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Category Archives: Philosophy

Ukraine Defense: Courageous, Righteous, and Tough People

01 Wednesday Feb 2023

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Europe, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, North America, Northern Europe, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Psychology, Russia, Ukraine

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democracy, Dignity and Freedom, Medieval v. Modern, National Self-Determination, Ukraine v. Russia, War and Resilience, War and Stoicism

War. Winter. Weariness.

Here, Anna From Ukraine in her daily broadcast lets the world know how war with Russia has been experienced and weathered in her nation.



My view: for those who believe in human dignity and freedom–especially freedom from autocrats, dictators, tyrants, perhaps as well deeply impersonal bureaucracies and systems, and one might also add for Moscow corrupt and criminal systems–courage, endurance, faith, and resilience matter. In the realpolitik between states, alliance, commitment, determination, and ferocity seen as well as off-stage matter too.

Related Online

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditations

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoicism


Posted to YouTube with February 1, 2023.

–33–

FTAC: Kherson and Putin’s Retreat

11 Friday Nov 2022

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Philosophy, Russia, Ukraine

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dictatorship, Medieval v. Modern, Putin, Russia

November 11, 2022.

Editor’s Comment


Even though Putin has quieted on “tactical nukes”, he still has them, and he and his regime remain deeply untrustworthy. Caution seems appropriate. The true ends of the story needs must take place in Moscow and St. Petersburg and in the Kremlin, the FSB, and related criminal and defense circles. Russia has absolutely nothing to gain by way of its feudal-medieval and altogether piratical and politically criminal and retrograde “Imperial” fascist totalitarian revanche, its leader, and his regime.


#MaligNarc #TsarVladimirTheSmaller has, both “of course” and tragically (for our species) the power to destroy himself and the world with it, would that he would keep destroying himself, at which he is excelling, and leave the world to both more compassionate and rational actors.

At his command nonetheless: doomsday underwater systems, hypersonic missiles, stealthy submarines, and “tactical” nuclear warheads.

Living within reach of that destructive capability is not an option as it has long been a given, and while the concepts of “balanced power” and “mutually assured destruction” may allay some ambitions and impulses, we seem to be waking up close to “midnight” every day with this one most execrable (#PutinFullTonto) excuse for a human being in power.

On Archaic Beliefs and Systems

Good: Expanding, Harmonious, and Open Systems; Human and Technological Evolution; Greater Peace and Prosperity On the Bedrock of a Spacious Humanism and Predominant Global Security.

Evil?

*

httpGrs://twitter.com/BarbaraLuethi/status/1590745260719841286?s=20&t=19WIDeZZ62SJHDHlxisc0g

https://t.co/kyRk79vRGf

1-Timing w/ var. Big Money x complex sensitive sophisticated globally distributed basic systems; 2. Malignant Narcissism & Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation; 3-western corruption & kompromat involving TCO narcotics & trafficking.

— J. S. Oppenheim (@JS_Oppenheim) November 10, 2022

*

I have now spent much of my blogging career–or it feels so–promoting the concepts of “Malignant Narcissism“and the related “Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation” while co-promoting or popularizing a post-Cold War narrative that touches on Moscow’s near immediate transformation and reversion to the black fist of a secret police state as well as the world’s appetite for the illicit in earthly delights, so to speak, handily delivered by organized crime, i.e., the world’s most lucrative narcotics and slaves.

While the west approaches accepting some moderation in its policies associated with hedonism and related industries, there remains for consideration the darkest political ramifications associated with corruption, “dark money”, and “kompromat”. Most in and of the west remain deeply committed and steadfast in relation to the experience of freedom as reliant on an atmosphere in which we may live as authentic persons with our own agency, efficacy, ideas, and options, even naughty or tawdry ๐Ÿ™‚ , within the realm (and boundaries) of the predominantly healthy and good.

The political hell of the Russian mafia state, greed-ridden and deeply hypocritical and mindlessly subject to the power of a heartless and vacuous lunatic, would have all of western freedom, law, and tradition choked by criminal intents, fraudulent political theater, and related force. Unfortunately, and it’s just my opinion, the west has been poisoned itself by KGB methods and related and equally unsightly and malign narcissism in cultural and political circles–as much would help explain the #GOPofGreed’s issues with authoritarian and reactionary bents.

