Applied Spider-Man Theory

'With power comes responsibility' is Spiderman motto and a well observed rule that we can observe sometimes in our society throughout history. There are maybe though exceptions and to find these exceptions, I would like to explore to what extent is that motto true. If it was entirely true, would the Green Goblin really go on rampages like he does ? Well, that might not be the best of examples, since he is held responsible for his actions by Spiderman, and punish, maybe not accordingly in a fair way ( a lot of times Spider-man would be too nice to the different people who impersonated the Green Goblin, from my point of view).

Anyway, first we have to start with a definition of power, and I will use classic sociological theories to do so. First of all, any power is characterized by an inter-dependent relationship. You do need two people for one to exert power over another one and there must be a need for these two to be in such a relation. For example, it could be two lovers, in which case they are dependent on each other for their feelings to be kept alive.

First question that arises then is that most relations are asymmetrical at a given time, meaning that someone will always make a decision that the other(s) will have to follow. There is nowadays a view that power is unfair, but it is bound to exist in the sense that if two persons try to exert power on the other, they would nullify each others decision and nothing would move. That's why that in the example of two lovers, the decisions would have to be balanced, either in time or in the theme of what has to be decided.

Now that we know that every inter-dependent relations will have a power relation, we have to observe in which way the power goes. One has power over another one, if he controls some uncertainty to come. I hold a gun to your face, I'm dependent on you because I want your wallet, you are dependent of me because I'm holding some uncertainty about your future ( life or death). It does not have to be a threat but the uncertainty control can be a reward. I ask you to clean my shoes and you'll get a big fat check, I get to decide the quality of the cleaning.

The third element of power we need to find, if we want to see the verstehen, it is the will to make someone do something. It does not have to be conscious, but it has to be accepted. Back to lovers: I want new shoes and someone in love with me offers them to me. I can accept them and offer back gratitude or more or I can refuse them and reject the person courting me. Have I exerted power in both cases ? In the first one, I would say that I did, as I have accepted that I hold a way to make someone do something for me, in the other one, even though I made someone do something I have reacted in such a way that it will not ( hopefully) happen again. In the second case, I have not exerted power, but the image the other had of me did and as such, he forced himself.

Now, what are the different types of power we can observe in society?

The first one is the power of Coalition. Meaning that many can form peer pressure, or threats to make someone do something. Unions are a good example, though it has to be noticed that they are trying to counter another form of power. They do though exert a form of pressure to act in a certain way in an inter-dependent relationship by holding cards over the future.

The second one is Hierarchical Authority. I have a boss, I have to obey him. We both work for the same institution, but this institution has given this guy the power to tell me what I have to do otherwise he will ask that some sanctions will be applied to me. He represents the power of the institution into which I am a part of, and as such, it is not directly the person who has power.

The third one is the power of the person holding an Information. In social sciences, informations ( and it is slightly similar in physics) can represent anything. So someone holding money for example, holds information that will make anyone do something. A better example might be, in theory, the University professor ( in a perfect world) who can ask his audience to be quiet, otherwise he won't share what he knows.

The fourth one is the Mastery of a process. Imagine that a prisoner is given the right to serve whoever he wants in a prison, well, people will have, to some extent, obey him otherwise they won't be sure what they will be served. He is not an authority, as he was not given power, but is one in practice.

The fifth one is the power of the Expert. Everybody knows this power: the doctor who can prescribe you a good drug or tell you everything is alright and you should go to work. The lawyer who tells you you'd better settle or loose in court, even though in your mind you are totally right. The architect who tells you that another floor will really not fit the general symmetry of the building.

The sixth one is the power of the Network. It is a vicious power that everybody to some extent uses. You know a guy who knows a guy so you can do something that someone else, who knows no one, can't do. The person with the network, does not have a power of coalition, because it is not a fixed group, he does not have to be an expert or an authority, but he is just a pal with the person who has some power.

Finally, there is the Manipulation. It is all the form of power that are based on simple manipulation of the pathos of the other. The other one is in love with you, well you don't have to go and get your coffee anymore. The other one is stupid and get enraged easily, well you have heard that this guy you hate told something against him in his back and he better get his ass slapped. Someone you never met does not know you're bluffing when you say your his boss's son, he will also get your coffee.

Now, all these powers have limits and consequences. To have limits and consequences, the power relation has to be observed, felt and understood. If I went to see ' Eat, pray, love' 5 times with my girlfriend because I'm telling myself I love that film, the power my girlfriend has over me is probably limitless. If I suddenly become a pure existentialist in front of man holding a gun in front of my face and decide I might as well die here, he can shoot, but he won't have made me handed in my wallet.

