Archives for posts with tag: Liberty
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Epigenetics

March 16, 2026 //
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Epigenetics refers to how your behaviors and environment can cause changes
that affect the way your genes work.
Unlike genetic changes (mutations),
epigenetic changes are reversible and do not change the sequence of DNA bases,
but they can change how your body reads a DNA sequence.
CDC.gov, 31 Jan 2025

So.
XII-th century alchemy was OK. And, eventually, had given birth to science.
All the while, starting with the XV-th century, practicing witchcraft was punished by burning the culprit at the stake.
In the same cultural space! Christian Europe…

Both alchemists and inquisitors read the same Bible. Followed the same precepts.
Both alchemists and witches were involved in the same business. Performed, or tried to, the same kind of feats. Alchemists tried to out-rightly transform the reality, according to their particular wishes, while the witches were accused of achieving ‘unnatural goals’. Saving someone’s life – or that of some animal – who should have ‘normally’ died. Who would have ‘otherwise’ died…
The interesting aspect of this whole thing is this:
Alchemy was considered to be OK. Alchemists believed – and the general public obliged – that everything which existed came to be by design. Was wished into being by God. As a consequence of this belief, the alchemists – and the general public – were convinced that by studying nature they would, eventually, learn something about the will of God. And achieve some results along the way…
Simultaneously, since the feats accomplished by the witches were ‘against the nature’, they must had been performed with the help of the devil. Hence had to be punished.

What about the miracles performed by Jesus?!? And promised by Him to all those who followed his teachings? In earnest…
“Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” Matthew, 17:20

What drove the XV-th century witch-hunters to the conclusion that miracles could be performed only with the help of the Devil?
That God was no longer willing to assist?

“The Black Death was a plague pandemic that occurred in Europe from 1346 to 1353. It was one of the most fatal pandemics in human history; as many as 50 million people[2] died, perhaps 50% of Europe’s 14th-century population.“

‘Reality’ – as in ‘whatever happened on the face of the Earth’ – was considered to be the actualization of the Will of God, remember?
Such a tragedy, “perhaps 50% of Europe’s 14th century population” disappearing in such horrible way, was bound to be interpreted as a punishment. Applied by God to a sinful population.
And since God was perceived to be in a vengeful disposition, any ‘help’ could have come only from the ‘competition’. From the ‘sneaky’ one.

Farfetched? Believers don’t think like that? Don’t blame God for the bad things happening to Man?

Some do not, indeed.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks after visiting Auschwitz:
“And suddenly I knew that when God speaks and human beings refuse to listen, even God is helpless in that situation. He knew that Cain was about to kill Abel, but He didn’t stop him. He knew Pharaoh was about to kill Israelite children. He didn’t stop it. God gives us freedom and never takes it back. But He tells us how to use that freedom. And when human beings refuse to listen, even God is powerless.“

Yet another interpretation?
Of the same cultural tradition?

Indeed, this my very point.
Just as individual living organisms somehow ‘tweak’ the information written in their DNA to increase their chances of survival in the specific conditions present in their environment, we – conscious human beings – have the opportunity, read ‘liberty’, to interpret the cultural traditions passed on to us by our ancestors.
We do that ‘under influence’. Pressured by everything going on around us.
Are we truly free when doing this?
Does our conscience work as intended in such conditions?
When in ‘dire straits’?

Only the future can tell.

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Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, effective communication, evolution, In English, skin in the game

Sola Gratia

February 16, 2026 //
0

“For by grace you have been saved through faith.
And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God”
(Ephesians 2:8).

Same person, inscribed simultaneously in a square and in a circle. Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man.

What better metaphor?
We belong to the real world. And, simultaneously, to a world of our own making.

A ‘virtual’ world.
In the sense that our world is crafted according to our ‘virtue’. Defined by our virtue…
Our collective virtue, of course. Nobody has ever managed to make an entire world for themselves… The world we live in, we inhabit as quests, is the consequence of our cultured efforts. A collective endeavor in both space and time.

OK, and where’s the link between redemption by divine grace and this schizophrenic world of yours?

The virtual world we’ve made, innocently until people have started to guess what God had in mind for us, can be measured across two dimensions. Freedom and faith.

