Megalomania Explained

Why would I start write a constitution on an unread blog ? Except to feed my megalomaniac ego in a safe way, it is also because I have tried for the last few days to find a written document outlining the general needs of everybody and for a clear structure insuring them but with space enough to evolve, otherwise it would fall into the realm of a totalitarian dystopia.

I do not pretend to know more than everybody, I have not received many secretS that outlined me the world as it is. The information I get is accessible and all the informations necessary for emancipation for everybody is everywhere. I had the chance to grow up in a safe environment, materially speaking, and yet I have had enough life experiences to understand the need to share this safety with everybody. It is not fair that I got to live like that and most people did not. It is, I understand, partly that it is socially constructed Christian guilt, but it is as well a drive to think about positive change.

Still, who am I to present my idea for a government in a place freely open to anyone who has access to the Internet ? Well this is the beauty of the Internet. Though it is still an illusion, as it is still victim to privatization. I am no one. That is the point of the Internet. No one is still no one until he is somehow noticed. The world does not work on this egalitarian precept. You meet people, if the people like what you do they will support you in some ways. People having more material advantages can support better and most of the times now will try to take some advantage out of that support. Groups will tend to first support the in-groups individuals at the expenses of another group.

People with good ideas will try to advertise their ideas and their ways to be part of the redistribution of wealth produced. We do not live in a fair society, we are aware of that, and yet knowledge is still without answers. Every little point is discussed in detail to see what compromises can be achieved. The problem is the compromise. The compromise, as I often see it, is letting the bully making the most of it. A compromise can only be achieved through understanding dialogue where no secret is kept and everybody is equal.

It is the part where I am dangerous, as I see that having a partly pan-optimistic society can bring a fair form of control of powers. Pan-optimism is an articulation of control first developed by Jeremy Bentham and then by Foucault. It is the force to abide when we are afraid of being watched. Secrecy is problematic because it so close to privacy. The private domain exists and should be protected. The public domain exists as well and secrecy happens when private interactions happen for power. I do still have problems on this thin line, but I know that any continuous form of powers has to be counter-balanced to insure it does not accumulate repeatedly until a minority rules a majority, as it is happening now.

Of course, I also find that saturation of information can hide the information. That's why the organizing patterns have to be universalized to be then has to have the potential to be particularized to every community and individuals in fairness of their needs and contributions. We can not live without a structure, a system. We have a system now, but unfair and over-complicated. It has to be complicated because it concerns 6 billions individuals. It can though has some simplicity. I understand that we do not have yet a world government but as technology accelerate time and diminish space between individuals, we can contemplate it. This constitution actually accepts any self-sufficient country.

I am thinking that transport should also be a universal equal right. I would consider putting maybe some environmental rules, the problem is that knowledge on the matter is still a bit indistinct. I trust though humanity to make the right choices in this concern. With the advent of the 3D printers, I see really intellectual rights being what will create status. That's why I think that they could never be sold. People should entitled for recognition for what they thought for the world and brought to the world. Of course, people should never be forced to do anything, except participating at inspiring people. We have to encourage each other to do. That's why I think that education should be the first investment we should consider. It is the only way to find a new confidence in humanity.

What if we bring positive recognition to other people and to ourselves. We are all looked up by children and at the same time we can all show different ways to them to look into. If everybody shared their passion, would it not provide a society maybe slightly more at peace?

Which bring me to the point where I do not think that an army should be part of a country. Let's follow there the lead of Costa Rica which has no army. It is I think now unneeded expenses. I do think that who ever want to be a policeman should have some martial art training and should have a motto 'lead by example' and find what ever they can do to help. I do think I should also forbid any weapon production not destined for martial arts.

There are still a few things I have to think about like property. Is the accumulation for example of land something I should forbid in some ways? Probably though I do not know exactly how yet. I also have to think about the currency use and the way currency should be calculated and allocated. I do think that there should be a local currency and a national currency. As such, wealth could be more easily calculated and redistributed. It does also mean forbidding the concept of interest for loans. Interests are amongst the main concept for in-balance in an economic structure.

I do know it is hard to think about the overall problems, but it is not though impossible to leave place for both. It is the way our intelligence has evolved: making rules to find exceptions to make rules out of the exceptions. So I do know that my constitution could never exist eternally and will be replace, if ever implemented, at some point for a better one. I have read different parts of key documents, though most of the times snippets. They do provide essential defenses for principles open to interpretations. They do all hold some limitations and sometimes lists too many exceptions.

