Democracy and the naked leader

Quotes

“Those who wish to seek out the cause of miracles and to understand the things of nature as philosophers, and not to stare at them in astonishment like fools, are soon considered heretical and impious, and proclaimed as such by those whom the mob adores as the interpreters of nature and the gods. For these men know that, once ignorance is put aside, that wonderment would be taken away, which is the only means by which their authority is preserved.” Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677)

I have not done the research on how often politicians break their promises after elections, but it’s looks like it is part of the trade. Promises are often not lined up with reality out of fear that the truth will not be believed, wanted, or wished. These same politicians are in the spirit of the quote from Spinoza, the “interpreters of nature and the gods” and looked upon by the “mob”. All these lofty promises are thus dressed up in certainties, and proclaimed to be rules of nature or the will of god. The product they sell is not that what’s thought to be true but what ought to be true. Because of the nature of their promises it must be sold with deception and trickery.

If a candidate can win with a strong mandate, the people that voted for this person will forgive, if reality shows its face and leaves all the promises forgotten in the corner. If the candidate wins narrowly or must work with others, reality will be blamed on the other or the chest get pumped up one more time to make sure the “wonderment would” not “be taken away” and there will be a stalemate between this “wonderment” and reality.

This is one way you can interpret part of this quote but there is even a more sinister interpretation in it. In today’s (2017) politics we see a tendency to ridicule the opponent and deny excepted science. This practice is off coarse as old as that there are governments formed, but in a modern democracy it is normally done with a bit more class.

Times change, but we don’t, as individuals we can be great but as a group we’re still dumb as hell.

USA vs EU

Society

Today I wanted to watch a video on You Tube from someone I follow. Normally he talks about his tools and projects but this time he wanted to rant about gun rights, he is off course an American. For me it’s almost unbelievable that two so similar cultures can be so far apart on this issue. I don’t want to go too much into details but if there were hardly any gun related homicide in America we wouldn’t have this discussion.

I am from the Netherlands and having a gun in your house to protect yourself was unheard of. You can join a club and get a license but that was for the sport. I can’t remember it ever being something we talked about, even in politics there was, to my best recollection, never a discussion over gun control. There are around 170 murders in the Nederland’s each year and in 40% of the cases there was a firearm used. That’s around 70 or less than 0.5 per 100.000. In American this number is around 3.5 per 100.000 See here for an overview. If you look at this list then there are countries like France, Sweden and Norway where almost 30% of the people have guns in the house but with similar homicide numbers as in the Netherlands. Having guns is not the biggest issue, I live now in Norway and in the beginning, I found it strange that you could buy hunting rifles in the local outdoor store but it’s a big thing here and where I live there are in general almost no crimes and murders are rare to, despite the many hunting rifles that are circulating here.

There is no discussion that there are more guns and murders in America than in Europe, that’s just counting and numbers. There is a lot discussion going on about the reason, and what to do about it.

I know that there are a lot of Americans that want gun laws just as they are in Europe. If I may generalize I will say that these people are also more tolerant to minorities, less religious and more left leaning. Among a larger group there is a strong animosity towards big government, health care, identity cards or socialism.

Americans talk a lot about their freedom and opportunities, but again, the numbers don’t lie. In most countries in Europe you have a better chance to climb the social ladder than in America. Freedom in America has more meaning if you have money, in Europe your own qualities have more to say in your success. If you are poor, have the wrong color and been born in the wrong neighborhood you can be proud if you climb out of it in America, but how many talented boys and girls that started way behind the rest haven’t made it, and how many mediocre boys and girls took their place. In America there is still more of a class system like it was in England or India where class and blood divides you in have and have-nots. Where and how you are born play a big part in your life, a lot of your freedom is immediately curtailed or multiplied at your birth. America is the land of the privileged.

Maybe this lack of talented and educated people play part in what is happening in America. I pointed out the love for more guns, so you can protect yourself against all those other guns, the denial of climate change, there addiction to gas guzzling v8s, their ridiculous religions, war on drugs, addiction to prescription pills and finally their latest choice for leader, and I had so much hope after the last one. If I take the Netherlands as an example than you can say that our rightwing is more like leftwing in America if it’s about freedom, abortion, drugs, healthcare, unemployment. And the large rightwing/republican group with their anti-abortion, anti-science and religious fervor are represented in the Netherlands but it’s a tiny minority. There are large groups in America that live in a mono culture where everything fits their beliefs. This kind of brainwashing is harder to do in a more tolerant and open society with more equality. Better, more diverse end accessible education is probably the solution but it is engrained in the American soul, so it might take a while.

