My son, three years away from voting age, is nevertheless aware of what’s going on.
Yesterday he recounted me an exchange he had witnessed on Ask.fm:
– Hey dude, are you going to vote? (“Dude” has just turned 18, the first in their gang to be able to vote)
– No! The way I see it nowadays going to vote is like being asked to choose what kind of shit you’ll be served for dinner. Why bother?
– I think understand what you mean. You compare a country with a bunch of guys having to eat at the same cafeteria who finally have an opportunity to choose between chefs/menus but only to discover that the available candidates are unpalatable. Rather pertinent comparison, specially after finally understanding that ‘negative voting’ (voting for the challenger only as a punishment for the incumbent, knowing from the beginning that both are equivalent) is not really a punishment for the incumbent but a carte blanche for the next incumbent and a shot in his own foot for the voter.
– That’s exactly what I feel. Finally someone who understands me…
– Well, I might understand you but I’d still go to the polling station. Mainly because I don’t agree with you about all candidates being worthless – even if you don’t get to vote for the winner nor for the second best by choosing someone in earnest your vote conveys a clear message, ‘this is exactly what I want’.
Even if I didn’t like anyone I’d still go there and strike out everybody on the ballot box, just to send everyone of them a stiff warning: ‘I don’t trust anyone of you but since I care strongly about my fate I’m going to watch closely whatever you’ll do from now on!’
Going back to your example with the cafeteria forfeiting the chance to express your opinion is beyond letting others to decide what kind of shit you’re going to enjoy.
After all not voting is a cross between a ‘blanket approval’ for what ever is going to happen and admitting that ‘I don’t care enough to move my butt to the polling station’. And in this case you shouldn’t be asking yourself anymore ‘what happened to these politicians that made them so callous?’
I’ve been using cinnamon sticks for rice pilaf or curries/stews for some 5 or 6 years now.
My son, 15 years old, who had been raised on a mixture of Northern Transylvanian (my wife is a native of Dej) and Romanian/Armenian food (I’m a half breed myself), (his parents take turns at the cooking stove), is used with ever changing recipes. That doesn’t means he accepts everything…in fact he is rather choosy, always having an alternative develops a certain habit of asking for the better of whatever is available at one moment!
Anyway, today – for the first time, he asked for the cinnamon stick and not only picked every grain of rice from it and sucked on it as if it was a lolly-pop but he also made a picture of it and posted it on his FB wall.
So learning new habits is not that hard, it only takes an open heart on the side of the student and a lot of patience from the teacher…not to mention the fact that the teacher’s main goal has to be the student’s best interest, otherwise the whole exercise is doomed to eventual failure!
PS
I must thank Jhumpa Lahiri (“The Namesake”) for introducing me to the joys of using cinnamon sticks.
Found this picture on FB.
A very strong reminder that we really need to start thinking with our own heads.
‘Newspapers’ are just as technological as smartphones are!!!
It’s how WE chose to use the available technology that makes all the difference in the world!
Excellent analysis.
One two pronged mistake though.
Putin was raised in a completely different environment than Nixon and the Russian Silent Majority is rather different than the American one. Not that different as some might think but nevertheless different enough as to accept a lot more authoritarianism from Putin than their American counterpart accepted from Nixon. And Putin is only happy to deliver.
So no, I don’t think leaving him alone may accomplish much. If anything, this would reinforce Putin’s conviction that the West is nothing but a bunch of degenerated pussies. He is wrong, of course, but the fact that he makes again the same mistake Hitler did 70 years ago doesn’t bode well for anybody. East or West of the Urals.
And yes, it is extremely unfortunate that “intelligentsia liberals and Moscow yuppies are elitist snobs on a scale that would turn anyone into a Bolshevik. They even named their go-to glossy “Snob”— and they meant it. It’s not just the new rich who are elitist snobs — liberal journalist-dissident Elena Tregubova’s memoir on press censorship interweaves her contempt for Putin with her Muscovite contempt for what she called “aborigines,” those provincial Russian multitudes who occupy the rest of Russia’s eleven time zones. Tregubova flaunted her contempt for Russia’s “aborigines,” whom she mocked for being too poor and uncivilized to tell the difference between processed orange juice and her beloved fresh-squeezed orange juice. I’m not making that up either.”
You see, this is the real problem that needs fixing, And not only in Russia.
Horthy and Antonescu, his Romanian counterpart, did some successful balancing during WWII and saved indeed some precious time for the many Jews that happened to live in those two countries. Also, by doing so, they avoided their countries being invaded twice, by both the Germans and the Russians, as Poland and Czechoslovakia were
But, unfortunately, the longer term results were horrendous.
No, not that what happened in Hungary in 1956 was far worse than the 1968 occupation of Prague or that present day Romania is in a lot worse, economical and political, shape than Poland despite having many more natural resources…
The real problem is that both people lost their self-esteem precisely because they didn’t put up any real resistance against neither of those two aggressors. And this is the explanation for what is going on right now!