You don’t make any sense…

Freedom of will is what allows us to choose.
Faith is what keeps us together.

To make sense, freedom and faith need reality.
There’s no such thing as absolute freedom and faith needs to be anchored in… you guessed right, hard core reality!

So here we have it.
Individual human beings collaborating in good faith and making good use of the amount of liberty made possible by the reality present in each consecutive moment.

Or

Herded people driven by blind faith ignoring the very concept of liberty. (Can you even consider these people as being human?)

Since both the above situations are fictional extremes, the truth is – as usual – somewhere in the middle.

Individual human people trying to make a living in whatever circumstances they have happened to open their eyes.
Since nothing is perfect in any given situation, people have to make do with whatever they have at their disposal.
One of the tools they use to keep going, to remain true to themselves, is the famous fallacy.

Faith in themselves…
Until the shit hits the fan!

Tags , , ,
Categories alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, effective communication, evolution, In English, skin in the game

To Whom?!?

November 18, 2025 //
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Things – every’thing’, actually – are/is relative.
Relative to the agent evaluating each of those things.
Accordin’ to Einstein, that is.
He was the one who taught us to use whatever reference frame suits our needs.

Do you reckon anybody wasted any time or energy thinking about freedom before the advent of slavery?
Me neither.
Forget about the fact that, in those times, people didn’t have much time left for abstract thinking. Finding food and enjoying it with friends kind of drains your energy when you have to do it yourself… The point being that, in those times, everybody was free. Hence ‘had’ nothing to compare freedom with… No lack of freedom, no reason to speak/think about it.
No reason to notice the thing and no reason to coin the concept…

Hunter-gatherers have no use for ‘property’. Personal objects are just that and everything else either belongs to Mother Nature or to the entire group. And this goes without saying. Or thinking about it. People share everything as a matter of fact and common sense discourages the others to use anybody’s personal objects unless in an emergency.
Agriculture – either herding animals or growing crops – changed everything. Property, both as a concept and as an everyday manner of dealing with ‘things’, was invented and introduced in daily use. Productivity increased dramatically. Which made it possible for people to have ‘spare time’. For thinking.
And for planning…

‘The neighbors have better crops. Let’s go take some for us. And while we’re at it, let’s take some of their women too’.
The first slave was probably the first person to long for freedom…

‘Cheap’ slave work coupled with the increased social productivity induced by a markedly improved technology for obtaining food meant that some individuals could afford the luxury of thinking.
The Ancient Athenians had both slaves and philosophers. The slaves did whatever was needed to be done while some of the ‘beneficiaries’ had enough time, and energy, to let their minds ‘free’. To roam free in search for meaning.
To coin the concept and to explore freedom…

Relative “To whom”? To us!
We’re responsible for freedom and freedom is relative to us.
We have invented it. We’re the ones using it. In the sense that we’re the ones who need to notice that freer communities fare a lot better than the less free.

So freedom is relative both to those thinking about it and to each particular community.
To each particular community which puts freedom into practice!

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Categories awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, effective communication, evolution, freedom, In English, Mutual Respect, skin in the game, Trust

Yeah, right…

April 19, 2025 //
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The words of Abraham Lincoln to honour the soldiers that sacrificed their lives in order
“that government of the people, by the people, for the people,
shall not perish from the earth”
were spoken at Gettysburg,
but these words apply as well to the countless soldiers
that died for the cause of democracy in the following 150 years.

How about people respecting each-other?

After all, government is supposed to be by the people and for the people…

Those serving in the government come from among the same people, don’t they?

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

Skinning cats

July 11, 2024 //
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With Chandler Owen, A. Philip Randolph founded and became co-editor of The Messenger,
an African American socialist magazine, in 1917.
In 1925, Randolph established the first predominantly black labor union,
the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, to improve working conditions
for the nearly 10,000 black railroad employees.
The Brotherhood would enjoy longstanding prominence in the labor and civil rights movements.

According to the English lore, “there’s more than one way to skin a cat”.
According to the cat, ‘who cares about how I lose my coat? I’ll end up dead anyway!’
According to the fur tanners, ‘the manner of skinning the pelt is of utmost importance for the end-result of the operation’.

