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Tag Archives: humanism

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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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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FTAC: Despots – Different Talks –> Same Walk!

05 Wednesday Sep 2018

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, A Little Wisdom, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology, Politics, Psychology

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absolute power, authoritarianism, despotism, dictatorship, dignity, freedom, humanism, malignant narcissism, political psychology

Different talks — same walk! When it comes to dictators, all are malignant narcissists.

Many want to keep repeating old arguments, especially, yawn, “communism v capitalism” but the truth is more like “sweet words — foul deeds”.

Add incitement, the role played by anti-Semitic cant and libel by despots through the ages.

In the eastern tradition too — I have in mind the Golden Horde — there appears to have been no difference in treatment between persons and property, and, in fact, for some (reference Richard Pipes books on Russian history) proof of sovereignty might be made to lie in the senseless destruction of either with impunity. And I would cite as another characteristic of the “authoritarian” breed the ability to visit suffering on others at will and with impunity.

On the street, they’re bullies; in office, presidents for life.


–33–

FTAC: Old Worn Out Arguments About Nothing That Needs to Exist Purely

06 Friday Jul 2018

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, International Development, Philosophy, Politics

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absolutism v democratic distribution, humanism, medieval v modern, political criminality, political philosophy, political responsibility

As long as the terms are black v white / capitalism v communism-socialism, the conversation seems bound to be boxed in or circular as well as suffocated by events and personalities locked in the past and best left there as well. A better springboard would be to query the character and nature of potential political power as groomed today and whether “power” needs be responsible power.

I’ve tried this framing: “Feudal Political Absolutism v Democratic Checked and Distributed Power”.

It’s too much of a mouthful but fully observable in Syria, east v west “contests”, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the rifts of the Islamic Small Wars. All involve feudal personalities applying martial power to plowing forward into the more dismal regions of their own political pasts.


I’m a little lazy now and this summer believe I should be reading (on deck: Goldman’s Lord of the Flies, Brodie’s Thomas Jefferson), settling down, regathering myself for what beyond my 60+ years looks like a still daunting and frightening future for myself and tens of millions of Americans as well as the middle classes and the surviving and struggling of the nations worldwide.  Time seems to have produced too many drowning in arms and drugs, directly related insecurity against depredation, general economic dissolution and isolation, and general political miasma and upheaval.

–33–

From October 2017: Emir of Kano Lamido Sanusi II, Nigeria, on Economic Disparity

12 Saturday May 2018

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Africa, Also in Media, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, foreign aid, International Development, Nigeria, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Politics, Regions

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banking, communitarian politics, conservative progressive politics, economic development, economic disparity, economic distribution, free trade, human agency and choice, humanism, Kano Lamido Sanusi II, leadership, liberal economics, Nigeria, post-colonial Africa, values


Amen!

Conversation welcomed.

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FTAC: A Comment on America’s Deep Polarization

03 Thursday May 2018

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology, Politics

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American political cohesion, American political polarization, humanism, political extremism, post-Enlightenment, Russian paternal authoritarianism, secularism

The Left is the achievement of Western enlightenment.

Recall the authoritarian and reactionary governance in place that involved hundreds of years of warfare between politically absolute monarchies and the development of a mercantile class powerful enough, eventually, to stand up for their own interests and security.

The Soviet / post-Soviet Far Left indeed continued the Russian historical experience with paternal authoritarianism — and, of course, it built on the secret police organization established by Nicholas II (the Okhrana). The rest is more or less KGB history and a long history of motivating or driving politics based on the amplification of the victimization of numerous groups thrown beneath the wheels of history — or believing themselves so.

The formerly moderate Left’s — or “cultural left’s” — embrace of humanism, secularism, the broadest freedom possible for persons (as opposed to, say, impersonal “headcount”) is echoed in our Constitution and Bill of Rights. We were raised to believe in Man and Reason and great possibilities. It’s from the Russian side and, in part, the 19th Century and earlier portions of the 20th that we seem approving of authoritarianism and thuggery, frankly, in now polarized Left and Right camps.

One may suppose the center has not held — and we have forgotten many of the good things we as Americans were to embrace.


Related on BackChannels

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/02/02/united-states-of-america-basic-training/

–33–

FTAC: Have South African Communists Set an Example for the Suffering of Mexico?