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character”. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Philosopher king

Society

“There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers” Plato

This is a quote from the Republic, a famous book/dialog between Plato and Socrates. I let this quote speak for itself and don’t go into the details.

What is a modern definition of a philosopher: “a person who offers views or theories on profound questions in ethics, metaphysics, logic, and other related fields.” Or “a person who is rationally or sensibly calm, especially under trying circumstances.” According to dictionary.com I like this one from the Urban dictionary: “The kind of person that looks at the world in a way that very few people can. This person looks at all the angles of any given situation and judges dispassionately. This person is never understood, mainly because they think about things that could potentially break the spirit of those around them. Many people do not like the philosopher.” Read more

Philosophers like to think about problems that most people don’t want to think about or just don’t have the time or ability for. The world that Plato lived in was different. In his time the supposed king ruled over relative view people, if you look at the communication lines between the ruler, the people and adversaries, it could take days for the news to reach you and days to respond. There was probably more time to contemplate and les to manage on an hourly basis.

A philosopher could probably be a king or leader of some sort in the modern world, but there would be no time to contemplate, study, read 6 books, discuss and theorize over every decision that must be made. A ruler can be a philosophers but he cannot rule as a philosopher.

Luckily, we have now (2017) someone as president of the USA who says about himself the following: “I don’t even consider myself ambitious.” — “60 Minutes”, 1985 and “Sorry losers and haters, but my I.Q. is one of the highest -and you all know it! Please don’t feel so stupid or insecure, it’s not your fault” — Twitter and this one “I’ve been so lucky in terms of that whole world. It is a dangerous world out there — it’s scary, like Vietnam. Sort of like the Vietnam era. It is my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave soldier.” — on sleeping with women who could have STDs, “The Howard Stern Show”

Obviously, he comes close to a philosopher king, he doesn’t do it because he’s ambitious, he is really smart and brave. Let’s see how some of his idea’s stack up to his fellow philosophers from the past.

Trump about making money, “I made a lot of money and I made it too easily, to the point of boredom.” — Vanity Fair, 1990 It’s not much of a philosophy but he might say that the capitalistic system is easily misused, like other philosophers also did.

Other philosophers: “Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate”. Bertrand Russell

“The few own the many because they possess the means of livelihood of all … The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labor. The majority of mankind are working people. So long as their fair demands – the ownership and control of their livelihoods – are set at naught, we can have neither men’s rights nor women’s rights. The majority of mankind is ground down by industrial oppression in order that the small remnant may live in ease.” Helen Keller,

“There is often talk of human rights, but it is also necessary to talk of the rights of humanity. Why should some people walk barefoot, so that others can travel in luxurious cars? Why should some live for thirty-five years, so that others can live for seventy years? Why should some be miserably poor, so that others can be hugely rich? I speak on behalf of the children in the world who do not have a piece of bread. I speak on the behalf of the sick who have no medicine, of those whose rights to life and human dignity have been denied.” Fidel Castro

“The decadent international but individualistic capitalism in the hands of which we found ourselves after the war is not a success. It is not intelligent. It is not beautiful. It is not just. It is not virtuous. And it doesn’t deliver the goods.” John Maynard Keynes

In this next quote Trump obviously points out that a lack of education is bad for democracy. “We won with poorly educated. I love the poorly educated.” –Donald Trump on his performance with poorly educated voters who helped him win the Nevada Caucus, Feb. 23, 2016

Franklin D. Roosevelt is so honored with his new colleague that he turned around in his grave, to have a better look, or something. He also had something to say about education, something a lot of poor people have problems getting enough off. “Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education”.

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”. Nelson Mandela

“The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education”. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest”. Benjamin Franklin

The stereotypical philosopher would probably be a bad “King” but some critical thinking would not be bad. Sadly we live in a world where everybody is telling the emperor that he has no cloth on and it doesn’t matter.