Whom to believe? Specially since all of them seem to be right…

Well, truth has a marked tendency for being complicated.
Hard to comprehend in its entirety and even harder to express in a concise manner.
Meanwhile we, conscious human beings, have a marked tendency to notice only what we’re interested in. To notice only what we care about…

In fact, the manner in which we notice things speaks volumes about who we are. About how we relate to what we call ‘reality’.

The white colonists inhabiting a certain area in Northern America had become ‘Free Americans’ after fighting the British. Only after they had freed themselves through battle!
A. Philip Randoph had fought for his freedom. And for human rights.

All this fighting leads to a bout of pondering.
Are we free together? As in ‘all of us’ and ‘once and for all’?
Or our freedom is defined against other people? Who might try to steal our liberty from us?

What is freedom, after all?
A zero sum game? Where liberty is up for grabs but in limited supply?
Or a ‘grace’ we impart with and upon our fellow human beings?
Something to be jealously guarded or something to be collectively and cooperatively maintained and enhanced?

And one final question.
Why would anyone attempt to steal other people’s freedom?
When history gives us plenty of evidence that whenever freedom was out to be shared people were happy while whenever freedom was in short supply the entire society eventually crumbled under it’s own weight…

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Categories 1989, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, effective communication, In English, man as a measure for all things, skin in the game, Trust

Getting across

May 1, 2023 //
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I’m not sure what ‘timid’ meant in those times.

I would have used ‘coward’.

On the other hand, it would have been politically incorrect…

And ‘somewhat’ inefficient! Being blunt, often scares your audience.

And makes them impervious to what you need to share with them.

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Categories 1989, arrogance, authoritarianism, awareness, Choices we make, cooperation, democracy, evolution, In English, limited rationality, man as a measure for all things, man induced fragility, Mutual Respect, Psychology, skin in the game, Trust

Perpendiculars

June 4, 2022 //
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‘Most people confuse liberty and democracy. They are not the same.’

Liberty and democracy are not the same indeed.

Like my left hand is not the same with my right one.

But I need both in order to lead what I consider to be a normal life.

Most people – specially if they get help, can survive without a hand. Or without either liberty or democracy.

But without both… without both hands or without both liberty and democracy… I’d be at somebody else’s mercy!

‘What?!?
What kind of liberty is there under communist rule???’

You see, liberty has two ‘faces’. Two dimensions.
Three, actually, but I’ll be talking about only two of them in this post.

There is the ‘inner liberty’ and there is the ‘socially sanctioned liberty’.

Liberty itself is a human concept.
We have noticed something, wondered about it, named it and then attempted to understand it.
This was, and continues to be, a collective effort.

In some places ‘liberty’ had appeared ‘naturally’.
There was enough liberty naturally sloshing around, hence the circumstances were right for those who had happened to live there at the right time to notice it. Furthermore, the conditions had been right again for the entire community to be able to agree among themselves about the concept and about how to use it/put in practice their new intellectual achievement.

Other places have not been so lucky.
They had been close enough, geographically and socio-historically, to notice the ‘birth of liberty’ but their specific conditions were not ‘right enough’. Many people living there coveted liberty but the local conditions made it impossible for liberty to take hold.
In these places ‘inner liberty’ – individually assumed freedom, can be found a lo more easily than presumed by those unfamiliar with the local realities.

Yet other places had it even worse.
Initially on the path towards liberty – and democracy, they have somehow stumbled.
For whatever causes – internal and/or external, something went wrong. People became disappointed enough to give up not only democracy but also liberty. Including their own, individual inner freedom.

A somewhat intermediary situation constitutes the third abnormal quadrant.
The people involved have given up their liberty – partially, but those running the show continue to use (‘pretendingly’) democracy as a window dressing to hide their true intentions.

The last hundred years or so have been extremely relevant in this matter.
All communist regimes had fallen. Under their own weight.
Most fascist/nazi regimes are no longer with us. Had been so ‘arrogant’ – read self destructive, that their neighbors had to do something about them. Had created so much disruption around them that those whose very existence was endangered had been forced to spring into action.
‘Illiberal democracy’ is a rather new ‘development’. Would be fascist/nazi dictators don’t have all circumstances aligned to make their final move so they have to make do with what there is at their disposal. The local population is ‘despondent’ enough to pay attention to their arguments but not desperate enough to follow them into the ‘unknown’. Hence this oxymoronic abomination.