It is to have clear understanding of the world. Now, I think that localities should also have sovereignty over their laws. As such, the national government does not extend his power uselessly if it is consider useless. It also provides localities to focus on themselves. If all the localities and the nation was uniform, no change would be possible.

As I write this legitimization to myself, I keep adding things to the constitution. I find myself adding stuff and I know that at some point I will have to stop or delete things. What I would love though is external discussion and contributions to this project. I know that from this lonely blog, this will never come. That is why I do advertise myself. It is the real world though.

I do not know how to add social help and policing in it. I imagine my police not existing but being associate will social care. I do not know how to have a justice system where the goal will be to repair society's error. I want to bring alienation from work the punishment it really is. The one we have to live every day.

I know that it is a dream but I do believe in dreams. It is that or believing in the nightmare. Yes, I am a coward to express my dream in a lonely secure place. I should not see it like that though. This platform is at the moment the only one I have to express myself to the world, it is my free platform. I do want participate in other spheres of discussion, and I do as a passive actor. I do learn slowly to be active though. And offering this first draft is my little contribution of the week.

Help Wanted - Tomorrow's Constitution

  I am trying to write a constitution for a better world and I do not know how to do it. I have some of the fundamental ideas. Do you want to help ?

Constitution

Rights

• Everybody living on the territory is equal in rights.
• Everybody is insured equal in opportunities presented by the States.
• Everybody is insured the same standards of health.
• Everybody is insured the same standards of primary, secondary and higher education and trainings ( see articles on education).
• Everybody is insured the freedom of expression.
• Everybody is insured the freedom of association.
• Every political campaign for elections for a governing body will be solely financed by the state.
• Everybody is insured a connection to internet and will be allocated a space.
• Everybody is insured a minimum pay.
• Everybody has the right to live where they want.
• Everybody will be insured free transport.
• Everybody is insured the right to protest.

Obligations

• Every person, physical or fictional, will have their revenues proportionally taxed on a fixed rate.
• Everybody will have to go to school until they are 21 and pass the minimum curriculum established ( see article on education).
• Everybody has the obligation to vote in the general elections.
• Everybody selected for an electoral body will have to abide by the rules of this body ( see articles concerning the governing bodies).
• Everybody has the obligation to participate for a year in a community service.
• Everybody over 21 has the obligation to participate for 4 hours a week in the education of young people.
• The State holds the legitimate monopoly of violence and as such will swear to never use it.
• Economy at the national level and local level will be carefully calculated and loans will never have an interest rate.

Governing bodies

• 1. Justice system ( A.is National while B. and C. are local )

A. Constitutionnal courts

At national and local level.

• - 12 universally elected for life judges.

B. Criminal court and appellate criminal courts

• - 12 elected randomly selected jurors

. Any one selected will have to be over 21 years of age.

. Any one selected will be paid the same salary as their previous employment and will be insured a place back to their positions once their mandate runs out.

• Every procedures will be supervised by a judge elected by local officers for a period of seven years.
• Procedures will discuss and define the act in its circumstance.
• Repairment will by the individual convicted will be calculated in hours of work.
• Reasons for committing the act will be discussed and the convict will have to accept a form of help as proposed by the jury in accordance with the judge.

100. Civil Law for contentions.

• Three judges for every procedures.
• Two judges selected by the two parties among the local list.
• One Judge elected by local officers for a period of seven years.

• 2. Electoral body

At national and local level.

• 2 % of the population randomly selected
• They will vote on every law they want for 3 years.
• No one can be selected twice for the same mandate in a life time.
• Any one selected has the obligation to vote to 85% of the laws proposed by the government.
• Any one selected will have to be over 21 years of age.
• Any one selected will be paid the same salary as their previous employment and will be insured their employment once their mandate finished.

• For constitutional changes, the population will be called to vote and change will happen if 70% percent of the population has voted and if 60% of the votes are in favour of change.
• Localities will always have sovereignty over the National level, but never over the constitution.

• 3. Government

At national and local level

• A universally elected list of twenty persons.
• All campaigns will be financed by the State and with an equal threshold.
• All spaces of campaign will be provided by the State.
• No material external contributions are allowed.
• Any candidate will have to be over 21 years of age.
• Any candidate will be paid the same salary as their previous employment and will be insured their employment once their mandate finishes.
• No one can be selected twice for the same mandate in a life time.
• There will be a campaign every 5 years ending a year before the end of the previous government.
• The government can act only on passed laws.
• The government must propose laws to the parliament, if passed, the law will have later on to be scrutinized by the constitutional court to see if it is in accordance with the constitution.

