Become Aware Of It, Pay Attention To It. Read About It, Learn About It, Write About It, Talk About It. Teach It.
Reflections upon anything under the sun and beyond. It may not be easy to be a Global Citizen, but it's not hard to engage the Globe.
Who Is Serving The People? Mueller vs. Barr
I know, most of us are suffering from Russia Gate burnout but this really is a big deal with huge ramifications. It will be years before we have a clear, fine grained view of what actually happened and how it has effected the integrity of the U.S. system of government.
Is Barr the people’s attorney?
Chart: A Side-by-Side Comparison of Barr’s vs. Mueller’s Statements About Special Counsel Report on 2016 Russian Election Interference.
Even though there seems not to have been any collusion or conspiracy between the Trump family or the Trump campaign with “The Russians”; the Russians still muddled things up and the Trump administration and the Republican party don’t seem to care.
This will clarify a lot.
“I am told that [Mueller’s] reaction to that was that it was my prerogative as attorney general to make that decision,” Barr said during his press conference.
Meanwhile, Mueller — as previously stated — made it clear that “the Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting President of wrongdoing.”
Chart: A Side-by-Side Compa... by on Scribd
As Just Security notes:
Mueller appears to be saying, as one might expect, that the Office of Legal Counsel opinion precludes the Justice Department from deciding whether to indict a sitting president. “It is unconstitutional,” Mueller adds in a curt sentence. He also emphasizes that indicting the president was not an option that his office, as “part of the Department of Justice” could even consider. Presumably that would apply to the Attorney General as well, unless Barr overturns the Office of Legal Counsel opinion.
This is the crux of the situation:
When a subject of an investigation obstructs that investigation or lies to investigators, it strikes at the core of the government’s effort to find the truth and hold wrongdoers accountable.
So who do you think Barr works for?
“[T]here is substantial evidence to show that the President was frustrated and angered by a sincere belief that the investigation was undermining his presidency, propelled by his political opponents, and fueled by illegal leaks,” Barr said during his press conference. “… Apart from whether the acts were obstructive, this evidence of non-corrupt motives weighs heavily against any allegation that the President had a corrupt intent to obstruct the investigation.”
Dr. Ralph Linton – An Important Anthropologist
If you haven’t studied Anthropology, you might want to do so. Understanding “human kind” and our various social expressions is needed more today than at any time in history. After all, what will our machines become when most of us have such a narrow view of human culture? KNOW THYSELF
What is Anthropology?
Anthropology is the study of people throughout the world, their evolutionary history, how they behave, adapt to different environments, communicate and socialise with one another. The study of anthropology is concerned both with the biological features that make us human (such as physiology, genetic makeup, nutritional history and evolution) and with social aspects (such as language, culture, politics, family and religion). Whether studying a religious community in London, or human evolutionary fossils in the UAE, anthropologists are concerned with many aspects of people’s lives: the everyday practices as well as the more dramatic rituals, ceremonies and processes which define us as human beings. A few common questions posed by anthropology are: how are societies different and how are they the same? how has evolution shaped how we think? what is culture? are there human universals? By taking the time to study peoples’ lives in detail, anthropologists explore what makes us uniquely human. In doing so, anthropologists aim to increase our understanding of ourselves and of each other.
"The tremendous and still accelerating development of science and technology has not been accompanied by an equal development in social, economic, and political patterns...We are only now...only beginning to explore the potentialities which it offers for developments in our culture outside technology, particularly in the social, political and economic fields. It is safe to predict that...such social inventions as modern-type Capitalism, Fascism, and Communism will be regarded as primitive experiments directed towards the adjustment of modern society to modern technology." – Dr. Ralph Linton
Click on the photo for
a brief biography of Dr. Ralph Linton
The Study Of Man
40 Great Anthropology Books That Anyone Can Appreciate
We highly recommend you read these books. They are indeed, all classics.
Cheers!
There Are Many Reasons To Stick With The Status Quo But We Shouldn't
I don't know about you, but it seems to me that there are many reasons to stick with the status quo, to not rock the boat, to keep your head down and do what you're told to do, what you are trained to do. Also, obviously, it feels good to fit into a community, even if that community doesn't include a lot of "real" friends.
You have responsibilities and to fulfill them, you need money.
Or maybe you don't have money, you can't make much money but you need to grow food and gather water, or you and your family will die.
Perhaps the War Lord or Strong Man in your region demands something of you, and you don't have the power to refuse. Maybe you are an office clerk, an entertainer, a sports star, a model, a rock star, a professional, an investment banker, a laborer with specialized skills and you are making enough money to have everything you need and more.
I could think of many more examples, but at the crux of it is that everything boils down to money and power relationships. You weren't born with GenX values burned into your soul any more than I was born with Baby Boomer values. You randomly pop into the world because your mother and father did some things and you made it past childhood and into adulthood, and now you have a good chance at having a long life. Things are pretty good if you were born into the right circumstances. If not, you have to deal with carrying water, always being at the edge of starvation, being brutally exploited for your labor, paying down your debt, still in fear of War Lords and tough guys who have no compunction about killing people: that's just the luck of the draw.
If you're lucky, you're a healthy, well-balanced person with some excellent friends living a beautiful life. You have all the comforts and conveniences our current world has to offer. You are well entertained, well loved, you have some interesting hobbies and some plans for the future. You are a fortunate person.
Let me say this if you are a fortunate person, you have more in common with an unfortunate person than you think. That's because everything in the Universe and on this planet is interconnected. Without getting into the weeds of causality, systems theory, chaos theory, thermal dynamics, quantum physics and complexity theory; without getting into nature and nurture, psychology, the interwoven big and small things that determine our behavior, epigenetics, concepts of free will, law, sociology and all the rest of it, the fact remains that you could not exist without everything else in existence.
The Tiger needs the forest and the river and the forest and the river need the Tiger.
Understanding this is understanding that the trees are not the most essential part of the forest. Why did I just mention trees and forests? Because it's a good illustration of why we need each other and why many ideologies and world views are so pathological.