It tires me to work up one more repeated reference section, but I will offer a short selection here, and with reference to my own citation, there’s plenty of additional reference on most BackChannels posts.

Related Online

Nekrasov, Andrey (Director). Poisoned by Polonium: The Litvinenko File. Documentary film, 2007.

Oppenheim, James S. “Trump, Corruption, Narcotics, Russia-A Glance.” BackChannels, October 10, 2022.

Satter, David. “The Unsolved Mystery Behind the Act of Terror That Brought Putin to Power.” National Review, August 17, 2016.

Schindler, John. “Exploring Al Qaeda’s Murky Connection to Russian Intelligence.” Business Insider, June 10, 2014.

Tiplady-Bishop, Lottie. “Jeffrey Epstein boasted about ‘flying to Moscow to visit Vladimir Putin’ as secrets behinds his millions are revealed.” The Sun, July 19, 2020.

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Books-Aurelius on Philosophy

21 Wednesday Sep 2022

Posted by commart in 21st Century Modern, A Little Wisdom, Books, Philosophy, Political Psychology

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Aurelius, intellectual discipline, intellectual freedom, philosophy, stoicism

Alexander, Caesar, Pompey–how do they compare to Diogenes, Heraclitus, and Socrates? The philosophers saw the things of the world for what they are–that is they saw things in terms of their causes and their matter–and their command centers were autonomous. As for the others, look at the kinds of worries they had and how little freedom they had!

Aurelius, Marcus. Meditations: The Annotated Edition. Introduction by Robin Waterfield, Translator and Editor. New York: Basic Books, 2021.

No need for droning. Were one designing a modern “great books” program, one might do worse than start with Meditations for grounding.

–33–

Victims of the German Democratic Republic: Brief Reflection on Germany’s Forgotten Internal Immigrants

28 Thursday Apr 2022

Posted by commart in 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Germany, International Development, Philosophy, Political Psychology

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Civilizational Compensation, Cold War Era, East Germany, GDR, Philosophy of Happiness and Time, Soviet Era

Deutsch: Deckblatt der MfS-Richtlinie Nr. 1/76 zur Entwicklung und Bearbeitung Operativer Vorgรคnge
Date, 1 January 1976, Source: BStU, GVS MfS 008-100/76; Author: Ministerium fรผr Staatssicherheit der DDR | “Cover sheet of the MfS Guideline No. 1/76 for the development and processing of operational processes”; Ministry for State Security DDR. Online Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zersetzung .

***

Decomposition (Zersetzung): ” . . . hidden psychological destruction of dissidents . . . .”

***

Persons of Interest in Relation to this Post: Evelyn Zupke; Hans D. Ripperger; Kristina Olney; Michelle Bachelet; Mike Mutterlose (URL’s language is German).

Cause: Aid and Compensation for the harms and indignities imposed on those trapped within the Soviet-controlled German Democratic Republic and subject to enslavement and punishment at the hands of the state’s secret police, the Stasi (Ministerium fรผr Staatsicherheit).

Related: The 1619 Project

We mere humans just don’t own time. For atheists, time is just a fact of life.

We do, again, and each as representative of Homo Sapiens sapiens, and for better or worse, own our memories.

It has been our species’ great misfortune to find always some portion of our numbers made to suffer at the hands of others.

Forget “God, Nature, and the Universe”. The earthquake, hurricane, tsunami, and volcano would seem possessed of physics and entirely dispossessed of conscience except that some of us believe that in the presence of one or the other, divine providence destroyed our lives or saved them.

Degradation, dehumanization, enslavement, subjugation, subjection, and other such evils–those are different, and in the history of our species, one sees the chains and whips changing hands by turns, and, sigh, we may feel ourselves lucky if wielding the whip . . . but then nothing lasts beyond bearing except a number of nefarious processes that we perhaps have not wrestled sufficiently into the past. So here we may acknowledge that we don’t get to erase our bad memories; we don’t get to retrieve the dead; we may or may not have some revenge on our tormentors–and if it was ourselves that held the keys and snapped the whips, our day–we know it secretly–has come–or will.

I believe it in the tendency of our species to develop awareness, compassion, conscience, consciousness, empathy, greater integrity and reason, and at the end of every dastardly era, great human sensibility and wisdom.

I was asked not long ago to help promote the cause of the internally displaced in place of the once Soviet-controlled and Communist German Democratic Republic.