The thing is that sometimes, we see the power and dislike it, but without observing what gives this power its limits. The limits of power are a lot of times set by the responsibility this power has in an inter-dependent relationship. For example, a King of France has an almost absolute power over his kingdom. He has so only though as long as he can hold his kingdom together. Now if he starts going crazy on spending and taxation and people do not recognize their country anymore, they will find a way to fight this power. The opposite is kind of true, someone who has a lot of power, but use it in such a way that everybody in the relationship is happy, will hold to this power very long. If women are portrayed as the weaker gender, men will have to be polite and courteous because they are the protectors. If now women want to be seen as equal, men do not want to hold the responsibility anymore.

With the loss of power therefore might also come the loss of responsibility, which might be the vicious side of this story. Imagine the owner of a company. He gets to decide who works where and what salary they'll have, and if he abuses of that power, like the king, he would be in trouble. But now, a CEO, who does not own his company, is not responsible for anything, as he would point at the shareholders and say that they hold control over future uncertainties. These shareholders though, will point at the market and consumers to say that they hold the control over the future uncertainties of the company. Everybody has some power, meaning that everybody is responsible, meaning that nobody is.

We can find this disappearance of power and responsibilities in a lot of strata of society I think. Certainly in politics, in economy, in class inequalities. The best way to avoid the costs of power is obviously the tendency for synopticon. The synopticon is the process of everybody looking at one person. This person will look as holding a lot of power, and yet it is only because everybody looks at him that he will look as being responsible. A National football trainer would look responsible for his team, but it is just because he is the one put up front by the team and the owners of the club. Mubarak is also good example of someone who looks like he is in power of a country and held responsible for the inequalities in this country, but he was just a front figure for a whole clique.

People are afraid to look powerful, because they do not like the cost of power, the responsibilities. They prefer to put up masks. If you want to make something positive for the world though, you do need to have power over what goes wrong. I don't know on this one if I really prefer Spider-man over Superman.

just be nuts and lay (it) down

In the last twenty days, I have finished reading books and essays from Lenin, Gramsci, Walter Benjamin, Freud and Chuang Tzu. This is quite a heavy mix for the mind and as a result I will blurt out the little conclusions I can come to when thinking about our present times using as an inspiration what they have written a bit less than a hundred years ago ( except for Chuang Tzu).



To start with a joke, my conclusion with these authors is that I agree with Habermas when he states that the Enlightment was a halfway done job. (Drums) These authors did not help my sense of humor, I know. Anyway, I actually disagree with Habermas to some extent. I think the first point to make is that Enlightment had never started and could never end. It rather got expanded through the Korean invention of print (take that euro-centrics!) and its quasi-democratisation in Europe ( oooooh :'( ) I say quasi because depending of the countries, censure would heavily exist or be ineffective.



The development and circulation of literature and ideas brought the reverence of eternal arts to the home of everybody. Indeed, books, unlike conversations, can be read and re-read at leisure to find new ideas in new lectures or confirm old ideas. The mind has changed there onwards. Religious clerks, the little priests from the countryside, were not the sole people to hold the cultish ideal of the Word in their hands, but the whole village could have it. Everybody could read, or look at pictures and it did not have this special ideal of being the sole power of the church or the few chosen intellectuals to states possible answers to big questions. It was the not the business of the aristocracy anymore, but also of a rising bourgeoisie and at some point, even the proletariat were allowed the skills to read.



It was not enough to emancipate the world, but it was enough to destroy some institutions that relied upon the lack of capacity of the people to reach informations. Notably, the Catholic Church soldiers could not wander in their ways and sell VIP tickets to heaven anymore. Would Martin Luther not have told them, someone else surely would have come along and tell them something in those lines, as nowhere in the holy printed book does it say that VIP tickets could be sold by Peter's descendents. The print made the people who read realize how much of a scam the Catholic Church was and, though rituals are important in the sense that they commemorate knowledge that should not be forgotten acquired by humanity, liberated us from this institution.



Of course, people did not have much to read at the time. That was an important factor. The Bible was the super-ego of society, in the sense that it dictated the rules of society or unto which society ought to abide by. Violence was only the repress sense of guilt of the non-following of these rules. That is why Christian society was as violent as any other society, and probably more, as the rules set by Jesus can be hard to understand and follow. He did indeed set a more than conflicted super-ego, creating a society that did no know whether it should let its instinct go wild or its reason. Secular versus Eternal, Kings against Popes, represents the internal conflict of the mind on a societal scale.



