Some power to influence the destiny of other people.
When exercising that power we’re all influenced by our previously received conditioning and by the present circumstances.
When pressed by ‘urgent considerations’ very few of us remain aware of the fact that present day decisions set the scene for what’s going to happen tomorrow.
When pressed by what we consider to be ‘urgent’ we forget about ‘primum non nocere’.
When caving in to urgency we forget that we are the ones going to live with the consequences of our present decisions.

The Afghans flee their country because they have lost hope.
The Afghan soldiers have caved in because they have lost hope.
The Afghans who have joined the Taliban have done that because they felt there was no other hope.

Who will have to make do in these circumstances?
When are we going to take responsibility for our own fate?
When are we going to start building our own hopes?

Bearing in mind that we have only one Earth at our disposal?
And that if we play our cards right, the sky is the only limit?

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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!

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Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, democracy, effective communication, evolution, In English, man as a measure for all things, Mindset, Psychology, re-definitions, teleology, The kind of world we are building for our children, Transparency, Trust