Allow me to quote the first two paragraphs of "How a Forest Ecosystem is Defined" by Steve Nix at ThoughtCo.
Forest ecosystems are defined by a "salient" or common set of characteristics that make the forest ecology of a particular area unique. These very complex sets of forest conditions are studied by forest ecologists who try to isolate and classify the common structural patterns that continually reoccur in a particular forest's environment.
The perfect forest ecosystem is where simpler biotic communities live in the same approximate space with increasingly more complex biotic communities to each communities benefit. In other words, it is where many individual biotic communities symbiotically live in "harmony" with other biotic communities in perpetuity for the benefit of all neighboring forest organisms.
If you don't understand homeostasis and the dynamic interplay between the systems in your body and the systems in your environment that keep you healthy and satisfied allowing you to contribute to a socioeconomic system that is highly destructive, you are on the bandwagon heading for a violent dead end.
I know, look around, if you are in a rich country and have an excellent job; if you are a successful entrepreneur or business person who can afford to consume a lot of stuff at a high level, you're probably thinking that things are great the way things are. Sure, you have your complaints, but you're going to go to the game or the concert this weekend, and you're hardly concerned about parsing poverty statistics or keeping track of which animal went extinct last month or which ecosystem around the world is under threat. Climate change is slow moving, right? We don't have to think about it until January, first 2100 and, by then, a bunch of genius entrepreneurs, scientists, engineers, and technologists will have found a commercial solution that is affordable and have fixed everything. By then, we will be extracting the things we need to keep the economy growing from asteroids. Well, we want to hope for the best.
It's good to be optimistic, mainly because many of the fantastic things we currently dream of doing are possible if not probable, but do you know why I'm not that enamored by our current socioeconomic structure? It's because the incentives are all wrong, our understanding of causality is all wrong. We can't see the forest for the trees.
Because we don't pay attention to some fundamental domains of thought like structuralism (there are many kinds of structuralism) and systems theory, we can't comprehend the delicate balance required for a healthy, sustainable society.
Honestly, here I have to say, ignore these ideas at your peril. It's time people everywhere got on a new bandwagon that's going somewhere truly beautiful. It's time we understood what it truly means to be an evolved human on Earth in 2019.
Don't worry, you can still go to the game and the concert. I'm only suggesting that you spend a little time looking into concepts that may seem unfamiliar to you now but that I'm sure you'll understand in no time at all.
Let's learn about a "Natural-Law Resource-Based Economy." Since TZM began in 2008, scholars, scientists, and professionals from all over have been publishing work that, without intending to, supports the framework of ideas inherent in The Zeitgeist Movement's train of thought.
In later posts and videos, I will focus on some of these people, their work, and the public debate that surrounds them. Lest you think I'm spouting the party line and can't think for myself, actually, over the past 35 years, I've known lots of people who've had similar trains of thought, including me, it just happens that this particular organization is unusually acute in its vision. More on that later.
Please take this journey with me, and let me know what you know about developing a sustainable and healthy global culture. We are very much open to new ideas. Do you have solutions to water shortages, or how to maintain biodiversity; do you have answers to inequality, corruption, debt peonage, global trade, energy development, and the like? Please let us know who you are and what you're working on. If there is someone you think we should know about, please tell us. We don't want to give ourselves headaches criticizing the way things are, we want to experience the positive stress of the challenge of making things better for ourselves and future generations. We may yet, crash and burn, but the efforts we make to come together and solve problems will allow us to live a much happier, healthier, and loving life.
Is The Zeitgeist Movement A Cult?
Oh, Come On!
Are we brainwashed? Did Jesus poop? Who won the football game? Can we have a fair wage and also get tips? If you pray to the Buddha, what do you get? How many shares in Microsoft does a given coal miner own? Why do we have to borrow so much money? Will liquid fuels last forever and ever? Are you prepared for a grid down situation? Does it matter if your son feels more comfortable identifying as a girl? If you are Catholic and you marry a Jewish person, will the blood of your children be impure? Does "The Sixth Extinction" matter to a good shopper? If the global average temperature of the Earth increases to 5c above the 18th-century baseline, could we still use airplanes to travel? Should we remove all regulations on fishing? Why do we need the Amazon rain forest? What would happen if most people in rich countries bought a pair of jeans once every three years, instead of buying five pairs a month? When groundwater tables have been depleted, how much will a loaf of bread cost? Again, why do we have to borrow money? Why?
Is The Zeitgeist Movement a cult? Why do I ask? Well, I stumbled on the Wikipedia article on the movement and found it terribly out of date. Someone should update it. The first three references in the article are from The Daily Telegraph, The Journal of Contemporary Religion, an international journal concerned with the discussion and analysis of contemporary aspects of Religion, focusing on significant trends, developments, and processes of the past 20-30 years, and Tablet Magazine, an online publication about Jewish life and culture. Then there is a reference to a New York Times article that's a bit more balanced than the views above.
Peter Josephs on, The Young Turks
There's nothing more to say about the Wikipedia article. It's hopelessly out of date and extremely biased. Peter makes an anti-establishment art film regarding sustainability, and our "cultish" financial system and the movement is characterized as a whacky cult. I am sure that the people who contributed to the Wikipedia article have not done the slightest first-hand reading on the subject.
If you want to know what the movement is about, read The Zeitgeist Movement Explained and The New Human Rights Movement. If you do, you will understand that Peter put a lot of work into those two books. The first one explains the movement in great detail. The second one is even better and describes many ways we could improve the lives of the many without hurting, in the slightest, the lives of the few at the top.
Why are we so unable to imagine a world different from the one we are accustomed to? To find an answer to that question, one would have to read up on anthropology, psychology, neuroscience, medicine, sociology, and many other domains of interest to develop a context for the question. Then one could start to think about it. Massive Online Open Courses from MIT, Harvard, Yale, are readily available, many schools around the world offer massive open online courses, and they are free. We all need to be grounded in many subjects so we can be more creative when thinking about new ideas. To be able to update one's prior understanding of things, one must have previous knowledge of things and be able to think critically about them. We all need a foundation upon which we can build out our understanding of how things work.