And society became neurotic a little bit when came the Protestants. Why do I say such a thing? Well first of all, we can observe the internal tension and masochism of civil tensions and exterminations of unbalanced beings that cannot find an enemy outside, but rather punish themselves for not knowing who ought to be guilty. The massacre of the protestants, the catholics, the jews inside our own borders is again a societal psycho-pathology that can exist in an individual requiring rejection to feel that it has a judging father. An eternal god ready to set the rights and wrongs against our instinctive will, something that will be there before and after our mind, to be sure that we exist and we do not make everything up. We did not know what was right from wrong anymore and everything was up for discussion. There is nothing wrong with that, as long as it is a public debate, which it was, between the forces in power. The unconscious though was stable. The main population knew its place. It was a repressed part of society, the most important part repressed, and represented what should never be in power if we would have to be civilized, except if it could sublime itself.



Wait a second, it does not seem like society was neurotic, and it seems I am with such writing. Well, both can be true and false. I can represent the state of society as it is now as I am a mega-digester of artifacts, I do not hold one god, I do not have one father. And I know that values are laws and I do not know the laws.



So back to square one to make sense and make of this article a synopsis of my psycho-analysis, or rather the one of society. Print diluted at first the instinctive response to corrupt civilizing process on a large scale. Print made us realize that the Bible – the transformation of human nature into a sensible story- was not what our human nature transformed it into – the Catholic Church. So what happened is that we were both confronted with the realization that we had a human nature – every day's corruption of values- and we had a way out: the Bible. (I am talking only about Europe and an analysis of China could come later on, as for other civilizations, I do not hold enough knowledge – I could try Japan as it is an interesting counter-example of a strong unchanged super-ego).



The Bible did not seem to be enough. We did not like it and did not like the multiple interpretations and we were lost. We took it on ourself and so killed some of our neighbors. It was hard to be lost. And it was hard to be without a sense of what is right and what is wrong. So came the idea that we could write what is right and what is wrong and instead of following an oral tradition ( god bless the Hasidim) or a wise-men re-adapted word ( J.C. in da houze) we could make our own in a constantly evolving law. We mixed the idea of an eternal super-ego and a living-evolving ego.



It worked because people who got to make the laws were the people in power and they had a super-ego of their own in the fact that they possessed everything: eternal knowledge, philosophy and arts. By the way, whenever I use the word eternal, I use it only on a human phenomenological level, meaning that it means it will survive before and after my death. It makes me care for the world before and after me and I do not have to consider the idea that it exist only because I think it exists. Would I choose this later case; I could have gone on a Norwegian rampage with a Colt Peacemaker just for the cheer pleaser of looking like Clint.



So the bourgeoisies held in their hands education (the capacity to read books) and arts ( the ideology of the eternal), and they could make societies super-ego as their was no sense of right and wrong dictated by one single book anymore ( there was never actually a sense of right and wrong in the Bible, but god forbids we would read the book and get free as J.C. would have wanted us to be! - fuck John and his apocalypse). So they made up, to replace the idea of God on Earth (the Catholic Church), the Nation-State, which held a cult art, a cult history, a super-ego.



And it was good. Until the ego felt the need to kill that super-ego because it knew that the father was corrupted ( down with Chronos !) or it received a slap from the super-ego because the ego grew too fast. The slap was fascism and the war. It has to be said that the simple super-ego of most of the western world was really good between 1900 until the end of the 1930's. It was bound to go wrong as there was never as much international economic exchanges and such a spread of education. The masses indeed got to know what was unfair in the word through books and newspapers. They asked for system that had more justice for everybody. The practice of the law did not make the justice (go Kafka).



I realized that when I've learned this week that the most successful in term of votes American elections was the re-election of Franklin D. Roosevelt. in 1936 after he made this speech:



“...For nearly four years you have had an Administration which instead of twirling its thumbs has rolled up its sleeves. We will keep our sleeves rolled up.

We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace—business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.

They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.

Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred.”



Fear gets our instinct out if we do not have strong eternal injunctions. We forget yesterday's acquired knowledge and what we made of it. More than that, if democracy is the eternal psycho-analysis of our need to have a sense of guilt and shame for our dos and donts, we need to discuss constantly the foundation of our system of justice, of its origins or accept one once and for all and let the rest of our instinct go wild, but we cannot be in a in-between state.



Of course, the World War 2 was only a small catharsis and it was not over for our history. First of all, it has to be remembered that though some communist regimes were repressive, there economic system did work until the 70s. The 1970’s were the strange period of the world. It was the period where countries and civilizations were close to a break down. The USA got unto imperialism though discreet through shock therapy, Europe got to deal with itself and the different dictatorial system it still had, Russia lost their hope when they learned they could not get on the moon (it is still hard to believe we got there). I do not know why the Chinese accepted Deng Xiaoping reforms, except that they did not accept the repression of their human nature.