Imagine, if you will, going to sleep in one dismal but predictable awful cultural, legal, political, and social circumstance and waking the next day without a country–and afterward a “democratic open society of the west” that prides itself on compassion but hasn’t much in place for you–and then years later when it does . . . you’re no more important in it than you were in the other place.

Perhaps one’s personal circumstance has become more bearable , the powers that be more polite, and amends for the insufferable past made with good will whether or not sufficient to quells bad memories and the residuals in nightmares.

*

I have found in overview–remember my analytical discipline: collect, select, and opine–that East Germany’s internal migrants, all of whom went to sleep in one place in time and woke up in another entirely–have not been overlooked but perhaps underserved in the regions of cultural and economic development. In the Soviet way, they had been locked down in time, suffocated, surveilled, deprived of normal human political and social processes, and subject to deliberate state-driven control, diminishment, and, ultimately, erasure.

How would even the most benevolent of modern societies “compensate” for that experience?

Well . . . there is today the business of living well enough to create and enjoy better memories in freedom and with at least a modicum of privacy (although the “modern” appear to have some new horrors on the horizon, e.g., massive intrusion via data sifting) as well as dignity and security.

*

Now and then, I haul out Qualities of Living (QOLs) a conceptual alternative to thinking about power as an expression of grandiose narcissistic ambition with accompanying control and influence ascribed to a potentate absolute or constitutional. What if power were more often the power to bring extraordinary improvement to geopolitical space in the many dimensions to be appreciated by the inhabitants of a given space?

*

After 1990 โ€œthe whole software of life changedโ€ for east Germans, says Markus Kerber, a bigwig at the interior ministry. Short-term pain was inevitable. Average labour productivity in the east was 30% of that in the west. Kohlโ€™s decision to exchange Ostmarks at a 1:1 rate for Deutschmarks made swathes of firms uncompetitive overnight. Those that survived struggled with the western rules they had to import wholesale. By one estimate, 80% of east Germans at some point found themselves out of work.

Perhaps the Treuhand could have proceeded more gently, some argue today.

“Germans still don’t agree on what reunification meant: Discontent may even be growing.” The Economist, November 2, 2019.

*

Cultural and economic adjustment, development, inclusion with some foresight and vision may turn out the key that will finally fix the past in the past where it needs to be. In this day, however, quite a number of cultures, groups, and just plain people have taken up the causes of yesterday, exhumed and tallied abuses, ranted high and low for justice, but the best all may do is not relive what’s gone and take pains–whatever it was–not to see it happen again.

Related Online

Bailey, Charlotte. “The Lingering Trauma of Stasi Surveillance.” The Atlantic, November 9, 2019.

Binder, David. “Erich Mielke, Powerful Head of Stasi, East Germany’s Vast Spy Network, Dies at 92.” The New York Times, May 26, 2000.

Chapple, Amos. “The Secret Lives of the Stasi: Chilling photos uncovered by a German artist reveal the Stasi’s methods to monitor and terrorize their citizens.” RFE/RL, December 12, 2018.

Connolly, Kate. “German reunification 25 years on: how different are east and west really.” The Guardian, October 2, 2015.

Crypto Museum. “Minesterium fur Staatssicherheit – MfS”.

“Germans still don’t agree on what reunification meant: Discontent may even be growing.” The Economist, November 2, 2019.

Hertzberg, Max. “Stasi Tactics – Zersetzung.” Max Hertzberg: Spies, crime and hopepunk, November 28, 2021.

Holden, Stephen. “Behind Closed Doors in Both Berlins.” The New York Times, November 6, 2014.

Iannetta, Massimo and Nina Toussaint, Dirs. “The Decomposition of the Soul.” Documentary, 82 minutes, 2002.

Ivanova, Irina. “The Decomposition of the Soul.” Review. Indypendent, February 6, 2007.

Mรผnz, Rainer and Ralf E. Ulrich. “Changing Patterns of Immigration to Germany, 1945-1997.” Research & Seminars, University of California-Davis, Center for German and European Studies, 1998. Alternative Reference: https://www.worldcat.org/title/changing-patterns-of-migration-to-germany-1945-1997/oclc/40780392 .

Oltermann, Philip. “‘I’ve been shafted twice’: Stasi victims and their quest for compensation.” The Guardian, November 6, 2019.