Humans are learning machines. Any human denied the opportunity to continually learn and grow is suffering. Any wasted intellectual energy is a tragedy. If all people had access to the resources needed to educate themselves, the challenges facing human civilization would be easily solved.
It would be foolish for me to reinvent wheels here unless I thought I had something new to add so for now, I would like to refer you to two YouTuber channels who have some exciting things to say that might help inform your opinion on the question in the title above.
First, let's find out what a cult is. Here I'd like to refer you to GENETICALLY MODIFIED SKEPTIC on YouTube. He has some great videos on the subject of cults.
Next, I'd like to refer you to ZERO BOOKS and their new series, "We Live In A Society."
You see, context is essential.
Is our current economic system the best of all possible commercial orders? Where's your imagination? We can do better than this and we must.
Note – I'm a fan of Peter's work, and I like the Zeitgeist community. I am not a member of a cult. I'm not a member of any TZM organization or chapter. However, I do feel it's urgent to help educate people on these subjects so we can begin to have a broader conversation on what could be done to meet the challenges of human civilization moving forward. More people need to be talking about these things.
Also, we can talk about Marx, Socialism, Cults, Religion without labeling ourselves. I am fascinated by Religion, and yet, I am not religious. I can read Marx and learn from his social criticism without being a Marxist. I can recognize that I am part of a society without being a socialist. I’m a businessman, and yet, I’m not a “capitalist.” Sticks and stones, right?
Marx was not a Marxist, Jesus (if he existed at all) was surely not a Christian, and Buddha was not a Buddhist. If you want to know what Peter and the people who get his "train of thought" think, talk to them.
I don't speak for TZM, but I know they are trying to discover ways of sustaining human civilization while at the same time improving human health and the health of all ecosystems on Earth. What's wrong with that? It's not scary. It won't hurt you to be curious about unfamiliar ideas. We all need to think about the direction we’re headed. We all share and depend on this one amazing ecosystem.
BULIAMTI’S TAKE
Exercise it, Renew it, or Watch if Fade Away
Some kind and considerate person asked me a tough question on one of my YouTube channels today. “If I were the top dog, what would I do to usher in a “resource-based” economy?” (I’m paraphrasing.) We are talking about ideas that Peter Josephs, the founder of The Zeitgeist Movement espouses in his work. I won’t go into that in this post but you can rest assured that there will be a lot more on that in later posts.
Friends are your best resource.
The question has me thinking and I’ll address the core of it later in another post. I need to think about it a bit more. But the first thing that came to mind is – how would I get “buy in” from 5% of the global population? That’s just to start.
And then, three questions popped into my mind:
What do you want?
Why do you want it?
How are you going to get there?
These are three core questions all of use have to wrestle with. The first one seems easy but how many people do you know who really understand what they really want? Let me ask another question. What motivates you? What motivates your reasoning? Is it a combination of emotional responses and learned behaviors, plus a parroting of certain language and ideas that you picked up somehow subconsciously? I mean, your way of thinking didn’t come from somewhere deep down inside you, did it. And yet, you take it for granted that your thoughts are your own. Why is that? Deep. Oh no, not another tough question.
How do we manufacture consent? How did we get into this set of living arrangements? You’d have to do a lot of reading across domains of interest just to start to understand those two questions. Then, you’d have to train yourself to understand complex systems because this set of living arrangements is highly complex. You’d have to buff up your understanding of some pretty complex theories as well, like, for instance, complexity theory. What? Don’t go there? I hear you. Let’s take a deep breath.
That was good. OK, back to those first three questions.
The first step to understanding the first question is to admit that you don’t know why you want what you want. You want a truck, and you think you know why you want a truck, but you really don’t know why you want a truck. I know, you think I’m nuts. Of course, you know why you want a truck, your truck is your corporate utilitarian vehicle and you need it to survive. Or do you?
You see, one of the problems is that you simply can’t imagine a world in which you don’t need a truck to survive. You don’t need it to signal your manhood to your tribe, you don’t need it to do donuts at a famous intersection in your city, and you don’t need it to get from point “a” to point “b”. You don’t need to borrow money to buy it. You don’t need to buy insurance for it. You don’t need to pay to park the damn thing somewhere. Hell, you don’t need to maintain it or sell it or die in it. There are lots of other ways to get around.
Walking is healthy, riding a bike is healthy, taking public transportation in a community of people that have been brought up to be polite, considerate and helpful is much healthier than listing to a shock jock in a traffic jam. No, not now, I won’t bore you with the studies, the evidence, the science, the physiological and psychological accrued benefits of living as Homo Sapiens lived for tens of thousands of years.
What do I want? Well, I don’t want a lot of baggage weighing me down. I don’t want layers of identity confusing me. I don’t want to feel outrage or to feel oppressed. I don’t want to be stressed out all the time, that’s for sure. I don’t want a lot of truly useless, cheap shit clogging up my life and spilling out of my closets and into landfills. And I don’t want to worry about MONEY all the time.
I want a few inspiring relationships. I want to feel vital and strong. I want the freedom to dream and do what I want. I want a pat on the back and a sincere smile when I do a good job. I want to wake up every morning and go to bed every night feeling like I made a difference while having an overwhelming feeling of loving life. I want to feel that beautiful wave of gratitude wash over me every day.
Why do you want that, Mr? WOW! That’s a much harder question. Again, I’d need to be intellectually curious and willing to do some reading across domains to answer that question. I’d need solid relationships with some mentors. I’d have to figure out how human desires work. Where do desires come from? Did I just wake up in the morning one day with this ingenious realization that I had to start smoking because ________________________. Fill in the blank. Oh, I do remember Winston tastes good like a cigarette should. NO! I need to start vaping, everyone is doing that these days. I just want to FIT IN. I’m not an American psycho, I’m just human.
The first step to answering the why questions is to admit that you really don’t know why. Then you can start doing some mind and soul searching, you can do some research, and then, only then, you might figure it out.