The idea is that art as it is, is the reproduction of our internal tensions. It works for an individual, but for society, art gets a position a priori and dictates whether the tensions have been accepted or not, they dictates or shows the commands we have chosen for ourselves, they represent the super-ego or its lack. Cinema and television represents a form of atheist polytheism where values are saturated, just like law can be, and our values are mixed up to make us a neurotic civilization.



We are back to square one and we can either accept that the super-ego and where it comes from is wrong, but we need then to know what it is and where it is from. Or we need to accept its slap, in the way the German and the Italians did, but understand that it won't last. We can observe that in both the sadomasochism is emerging as the Germans are the first one to hate them in the name of the ecosystem and the Italians are so as well in the sense that they constantly elect the mafia they used to abhor. As for the American, they have either too much super-ego, in the number of laws that cannot be accounted for or the lack of super-ego in their culture industry.



Freud said it so himself, it is not only the case to get rid of the super-ego that has been created in our civilization by the holders of the means of productions, and we have to build up our own super-ego and the constantly changing nature of the ego.



I will state I think what should be the lines unto which a civilization might want to adhere, without making a fuss of making it a cult, as cult have come to be as well the object of discussion and rebellions as every civilization feels sometimes like too much of oppressed teenagers. I will just outline what I want my super-ego to make me feel guilty about and internalize it without having to discuss it too much afterwards:



'And moreover men are liable to eight defects, and (the conduct of) affairs to four evils; of which we must by all means take account.

' 1 To take the management of affairs which do not concern him is called monopolising.

2 To bring forward a subject which no one regards is called loquacity.

3 To lead men on by speeches made to please them is called sycophancy.

4 To praise men without regard to right or wrong is called flattery.

5 To be fond of speaking of men's wickedness is called calumny.

6 To part friends and separate relatives is called mischievousness.

7 To praise a man deceitfully, or in the same way fix on him the character of being bad, is called depravity.

8 Without reference to their being good or bad, to agree with men with double face, in order to steal a knowledge of what they wish, is called being dangerous.

Those eight defects produce disorder among other men and injury to one's self. A superior man will not make a friend of one who has them, nor will an intelligent ruler make him his minister.

'To speak of what I called the four evils:



1 To be fond of conducting great affairs, changing and altering what is of long-standing, to obtain for one's self the reputation of meritorious service, is called ambition;

2 to claim all wisdom and intrude into affairs, encroaching on the work of others, and representing it as one's own, is called greediness;

3 to see his errors without changing them, and to go on more resolutely in his own way when remonstrated with, is called obstinacy;

4 when another agrees with himself, to approve of him, and, however good he may be, when he disagrees, to disapprove of him, is called boastful conceit.





These are the four evils. When one can put away the eight defects, and allow no course to the four evils, he begins to be capable of being taught.'



I chose those because I was confronted with them recently, they are not only stubborn to an ethic of moderation and they can be rules of national and international politics as much as rules for individuals. I have written for way too long now, and I need to print these rules for my desk. I did not want to take on any Christian interpretation because J.C. had too much faith in humanity to think that we can handle ourselves without fathers. We will have to come to term though with our conflicting nature ( Eros and Ananke; Instinct and civilization) as we will be the parents ourselves, soon enough, of artificial intelligence, and it would be sad to be horrible parents. I will leave you on a poem I came to love and love to hate:



They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

They may not mean to, but they do.

They fill you with the faults they had

And add some extra, just for you.



But they were fucked up in their turn

By fools in old-style hats and coats,

Who half the time were soppy-stern

And half at one another's throats.



Man hands on misery to man.

It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

And don't have any kids yourself.

( Philip Larkin ; This be the verse)

Why are you Guy Fawkes ?

Not many people will complain for the delay, but I have quite a cool explanations. I was away in Freiburg and I have put up 250 flyers up with printed masks and invitations to join the Anonymous forum whatis-theplan.org.

It took me a while to think about the subject of this article. I know that it looks most of the time as I am just writing it on the go, and I am but it is after I spent time thinking and self-reflecting and very rarely on a sudden urge. The ideas were various and I think I should start with simple questions.

• You take a chair and take out the back-support and armrests, is it still a chair ?
• There is so much emptiness that under a microscope, two fingers can never touch themselves and yet, why is it so hard to see void ?
• If you see a bird, and it starts swimming and lays eggs giving birth to fish, is it still a bird?
• If you'd have to, would you kill a sibling of yours to save two strangers?
• Is it natural for a person to change sex?
• If we make a colony on Mars, what will be our definition of a year?
• If you are like no one else, what is humanity?
• 47,9 + 32,6 =..... ? You can touch a calculator, but you can't touch the mental process that gave the answer to that question, so what comes first, your mind or your body?
• You wait. Is that active or passive?
• I speak French because it is my mother-tongue, yet I made the decision to speak Esperanto to my children. Would Esperanto have been my mother-tongue, would I have made another decision?
• Yesterday, I saw Santa Claus in an empty street and he told me a secret. Do you think this could be true?