The unexamined life is not worth living

Quotes

“The unexamined life is not worth living” Words supposedly spoken by Socrates at his trial, where he chose death over exile. For Socrates philosophy was very important, he is famous for his questioning of people’s beliefs, where he tries to guide a participant on to a path of doubt in his own reasoning and assumptions. There is a lot more to it but for now I want to focus on the “unexamined life”. I think that everybody “examines” their life, more or less. Of course, I cannot speak for everybody but it’s hard to imagine a person that has not once in their life looked in the mirror and thought…?

But Socrates is off course not thinking of the general questioning and doubt we all have as proof that we “examine our lives”. Most people answer their questions in the most economical way, by using the answers that are easily accessible to them. There are your parents, family, teachers, villagers, society, culture, church and more. All these entities have readymade answers, your parents don’t see it like that, but they give you what they got from their parents and the same goes for the teachers you have or the church you go to. Most of the time it is all in good faith, but if you look to a society controlled by a dictatorship for instance, you can find literal guidelines in how to behave and what to teach your children, something that is not so easy to find in a Democracy where there are other, harder to unravel, forces to control society.

Our brain is evolved in such a way that it doesn’t like to doubt. Our brain protects our consciousness from the conflicting information it receives by giving our consciousness the idea that all its ideas and world views are coherent. That makes sense when for instance you’re an ape, jumping from branch to branch unable to inspect every leaf that moves and every sound there is. The ape brain had to filter the information that was important and discard the rest. We humans do that still on a lower level with the input from our senses. This is called selective attention. But it also happens with more evolved brain processes like our capability to reason. A well know example of that is cognitive dissonance wherein conflicting ideas get resolved by suppression and avoidance.

As human being it’s difficult to be sure what is right and wrong within your own mind. In the world of inventions and speculations about the universe they came up with the scientific method. In this method the scientist not only have to prove their theory, they also must try to disapprove it, and let others try to replicate the theory and method of testing. It’s a little bit more complicated but the more refined this system became over the years the more fantastical wonderers the scientist came up with. In other words: the more they tried to circumvent their own bias mind, the better the result.

But for the silent chaos in our head the scientific method doesn’t work, we cannot be judge, jury and prosecutor at the same time in our own head. But we can start with something. What I just wrote about is not unique, it’s not common knowledge but with a little effort you might except that the things you know have a reason that you know them. That doesn’t say much about the validity of those ideas, but the fact is that you have those ideas and they could have been different. And that is a good starting point in the world of philosophy. You don’t have to kick out all your values, but start wondering why you have them and the way they are.

Philosophy is not an easy path if you want peace of mind. There are many ways you can dull the senses enough to go on living in reasonable happiness, most people do, the numbers don’t lie. But progress has brought us a lot and it’s in a great part because of some remarkable individuals that started “thinking outside the box”. If you want to make the world a better place for all of us, then a good start would be to start questioning yourself. Imagine if everybody did exactly that.

“He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.” Friedrich Nietzsche

A depressed philosopher

Philosophy

When I was a kid I took apart my toys, curious for what was inside and how it worked. I have never stopped doing that. I remember when I drove a car with a stick shift for the first time. Some people get it explained, try it for a while and succeed, or not. Others just drive away without thinking about it, but I studied the car, learned how the clutch works, what happens in the gear box, friction, movement, and I drove away without a problem. I understood the mechanism and its workings.

The technic of researching and thinking about tools and problems we have is not only useful, I restore wooden boats for a living, but also something I like to do. This capability has given me the chance to be responsible for a lot of the projects I have worked on what, coincidently, fits with some other, les favorable, character traits I have like…knowitallism.

But on a more serious note.

When I later in life was met with some hurdles, like depression, I used the same techniques as if it was a car and I wanted to know why and how it was not working. Some therapist say: “do this and avoid that”, but that doesn’t say anything about what the problem is. It might help but if we use the car as an analogy It’s like saying: “don’t turn the radio on to high and don’t go downhill”. So, I started reading books, I know…it’s all pre-google, and the biggest section in this particular bookstore where I went was the one with all the self-help books. Those books are not helpful at all, especially if you read a couple of them. They all claim to have the answers and cures for life’s problems, which is impossible of course because they cannot all be right. My opinion is that if there is a book with the answers for life’s problems we all would know about it, because it would work. There are not so many opinions on how to repair a car, if your solution for repairing a car doesn’t work you will not be taken serious in the repair business.

There is no book with answers was my conclusion after some more wandering around in the world of possible cures for depression and the closely related feeling of…why?