Rennell, Tony. “Stasi’s ‘no touch’ torture: It was the East German secret police’s most terrifying weapon – gaslighting mind games that drove its own citizens mad . . . and the lessons for today’s social media generation couldn’t be more stark.” Daily Mail, June 8-9, 2021.

Schultheis, Emily. “As Germany’s secret-police archive shutters, reckoning for its victims continues.” National Geographic, August 5, 2021.

Spiekermann, Uwe. “The Stasi at Home and Abroad: Domestic Order and Foreign Intelligence.” Bulletin of the German Historical Institute, Supplement 9, 2014.

Stasi Documents Archive. “Introduction – Ministry for State Security”.

Stuchbery, Michael. “Why Germany will never forget the Stasi era of mass surveillance.” The Local, February 8, 2019.

Suarez, Hannah. “Stasi Museum–Germans spying on Germans, psychological warfare (Zersetzung)”. 21st Century Expat | Digital Nomad, December 7, 2019.

The Local. “Putin’s Stasi ID card found in Dresden archive.” December 11, 2018.

Wikipedia: “East German Round Table”; German reunification; German Unity Day; “Matthias Platzeck”; “Otto von Habsburg”; “Pan-European Picnic”; “Peaceful Revolution AKA Die Wende”; “Stasi”; “Stasi Records Agency”; “Zersetzung”.

Wilson, Katie. “Five films that shaped the GDR’s legacy–and what east Germans think of them today.” The Local: Germany’s News in English, September 25, 2019.


In the 1970s the MfS changed its secret police activities and began increasingly to use “softer” methods. The GDR leadership did not want to compromise its attempts to gain international recognition: persecution and repression were to be concealed. The MfS now focused more on preventive surveillance and so-called “psychic demolition”. It used manipulation and targeted rumours in its attempts to systematically intimidate individuals or groups, to ruin their reputations, isolate or criminalize them. Friendships were destroyed, and professional careers ruined without the victims even realizing why.

However, the change in methods did not lead to any let-up in the repressive pressure exerted by the MfS. And the aim also remained the same: to prevent the development of non-conformist or dissident ideas and behaviour.

Stasi Documents Archive. “Introduction – Ministry for State Security”.

The rest of the group agreed that the destruction of trust was one of the most painful legacies of their experiences in the GDR. The dense informer network meant that everyone spied on one another. Many did not find out who had informed on them until decades later, when they requested their Stasi file.

Bailey, Charlotte. “The Lingering Trauma of Stasi Surveillance.” The Atlantic, November 9, 2019.

So in the 1970s, the masterminds at Stasi School โ€” formally known as the College of Legal Studies โ€” decided on a new, more subtle tactic of repression, a way of stamping out rebellion without the overt use of force.

Instead of pounding their suspects into submission, they would send them mad. And so began the policy of Zersetzung.

The word meant disintegration or corrosion or decomposition. Today we would call it ‘gaslighting’ โ€” playing with someone’s mind and self-worth until any resistance crumbles and he or she becomes either compliant or apathetic.

Rennell, Tony. “Stasi’s ‘no touch’ torture: It was the East German secret police’s most terrifying weapon – gaslighting mind games that drove its own citizens mad . . . and the lessons for today’s social media generation couldn’t be more stark.” Daily Mail, June 8-9, 2021.

Six phases of postwar immigration to Germany can be distinguished (see table 2; see also Martin 1991; Mรผnz and Ulrich 1993; Rudolph 1994; Seifert 1995). The first phase was dominated by the immigration of Germans: expellees, citizens of the GDR, other ethnic Germans

Mรผnz, Rainer and Ralf E. Ulrich. “Changing Patterns of Immigration to Germany, 1945-1997.” Research & Seminars, University of California-Davis, Center for German and European Studies, 1998. Alternative Reference: https://www.worldcat.org/title/changing-patterns-of-migration-to-germany-1945-1997/oclc/40780392 .

Posted to YouTube August 18, 2009.

Born into poverty in pre-World War I Berlin, Mr. Mielke joined the Communist youth movement at age 15, and his career epitomized the grimness of Communist rule in East Germany, where assassination, kidnapping, execution, denunciation and intimidation were used to achieve and maintain power under the long, menacing shadow of the Soviet Union.

Mr. Mielke and the ministry for state security kept the 16.5 million people of East Germany obedient to Communism and repressed dissent for more than 30 years. Not only did the ministry pursue an effective campaign against those it regarded as enemies of the state, but its army of 90,000 agents and 260,000 informers finally turned East Germany into a country that spied on itself.