‘Illiberal democracy’…
On the other hand, the spin doctors promoting illiberal democracies hope to be able to reap the benefits of democracy – the population being ‘rather favorably disposed’ towards the government while having to pay less ‘lip service’ to individual human rights.
A balancing act, with no safety net, which is alluring to those reckless enough to attempt it but which will end up badly. Sooner rather than later.

But the most interesting ‘combination’ – for me, at least, is Anarchy.
In the sense that those who ‘swallow’ the lure are self delusional.
They have somehow convinced themselves that their, own, liberty somehow trumps the liberty of everybody else. They feel so strong, so immune to any outside influence, that they would willingly accept to live in a no rule environment. Without understanding that ‘no rule’ means ‘no holds barred’.
They actually don’t realize that unfettered liberty actually means ‘Each of us free against all others’.
This being the reason for which Anarchy, as a political arrangement, has never survived for long enough to be noticed. Except as a transitory phase.

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

Natural Law

June 4, 2022 //
0

Many people interpret Darwin’s Evolution as ‘the survival of the fittest’.
Ernst Mayr, What Evolution Is, made is crystal clear that ‘evolution is not as much about the survival of the fittest as it’s about the demise of the unfit. Read the book, it’s well worth the time. https://www.scribd.com/document/358382958/Ernst-Mayr-What-Evolution-is-PDF

The meme above had been shared by somebody who was convinced that “Covid is solely a mental disease programmed into the minds of the masses to further ingratiate themselves in their loving servitude to their slave master tyrants“.

The fact that we have so many, and so conflicting, views on such a simple natural law as the law of evolution means that… we don’t know shit!

Hence Samuel Adams was right.
Since we know basically nothing, none of us should have ‘authority’ over others. Each of us should be free. To do as they please. To follow exclusively the ‘laws of nature’.

Which one of them?
Darwin’s – as some of us have chosen to interpret, or Mayr’s?

‘Survival of the fittest’ or ‘The demise of the unfit’?
‘I’m stronger than you so move over’ or ‘If you don’t agree with our commonly shared values, please find another place to live?’
‘Free against all else’ or ‘free together with everybody else’?

.

.

.

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Categories 1989, awareness, Choices we make, collective identity, effective communication, evolution, In English, man as a measure for all things, man induced fragility, Psychology, skin in the game, time

Natural fact? Social construct? Elusive ideal?

July 5, 2021 //
0

I’ll start by stating that nothing becomes fact before somebody calling it so!

Doesn’t make any sense?
It’s not enough?
OK…

So ‘blue’ had become a fact only after people had invented a word for it…
It had existed before hand but we hadn’t noticed it – hadn’t spoken about it, more exactly, until we had a word for it. Until we had learned how to ‘measure’ it…

But what is a ‘fact’?
Something which is ‘real’?
And how do you determine if something is ‘real’ or not?
It either has ‘measurable consequences’ or your experience about it has been confirmed by somebody else.
A coffee table becomes a fact in the dark after you hit it with your shin and a meteorite ceases being a illusion the moment your hubby confirms he has also seen it.
No so complicated, was it?

‘But what about a propaganda movie? It that real? Can you consider it to be a fact?’

Excellent question, Watson!

The movie itself is real alright! A fact, indeed.
The fact that not everything it pretends to be real is true… is also a fact!
Savvy?

In fact, there are more facts waiting to be discovered than actual ‘happenings’.

Take the propaganda movie.
It has consequences.
Some people believe in its message. And act accordingly. Each of those actions becoming facts on their own.
Other people smell the rat hiding behind the screen. And act accordingly. Each of those actions being facts on their own.
The fact that those exposed to the same message more often than not chose to respond differently is a strong suggestion that facts – and reality itself, are not so straightforward as we’d like them to be.
As straightforward as most spin doctors pretend them to be…

‘You’ve been jabbering for sometime now but you haven’t yet come forward. What was the meaning of that ‘elusive’ title of yours?’

Liberty.
What is it?
A fact? A natural fact? Something which was given to us? Our natural status? Something others want to steal from us?
Something we’ve built/discovered together?
Or an ideal we’ll never be able to fulfill?