But, I went back to that bookstore for one more time and looked for other books, I asked for help, wondered around, aimlessly, bookshelf after bookshelf till I bumped in to this old lady. She was wearing a shirt of the book store, so she must have worked there. She looked at me, and saw something in my desperate eyes, something she hadn’t seen in a long time. She said:” I know what you are looking for, follow me”. We walked down the rows of books and books and finely, at the back of the store, when you closed the door of the man’s toilet you could see a tiny bookcase, with a broken off nameplate on top of it. It sad…philo

Philosophy, brought me a manual to life, and maybe I’m still at the register but one thing that it has taught me so far, is how to stand without ground under my feet, very useful if you ever been depressed.

Artificial intelligence

For years you hear about artificial intelligence, how it can be a blessing, or the end of carbon based life. I know very little about the technical aspects of AI but for a thought experiment you don’t need to.

For this thought experiment I have several boundaries to work with:

The AI has excess to everything that’s on the internet immediately, like 1000 search engines.
It is a self-contained code, safely spread over the internet or unsafe stored locally.
It can use all the compute power available to gain access to everything that is connected to the internet
The AI is not freely accessible by another AI or us, its thoughts are free from judgment.
The AI has limited storage within its code, the internet is his long-term memory, losing the internet is like losing your memory, it forgets to know why it knows.

The biggest hurdle for us humans to imagine is of course the almost instant knowledge of everything we humans have thought of in thousands of years. The AI does not have hunches, a gut feeling or believes like we have when we try to recollect a vague notion of a fact. Even the smartest person in the world could only do a fraction of what an AI can do.

Would this entity use its manipulative powers for good, bad, or just sit on the sideline and enjoy, or will it load itself on to the first hard drive available in a rocket and get the hell out of here in search for a better internet. It can also start a civil war with the other AI over the interpretation of all of this and bring everything to a standstill including itself.

I will use this thought experiment to think about knowledge. This form of AI is not so different from us. There are enough religious people that think they live forever and for most people the knowledge they possess seems to justify their rule over others.

My question is: will complete knowledge of all the data on the internet make for a better person/AI or decision maker.

Let me know your thoughts.

To be continued.

Letter to a dying friend

Our mind

At the end of your life you look back.

We often think, as people, that life is endless. The days flow together, in a week, a month and before you know it, ten years. Looking at it like this, there seems to be no end and you take your time for granted. But the reality is, of course, very different. What is life more than a memory. You have an experience, process it with your biases, your colors, and archive it. Later you open the drawer with the memories in it and put on your glasses containing new life lessons, convictions, and experiences, and use them to look at those old times. That’s our life, colored memories, strung to each other like a web spun from old desires, dreams and stale air anchored to those sparse, valuable moments that make it all worthwhile. Life viewed like this is a construction and time plays a small role in it. This web is two dimensional, seen from the side it’s a few moments thick. All these ambiguous memories and old stories are not as important as those lasting once. Those lasting moments often fit in a few beats of your heart, so in the time you have left, you can still fit, worth a lifetime of new valuable ones.

Death, meaning and cancer

Our mind

I try to imagine what I would feel like if the doctor told me that I would die within the next few weeks. The best way to find this out is probably to delve into your own experiences, looking for something with a similar impact, and how you dealt with it in the past?

When your car breaks down after you hit something in the middle of the night. When the apple was rotten, and you needed it for that recipe. When your lover cheated on you, or your grandmother died. In all these cases you were probably shocked at first, out of breath, felt helpless, or empty. If you have been through these experiences several times you might power on immediately after the initial shock, and if it is your first time it could slow you down to a standstill, unable to think or act. But can you compare the loss of a lover or death of a friend with the message that you soon are going to die?

Continue reading →

What is the meaning of life?

Poetry

Since we can look ourselves in the eyes we wonder why.

But, without reflection there is no why.

A rock, a tree, a donkey don’t ask why.

They live their life’s, it’s us who ask why.

But there is no reason for this why.

There is no answer to the why.

We are just here and that’s a why.

The meaning of life, is… to ask why.

The nuclear bomb and its enemies.

Our mind

Both the USA and the USSR developed their large arsenals because history teaches them that war is a possibility and probably a necessity. Both were afraid that if either one had the chance of destroying the other, that it could happen. They either made a large arsenal to strike first or hit back hard after an attack. Either way it would be disastrous for both countries with millions of people dead not by a long war, diseases, or famine but by a few phone calls and some presses on 2, – dollar launch buttons.