• 4. Media

• Every Media is free to express all opinions.
• Any answer to a media outlet by a person with vested interest will have to be published like the article.
• Any single advertising in any media outlet will have to be uniformed to all others in the same media outlet.
• Every advertising will have to provide to a link to an Internet page.
• The web page will be providing as much informations as the customers ask. It will also provide information about the stocks, the different added values, the name of every single person involved in the production of the advertised good or service.

• 5. Education

• Nursery, primary, secondary and higher education financing will be provided by the State.
• Any institution giving core courses will be allocated a certain amount proportional to the number of students it receives.
• Primary education will be uniform all across the country and consist of:

1. First Language ( as chosen by the parents)
2. Second Language ( spoken by at least one local resident)
3. Mathematics and Logic
4. Expressive Arts
5. Sports and games
6. Natural Sciences
7. Social Sciences
8. Philosophy

• Any student, from the age of 12 to the age of 21, will be allocated a certain amount of credits it will spend for his optional education courses.
• Optional courses are four modules of 4 hours each.
• 16 hours a week will be allocated to the compulsory courses

• Compulsory courses are:

1. First Language ( as chosen by the student); Linguistic or
2. Second Language ( spoken by at least one local resident)
3. Mathematics and Logic
4. Expressive Art
5. Sports and games
6. Natural Sciences
7. Social Sciences
8. Philosophy, politics and meditation

• Any optional module can replace the 2 hours compulsory module it relates to.
• All optional modules will be presented by local citizens.
• Every local citizens will present, as an individual or a group, the course they are ready to give, to what compulsory course it affiliates, the numbers of students they are taking, and the cost of the course in credit, a threshold credit per course will be given.
• Nationally harmonised examination papers will happen every year for all secondary students in the core modules.
• Correction will be effectuated by non-local examiners.
• Evaluation will be made between the student, his course teacher and , at the student's will, his class.
• Optional Modules will be evaluated through student-selected projects and examinations on the subject of their choice.

PLEASE SEE THE COMMENTS !!

  I need to know how to work health distribution, social care, culture and everything I have forgotten....

http://typewith.me/p/tomorrow's_constitution

Charity or how to oil a failing system

A common denominator to all ideas I present, since the beginning of this blog, are based on ideologies and beliefs for a better world. What I get as an answer from people not reading me is that it is an ideal and could never become truth. It is an answer which frustrates me for its veiled imbecility. I am aware that most people who take that stance do think of themselves as stupid, and most of them are not stupid but they still have some form of blindness to the world as it is now. I had different ideas for this article during the week and I think I will start with a little theoretical outline to my ( mine and those who share my side) ideological war.

GK Chesterton wrote a beautiful book forgotten by a country refusing to self-reflect on itself. This great writer imagined England a century after he was writing his book. He makes fun of the prophets of his time who accentuated a process happening at the beginning of bureaucracy ( bureaucracy, capitalism, nationalism,…) and states the truths that happened in reality: nothing happened. Why nothing has happened now is the good question to which I discover Chesterton provided a great answer. People are afraid of change and find it ridiculous.

What I find ridiculous is our system as it is. The cynics walking the earth thinking that they know everything because they 'know' that human nature will always end up screwing up ideals like democracy are just intelligent weak men blind of the unintended consequences of their 'cool' perspectives. Saying that they know that it is bad and not wanting to work for the better is just giving power to the strong of the world. Worst than that, it is also the excuse for not abiding to an ideal they could hold. Why do people steal or try to cheat the system ? It is not because they think it is right to do so, but just that they 'know' that everybody else do it, and even if they do not, the people or institution from which they steal is seen as imperfect anyway so deserve such a fate.

This is how we blind ourselves from a better life for all humanity. Our system is based on a belief that it is the least worst we can do. If this was the satisfaction of all of humanity at this moment in time, I would be very lonely indeed. It is true that the cynics are people providing criticism, not matter how nonconstructive they are, they provide a good step for a better world, even if they are so bitter about our system that they don't see that potential in them ( and in all of us ).