I know, you thought the “How” question was the toughest but it’s not. In a community we have all the tools and expertise at the ready to sort anything out: That’s a plain and simple fact. You are not just an individual, your body, mind, and life are all about community. If you didn’t have a hell of a lot of gut bacteria living inside your intestines you’d be dead in a split second of a heartbeat. If you didn’t live in a community the water would stop flowing and if you didn’t know where to get drinkable water you’d be dead in a few days. Think of all the busy people around you going about their “business” and what it really means to you. Now think of a problem. If you had access to those human resources, to that social capital, to that intellectual capital, to that aggregate of human caloric energy and power, there is nothing you couldn’t accomplish. And I mean “you” as in you all because you are nothing without a community.
We can expand on all of this, of course, but the main point is that if you can’t answer these questions, you can’t even begin to imagine how to start building a resource-based economy. There are material resources having to do with the “carrying capacity of the Earth”, and there are the emergent and just as tangible resources having to do with human spirit, imagination, creativity, motivational power and force of action. If we understand how those things really work, then you can bet that some generation in the future will boldly go where no human has gone before.
Be curious. Study primary sources. What do I mean by that? Read the works of people who have done the work and stay the hell away from pop culture, shock jocks and circus acts that are paid for by you, the taxpayer, the consumer. You need to focus on things that have been well thought through. You have to become addicted to "the work". Go ahead, tomorrow, when you get up, do some breathing exercises and some push-ups and take an hour long walk. Then read a good book for a half hour, take a cold shower, have a cup of coffee, and get busy. Eat your first meal of the day at one o’clock. Make sure you’re eating whole foods, hopefully from a market where you know the vendors personally. Do something like that for a month and tell me how you feel.
This is human life, people. Exercise it and renew it or watch it fade away. You, my friend, are a creator, not just a robotic consumer.
Patrick Lee Miller
Patrick Lee Miller is a thinker to follow. He’s a unique writer and educator with a broad and wise understanding of our current cultural challenges. Have a look at his articles on Quillette.
About this video:
Avatars were embodied appearances of divinities in the ancient narrative of the Bhagavad Gita before they represented embodied players in the cyberspace of massively multi-player online role-playing games (MMORPGs). Beginning with these games, this talk asks why players choose the avatars they do, and why they do with them whatever it is that they do. The answer given is psychoanalytic, arguing that players choose avatars in order to project outward their "inner objects," relics of earlier life, integrating them into their self-image in order to live better. But this is also what we do in our embodied lives, at least according to philosophers as disparate as Nietzsche and Plato. Each taught that the sensible world is a drama of projected personae. Whereas Nietzsche thought these personae were actions of the material body, however, Plato thought this drama needed a director off-stage, an immaterial soul. Plato was right, this talk argues, if we're to make sense of the notion of living a life, rather than being lived by one. Not coincidentally, his notion of living a life presupposed a doctrine of reincarnation akin to that of his predecessors in India. For both, embodied life is virtual; in other words, this "meatspace" we share is but a massively multi-player cosmic role-playing game. Or rather, a cosmic game with only one player—the Self.
TRIP OF COMPASSION
We highly recommend this film.
Tens of millions of people worldwide suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Millions more have suffered from emotional and physical abuse but never get diagnosed.
“Trip of Compassion” documents one unusual approach to healing trauma that might astonish you, an innovative treatment involving the psychoactive drug MDMA (commonly known as “ecstasy”). As you will see firsthand, if the therapy is well designed, true rebirth and transformation can happen in a matter of weeks and not years.
If you’ve ever felt held back, felt defective in some way, or felt that you’re not living up to your full potential, this film will give you hope. - Tim Ferriss
Some People Are Thinking About How To Do Things Differently
We’d like to share the thoughts and ideas of
Charles Eisenstein.
The true exercise of freedom is one’s ability to imagine a new way of doing things, a way that makes things better.
A Little Heartbreak
By Charles Eisenstein
Wednesday, September 26th, 2018
Can we invent a better myth to live by?
ROLAND BARTHES - "Mythologies"
“I am at the barber’s, and a copy of Paris-Match is offered to me. On the cover, a young black soldier in a French uniform is saluting, with his eyes uplifted, probably fixed on a fold of the tricolour. All this is the meaning of the picture. But whether naively or not, I see very well what it signifies to me: that France is a great Empire, that all her sons, without any colour discrimination, faithfully serve under the flag, and that there is no better answer to the detractors of an alleged colonialism than the zeal shown by this black soldier in serving his so-called oppressors.”
“For the myth-reader [i.e., the believer of myth] the outcome is quite different: everything happens as if the picture naturally conjured up the concept, as if the signifier gave a foundation to the signified: the myth exists from the precise moment when French imperiality achieves the natural state”
“Any semiological system is a system of values; now, the myth-consumer takes the signification for a system of facts: myth is read as a factual system, whereas it is but a semiological system.”
“the mythology of wine can in fact help us to understand the usual ambiguity of our daily life. For it is true that wine is a good and fine substance, but it is no less true that its production is deeply involved in French capitalism, whether it is that of the private distillers or that of the big settlers in Algeria who impose on the Muslims, on the very land of which they have been dispossessed, a crop of which they have no need, while they lack even bread. There are thus very engaging myths which are however not innocent. And the characteristic of our current alienation is precisely that wine cannot be a blissful substance, except if we wrongfully forget that it is also the product of an expropriation.”
We Are Living. We Are Able. This Is Not Doom and Gloom.
Globe Hackers is changing tack, but before we start anew we’d like to share again an article on the dreaded, uncomfortable subject of climate change. Perhaps we’ve been too polemical at times but our focus was never doom and gloom. We have always been too curious to worry too much about how things will end.
What happens after the sunset?
We want to focus on all the wonderful things there are to learn and the fabulous things we wish to create. We want to share amazing experiences that transformed our lives and plan new ones. We believe that finding solutions to challenges is fulfilling, life-affirming and enjoyable. We want to see people focusing on their avocations and vocations within a loving community where their curiosity and sincere quest for understanding and truth is never curtailed.
We understand the need for hope. We also feel that we must face reality with an open mind and heart.
With these things in mind we highly recommend reading the following article carefully. Think about what it's saying even if it relays information that’s hard to hear and even if you don't agree with its prognosis. And please, share it with your friends.