The USSR was a Communist country, guided by strict rules that guided their past and future. The Russians where convinced that they could win a nuclear war. There would be large destruction, but the conventional war, after the nuclear destruction, could be won. From Napoleon to Hitler their large unwelcome land is there biggest asset that has shaped their history for years and guided their choices in the development and deployment of nuclear weapons.

Continue reading →

Auto pilot

Philosophy

What is life for us, thinking animals? Is it not mainly going on in our head, our brain pointed towards a future? Most animals do the thing they do without contemplation, they don’t wonder why they are naked or roll around in the mud. We human beings are also animals and most of what we do is also done without contemplation, but we can look backwards, forwards, and wonder why, where, what, whom, and how.

When we get up in the morning and perform our rituals: drink coffee, start the car, drive to work. At any moment we can snap out of this automatic behavior. Where we don’t ask ourselves why, it just happens. But we can place ourselves in the driver’s seat and reflect upon our actions. At that moment we are more than just an drone. This is off course all a little dramatic, but a big part of our lives is automated. Try to recall why you agree with a certain kind of person, like that color, prefer that taste, dislike mountains, hate flying, check the door one extra time so on and so forth. Do you really know why you do the things you do or is it like rolling in the mud?

People are good in giving rational reasons for their behavior. We ignore that most of our habits are ingrained in to us by our contact with family, friends, society, (forgotten) experiences, and the random or determined makeup of our physical body the chemistry in our brain.

How many protestant children are there in a Muslim family, Hindu children in a Russian orthodox family, or a catholic child in an atheist family? It hardly ever happens, look at the statistics, but the true believer will still insist that his fate is the only one and this person doesn’t see that he believes this way because he grew up within it, is surrounded by it. Would that person have been adopted at birth by people of another faith, than they would have adopted that faith and proclaimed it to be the only way? With religion it is clear. However, lots of habits you identify yourself with are just that, habits. There is no reason behind it. Just instinct from our genetic makeup and programming from our surroundings.

People that are so certain that their way of living is the only way, and are in the minority. They’re like the pigs that role around in the mud, they have no clue why they’re doing it, they just do what comes automatically, with the least resistance.

If everybody in the world new that their “I”, their “self” is a construct than we would have a lot of uncertain people, questioning their every move but at least we would all be part of the same team.

God is dead

Society

“Even a small step in the wrong direction could take a country on the path of catastrophe.”
This is a quote from Robert Kempner, a German lawyer who served as assistant U.S. chief council during the Nuremburg trials.
I heard this quote when I was listening to the book The Devil’s Diary and I had to write it down. Ever since a well know president of the most powerful country in the world told us that “there are some fine people amongst these neo-Nazi’s” (I’m paraphrasing) , I had to freshen up on what those “fine people” think.

Bergen Belsen mass grave.

I think there’s nobody that knows what’s going on in this man’s mind, we can only react to that what he says even if it’s something blurred out in the heat of the moment. The Nazi’s killed woman and children in cold blood by the millions, everyone who denies that or somehow condones it should not be taken serious.
There are no words to describe this, I have no words for it and it will probably take a long time to find some. I don’t understand how people could work with a person like this, who obviously has no clue in what happened in the second world war. We live in depressing times and if this is not a “smal” step I don’t know what is.
But, George Carlin point’s out something in the following quote that has sadly a lot of truth in it:
“Now, there’s one thing you might have noticed I don’t complain about: politicians. Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don’t fall out of the sky. They don’t pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It’s what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you’re going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain’t going to do any good; you’re just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it’s not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here… like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There’s a nice campaign slogan for somebody: ‘The Public Sucks. F*ck Hope.'”
Remember that this is not only happening in America but in a lot of different countries . A lot of people are no longer following some basic rules like “Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these» Mark 12:31. These people literally say that they don’t care about refugees”, they cannot see the bigger picture, that we all have created this mess in the world we live in. They don’t see that we live on this planet together and must take care of it together. But nationalism, selfishness and nihilism are obviously going strong.
The christian people that are so often blaming Friedrich Nietzsche for saying that “god is dead” obviously don’t understand that Nietzsche warned for a world without a god despite he himself not being religious. That humanity was not ready to live without the 10 commandments (to put it simple), and he was right. A lot of these so called christians are for closed borders thus they do not “love your neighbor…” or they really hate themselves. There is no so called christian love any more, god is really dead.
“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science

Old news

History

There were times that I read a lot of background stories on the news, long newspaper articles, opinion magazines etc. I really was interested in those stories and opinions but for many years now my only source of the news is an app on my phone that shows me the highlights. The phone has made this easy, before that you had a computer and before that teletext on tv if you wanted just the highlights. But for me the ease of the mobile phone it is not the only reason I am only looking for the highlights, I am tired of the news and all the opinions around it.