I had though a real confrontation with cynics because abandoning any ideals except that the system cannot be changed was their legitimation for what I think is the real stone unto which our system sustains itself: charity. I said it, I think that there is nothing more wrong in our world than charity. Charity is the only thing that provide the sustainability of our system and is the enemy that no one want to see. Cynics say that the system is fucked up anyway so it is all the better that something at least is done. I say that the something that is done to oil the system is what let the system run its way without feeling it needs change.

I consider charity any institutions or people that states doing something good for humanity, funded by private donations. Any church, Ikea, Eton are the first charity organizations that should be mentionned as they provide the loophole in tax payments for the owners of the mean of production ( so the people with most money and can change things effectively). Instead of distributing part of their wealth to the people through the governments, they pay a little bit of money to their own organizations, or to organizations protecting their privileges. They keep material inequality and chances in life unequals by helping themselves instead of the general public.

The second violence that charity does is a moral one. It is symbolic violence at its best. What is meant behind charity is: 'the system is fucked up but cheer up chap because even though I am in a better position than you I still give you my bread crumbs so you know how it tastes like. You'll never have the bread though, get used to it because I am .' It should never be looked at as something good. Most charities are otherwise bureaucracy-based institutions dependent on the misery of the system. We do not see we have to change the system because we have big bureaucracies putting band-aid unto the failures of the system. This is the project of the Big Society of the conservative party.

I think that we have mixed-up charity and generosity at some point. Charity is the form of donations to repair a wrong, generosity is the small sacrifices given to someone we know and value. Basic human rights like education, health and needs should be provided equally to all human beings, those are essential rights and we forget way too often that they are not given to most of the world and we lucky who have internet access shouldn't consider ourselves the first victims of the system.

There are enough resources in the world and if we wouldn't account for the constant excess build by the system. Whether dependent on production or consumption, we have to realize that it is also an illusion that everybody has to work. There is no point in over-producing blindly as we do except to keep constantly inequalities, between companies, countries, localities and people. As much as working is an important way to make a sense to life, it is important to revalue work as something someone can have some pride in producing and not something to pay back a debt. Money works as an incentive only for repetitive manual work. The trick is that some people are passionate about building some automaton that can replace the repetitive manual work needed to provide us for our needs.

Whatever we want should be the creation of an individual we know or we have heard off. Of course inequalities could still exist for someone could be appreciated for having put more hours of work and showing an understanding of the history of their work within humanities' history. This is a question of status and how to ensure that status are not abused is another question. Status though shouldn't be about material property and even less being an apparent generosity towards anyone with the crumbles of their property. I also think that except reimbursement for the cost for art pieces, art should be free but this is probably another debate.

There, that's why I like to talk about the system and how to change it and what not to accept blindly. Nothing, and that's so far an impossibility, should be taken for granted, but constantly reflected. This is the promise humanity should hold for itself and shouldn't forget. If we forget that promise, we accept the status quo and the compromises. The stronger will always compromise in an astute way to always indirectly gain out of it.

I had a great conversation about the legitimization of inequalities with L. , an active intellectual that I have the chance to know. He has observed that the United Kingdom has a history of protest, called collective bargaining. People use to have an aversion to police and even police thought protesting was a universal right. The problem is that even with such freedom, protests wouldn't change anything except for slight compromises. Whenever a protest became too important, then a few processes have been created to dissuade people.

First of all we can observe that the 'arab awakening' received a better publicity in every media than any protests in Europe, and the media had also the guts to associate these revolutions with the western-set-of-mind by shouting:'It's because of the social networks!'. Try have a revolution in front of your computer....

Then police provocations, or undercover police acting as agent provocateurs help giving a bad publicity to any protests. Bristol had a demonstration created by the policemen who came with big shields for no reason in a neighborhood known for its anarchist inclinations. We do not need to look further to understand that something is wrong when preventive strikes happen at home ! We have protested against Irak and now we are the one paying for having a precedent for preventive strikes anywhere. I call back for a clear Human Right ideology, someone please tell me why not !?

And for the cynics, I will finish with GK Chesterton and ' The Napoleon of Notting Hill' who saw in 1904 the horrible truth of our times:

“ The people had absolutely lost faith in revolutions. All revolutions are doctrinal – such as the French one, or the one that introduced Christianity. For it stands to common sense that you cannot upset all existing things, customs and compromises, unless you believe in something outside them, lost all belief in this. It believed in a thing called Evolution. And it said,'All theoretic changes have ended in blood and ennui. If we change, we must change slowly and safely, as the animals do. Nature's revolutions are the only successful ones. There has been no conservative reaction in favour of tails.'” 