Binder, David. “Erich Mielke, Powerful Head of Stasi, East Germany’s Vast Spy Network, Dies at 92.” The New York Times, May 26, 2000.

Posted by Movie Coverage to YouTube September 17, 2012. URL play-dot-google-dot-com has a version with English subtitles. It’s a fine movie.

*

Is “living well” the best revenge?

I don’t know, but both alone and in community we most naturally make ourselves comfortable and secure if, when, and where we can. “Living well” with agency, autonomy, dignity, efficacy, freedom, inclusion beats all of the alternatives, and living well with some thoughtful planning for ourselves, our own, and others . . . I would call that repair and profound improvement.


Addendum: Related Online and Worth the Visit

Verhulst, Dominic. “HOHENSCHร–NHAUSEN: State Security Prison – Former East Berlin – DDR”. Photography.

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FTAC: A Jot on Historical Revisionism

16 Saturday Oct 2021

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, Extreme Brown vs Red-Green, Free Speech, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

far out left, fascism on the left, Historical Revisionism, Woke


I hate REVISIONISM!

It’s a good measure for what is despotic.

Whoever or whatever it was — or remains — if it was evil, we should collectively appreciate its import, ameliorate its damage, if comparatively recent, and pack it away not to be repeated if the semblance of the same may be prevented or damped.

Related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Orwell_Matters


As lies are told to hide something or to get something, those who counsel the excising of history — erasure of the past, in essence — would seem most of all ashamed of themselves and sensitive to their own hidden predilections for control and conquest. Only the pulling down of the despot’s statue at the time of the revolution proves liberating and signal of liberation. Yanking old generals off their pedestals? That’s something else.

Related Online

Byfield, Chris. “William Shatner dismantled wokeism in stunning outburst. ‘Utterly ridiculous’.” Express, October 14, 2021.

Weiss, Bari. “We Got Here Because of Cowardice. We Get Out With Courage.” Commentary, November 2021.

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FTAC: On the Secular Roof: No Compulsion

19 Sunday Sep 2021

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Philosophy, Religion

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Futurism, Global International Statndards, globalism, political management, public policy, QOLs

From the Awesome Conversation, A Note Placed with the Rationalist Society of Pakistan (Facebook)


Because there is no compulsion (is there?), the modern secular guaranty is a roof beneath which all faiths and religious practices may be engaged by choice peacefully and securely.

By the numbers, our planet supports fewer than 7,000 living language cultures and approximately 4,200 separable religions and related sects.

For the blood thirsty, religion may be regarded as a gift, for wars related to creed or dogma favored by one powerful house or another (x clan, family, or tribe or by caliphate, kingdom, or empire) tend to be the least resolvable drivers of wars: nothing has ever been proved or disproved by them. For the most part, the employment of religious rhetoric by the powerful traces most of all to the want of personal aggrandizement and the presence of messianic ambition, and limitless greed.

Today’s post-Reformation Europe supports a dozen historical monarchies, all but two of them constitutional monarchies tempered by empowered and popularly elected legislatures and courts independent of churches once regarded as all powerful (there are no compassionate, democratic, humanist, or liberal theocracies. All theocracies remain deeply medieval, primitive, and suffocating, and especially so where subscription (loyalty with payment extracted) has been compelled.


One Earth and Our Own Little Worlds

The Taliban, among other of the world’s absolutists, scolds, and scourges will learn, whether they like it or not, that modern complexity in financing and trade demands ever higher levels of human cooperation and integration across cultural, economic, and geopolitical boundaries. The lone ancient bureaucrat with his snicker and his hand out for the bribe that lifts the gate he guards has now the power befitting make-believe trolls. Really getting things done — big things: accession to favorable security organizations; extensive infrastructure creation, re-engineering, and repair (after war, especially, but obsolescence over time demands the same regenerative efforts everywhere), ports, transnational communications — require good relationships with a whole world. Otherwise — and examples are numerous (start with Zimbabwe and work backward through the world’s dictatorships) — one’s people may be reduced to eating dust and worms.

For those with the full spread on a table in a palace, where’s the worry?

Well, history has a way of devouring those who exploit as well as starve their own.