The Uninhabitable Earth
Famine, economic collapse, a sun that cooks us: What climate change could wreak — sooner than you think.
See also:
The Uninhabitable Earth, Annotated Edition
The facts, research, and science behind the climate-change article that explored our planet’s worst-case scenarios.
See also:
We are living in a time of abundance and relative peace. We know we still have a lot to learn. As a whole, we are clever but not wise. We are dependent on all living things and yet we barely notice it. We have agency that we don’t use. We are all, to some degree, responsible for how things are although we rarely acknowledge this without blaming or shaming.
We hope all of us can continue this great adventure knowing there is a lot of work to be done and knowing we can always do better.
Globe Hackers wants to celebrate the greatest period of bread and circus human civilization has ever known. Not only the past two hundred years or so when things really took off but in the present moment where we can hardly fathom what’s next.
If there is something that needs fixing, for Life’s sake, let’s try to fix it. If we fail, at least we had a fantastic time trying to make things better.
For the foreseeable future, Globe Hackers is dedicated to bringing you, “Bread and Circus in the Anthropocene”.
More on that later.
The Brave New World of Political Technologists
If you are British, why did you vote to remain or leave?
Are our choices really our own? To what degree do outside influences and our subconscious determine our choices? How many social media platforms have you joined and shared your data with? Most of us register and opt-in without much of a thought. Powerful organizations use our data every day to influence our decisions.
Have a listen to the following episode from BBC's Analysis Podcast and think twice about how your decisions are made. If you think you are a free agent, you might want to reassess.
British Politics: A Russian View
Analysis
Peter Pomerantsev asks why new techniques in political campaigning have succeeded and what the consequences are for society. He has a different view to most from his past career working inside the TV industryin Moscow.
The future arrived first in Russia. The defeat of communism gave rise to political technologists who flourished in the vacuum left by the Cold War, developing a supple approach to ideology that made them the new masters of politics. Something of this post-ideological spirit is visible in Britain. Centrism no longer seems viable. Globalisation is increasingly resented. Ours is an uncertain political landscape in which commentators and polls habitually fail to predict what is to come. There was a time when if you lived in a certain place, in a certain type of home, then you were likely to vote a certain way. But that is no longer the case. Instead, political strategists imagine you through your data. The campaigns that succeed are the ones that hook in as many groups as possible, using advances in political technology to send different messages to different groups.
Pomerantsev, one of the most compelling voices on modern Russia, is a senior visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and is the author of "Nothing is True and Everything is Possible: Adventures in Modern Russia".
Do you think society at large is capable of getting out ahead of the curve when it comes to understanding these kinds of issues? Perhaps we have no real choice except to go along for the ride.
We Are Programmed by the Fiercely Competitive.
Click to see the documentary.
It seems to me we have two choices that are achievable to some degree, perhaps we've always only had only two major choices of some kind or another.
We can work hard at being fiercely competitive or we can work hard at making our best attempt at enjoying life with our family and friends.
Sacrificing and struggling for progress (whatever you might mean by that) may only be a vain attempt at developing a human society that humans are not capable of. Fiercely competitive people program society with the algorithms that are designed to benefit the fiercely competitive.
In the immortal words of Tony Montana, "In this country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, you get the women." The woman bear your children and your children are privileged with money and power and there we have our mean. (As if "the women" have no say in the matter.)
Those of us who refuse to learn from the wisdom of our iconic movies are doomed to make the same movies over and over again. Movies imitate life while life imitates movies and so goes the genius of cultural evolution.
Trump has the money, Trump has the power, Trump has the women - Trump has his base - full Stop!
Are we devolving or progressing? Or, what makes a puppet human?
Are we devolving? Sure, culture is simply doing what it always does. Culture acts upon us and sucks us into its agenda. Culture is a beast that keeps growling at our heals. Culture roars and we are inspired to run up the hill to a better vantage point or escape into a tree, just out of reach, where we can keep our fear to ourselves. Culture barks and society rolls back down to a former position. That's why we need to stay focused and pay attention so we know when we'll need to make an effort to transform culture and push society back up toward the light.
But what about progress? This thing we call progress is generally an illusion. In order to make progress, we'd have to know how things work. Unfortunately, most of us are puppets who have no idea how puppets work. What puppet could understand the mechanisms of mind that made it and make it dance? Only God knows those mysterious things. We learn how something works if we need to know. We are compelled to survive after all. We are special puppets who are a tad bit more evolved because we are a tad bit more conscious. We have this thing called "self" and we are not yet sure whether ants have self-awareness or dogs or cows or chickens or tuna fish or pine trees. Those life forms don't talk like us. They don't seem to have the capacity to lie. They don't make complicated tools that allow them to seemingly have dominion over nature. They are simply part and parcel of a greater whole.
We build rocket ships and MRI machines and yet our moods are influenced by microbes that inhabit our intestines. Why do human bodies host so many microbes and if microbes influence our thoughts and moods, how does that work? What's going on with all these microbes? Some people ask such questions; some people like to think slow; some people are more curious than others; some people like to investigate things.
If we are losing something and therefore devolving, what is it we're losing?
Past ideals are constructs, fantasies. Alexander the Great's soldiers while marching into Persia carried their constructs and fantasies. Did those mental things add weight to their kit?
We are programmed to fit in and behave. If we don't we fit in and can't behave, we find somewhere else where we can fit in and behave. If we can't find our community we become derelict and loveless. A nose ring, a tattoo or a Luis Vuitton bag are just parts of a uniform that will hopefully attract love. Any random sneeze might put a potential nosering wearing hipster on a path to Yale Law School where, eventually, a Luis Vuitton bag would have immense importance. Does one really love the bag or its function as a lure meant to attract love? We are simply signaling in an attempt to get what we think we need when what we actually need are loving relationships.
A butterfly flaps its wings and we dance to whatever music we come to need to dance to. It may actually be that random, and at the same time, that deterministic.