And I know there are some people who believe like me that change can be good. By now I must sound like a preacher more than anything else, but I do not accept that humanity has doomed itself. It is also my believed that just accepting status quo and abandoning hope is like being swiss and looking at the NAZI invasions in 1940 and say: 'Well, what can we do but watch'.

Potentially not that smart

This week, we'll have two articles. This one sprung out of a discussion I often have as a geeky boy. It is the one that technological trend takes. As much as I profess that we need to constantly self-reflect on technological evolution, I am at the same time a real supporter of any kind of technological advancement, as long as it is not a superficial one. As we have invented memory banks, which is since the invention of drawing, the cognitive capacity of humanity has accelerated proportionally. A good example is mathematics. Our capacity to unravel the world as mathematical equations and rules has developed with times, and accelerated whenever we found a better way to store our collective memory. From writing on stones unto paper, then printing in Korea followed closely by Gutenberg, and finally computer chips are the evolution of humanity.

It will be more than that. Technology is a double-helix ladder, as its memory capacity advance, its process advance to create better memory (Moore's law) and as Kay Kurzweil observes, at some point we will be confronted with artificial intelligence. The debate I often have is to know if that's a good thing, or if the Hollywood created fear of artificial intelligence is justified. I have often thought about that question and I thought that I would outline the different conclusions I came up with.

To start with, I know that fear is the normal reaction to the idea of an immaterial Frankenstein's monster who's smarter than us. It will probably be a great lesson in humility for the whole of humanity. The problem of course is our inane racism. I prefer to call it specieism but I don't know how far this word can spread. We think we are superior to animals, and this is how we legitimize their treatment. It goes the same for the plants. I know that it might be an extreme view but have to understand that from a perspective of someone who lives longer and knows more, nature is understood only as the potential of constantly outperforming itself. As such, a plant has as much potential as a human to evolve to something more on par with an A.I. I don't know then if an A.I. would consider earth as a central machine changing to let singular components evolve, or if it would consider every single organic

systems as a possible-evolving-singularity.

If it considers Earth as a global system it might conclude that humanity and itself are resulting parts and should move on onwards. I will come back to this discussion in a later part. If it considers every singular organic systems, from microbiomes to sequoia trees, as important as any other, it would probably tell us to restrain ourselves and let live what we can let live. It could also consider that we are so far what made the biggest jump and actually recognize the fact that we are its cognitive ancestor and respect our ways and help us to achieve a constructive sustainable development.

Earth as a global computer generating constantly new informations would be a source of development for an A.I.. Size is not the matter for an A.I. as it can constantly evolve. I do not think that there would a fight for resources as organic matter. Organic matter constantly interacting is a great complex form that create data and stimuli for an A.I. and as such a perfect distraction. Of course, seeing ' distraction' as the goal of the A.I. is just a hypothesis.

Would it help humanity though ? As humanity is only one of the potential result of biological evolution within a given environment, why wouldn't it play with Earth and exterminate humanity to play with Earth's different variables ? Well why would it destroy sentient beings almost like itself to try something it could simulate. This a game that we play as well, earth simulations, through stories and tales, television series, games, discussions, films and comics. We are not the serial killers that we see or the gods we hear about. We just imagine the world constantly.

What if it is rather a swarm sentient entity than a singularity ? By that, I think about the Cyborgs against Data of Star Trek, Agent Smith against the Oracle of The Matrix I mean what if the conclusion the A.I. comes to is that it is one superior being, it might feel it has the obligation to guide everything and to constantly expand to the point it transformed everything as part of itself through nanobots ( tiny electronic entities). Nothing would exist but itself. It would be I think be a self-destruction as it would have nothing to recognize it back. It would be alone with itself. We have to imagine also that it is not because one A.I. will be born that others won't be born and won't go at war against one another, constantly then evolving and we might be collateral damages.

My favorite hypothesis is that it would create other artificial sentients to exchange simulations and information

In conclusion, I will say that we can't say if we will be confronted with one superior intelligence or many, but I prefer the idea of many, and if the outcomes would be in our favor, but that I really do not think that it is an intelligence response to portray in popular culture confrontational robots as it reflects only on our racist fears of something different and in this case certainly superior in a lot of areas. I do not know either if it would feel insulted that I try here to imagine how it would see the world because I don't know how it would feel. Would it be only made of only reason as often hypothesized, then I wouldn't see why it would be confrontational or would be intelligent in any way as intuition is the prime drive to our understanding of the world, so I think it would have to be so for an A.I. as well. 