Ok, maybe those are not simple questions and I congratulate you if think they are as you must have accumulated much more knowledge than I ever managed to. I will reformulate by the way the questions at the end of the article I think, just to make sure we are on the same wave.

So let's assume that you and I share a real world, as it is laid out under our eyes. I will ask you by the way not to assume I am too crazy when I say that the world under our eyes might not be it. I just like to nourish some doubts sometimes. I do know the objections to the doubt: 'whether or not it is an illusion or whatever, why does it matter?'. Well, I think I will make a point why doubting sometimes does matter. Maybe it is just that I think we should not ignore our past and recognize that we have been wrong quite a few times so we might as well think we can still be wrong.

But on the reality of our world, let's say that we live in it. As the poet said to the bishop:' Fuck, this hurt – now do you see it's real!'. History did good I think to forget the poet as it was just in profession that he was such, and not in mind.

So the question to ask ourselves after that one should be: why don't we make the world a better place?

Anyway, we live in a world with other people and we abide by the rules we are told by our parents, our friends and by what we see. Of course we do not exactly abide by every rule and we all adapt them to the circumstances and most of the times we act on them without reflecting on them, not even afterwards. We do reflect on negative consequences to some actions and tell ourselves maybe not to repeat them. But rarely does reflection come unto any significant habits of daily life as we take habits for granted. We have to take it for granted. Otherwise, if we applied reasoning on everything, we would probably go crazy rather quickly.

I have though yesterday come to discuss the question of death penalty with someone I had just met. This person had to write an exam where she was to make a defense of death penalty and refused herself to do so. I pointed out that this was as smart as a person in favor of death penalty refusing to write a defense against the death-penalty. Apparently though, the principle against death-penalty is morally superior enough not to be asked such a task when the belief in favor is not. The lack of self-reflection on the matter, the lack of incapacity to find the origins of this sense of moral superiority, was for me the most problematic aspect of her position.

Of course I am against death-penalty, but I do know why and that is why I can do a pretty good defense in favor, as it does not make me doubt my belief. Somehow, I am afraid that Europeans are still capable of extremism as they judge so easily and are incapable of empathy. Empathy for the devil does not mean you support his actions. It only means that you see and understand his point of view and would you be good at empathy, you would see that it is only frustration leading him, as he was only an ignored second son and not because he is inherently evil. 

This latter position is an easy one and truthful as much as the other one, it leads though to no resolution and not possibility for peace.

Anyway, I am going off my intended path. I am just amazed everyday at our capacity for judging individuals when we are so incapable of self-reflection and acting on those few self-reflections. My point from this last anecdote was that I want to try not to get common sense to hit me too often and allow long defenses for any moral arguments. The foundation for my morality is that tomorrow will be better because yesterday was worse. It is just a belief and I want to work towards that belief. I do not want to act good because of a possible punishment after death, or because I am afraid of society's punishment, or worst of all because I do not know why. I have already detailed this in one of my first posts.

I was just wondering why there is so much apathy in the world. When were the children in us killed? I do think that we are more insensible than we used to be, but we just love to lie to ourselves about it so we do not have to find the root of this problem. Of course, for example, death has become a great taboo and could be the example of the scared souls we have become, except that sending our dying off to places we do not deal with it is not sensible at all. Students in U.K.went down in the streets and the same day their tuitions fees tripled and they did not get angry. We care for our children, and yet we are fully aware that we will leave them worse off. We leave them to be kids for a while and then we tell them the dreams of youth are gone.

I am just wondering why we cannot ask for world peace anymore. Why do we have to still have weapon production when history proves that you do not need weapons to win a war? Why does starvation exist when we can travel the world faster than Earth can spin on itself? Why do we think that corruption is not surprising anymore and why are we cynics about it when it is so easy to have a political conscience. I do not really know yet. I am trying to work it out.

I will say this. I do believe that social movements changed the world for the best every time they appeared. I do want to learn from history and I will use our Christian heritage as leverage for making people feel guilty about the way they have let things go. I have joined Anonymous, which is not about anonymity as much as it is about asking for real change for a better world. If you believe blindly the mainstream media about Anonymous being only about hacking, then you are a mediocre human being blindly accepting serfdom. The hacking is the destructive ( though not physically hurting anyone, as it is a motto of the social movement) part of movement, but if the bullseye were the CIA, the FBI, other armed forces and a lot of military contractors, I am asking you this: Why have so far only eight people aged in their teens been arrested?