Perhaps we'd be better off thinking about degrees of "agency". To a certain degree, some of us have a tad bit more of it. If you need to ask what, why and how questions, you probably have more agency than most. That is, of course, if you do the work to try to answer those questions.
So what can turn a puppet into a human being? First, fight the lies that make us puppets and if we become truly brave, truthful and unselfish we will be born again as real human beings content with a struggle that leads to something better.
Please Indulge Me, I have a question.
If we found a twin Earth on the opposite side of the sun that was pure, habitable and rich with resources and no people, would you be in favor of putting people on it?
Thumbs up? Thumbs down?
Now please take a few minutes and watch this:
What do you believe and why do you believe it? I wonder if enough of us will do the work required to find sustainable solutions to serious problems.
Why I Unsubscribed to Your Newsletter
Or why I guess I should stop writing blog posts.
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Unfortunately, I believe that your newsletter won't make a bit of difference to the future of human civilization. The people will never stand together to save human habitat. Instead, it seems we would rather pine for the afterlife.
We are living in the Anthropocene and are the root cause of The Sixth Extinction. We are the cause of rapid, catastrophic climate change and all we want to do is go shopping. We are content with bread and circus.
However, I am sure that if we can find a way to monetize "the end of days" climate change will suddenly become the most important issue of the day. Imagine all the sustainable, green merchandise we could sell locally. It could solve inequality and allow entrepreneurs to exit the "gig economy" for decent jobs we could be proud of. (I apologize, I'm being sarcastic.)
When global corporations and the uber rich are finally paying lobbyist large sums of money to talk to elected officials about the need to come to terms with climate change, it will be far too late to worry about it. Do you really believe that any normal person will be lucky enough to enter the gated communities that await the super rich in New Zealand? Do you really believe their vain attempt to secure a reengineered habitat for their descendants is possible?
Human civilization has always been about wealth and power. We don't care about complex natural systems. OK, you are right, some people do, but not enough of us to make a difference.
I'm an American who has lived abroad for thirty-five years in seven different countries. In my opinion, from the outside looking in, America provides no hope for humanity whatsoever. It doesn't matter what issues you are concerned about: poverty; sustainable food production; technology; world peace; education; innovation; social justice; human rights, etc.
Americans are, however, very good entertainers. We are universally appreciated for that. We will await our fate while being very well entertained - of this, I am certain.
As for the rest of the world stepping up to find solutions to our social, economic, cultural, health, and science challenges - don't expect much. We are all equally blind. We have become the walking dead, the destroyers of civilization. No epic poem could possibly describe the profound stupidity of our species. However, our unique brand of idiocy could be described in ONE word - consumerism.
We are clever but we are not wise. We are muppets.
Although we can also be profoundly beautiful, in the end, we were but a brief, insignificant hiccup in the mysterious space-time continuum, also known as, the Universe. We are the constantly recycling star stuff Carl Sagan spoke of. I doubt any intelligent life form will ever encounter Voyager's Golden Records that we so pompously launched into outer space. Our e-waste may lie buried here for hundreds of millions of years waiting in vain for an alien archeologist to make sense of it all.
Good luck with your work spreading the word; we all have to do something.
Although I am profoundly disappointed that human civilization is coming to an end and that we won't be able to continue to make amazing discoveries about ourselves, the universe and our place in it for much longer; I hope some of us will continue to be able to live loving, inspired lives and die with dignity.
Must Read: Political Aspects of Full Employment
Must-Read: Michael Kalecki (1943): Political Aspects of Full Employment: “Most economists are now agreed that full employment may be achieved by government spending…
Michael Kalecki
…There is a political background in the opposition to the full employment doctrine, even though the arguments advanced are economic…. The reasons for the opposition of the ‘industrial leaders’ to full employment achieved by government spending… [are]: (i) dislike of government interference in the problem of employment as such; (ii) dislike of… public investment and subsidizing consumption… (iii) dislike of the social and political changes resulting from the maintenance of full employment….
Capitalists [have] a powerful indirect control over government policy: everything which may shake the state of confidence… [might] cause an economic crisis…. The social function of the doctrine of ‘sound finance’ is to make the level of employment dependent on the state of confidence…. The dislike of business leaders for a government spending policy grows even more acute when they come to consider the objects on which the money would be spent…. Public investment… be confined to objects which do not compete with the equipment of private business… suits the businessmen very well. But the scope for public investment of this type is rather narrow….
The maintenance of full employment would cause social and political changes which would give a new impetus to the opposition of the business leaders. The ‘sack’ would cease to play its role as a disciplinary measure. The social position of the boss would be undermined, and the self-assurance and class-consciousness of the working class would grow…. ‘Discipline in the factories’ and ‘political stability’ are more appreciated than profits by business leaders. Their class instinct tells them that lasting full employment is unsound from their point of view, and that unemployment is an integral part of the ‘normal’ capitalist system…
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL PAPER - it's only four pages.
Be The Best Global Citizen You Can Be
We all must think globally, act locally and recognize that we are all global if we are going to maintain a sustainable modern civilization. If we don't all cooperate and work together the current human project will end.
The following presents some very good ideas to consider regarding global citizenship.
10 Steps to Becoming a Global Citizen
PUBLISHED JULY 11, 2012
10 Steps to Becoming a Global Citizen
(from our partner—The Global Citizens Initiative)
There is an emerging world community to which we all belong. The growing interconnectedness among people, countries, and economies means that there is a global dimension to who we are. The most positive way of responding to this is by pursuing a path of global citizenship. Global citizens see ourselves as part of an emerging world community and are committed to helping build this community’s values and practices.
Here are 10 Steps that you can take if you are interested in becoming a global citizen.
Step 1. RECOGNIZE THE GLOBAL PART OF WHO YOU ARE: All of our lives have become globalized; whether through the Internet, the way in which we’re impacted by the global economy; our desire to provide humanitarian assistance to disaster victims in countries other than our own; or even in our love of world art, music, food, and travel. We all have a part of us that is global. Examine your own life, recognize its global dimension, and reflect on how that affects your view of the world.