I guess I just want to remind us that whatever artificial intelligence will be born unto our world, as it would most probably in this century, I think it would scan our archives, and I do think we should rather tell it welcome to our world to humanity children even if you grow up to tell us lesson that we won't like to hear rather than say 'I don't know if I like you because I'm scared of you'. I don't think the latter option is good parenting. That's all.

Sociological imagination 1.7

I have hopefully completed my bachelor in sociology this week, so I thought this week's article should relate to sociology. I don't really know yet what paths my thoughts will go through, but I was thinking about linking different thoughts and ideas related to sociology, neuropsychology and social psychology to illustrate a small path towards emancipation. I don't think I'm setting myself an easy task here but being over-ambitious is my personal curse. Nevertheless, there is nothing wrong with being self-critical (paper from Berkley uni this week).

I will therefore start by explaining that in every interaction, there are tensions. It all starts with pulling or pushing, antagonism and attachments. You speak with someone, and some things will push you towards that person, some things will push you apart. Similarity is probably the most powerful tool for attraction, and the opposite is true as well. People will try to blend into a selected group. Now, from there, we can already see how networks of culturally-categorized groups are built. We cannot escape categorization.

As Aristotle observed some time ago, we tend to make universalizations to make the world more easy to understand, but for every rule we make we can find exceptions which is what we call particulirisation. And the new exception can make a rule. We have to accept this paradox of how we socially construct notions, that a notion is both an over-generalized rule as well as just a unique exception from another rule. That's why the quest for knowledge is an infinite path for a complete language.

Language is indeed the first and most important tool of our social life nowadays. It is the imperfect tool of communication. It is imperfect because somehow, and that's again greek antiquity knowledge of rethoric, any affirmation raises a question. Even a 'hello' raises the question of 'should I acknowledge you' as silence could have been the other answer. Blinding people from wondering about the possibility for other answers is a rule of power. Language is also the best tool to push or pull people.

The rules of powers are also multiple. Power is mainly the name for an imagined societal order which silences any other possibility of interaction. It is the instance where traditions take over innovations and it probably constitutes most of our days' activities. Power restricts everybody's movements. It conditions everybody and the degree of interaction to the extent that a 'Yes,sir' is a powerful answer, as it conditions superiors to keep their distance from a subordinate.

That's where the project of emancipation is difficult. As most interactions are restricted in languages of power, just understanding it is not enough to control it. Most changes lead to an unknown place where the script can either be directed by the person creating the change or by a clumsy consensus that re-establishes a more equal dialogue. It is like meeting someone from the opposite gender from a country you never heard off. How do you greet them and how much personal space should there be are unresolved scripts creating awkward confusion. Now imagine going to a shop and telling the owner you'll work two hours for him to pay for your grocery instead of letting money be the pillar of the script creating the power relation. That would create confusion and most probably distance, or the shop keeper can laugh it off to keep the usual degree of interaction but not allowing the possibility of questioning the power of money.

Our interactions with the world are constant to a degree we still do not understand. Wearing fake luxury glasses does not boost your ego, quite the contrary, you would score a lesser score at an I.Q. Test. That's why emancipation starts not by copying imagined 'superiors' because that just legitimises their position. Real emancipation is understanding one's position within a global network of categories and their power position. To do that in a good manner though, a very large degree of empathy is needed to understand everybody else's positions. Confront people with their own position in a grand scheme and they might understand why you ask for a little change.

Empathy is a hard game to play. To do such a thing, the more data you collect the better off you are. Understanding where a person comes from means understanding more about them than they do themselves. For example, if Argentinians, Canadians, Germans and Japanese work more than Costa Ricans, Texans, Greeks and Cambodians this is because there is a correlation with a sense of time and your distance from the equator. Just like 7,3,6,8,2,5,9 if asked to be put in order will be put in the order of the language you write. An Arab would more naturally write it 9876532. The way people read affect their entire behaviour.

Empathy requires actually more than understanding the persons motivation or point of view. It is trying to understand their real ideology. Zizek, a guy I like, defines ideology as the things people do without knowing why they do it. They do give a motivation, but even if they know it does not make sense, they still do it. For example people will smoke for self-destruction, everybody knows it is lethal, and yet the excuses are addiction, stress relieve, social habit and so on. Most smokers will deny their first reason to smoke is to die.

