Archives for posts with tag: the other

The Blame Game

June 24, 2026 //
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“the greatest lie of all:
others need to change,
we are somehow, in some way,
immune to the need for repentance”

“We’re about to be steam-rolled.”
That was how I wrapped up one of my previous posts.

What next?
‘What happened? What can we do to avoid being steam-rolled?’
Or
‘Whom should we blame?’

Let’s start with a simpler one.
You are the manager of a wheat storing facility.
What do you do if:
1. You discover there’s a (one, 1) mouse on the premises.
2. You discover there’s a mouse infestation present.

1. You trap the mouse. You check how it got in and whether there are more of them.
2. You reconsider the entire pest control system. Something must be amiss if things got this bad before anybody noticed.

Let’s go back to us being about to be steam-rolled.
Finding a culprit, ‘the culprit’, may make sense in the psychological sense. It may make us feel better.
But will it teach us what to do next?

Should we let them go scot-free? The culprits?

When it comes to mice, it’s simple. One individual or an entire infestation, there’s no place for any mouse inside a grain-storing facility.
When it comes to people…

Let’s make another thought experiment.
We are a group of people taking a hike.
We’ve hired a local guide, trusting he knows what he’s doing. The guy was recommended by one of us, who had heard about him from an acquaintance.
Soon into the trip we discover the guide is a moron. Not only he is a complete jerk but also he isn’t familiar with the terrain.
What do we do?
Focus on getting back, safe, or start blaming the person who had recommended the guide? Argue with the moronic jerk, maybe?

Reality check.
People taking a hike, the guide included here, will experience, first hand and very soon, the consequences of being led ‘astray’.
Politicians, and most political commentators, are the last to ‘taste’ the consequences of their medicine being fed to the ordinary people.

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Categories 1989, awareness, collective identity, effective communication, In English, Psychology, skin in the game, teleology

Mandatory

September 21, 2021 //
4

Isn’t it rather strange?

Health care professionals who are not yet vaccinated against Covid-19?
Teachers who are not yet vaccinated against Covid-19?

OK, I understand there are some people who cannot go near a vaccine. For medical reasons. But they are few. And, anyway, most of them do not ‘belong’ to this line of work.

But the rest? What is it which prevents them from getting the jab?
The ‘mandatory’ part?
Why do I care about it being mandatory if it saves my life?

Am I being oppressed for having to breathe in order to live?

Am I feeling oppressed for having to work – as in being useful for other people, in order to lead a decent life?

Is this the real reason for which so many of us, teachers and health care professionals included, refuse the vaccine?

‘I am not going to sacrifice my health for the misconceptions and irrational fears of others.’

I don’t care about anybody else but me?!?

Only time can judge this.

Which was smarter.
To accept the vaccine – and contribute to the general well being, assuming the non-0 risk involved.
Or to weather the storm. Hoping the pandemic will die on its own. And/or that enough of the others will get the jab.

But to find out what time will have decided, each of us must live. Must survive the pandemic.

And here’s the catch.
The strongest amongst us will survive. Without a mask. Without a vaccine.
While many of those who didn’t have to die will have gone under.

But what kind of a world will that be?

Dog eat dog?

Are we OK with that?
Is this what we want to leave behind?

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

How things work

June 12, 2020 //
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Albert Einstein, a physicist, had noticed that observations are relative to the “frame of reference” where the observer happens to make his observations.

Humberto Maturana, a biologist, has reached the conclusion that consciousness – or ‘self awareness’, as he prefers to call it, is a personal trait which is developed by individuals living in concert.

Blending Einstein’s and Maturana’s ideas, it is easy to ‘see’ that observations made by human individuals depend, simultaneously, on two referential systems. Or frames of reference, in Einstein’s terms.

On the actual, ‘geographic’, ‘place’ where the individual makes their observations.
And on the ‘cultural place’ where the conscience – inner referential system, of the observing individual had been ‘shaped’.

Otherwise put, nobody can see things which are not there. Nor ‘see’ – a.k.a. understand, things which are too ‘distant’ from what that person already ‘knows’. Accepts as being ‘normal’. Feels like being ‘right’.

To make things just a tad ‘clearer’ – ‘nature versus nurture’, we must consider the vagaries of individual ‘biology’. Some people see/hear/smell/feel differently than others. And even ‘think’ differently.

And my point is?

Maturana made it before me. The ‘other’ – the more different, the better, is a source of richness. IF we treat each-other the right way. If we help each-other by ‘concerting’ our observations about what we have in common.
The ‘place’ we observe. Einstein’s referential frame. Where we ‘happen to stand’. Together.

And there’s something else I’d like you to read.

“J.K. Rowling Writes about Her Reasons for Speaking out on Sex and Gender Issues”
https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-her-reasons-for-speaking-out-on-sex-and-gender-issues

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Categories altruism, awareness, biology, Bounded rationality, Chance, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, Culture, effective communication, evolution, Frames of mind, In English, limited rationality, man as a measure for all things, Mindset, Mutual Respect, Psychology, religion, teleology, Trust