Today’s responsible government needs must become a partner in the achievement of modern standards contributing to its own prosperity and stability — or the same may choose to remain heavily guarded in its keep and otherwise a vulgar backwater demeaned and reviled worldwide.

Political leaders may have today the puzzle of perpetuating the strength of their own cultures and families and related self-concepts while participating in the development of complex global diplomatic and legal systems bearing on the practical business and technology systems intended to secure a global tomorrow in which the earth and all her cargo may thrive.

Qualities of Living — The State of the State

War is easy.

It is living — and managing for the living — that has become challenging.

I believe for avarice, greed, and vanity, failed and failing states — generally absolute power systems that grind against their own constituents as well as the grain of humanity as well as decaying societies either disinterested in or incapable of damping the rise of their own fascistic elements — fail across measurable dimensions. Absolute and corrupt or decadent powers have despoiled their own environments and societies mightily in the cause of their own glorification. The same have produced a barbarism wondrous to behold and often beyond the bounds of any collective natural or normal human tolerance.

As I’ve written about Qualities of Living (QOLs) before and may come to dwell on the same as a principle for global political, practical, and spiritual competition — who would live best x conditions x population x area-squared? — I’ll reprint here the outline from August 25 this year –>


QOL: Qualities of Living

Biological: Environmental and Human Health

Financial: Actualizing, Beyond Basic, Individual and Family Sufficiency

Psychological: Dignifying with High Degrees of Freedom, Positive Outlook, Potential for Fulfillment, Good Self-Concept, Reliable Community and Personal Security

Spatial: Bases and Boundaries x Person x Family x Clan x Tribe x Nation x Ethnic x Transnational Cultures / Defenses and Retreats

Spiritual: Broad Awareness, Consciousness, Conscience x Comprehension of Community and Personal Place in Time


We may each have our separable dreams — but why not with clean air and water and good soil while in pursuit of contentment, place, and security?

Universally: may we and will we do that much for one another without reference to cultural or political identification and location?

Why not while we dream our dreams do so within the bounds of secured community and personal spaces?

Why not for each person with futures dreamed that may be in part accomplished, comfortable,and enlivening set and sustain the stage for positive accomplishment?


Accentuate Good; Diminish Evil

How good may we be across our species’ one biological platform: Earth?

And how rotten?

The Taliban in pursuit of absolute obedience has made a great to-do of burqa and hijab . . . but are not the virtues desired actually modesty and piety?

As an American of Jewish descent, I would not (yet, though sorely tempted) think of myself as an atheist: I am neither that brave nor cocksure. I would however suggest as virtues worthy of individual consideration and contemplation of possession without religious reference, the following: compassion; courage, empathy; fairness; foresight; fortitude, integrity; patience; temperance.

Worthy of appreciation and occasional experience but better served by diminishment over time: avarice; dishonesty; gluttony; greed; hubris; hypocrisy.

Put another way (more parallel and less awkward): have we — or just our solitary selves — compassion, courage, empathy, fairness, foresight, fortitude, integrity, and patience in all we do with ourselves and with others?

And if and when less noble and we find ourselves avaricious, controlling, corrupt, criminal, dishonest, fanatical, gluttonous, greedy, full of hubris, and hypocritical, should we not wish to have been by character and ethical and moral quality better?

One may ask what may be the balance within as well as politically and socially, for it may be that balance — that mixture in personal and communal or tribal character — that becomes the atmosphere in which we choose to reside or may be doomed to wander.

Related Online

Gannon, Kathy. “Taliban replace ministry for women with ‘virtue’ authorities.” AP News, September 18, 2021.

Lawrenz, Jรผrgen. “Universal virtues?” Ask A Philosopher, September 1, 2019.

Oppenheim, James S. “FTAC: Global QOL (Qualities of Living).” BackChannels, August 25, 2021.

Oppenheim, James S. “Globalization: A Short List”. Conflict-BackChannels, June 4, 2020.

Stecklow, Steve, Babak Dehghanpisheh, and Yeganeh Torbati. “Khamenei controls massive financial empire built on property seizures.” Reuters Investigates, November 11, 2013.

Wikipedia. “Environmental issues in Iran”.

Wikipedia. “Environmental Issues in Russia”.

Wikipedia. “List of religions and spiritual traditions”.


Hamlet had in part the experience of the medieval world, a most treacherous political and social space in time. Well, here is our still early 21st Century, and we may ask whether life must be or should be as horrifying as it may have been then.