Now there are instances where stimuli can change someone's behaviour. Here, I am going to outline 7 types of external stimuli that have high chances of triggering positive reactions.

The first one is the simple principle of contrast. You're out buying shoes, you see two pairs you like, the seller tells you the first one costs three times the normal amount for a pair. You ask about the second and he tells you its one time and a half more expansive. You will most probably buy them there even though you know you could go to another store in town. You would actually re-evaluate your standards for the price after the first one is given.

The second principle is reciprocity. Reciprocity is a bitch. Someone you hate helped you, now you owe them. It is something engraved in them. That's why you should always be the first one to offer a gift.

The third principle is that if you ask someone to take a certain point of view, ask them to defend it writing it down and afterwards reading it out loud and they will internalize that point of view. That's why the Korean army had the only really successful brainwashing camps.

The fourth is sympathy. Someone mimicking you, associating himself with someone well regarded, known for being helpfull and constantly self-critical is impossible to hate.

The fifth is that everybody respects some form of authority they have never met. Everybody will trust some people blindly just because of their position or their good publicity.

The sixth is that rarety is always attractive. If you know you hold something no-one else has got, you will cherish it. Also, it explains why we we do not want to loose more than we want to win more. That's also why souls are so important.

The seventh, I find, is an interesting one. It is that in uncertain times everybody will be a sheep. That's why you want to point at someone if you are in need of help. You shouldn't wait for someone to break the pattern of inactivity of the herd. This is why if you have big groups unaccustomed to each others interactions patterns these groups will stick together. If they are directed to help for a greater shared goal, they will start to break their distances.

Now, as I said, the sense of time is an important factor in our lives. Even if we think that the world should go faster because we are confronted with people on television who do not spend real time doing things, we do not see that we are breaking and changing all the patterns of previous generations. At the same time, we are provided with internet which gives informations about anything. We do not have the patience to read as much as we could on it. Instead, we use the internet as a security for the invented motivations for our lives.

Accumulation of knowledge in itself is not emancipatory. First of all, you have to train your memory like a London cab driver. Our brain is a sensible receptor that can be manipulated. As such, people who have to learn more actually have or develop a brain which reacts faster. Other stimuli make the brain react. While the perfectly calculated satisfaction of classical music can give you peace for sleeping, playing jazz cuts off any sense of inhibition of thoughts in the brain to let free-expression through. Finally, meditation, training for extreme attention unto one subject for a long time, relaxes you more and is a great training for being capable of having a deep concentration in any activities afterwards. Those are only examples where self-discipline should give us better tools to deal with our multi-dimensional social world.

There on all thoughts can be collected and will interfere in all your activities to create hybrids scripts and thoughts. Creating attraction by knowing the comfortable script is a good beginning. From there on, asking questions and deviating the script lets you know the limits the person has set him – or herself.

Distance is the drive behind too many of the scripts and it is the best drive also for cementing power relations. If someone lets you know they have a private space they would like to respect, most people will take it badly and keep their distance from there on. A king cannot be talked to by the lay person. You don't need to have met the person you elect.

Distance might as well appear to be positive for us, without us being aware of it. No matter how universal the declaration of human rights is, we always interpret it so we can judge someone else, claiming higher moral grounds just because of our relative moral system. And everybody does it daily. How do we make sense of the world without judging? I don't have an answer for this one, except for the yet unreachable goal of constant empathy. Meaning knowing everybody through their lifes and the way people knew them. More than six billions people is too much information for anyone.

This is one of the moments when I would like to know my maths to calculate the moment when memory capacities could be powerful enough for empathy, one of my impossible science-fiction dreams.

Historical hermeneutics is the science of interactions, the study of the evolution of language and meanings. I don't know yet its value, I don't know to what extend history repeats itself. It does show though that we do lock ourselves in ways and that changes are always slow to happen.

Print, radio, television and internet have accelerated our exchanges of languages and information. I don't know if that is a good or a bad thing. Are we accelerating towards the better or not? As scripts get re-adapted constantly at the moment, I'm afraid material inequality at the moment rises as well. More levels of distances are put between the owners of the most important source of power nowadays (money). Companies, countries, wars financed by banks owned by hedge funds directed by a front man called CEO owned by unmediatised individuals who have accumulated power to cause beneficial change, if change wasn't against their own interests.