Teenagers, let's put an end to this myth, do not have the capacity to do serious hacking. Police just arrest people who have put out their voice to say that they want change and the ones who did not do it discreetly got publicly arrested. Adults could have been arrested in this investigation as well, but the point of the arrests were to morally pressure the whole social movement. You say the soviet union put a bad name to communism, I will ask you please to think what the future generations will think of us! Yes I am allowed to say such things, but I am not allowed to act on my believes.

Of course, I am just hoping now that out of our civilization’s ashes will come a better one. We are having increasing military budgets, declining energy productions (hence rise in food cost), and we are raging wars we cannot win. We have a deadlocked political system consenting to the owners of means of productions. We have a systemic growing unemployment with a decreasing redistribution of wealth. And we all have a delusion of grandeur, individuals, but a society that is worse off as a whole, thinking that we can survive this great historical recipe for disaster.

I just like to think about the old questions because they do not cost a thing:

• Is an object one object of the assembly of many?

• Is the universe a tiny thing in emptiness, or so big that we do not get it?

• Is any being revealed by its appearance, or the idea of it?

• Can liberty exist independently from necessity?

• Which is more important: reason or passion?

• Is Culture emancipation from Nature?

• Can Time last forever?

• Has everybody got a unique self or is the self similar to everybody?

• Are we bodies limited in a time-space coordinate or minds imagining the world, the history and that might be immortal?

• What is the difference between being passive or active?

• Is a human being’s existence the result of a series of causes or the new start of a series of consequences?

• Can a lonely individual express objective truth?

Project for the future

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B5a-s9kLo5kaZjZkY2M3ZWMtZTg3Yy00OGIyLWJhMjItY2Q4YjE2N2I3NmRl&hl=fr

 This is an alphabet that can be written from any angle in any direction as all the signs are different, which means that it is not constrained by direction as most alphabets tend to do ( see Lara Borodotsky). Great for the dyslexic and for spatial awareness ( increasing spatial awareness increase the capacity for empathy).

 And learn Esperanto.


 Two projects to add to my constitution as international ways of communication.

 ( I have already learned the alphabets, I just need to learn Esperanto)

 The idea is not to have language-based inequality to start with.

You and I do nothing to help

We are all doing meaningless work for a meaningless future. We work to be comparatively ridiculously paid to buy entertainment and stuff we already have, to feel slightly better. Better than the neighbor who has slightly less, better so we are closer to the neighbor owning slightly more. I do not know if we can be proud of ourselves, of what we give to our children. We give the over-production of an earth with limited resources for increasing inequalities.



Society is built on the illusion that it is, like our portrayal of nature, a system, that works like a machine, that is controlled, that is sustainable by our reasoning, by the fact that we all live our lives. We live in the politics of daily life, in office politics, in family politics, and those are already hard enough without complicated it by taking a step back to understand the whole picture. There is an analogy between the whole earth and computers: we know how to work with them, it does not mean we know how they work. Earth and society are the result of a long history of processes, life world and system world being constantly in relations.



Society though is essentially wrong, when we compare it to some of the pragmatically perfect societies that we have thought off and keep thinking about. A few people around the world, through time, at least since the French Revolution, have imagined perfect societies, not fake-utopia stuck in a strict space-time, but a few things have prevented changes and these obstacles to the general good are mostly due to the one percent of the population that owns most of the wealth. They get to decide how global politics work, so they do not loose too much.



It all starts with the illusion of national democracy. Nations having democracies are also the nations have integrated into a global economy. Global economy works by having some organizations calculating a certain output of a country, called economic growth, and depending on this evaluation, will lend them a certain amount of currencies. We have here actually a microcosm of any service company, where all the employees compete against each other, though all in their own private work, to be the one receiving the best title (e.g. manager, partner, associate, director-manager, combined with the belittling definition as junior or senior,...), so the best salary. Nations compete against each other and have to make some sacrifices on their prosperity, as competition leads to sacrifices in the employee's life out of the office.



The people paying are the citizens of the nations. It is also the illusion of democracy that politicians do not make concessions to rich people. A good example here is England where the media make the politicians, obviously meaning that politicians will have to rub the newspapers' owners on their good sides. American politicians have to rub the different hedge-fund owners, industry owners, intellectual property owners, on their good sides to receive the party contribution to insure good publicity ( paying for posters, T.V. ads, grass root workers). That is also why politicians have been asked to eradicate the word 'working-class' from their speeches, so there are no more distinctions and everybody can feel like a consenting middle-class.