Whether in Moscow or in Washington (or Beijing) – the three almost Orwellian anchoring points in global security — Big Defense and related “protection” rackets gin up a lot money, the perception of threat driving economies and societies in part or whole, but here one may wonder what if the world’s more apprehending, forward-looking, and good natured souls simply moved to address greater global challenges, leaving the dictators, extremists, hotheads, and malignant narcissists (“MaligNarcs” here) to wallow around a while longer in their own fantasies while they themselves become further displaced by time.

–33–

Rauch on Perception and Truth

09 Wednesday Jun 2021

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, Free Speech, International Development, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Politics

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Tags

Empiricism and Epistemology, humanism, Jonathan Rauch, truth

Notice how Locke’s empiricism dovetails with the political principles of natural rights and basic equality: because all people have eyes and ears and minds, and because we must check and consult with each other to find truth, the many, not just the few, are entitled to assert their own beliefs and contest others. Epistemic rights, like political rights, belong to all of us; empiricism is the duty of all of us. No exceptions for priests, princes, or partisans.

Jonathan Rauch

Rauch, Jonathan. The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth. Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 2021.


With America’s former “Fake News!” Fake President dooming Congressional members of the Republican Party into becoming IrrElephants, now seems just the time for reconsidering the character, history, and nature of what informed and modern humanity has come to call “Truth”.

The matter shouldn’t be that complex, but considering the long history of narcissistic conceits (why of course the sun revolves around the earth!) and wars involving irreconcilliable beliefs, cocksure wrong conclusions, and innumerable faiths, it should seem no wonder that for the pleasure of obtaining where all may a deeply responsible peace we have arrived in a lively conversation about empiricism and epistemology.

I have only started reading Rauch’s book but feel both the quote and note here worthy of play.

For evolutionary guidance —>

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FTAC: Israel-Palestine and the Defiance of Civility and Reason

20 Thursday May 2021

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Gaza, Gaza Suzerain, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Palestinia, Palestinian Territories, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Politics

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humanism, integrity, MEC, middle east conflict, Palestinian Dilemma

In the medieval mode, power lies and makes it truth; in the modern world, power had better tell the truth given the world’s yet free legions of high-integrity academics, consultants, judges, lawyers, researchers, and scholars. Lie to us, and we will find you out and bring about your humiliation in the minds of future generations. So here we know the lie told to the Palestinian refugees of 1948: “The Jews stole your land, and God wants you to win it back” — and it seems an old portion of Arab power has given the Palestinians that lie as something against which to bang their heads for decades.


From the Awesome Conversation

***

What mobs hear, believe, and repeat is different from what lawyers, judges, and scholars examine and come to know with overwhelming validity.

On this blog: “Broadened Scope and Future Vision: A Note on Sheikh Jarrah, Whipped Mobs, and Middle East Peace” (May 4, 2021).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheikh_Jarrah_property_dispute

The civilized way of attenuating findings certain to make one side or another unhappy is to cooperate in a relocation chosen by those moving out and as good or better than present circumstance and altogether agreed permanent according to the will of those so relocated. No death, outrage, vandalism, or violence — just a disruptive but civil adjustment undertaken in a mutually respectful even if reluctant atmosphere.

You would rather create a sore, salt it, and drive a mob against both historical and inherited realities and superior — proven, experienced — defense and security forces.

Given the bent, about all Palestinian “advocates” can guaranty is greater and more widespread Palestinian anger and related harm.

***


So the Power That Lies–what is it to tell its people when the game’s up?

The answer is Copernican: “We were wrong. We could not see nought but ourselves and God, the universe, and the world before us fully admiring, approving, validating no matter what we did to ourselves, those taught to trust us most, and those we regarded as our enemies.”

I would not regard my fellow Jews as occupying the Center of the Universe either, but one may respect or at least value the co-evolutionary presence of the world’s diminishing pool of ethnolinguistic cultures, and then perhaps respect Arabs and Israelis and others most of all for overcoming themselves and broadening the reach of those principles most peaceful, pleasant, responsible, and, ultimately, universal.


Related Online

Bergman, Ronen. “The KGB’s Middle East Files: Palestinians in the service of Mother Russia.” November 4, 2016.

Lane, Ashley. “Iran’s Islamist Proxies in the Middle East.” Wilson Center, December 17, 2020.