PS European Union is not a failure. Yes, sometimes it does appear like one only so did the League of Nations to Hitler. And in the end it was the countries from the old Europe, with some American help, that succeeded in defeating Hitler and containing Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev.
Well…yeah …probably…. but I’m not sure about ‘do more drugs’ though! While smarter people are indeed more curious and more inclined to experiment than the rest of us they also understand faster that one cannot remain smarter for long after ‘doing drugs’ on a regular basis. So ‘try more drugs’… maybe… ‘do more drugs’… not if they are really smart!
First about Marx being a dialectician. He was one alright. Only there is a small problem with dialectics. In order to work they need at least two equivalent proponents, one on each side. You cannot have proper dialectics by talking to yourself, eventually you’ll take sides and the whole exercise loses its scope.
At this point I’ll make a short break and let you in on one of my moments of shame. As a high school student (Romania under communist rule) I had to participate in a compulsory class about ‘dialectical and historical materialism’ – the ‘scientific formula’ used by communists to describe their creed in those times. At one point the teacher asked me “What are the reasons for ‘dialectical’ materialism being ‘better’ than all other forms of materialism?”. “‘Dialectical materialism’ constantly checks its concepts against the reality and adjust them as the reality changes. By doing this its practitioners constantly deepen human knowledge and build an ever improving understanding of the world.” The teacher congratulated me for this answer and I felt very proud at that moment. But only momentarily. Very soon I started to understand that the theory was fine indeed but that it couldn’t be put into practice.
Precisely because of how Marx had envisioned the communist society:
In fewer words he had stated that the communists were the sole guardians of truth and that that truth was unquestionable. Hence everybody else was wrong and the communists had an obligation to bring everybody back to the ‘straight and narrow’!
And where are the symptoms of his alleged ‘schizophrenia’? Read the manifesto. It is comprised of a ‘theoretical’ introduction, in which Marx exposes his view on what had happened until the dawn of mankind till his days, and a ‘to do’ part which contains Marx’s recomandations about what people should have done from there on. I find it extremely baffling that a person who gathered such a complex understanding about a certain situation could come up with such completely erroneous ideas about how to proceed from there on. Quite a lot of people entertain the notion that Marx was right only Lenin got it wrong and hence the failure of Russian/European communism. No! Marx was right only when he described and explained what had happened. What he had said about the ‘conquest of political power by the proletariat’ was plain wrong. There is no such thing as a ‘good’ or ‘right’ dictatorship, no matter how dialectical it pretends to be.
You see, bona fide dialectics is about people freely, but considerately, contradicting each-other. In no way about ‘sheeple’ submissively caving in to peer pressure or crushing authority.
And here we have ‘it’: under communist rule, in order to save both their mortal beings and their inner souls quite a lot of people apparently toed the line but nevertheless kept a mental reserve about what was going on around them. Not clinical/proper schizophrenia indeed but how else would you call it?
PS. I still have to explain where my shame came from. When I eventually did understand the unbridgeable contradiction between my fine theoretical demonstration about the relative superiority of ‘dialectical materialism’ above over all other forms of materialism and the day to day tragic consequences of that specific brand of materialism being put into practice I remembered how proud I was about the praise I received on that day. Remembering that moment is a fail proof method to prune down my pride!
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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! 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!
Most of you are probably aware that French was THE Lingua Franca until some 60 or 70 years ago, long after Britain had displaced France as the dominant world power.
Why? Because English is a lot more flexible than French and, as such, a lot more suitable as a medium for negotiation.
Why had we, as a species, waited for so long? Because until then international exchanges were, basically, more of an imperial nature than anything else. Only when people started to engage in meaningful negotiation medium became important. Orders can be given in any language, sooner or later the subordinate will figure out the message if the imperator is insistent enough but for meaningful negotiation to be possible the medium needs to be simultaneously expressive enough for the participants to be able to make themselves understood yet imprecise enough to leave room for ‘diplomatic’ manoeuvres.
See what I mean? The last entry is indeed the pinnacle of ambiguity, it is extremely descriptive and it can be simultaneously an oxymoron and a pleonasm, depending on which half of the couple is using it!
Here are some more examples from the FB wall where I found the picture:
Benjamin Adams: “In greek oxy means sharp. In English moron means dull. Oxymoron is an oxymoron.”
I share his concern about the huge social and economic effects produced by extreme wealth polarization but I don’t think that beating anybody may solve anything.
On the contrary, starting a fight instead of a dialog only compounds the problem and worsens the perspectives.
As to why the Icelanders where successful in what they did…this is indeed very simple.
They focused on the wrong doers, not on the 1%.
Belonging to the 1% is not a sin.
Trying to get/remain there by wrongful means is the place where problems are generated and it is here where we should concentrate our attention.
nicichiarasa 