How about all three at the same time?

‘Are you nuts?’

A ball – a foot-ball, for example, has a certain degree of freedom. Put it on a table and it may roll in any direction it may choose. But will ‘never’ be able to fall through the table nor start to fly. ‘On it’s own’…
A helium balloon has another kind of freedom. If it’s tied down with a string it has the freedom to oscillate. If it’s ‘free’ it has the freedom to go up. For as long as it manages to hold on on enough helium, but that’s another thing. Another fact, if you will…

A society is free only if its members respect and defend, collectively, their freedoms. Their individual freedom and their collective freedom. For instance, Russia is a free country but its citizens are not as free as their neighbors, the Fins.
The moment Hong Kong went back to China, the city was no longer as free as it used to be as a British dominion. Yet its citizens have continued to be far freer than the rest of the Chinese citizens. For a while…..

Somethings – freedom, for instance, cannot be anything more than people think about them.

Others can.
Until people had invented X-rays, nobody could know how big were the roots of any given tooth.
Until Robert K. Merton had put together a more detailed analysis of it, the law of the unintended consequences was something people intuitively knew it was ‘real’ but nobody was fully aware of its real depth. Now, most of us agree that that depth is unfathomable. Yet some people still behave as if things were under control… Under their control…

Freedom, and all other rights we have enjoyed for sometime now, is only as wide – and only as deep, as we make it to be. As we agree among ourselves to make it.
For all of us!

Collective freedom as a fact.
In the sense that the freer communities have had a consistently bigger survivability rate than the more authoritarian regimes.
Ancient Athens had been able to navigate through more ‘dire straights’ than its arch-enemy, Sparta.
The Roman Empire has been established as a democracy, thrived as one for a while then failed abysmally as an autocracy.
Yes, the Egyptian empire did survive for millennia… only it had been ruled, succeedingly, by 33 dynasties. Practically, there had been 33 regimes, not one… And since there had been some 3100 years between its unification and it being incorporated into the Roman Empire… an average of 100 years per political regime cannot be branded as a real success… Specially in the early years, when the competition was…

A quick jump to the XX-th century will suggest the very same thing. All major wars – WWI, WWII and the Cold one, had been won by the freer societies.

So collective freedom, or lack thereof, has consequences. Is a fact.

On the other hand, freedom – the real version, the one that works, cannot be had/enjoyed but in a social context.
Nobody can be free on their own.
The emperors of yore – and the dictators of today, have been under the impression – illusion, more likely, that they could do whatever they pleased. That they were free. So free that they never hesitated to trample the freedom of their subjects. Only that freedom never lasted for long… it was soon replaced by the liberty of somebody else… And all these successive liberties have been exerted at the expense of those of everybody else.

Hence liberty, individual as well as collective, is not only a fact. It’s also a social construct.

What about the ‘elusive ideal’?

“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.“

Oops!
The only reasonable way to read this is ‘if you want to be free, you need to think straight’.
To find out what’s keeping you down and how to free yourself in a sustainable way.
How to free yourself in a manner which will add to the freedom of all others!

Cause if your increased freedom means the debasement of your erstwhile peers… things don’t look right…

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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, authoritarianism, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, democracy, effective communication, evolution, human rights, In English, man as a measure for all things, manipulation, Mutual Respect, Psychology, teleology, Trust

“Ball of confusion”

July 29, 2020 //
2

While everything mentioned above is absolutely true, we must also remember that it was the whites – who had first reached the ‘proper stage of development’, who had given up slavery and invented ‘human rights’.
On the other side, it is also true that the whites did reach the ‘proper stage of development’ by exploiting the rest of the world.
Only ‘this’ wasn’t invented by them! I don’t want to go into the finer details. All of you know, very well, what had really happened ‘on the ground’.

So.
What are we going to do next?

‘Delete’ everything the white people have contributed only because they have been the last to exploit the rest of the mankind?

Or accept the fact that evolution works in an oblique manner?

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Categories 1989, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, complementary ways of attending knowlege, cooperation, effective communication, evolution, forgiveness, Frames of mind, human rights, In English, limited rationality, man as a measure for all things, Mutual Respect, Psychology, skin in the game, teleology, Trust
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