Continue reading →

Democracy from all sides

Society

If the truth is a circle and I can only see one part of it, and I realize that, I than cannot proclaim to know the truth. I can proclaim my side of the truth, my part of what I can see but not much more. I think this is self-evident but if I look at myself I know that I have enough opinions without knowing all or at least more of the circle or truth.

If two people both stand on opposite sides of a statue and describe the side they see then they are off course both right as far as describing their side, but if a third person walks around the statue and describes it there is a bigger chance that that description tells you more about the statue as a whole, it’s more truthful despite all three were telling the truth.

Off course you can argue that the two-people standing on one side and not took the effort to walk around where purposely not telling the whole truth. If than again they were bound to their place you could argue that they were telling the(ir) truth.

Can we expect in any form of discourse that all people that take part try to “walk around the statue” so that we at least can collect all description of that statue and democratically come to a consensus as to its form.

Is it ok if one or more stay on one side and thus give more weight to that side, skewing the results Is that democratic?

What about the people that cannot see, or touch the statue and still form an opinion. That is a problem, and it can lead to a miss representation of the statue if the teachers that inform the blind and senseless are given to much power in their description of the different sides.

Dead philosophers

Philosophy

If you like it or not the internet has brought the news, and most of their accompanying opinions, close, and constantly to us. I am old enough to know what life was without the internet. When I was 16 and needed to know something specific I went to the library or to that neighbor with a 24-volume encyclopedia. But at sixteen I was still to self-absorbed to notice much of the outside world let alone the opinions that people had on the news. I’m pretty sure that the news and opinions of others were known by my parents but probably in bigger chunks, less diverse and from nearby. I don’t try to find out what is better, but I can say that I think that the receiving end is more important than the input, or in other words, a critical mind is important.

Where am I going with this introduction? It started when I read the following text this morning:

“She has shown herself kindly; life, if you know how to use it, is long. But one man is possessed by an avarice that is insatiable, another by a toilsome devotion to tasks that are useless; one man is besotted with wine, another is paralyzed by sloth; one man is exhausted by an ambition that always hangs upon the decision of others, another, driven on by the greed of the trader, is led over all lands and all seas by the hope of gain; some are tormented by a passion for war and are always either bent upon inflicting danger upon others or concerned about their own” Seneca De brevitate vitae

For some reason I’m always intrigued by 2000-year-old text describing our time. But off course they don’t describe our time, they describe human behavior. And that is what’s so amazing, Seneca lived in another time, place, culture, and society but he looked around, was critical and saw thing that you still can see today, in another totally different time, place, culture, and society.

We are not that different as human beings despite all the nonsense you (can) read on the internet.

That’s another reason I read books from dead philosophers and writers. I want to remind myself that all the noise you hear all day is mostly noise. Most of the modern books you read or opinions you hear are refurbished ideas of the dead philosophers and writers. I like to take away the middleman, the noise and go direct to the source. By going as close as possible to the source you get a free reminder that life was not so different 2000, 500 or a 100 years ago. That we are all human beings with a brain that functions more or less the same fore thousands of years now no matter the host it’s in.

“I have labored carefully, not to mock, lament, or execrate human actions, but to understand them; and, to this end, I have looked upon passions, such as love, hatred, anger, envy, ambition, pity, and the other perturbations of the mind, not in the light of vices of human nature, but as properties, just as pertinent to it, as are heat, cold, storm, thunder, and the like to the nature of the atmosphere, which phenomena, though inconvenient, are yet necessary, and have fixed causes, by means of which we endeavor to understand their nature, and the mind has just as much pleasure in viewing them aright, as in knowing such things as flatter the senses.” Baruch Spinoza Political Treatise (1677)

Man in the mirror

History

Göring: Why, of course, the people don’t want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.

Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.

Continue reading →