Step 2. EXPAND YOUR DEFINITION OF COMMUNITY: Because of the many ways in which countries and people are now so interconnected, we all are now part of an emerging world community. This doesn’t mean that we have to give up being a member of other communities, e.g., our town, our country, our ethnicity. It means that we have another community—the world community—to which we now belong. Find ways to celebrate your connection to this community.
Step 3. DISCOVER THE VALUES OF THE WORLD COMMUNITY: Every community needs to have values, and the world community is no exception to this rule. The values of the world community reflect the moral ideals that most of us believe in as the basis for human existence; for example human rights, religious pluralism, participatory governance, protection of the environment, poverty reduction, sustainable economic growth, elimination of weapons of mass destruction, prevention and cessation of conflict between countries, humanitarian assistance, and the preservation of the world’s cultural diversity. Take stock of your belief in these values. Are you aware of ways in which the world as a whole is trying to live by them?
Step 4. BECOME AWARE OF GLOBAL POLICIES AND PROGRAMS: Whether you realize it or not, all around you, policies and programs are being developed to help govern our emerging world community. Such policies range in scope from international treaties that ban the spread of nuclear weapons to administrative rules and regulations governing the internet. Learn about these policies and programs by subscribing to publications such as GCitizen, the Newsletter of The Global Citizens’ Initiative (www.theglobalcitizensinitiative.org).
Step 5. ENGAGE WITH THE ORGANIZATIONS THAT ARE TRYING TO GOVERN THE WORLD: As a global citizen you should try and build awareness about the different organizations, which are making the policies shaping our world community. These organizations include international agencies, like the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund, legal tribunals like the World Court and the International Criminal Court, international professional associations like the The International Federation of Accountants or the International Civil Aviation Organization, and transnational corporations like Starbucks, Hindustan Lever, and Smith/Kline/Glaxo. Try to learn about and engage with these organizations and make sure that they are operating in accordance with the values we perceive to be important.
Step 6. PARTICIPATE IN AN ADVOCACY EFFORT FOR GLOBAL CHANGE: Sign petitions, join demonstrations, contribute funds, and explore other ways of advocating for global change. As global citizens we need to join together to express the fact that people across the planet share common views when it comes to basic values such as human rights, environmental protection, and the banning of weapons of mass destruction. The Global Citizens’ Initiative (TGCI) is an organization that provides information and opportunities for global citizens to join together and advocate for change.
Step 7. HELP ENSURE YOUR COUNTRY’S FOREIGN POLICY PROMOTES GLOBAL VALUES: Global citizens also are citizens of the countries in which they were born and live. As such we have the ability to influence the positions that our countries take on global issues. We need to help ensure that our country’s foreign policy supports the building of equitable global solutions to world problems; solutions that work for all countries. So let your government know how you feel by supporting leaders who want their countries to become engaged with the world, not isolated from it.
Step 8. PARTICIPATE IN ORGANIZATIONS WORKING TO BUILD WORLD COMMUNITY: There are all sorts of organizations making important contributions to our emerging world community—NGOs, global action networks, international professional associations, transnational corporations, and others. They work on a range of issues related to the values of our world community—ranging from human rights to world arts and culture. Pick one, any one that relates to an issue in which you are interested, and get involved.
Step 9. NURTURE A LIFESTYLE THAT SUPPORTS SUSTAINABLE GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT: The environmental movement has taught us a great deal about how everyday lifestyles and behaviors can have an impact on the quality of life on our planet. The types of transportation we use, how we heat or cool our homes, the types of clothes we wear and the food we eat all affect our quality of life. As global citizens we need to adopt environmentally responsible behaviors in the ways we live.
Step 10. SUPPORT WORLD ART, MUSIC, AND CULTURE: Being a global citizen is also a celebration of the many different arts and cultures of our people. Take time to learn the ways in which different cultures give expression to the human spirit.
It's Not About Sex
The avalanche of accusations of sexual assault and harassment by well-known people belies a more pernicious pathology at the heart of human culture - Money & Power.
Sexual harassment became a common legal issue in the 1980s. It started when we finally admitted that "flirtation" in the workplace belied much more sinister and damaging social habits surrounding sexual predation.
Cultures are always changing whether one perceives it or not. Cultures also seem to evolve, but that is an illusion. The vicissitudes of cultural norms, fashions, fads, and habits are programmed by a vast, frenetic cacophony of random, cascading interactions that are transiently formed into something coherent by the human brain's need to make sense of social experience; what is often called today - the narrative.
In America, in the twenties and sixties, when norms surrounding sexual behavior seemed looser, one might not have spoken about unwanted advances simply because it wasn't "hip" to do so. The desire to fit in superseded one's need for justice when one felt threatened by unwanted sexual advances or when one indeed had been sexually assaulted. (This is, of course, a gross simplification and only concerns itself with one facet of a violent and humiliating crime.)
Everyone, regardless of what era they may have grown up in understands that there are lines that when crossed constitute an attack that causes terrible injury to the victim. And like pornography, some lines can be somewhat subjective, as in, you know it when you see it.
There is one aspect of all of this that is utterly clear to me and should be utterly clear to everyone: money and power are at the heart of the issue.
People don't speak out against, don't report about, don't prosecute these particular, well-known individuals simply because they don't want to get on the wrong side of money and power. They are so afraid of curtailing their chance to make money and access power that they are willing to look the other way and endure the trauma, pain, and guilt of a crime whose victims may even be their friends.
I'm talking less here of the direct victims of violence than the bystanders who know it's happening and say nothing. Believe it or not, they are victims too. Anyone who doesn't report such behavior or ignores these criminal acts is complicit in assuring that there will be new victims. It may be subjective but we know guilt and suffering when we feel it.
So this is the real question I'd like us to focus on for a moment. Is the system screwing all of us? I'd say it is and has been for a very long time. We simply can't find a way to live together without the inequities of money and power at the center of our culture. If we really want things to get better we're going to have to redesign and re-engineer our socioeconomic system and we're going to have to heal our culture. We have to be willing and able to blow the whistle and know that in doing so we're not going to damage our reputation or our ability to pursue happiness.