Why do we accept this? It is mostly for the same reasons that most people do not participate in work-unions anymore: it is the worst way to receive a promotion. What kind of factory owner would accept a worker who is ready to strike for some other worker's right. Solidarity is not productive, and this is how alienation works. Alienation from other workers is the best way to receive a slightly better salary, at the cost of the other poor soul. Same goes for the country… Why would countries unite against banks if they can receive a better estimation of their own growth ?



“What is the alternative?” is an argument proposed by the overall consenting population against any idea of change. And it is true, history has not proven many alternatives right. Of course, history is written by the countries which destroy the smaller countries. I said that Viet Nam had an interesting system and I was told that a famine in the 80's decimated the country. Of course, Viet Nam liberated Laos from the worst regime history has seen, with the help of the Soviet Union and North Korea. This desperate alliance from Viet Nam resulted in their outcast from the world. As much as there was a famine due partly to mismanagement, and the fact that the Americans created a fake market in the south during the war, the world never apologized for going to an ideological war with Viet Nam and letting them starve for an action that we would all approve now. Any socialist country was forced into poverty by the 'powerful' nations of the world (there are no powerful nations, just powerful owners of production backing up consenting nations).



We see this same portrayal of dangerous alternative in the image of Iran being 'utterly evil' or Anonymous being a destructive terrorist organization. I participate in some of the Anonymous forums, and I have to say that there is nothing terrorist about them, rather the opposite, they provide information that should be news in mainstream media. As an example, did you know that the mayor of Orlando made food donations to homeless people a crime? Did you know that the American government is legally forcing people to give testimonies against Bradley Manning (Do you know Bradley Manning? The guy who indirectly forced Western Governments to do nothing against the Arab Spring, who is being tortured at this moment in American jails).



Our capitalist society has produced great technological advancements, I am told. The problem is that even technological advancement nowadays is a decision made by big companies trying to make more profits, it has nothing to do with technological advancements improving our lives. Internet for example, this great invention, is now being reinvented so it will be entirely privatized. Even the dark internet ( the one accessed through Tor, I2P; the one that cannot be access through your mainstream browser) will not exist anymore, so all the big companies, and the nations working for them, will be able to control and destroy small alternate economy systems, like bitcoin. The game industry provides products that make us live faster and made my generation attention-deficit (meditation alternatively makes anyone smarter). Thank You technological advancement for your private transport raising the cost of public transports. Thank You technological advancement for always creating 'new' products where all the complimentary goods cost twice their real values. Thank you technological advancement for winning your battle against open source knowledge.



The world is now too big, too complex to provide an alternative, is another argument I am confronted with often. And I am afraid that it is true, that I have been brought up in the perfect environment to study mental environments (how do we come to think the way we do), when most

people have not had this luck. I do try to make most of it though.



We are all working for someone, and most of the time we do not know whom, even with the best of intentions. The German civil society does not understand they still work for a logical hegemony when it voted against nuclear energy. What they have voted for is lesser finance and support for research and investment into smart nuclear energy. Chernobyl incident killed 47 people since 1986. Why is this fact ( World Health Organization 2006 report) being left out of mainstream media ? The problem with nuclear energy at the moment is that we do not yet how to work nuclear fusion, so there is no waste and an eternal cycle of energy production, which theories actually find possible. This requires major investment, just like building nuclear reactors requires investments. Instead, the Germans have opted for 'sustainable energy'.



Sustainable energy is the lie of the energy industry, one of the best of the century probably. Why? Well lets take solar panels. Solar panels capacities work with processors just like our computers. Which means that they the industries come every two years with an effectively much better product, which means that all the old ones have to be thrown out and to be replaced. We have now a new consumption cycle for energy bringing in far more money than an eternal energy source could...



Am I a pessimist? Some politicians do go into politics so the future looks slightly brighter. Politics on the world scale works on compromises with the big companies, always threatening to outsource their industries, their labor, their revenues, or the little taxes they pay. So industries make promises to politicians. Politicians do not tell the people that they received promises from the industry owners about a slightly better future, because who would vote for a powerless politician? We are therefore left with the lies for votes. Or worse, with hypocritical liberals like Mrs.Merkel, having one of the most protective industries in the world, limiting competition in the country, and blaming the Greeks for helping their exports (a low Euro is good for exports...), telling the village Germans that the Turkish low-wage labor they have imported does not integrate well but hiding how much they need them.



I say nothing new, and yet most of the people I know do not want to do anything. Why? Fear of loss I would say. Of course fear of loss exists in everybody who has got something to lose. We are ready to make concessions only when we are more afraid of what we do not know. Naomi Klein's ¨shock doctrine” is a good example of a tool for change. An example of the shock doctrine is actually the United States, which never had a more conservative way of life (e.g. rate of women firefighter, decline in union membership, the freedom of liberal market,...) since 9/11. And this is not profiting the general population.