KosherTube. “Hitler and The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.” Original: History. YouTube, April 9, 2018.


Israel Foreign Affairs Ministry, May 16, 2021.

CNN. Posted to YouTube September 5, 2012.

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Epigram

Hillel the Elder

"That which is distasteful to thee do not do to another. That is the whole of Torah. The rest is commentary. Now go and study."

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? If not now, when?"

"Whosoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whosoever that saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world."

Oriana Fallaci
"Whether it comes from a despotic sovereign or an elected president, from a murderous general or a beloved leader, I see power as an inhuman and hateful phenomenon...I have always looked on disobedience toward the oppressive as the only way to use the miracle of having been born."

Talmud 7:16 as Quoted by Rishon Rishon in 2004
Qohelet Raba, 7:16

ืื›ื–ืจื™ ืกื•ืฃ ืฉื ืขืฉื” ืื›ื–ืจื™ ื‘ืžืงื•ื ืจื—ืžืŸ

Kol mi shena`asa rahaman bimqom akhzari Sof shena`asa akhzari bimqom rahaman

All who are made to be compassionate in the place of the cruel In the end are made to be cruel in the place of the compassionate.

More colloquially translated: "Those who are kind to the cruel, in the end will be cruel to the kind."

Online Source: http://www.rishon-rishon.com/archives/044412.php

Abraham Isaac Kook

"The purely righteous do not complain about evil, rather they add justice.They do not complain about heresy, rather they add faith.They do not complain about ignorance, rather they add wisdom." From the pages of Arpilei Tohar.

Heinrich Heine
"Where books are burned, in the end people will be burned." -- From Almansor: A Tragedy (1823).

Simon Wiesenthal
Remark Made in the Ballroom of the Imperial Hotel, Vienna, Austria on the occasion of His 90th Birthday: "The Nazis are no more, but we are still here, singing and dancing."

Maimonides
"Truth does not become more true if the whole world were to accept it; nor does it become less true if the whole world were to reject it."

"The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision."

Douglas Adams
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" Epigram appearing in the dedication of Richard Dawkins' The GOD Delusion.

Thucydides
"The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools."

Milan Kundera
"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

Malala Yousafzai
โ€œThe terrorists thought that they would change our aims and stop our ambitions but nothing changed in my life except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born.โ€

Tanit Nima Tinat
"Who could die of love?"

What I Have Said About the Jews

My people, not that I speak for them, I nonetheless describe as a "global ethnic commune with its heart in Jerusalem and soul in the Land of Israel."

We have never given up on God, nor have we ever given up on one another.

Many things we have given up, but no one misses, say, animal sacrifice, and as many things we have kept, so we have still to welcome our Sabbath on Friday at sunset and to rest all of Saturday until three stars appear in the sky.

Most of all, through 5,773 years, wherever life has taken us, through the greatest triumphs and the most awful tragedies, we have preserved our tribal identity and soul, and so shall we continue eternally.

Anti-Semitism / Anti-Zionism = Signal of Fascism

I may suggest that anti-Zionism / anti-Semitism are signal (a little bit) of fascist urges, and the Left -- I'm an old liberal: I know my heart -- has been vulnerable to manipulation by what appears to me as a "Red Brown Green Alliance" driven by a handful of powerful autocrats intent on sustaining a medieval worldview in service to their own glorification. (And there I will stop).
One hopes for knowledge to allay fear; one hopes for love to overmatch hate.

Too often, the security found in the parroting of a loyal lie outweighs the integrity to be earned in confronting and voicing an uncomfortable truth.

Those who make their followers believe absurdities may also make them commit atrocities.

Positively Orwellian: Comment Responding to Claim that the Arab Assault on Israel in 1948 Had Not Intended Annihilation

“Revisionism” is the most contemptible path that power takes to abet theft and hide shame by attempting to alter public perception of past events.

On Press Freedom, Commentary, and Journalism

In the free world, talent -- editors, graphic artists, researchers, writers -- gravitate toward the organizations that suit their interests and values. The result: high integrity and highly reliable reportage and both responsible and thoughtful reasoning.

This is not to suggest that partisan presses don't exist or that propaganda doesn't exist in the west, but any reader possessed of critical thinking ability and genuine independence -- not bought, not programmed -- is certainly free to evaluate the works of earnest reporters and scholars.

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