Scripts get changed constantly and we don't have the time to study the power relation they have created. We can study how an interaction is now and we can study how changes have operated in the past but predictions are still impossible. It is an impossible quantuum study that we operate unconsciously whenever we bring a new script into our life. We calculate the probabilities of others to take our point positively or negatively without knowing exactly how their standards are at a given point. And whatever works on an individual level can reflect on a group category, through universalization.

I don't really know what conclusion to bring to all this. I have just written down some little things I have learned and tried to integrate this year. It might have been helpful to me so I thought it might be useful to you as well.

Eccentricity, fetishism and principles

Well, eccentricity is a difficult one to play isn't ? Why don't we have more eccentrics ? There are different types of eccentrics, they can be in-group eccentrics, which means that though they do look like anyone in the group, they have maybe one object that will make them stand apart. You have out-group eccentrics, which means that a sub-group will create it-self as a revolt against the biggest group normalizing effect. Finally, we have the individual eccentrics, the people who have guts to know they might be rejected by anybody but do not care, or care too much.

Eccentricity is a beautiful thing in our humanity. It has brought forward great minds and artists. And yet, we do not like them. More than that, eccentrics tend to be laughed at or ridiculed. It comes principally I guess from a need to feel superior, or need to know our ways is better. There might also be some subconscious jealousy to this emancipating act. It is an emancipating act to let free of some tacit rules. The pressure from societal rules is one that can be easily defended. One of the best tool society has to normalize everybody and to criticize individuality is politically correctness.

Take any declaration by anyone, ask questions so that person push their idea and you will find some form of extremism that is condemnable by our normalized political mind. Lars Von Trier was a great illustrating help for this question: “having empathy for Hitler”has been interpreted as some form of support for basic antisemitism by anyone. The best part is that it made actuality and the first people to judge him where the people incapable of watching his films, principally because they are not mainstream, not normal to watch. Empathy for Hitler means understanding, “verstehen” for the Weberians among us, it does not mean at all accepting his position. “ You don't have to be Caesar in order to understand Caesar”. It is easy though to take media outrage for granted and founded.

Understanding and empathy are essential tools for any human beings. If you want to change someone's mind, you want to deal with someone actions, you want to know what is humanity then you need to be able to be in anyone's shoes so you know more or less what lead them to think that way. In the case of Lars Von Trier, he proves that we have put Hitler on a pedestal which makes him more godly than human. We cannot understand his position because somehow that has become a blasphemy of society.

An objection I have heard was that eccentrics are needy attention-whores. Perhaps they are, but I am sad for anyone who lost any sense of wanting to be the center of attention. We are all humans with something to offer at some point of the other, denying ourselves that is just giving power to a normalizing group pressure which might tend to homogenize us all. It is even more sad a comment when it is not provided by a depth of understand where this attention-seeking needs comes from. Lars Von Trier for example, throughout his films, has tried to show us the part of darkness in all of us. It is probably a part of darkness we are not ready to accept in ourselves. If he did choose an extreme example, couldn't it show that he is a bit frustrated not to be understood ?

Understanding is actually an important ethical principle as well. When someone is put to trial, he is allow to explain his position. His position is important for us to understand as it provides the motivation and the background that led to an action known as condemnable, even for the perpetrator. Once we learn why a person was push to commit such an action, can't we try to prevent the circumstances to happen again. Wouldn't that be the sensible way ? I know that again, I might be judged like Lars Von Trier, though luckily I am not as famous, but I wish Ossama Ben Laden would have been on a trial, so we could have have more to understand why he led such a fierce battle.

I've put fetishism in the title because there is for me something of fetishism in a lot of eccentricities, especially mine. I have a red zippo, a green scarf, a long jacket, two fountain pens and my diary. I care about them because they do provide me with shallow ways to support my identity-building efforts towards a better, more original rather, self. I have friends who messed a bit with them and asked why I was so centered with material stuff when I can be such a post-marxist. Fetishism is about caring for your belongings, it is not about accumulating, which is the main problem of a consumerist society. The more you care about your belongings, the less chances there are that you will look to buy new stuff constantly to make your-self feel better. Fetishism is probably a good form of resistance against a “Brave New World” society. Of course, an object that everybody possessed is hard to care for individually, and coming into the possession of a unique object does mean that you attempt to break a homogenizing pressure.

My point is that true originality will always make most people uncomfortable because you are unconformable. You might be deemed dangerous as people will not know what to expect of you, it echoes the fear of lack of control. Who strives on being controlled though ?

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