Another sociologist (most sociologists by the way are very left-oriented politically, except the crappy ones like A. Giddens), called Helmut Rosa observed that our society is accelerating. We compete to be faster constantly, which means effectively that we stress more and with stress disappears natural empathy. Our natural empathy disappears because of our entertainment as well. Accelerated games, accelerated films, accelerated television.



Television was problematic as the intelligentsia of the world for a long time did not accept this institution. It took the New-York Times's critics, and the fact that you had to pay for different programs (best Bourdieusian recipe to make a high-class taste) to make most of the society spend most of their evenings in front of it, myself included. Fact and fiction mingled to create the entertainment we seriously needed to not realize that we are the ignorant working-class, just like the poor workers of the third world, and that we accept our fate because we just do what we do.

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'.

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 ?

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Joseph-Stiglitz-IMF-President/188017197915727

Media outlook

I have decided that if I should have the audacity one day to write for a recognized publication, I should build up to it and prove myself capable of the job. To do so, among other tasks that I ask of myself everyday, I have decided that, instead of letting the articles of this blog write themselves whenever the feeling passes, I shall push myself to write... let's say one article a week to start with. It should be a worthy article of course, not a little paragraph stating that paradoxes are running amok and it is hard to handle them all at once. It could be just a long rambling on different thoughts intertwined sometimes.One theme is always preferable, so depth is worked on in it accordingly. The subject might be wide, and only one matter within that subject should be studied, and compared to similar processes. Well, in the chaotic manner that I process things. And if, in any case, I cannot come up with an idea worth writing about, I will take some piece of news that I want to explore.

News are not what they are. The “news” is one of the important

institutions building the groups within our society. News do not
represent information about a recent event concerning its audience.

If news were to such a thing, we would over-value our emotional exhibitionism in social networks. A facebook status represents recent news that could inform me of an event concerning me and my environment. The power disputes in Ivory Coast are sources of interest, but not information. They are useful if you know or meet someone from the region  but the media does not inform you of the ethnic conflict behind the election. Yet we watch it.

Well, I say we. We all watch different news, we watch the news which will be most useful for us in a group, and to build our identity.

If we want to play the cynic and say that politics are rotten, we do not have to read news. If we want to play the man of the world who is aware of the different games played on the world stage, you would read all the political and economic magazines but snob the sports or Hollywood star-system. Academics would read Science or Nature and consider them to be very influential, when a majority of the population has never turned a page of such magazines.   In the diversity of print media we find a diversity of social groups trying to accumulate knowledge-at-hand which can be used to have a better handle of a script in social interactions. It is a form of domination to have more information. Of course it is also a sign of stupidity and possible rejection to show pride in knowing things that we don't know to be false. News are a constant filter used and abused, unconsciously, by society to create a sense of in-group/out-group.

  So every newspaper will present a different discourse for their public. It will also frame the world of the audience to dictate who is good or bad. We don't understand yet to what extend our opinion is build by the information we get. What is obviously and undeniably important in the news that form our world is the selection of the news by the selected medium. Why is the front page the front page? We all have been scandalized sometimes to see on the first page some prince or singer when hundreds have been killed on page 6. Which shows maybe my bias: should it be more important to feel for the damned of the world rather than enjoy the beautiful mediatic theater of fake break-ups between beautiful people?

News, if transformed into a subjective process of acquiring knowledge of recent information (the irony of recent information are archeology news feeds), should probably not be a mass media. The defense for mass media
is, that it levels the field for everybody. Everybody knows as much, and
 it would be a tiny bit totalitarian to forbid any other source of knowledge so there can be no contention. Mass media does not, as stated before, change our opinion, but changes the themes of discussion. That is why changing completely an education system could not be news. It does not require novelty, it cannot bring novelty. It could only present in depth views on the different alternatives. It would be news for everybody, but always on one theme, which does not bring the novelty which sells so well. Of course it is important for democracy to have informed citizens. But the real foundation of society is the engagement of citizens. I am not sure how to resolve that problem. How can we bring political awareness to
everybody? It is impossible to be politically aware at all levels of
all the changes and the possibilities for change. People should perceive some moral duty to find a societal theme, find facts to build a good argumentation that they could then argue between themselves. Of course, facts can never be presented, whatever the medium, in a cold unbiased manner. Hence it is important to also have a multiplicity of point of views on every theme, however hard it would be for us to listen to (when was the last time you've heard the difficulties some harmless paedophiles find dealing with their deviancy?). Well, here is my first article of my now new weekly articles. I hope that it brought up more questions than answers and you enjoyed the reading.