22 Friday Dec 2017

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, International Development, Political Psychology, Politics

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empathy, humanism, Mexico, New Communism, political criminality, political integrity, social conscience, South Africa, virtue

Inspiration: the briefest tirade against systemic corruption with other parts of the conversation previously referencing the agony of Mexico between the slave wages of the “maquiladora” and the brutality of the narcotics and other trafficking business.


I’ve just spent an hour struggling to deliver the answer, the prescription, that magic elixir in thought that would derail the wicked and cleanse the land with decency in law and the power to maintain the best conditions for economic, physical, political, psychological, and spiritual well being for all The People.

Naturally, I thought of the Communists of South Africa.

http://ewn.co.za/2017/11/18/mapaila-zuma-has-sold-out-the-country (Manyathela, Clement.  “Mapiala: Zuma has sold out the country.”  Eyewitness News (late 2017).

—
Jacob Zuma had taken millions in British development support to build for himself a compound fit for a king, and in the way of similar autocrats / malignant narcissists, he had developed renown for favors to family and friends. His latest turn was toward the Black Nationalism made so clearly successful (I kid about that) by Robert Mugabe next door in Zimbabwe.

For reasons I cannot explain, but perhaps today’s SA Communist Party will, Zuma’s corruption was found, alas, unappealing by those who were supposed to love him most of all.

My best hope for Mexico will be that the possession of conscience and empathy prove evolutionary even in the worst of gangsters, and that some forms of evil diminish because the criminals in the boardrooms and out on the streets may lose the respect of their children while also finding societies, somewhere, that for all their money and power won’t have them.

If I could time travel back in history, I would have liked to have spent an afternoon fly fishing with Andrew Carnegie and then a couple of hours over scotch AFTER he had given up his position and turned to philanthropy.

I would not have liked to have spent any time with Mr. Frick.


In what must be the weirdest way of the web and Facebook, this wonderfully supportive piece for evolutionary improvement in “self-awareness, social awareness” and moral sense arrived on my desktop:

Arnhart, Larry.  “Von Economo Nuerons: The Neural Basis for Self-Awareness, Social Awareness, and the Moral Sense?”  Darwinian Conservatism, December 14, 2017.

Spindle neurons are also called von Economo neurons (VENs), because Constantin von Economo provided the first comprehensive description of these neurons in 1925 (Seeley et al. 2012). It was not until the end of the 20th century, however, that comparative neurologists began to study VENs as special neurons that might be part of what explains the evolutionary uniqueness of the human mind.

VENs appear in the brains of only a few species. They are present in gorillas, bonobos, chimpanzees, and orangutans, although in numbers smaller than for humans. They are also found in the brains of whales, dolphins, and elephants. Thus, VENs are associated with species that have large brains, which suggests the possibility that VENs facilitate speedy communication of neural signals over neural networks scattered over large brains. VENs are also associated with species that have complex social lives and that show mirror self-awareness (recognizing themselves in mirrors).

BackChannels natural interest: the cultivation of empathy in our species and concomitant possession of conscience and related good will and good spirit.

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Battered, Jaded, Numbed? Here’s An Old Tonic

01 Friday Dec 2017

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, A Little Wisdom, Also in Media, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Journal, Philosophy, Poetry, Political Psychology

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decency, Don Quixote, humanism, idealism, universalism

As have many days for many years, this one started with a glimpse at conflict and crime news, some searched up, some by way of Facebook forum conversations: Mexico’s national addiction to drugs and money (in that order); a look at human trafficking — it appears China receives from Columbia a steady stream of duped women to be forced into prostitution and then takes little action against the trade.

Web surfers visiting here have probably had their own fill of experience or news — or both — vomited up from the evil and ugly world.  For those so offended but in themselves good and noble and perhaps in need of a refreshed idealism and inspiration, I offer an old memory.

Here’s a trailer.

And here — from another company — the greater quotation.


Related On the Web

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1977/08/20/richard-kiley-at-55-the-once-and-present-man-of-la-mancha/30d559ae-bac1-47f6-b7f4-cffc93304468/ – 8/20/1977

https://www.broadwayworld.com/board/readmessage.php?thread=1088321 — 11/21/2015 Message board topic: 50th anniversary of the musical.

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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

אכזרי סוף שנעשה אכזרי במקום רחמן

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
“The 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.”

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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