It's simply not right to use your power to coerce another person to do something they don't want to do. And yet it happens all the time and not just when an asshole wants to get off. We are all slaves to circumstances to one degree or another.
Human sexuality becomes diseased and violent when it's mixed with money and power. Various cultures are more or less restrained. I'm not talking about cultural relativism. Just ask a cultural anthropologist about sexual norms across cultures.
You see, there is an imbalance of information and resources that is causing almost all of the damage here. All of the criminal perversions in our culture sprout from these inequities.
So do you want to change things for the better? #metoo
Revolt!
HyperNormalisation - What Do You Think of This Film by Adam Curtis?
I hope you will watch this film in full and think carefully about what it's saying.
Tell me what you think.
Myopia - The Paradox of Success
The economy, the environment, Earth’s ecosystems, politics, culture, values are all interconnected. Each new discovery has unintended consequences. Civilization’s use of fossil fuels is warming the earth’s atmosphere at an alarming rate, unprecedented, perhaps, since life began to define the nature of our planet’s chemistry. (Definitions being purely a human thing, of course.) As far as we know now, life only exists on Earth. Humans have only been here a couple of hundred thousand years. That’s what we’ve learned through the amazing toolkit we call science. (What a boring old cliche of a paragraph - well worn indeed, but not well enough considered.)
J. Robert Oppenheimer, Nuclear Physisist and all business.
Perhaps the most powerful human achievement was splitting the atom and creating nuclear bombs. We have learned much from having used them against our fellow human beings in Japan. Thanks to science, of course. Did the Japanese, by not surrendering to the Alleys earlier, unwittingly volunteer to be subjects of our research into the effects of a nuclear bomb attack? Modern civilization has so many complex and debatable things to ponder. I can imagine our world giving Socrates, and dare I say, even Jesus Christ a nasty headache.
We have nuclear power because we were compelled by our enemies in WWII to make nuclear bombs. After nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we needed a benevolent Genie, one that could remain happily out of the bottle. The Nuclear Power Industry was born. Since then we’ve tried in vain to limit nuclear weapons proliferation. But the bad Genie won’t be imprisoned.
The North Korean, leadership obviously believes that nuclear weapons are essential for their survival. Their only hope for “freedom”. Isn’t that ironic? That’s what they believe, that’s what the North Korean people have been made to believe. Their leader knows he doesn’t stand a chance of remaining in power without nuclear weapons that can be effectively delivered to his enemies porch. The world has been dealing with threats from North Korea since the Korean war. North Korea das stayed the course for decades and are finally close to having the most powerful bargaining chip any country could possibly possess. There is no way they are going to give that up.
Don’t we all wish nuclear bombs would just go away? How can we put that damn Genie back in the bottle? Will threats work? Will war help? Did we get enough bang for our buck in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan? Were those wars worth the cost? Who benefited from those conflicts and how? Who made money and who died?
(Nuclear power plants generate 14 percent of the world's electricity, but some countries are more dependent on this power source than others. France relies on nuclear for 75.2 percent of its electricity; the United States, about 20 percent.) Nuclear power is costly and its price may ultimately be too high but for now we're living with nuclear power just fine.
WHAT IS COST OF NUCLEAR POWER IN TERMS OF LOST ELECTRICITY OR TRADE IN ELECTRICITY?
Depending on what sources you look at, decommissioning a nuclear power plant is either insanely costly and dangerous or well within reasonable costs and risk parameters. At any rate, nuclear power is a huge and important industry with plenty of lobbying money. How do you think climate change will affect the nuclear power industry? Is Fukushima still a big deal or can we write that disaster off already and get on with it?
And energy policy really is all about money and power. Cheap energy is a great source of power for businesses and governments. Of course, common people like it too. In fact, we’re addicted to it. We all need energy, lots of it. Human exploitation of fossil fuels created modern civilization. Fossil fuels have been the low hanging fruit compared to the complex business of creating the latest generation of nuclear power plant. Homo Plugged-In can't live without cheap power. Imagine the suicide rate if the power grid went down for a month.
Global Capitalism needed fossil fuels to develop. Without cheap energy at the scale of fossil fuels, we would be living very differently today. We may never have discovered a way to split the atom. Other than Global Capitalism, consideration of any other social-political-economic system ended many decades ago. Today, the many externalities and unintended consequences of global capitalism have finally and inevitably caught up with us, and the consequences are dire. We may now need to prepare ourselves and our children for a very different way of life.
What solutions to these problems are you looking at? Share compelling solutions your interested in from across domains of technology, science, social science, business and so on. Tell us what you're working on. What must we be busy doing to prepare for the future and to make our lives better? If you believe that our current global social-political-economic paradigm is inevitable and for the best, explain yourself and try not to parrot cable news. If you can't think of any possible alternatives then I must congratulate you on your lack of imagination and recommend you for the Pangloss Medal of Optimism and It Is What It Is, 2017.
["Pangloss gave instruction in metaphysico-theologico-cosmolo-nigology. He proved admirably that there cannot possibly be an effect without a cause and that in this best of all possible worlds the baron’s castle was the most beautiful of all castles and his wife the best of all possible baronesses. —It is clear, said he, that things cannot be otherwise than they are, for since everything is made to serve an end, everything necessarily serves the best end. Observe: noses were made to support spectacles, hence we have spectacles. Legs, as anyone can plainly see, were made to be breached, and so we have breeches. . . . Consequently, those who say everything is well are uttering mere stupidities; they should say everything is for the best." From Voltaire’s “Candide”]
If you’re a highly paid clerk, professional or executive working for a large global enterprise, or only a bright little slacker waiting for your stock to vest, enjoy your salary and good luck; deaf ears also hear no evil and see no evil and it seems nothing can be done about that. Just hone your intuition, that will have to be good enough. Oh and, nice car!
Bugatti Veyron Super Sport, $2,500,000
Reflective People - What's Their Problem?
Also concider reading: "From bacteria to bach" by daniel dennet. it's highly entertaining and informative.
A superb talk by Daniel Dennett. It's simple too clear and reasonable not to share. I hope you give it a listen. Enjoy the weekend.