Socio Scooby Logy Doo

So I am writing an article on monsters and it might look childish but science is in the end just fiction confronted with reality and there are probably some realities in our cultural monsters. Of course, the fascination for monsters is not shared by everybody, the fact that I have grown in geeky culture through and through is either the chicken or the egg of this fascination. Now I will present here some observation about the contemporary monsters we encounter in our comics, films and books. While reading this, let's keep in mind that monsters have existed since the dawn of humanity and are as important memes as deities and some deities happen to be monsters. I will though speak only of contemporary monsters and I will not work on their evolutions as it would have to follow the evolution of society. ( Yey, I have here the idea for another article to come ).

Let's start with the basic for any analysis: a simple definition and a simple taxonomy ( an Aristotelian organization) of monsters. The definition will be 'a supernatural threat to humanity'. And the subgroups of monsters are the big monsters, the hunter monsters and the swarm monsters. As you can see, it is pretty basic ( basic reflexion has time and time proven to be really infinite and might actually be an oxymoron). Now we have to see what I mean by these subgroups.

Well the big monsters are most probably the oldest monsters humanity had. They are the giants and the titans, the cyclopes and the leviathan, the king kong and the godzilla. They are the top of the food chain that everybody expects but never meet. They have also been embodied in science with mega-volcanos, intergalactic crashes, surprising tsunamis and lunatic suns. The newest kind of big monster I can think of is the alien spaceship. The aliens in themselves can embody different kind of monsters, but the spaceship usually represents what is too big to be controlled. The fear behind monsters is probably the one of finding something we could never have control on. We have to thank though hollywoodian mythology which always finds a way to destroy the threat and makes us forget that destruction is not a synonym for control.

Now a monster that I think has appeared only at the end of the 19^th century ( though this has to be verified) is the swarm monster. The best example is of course the zombie. They have the power to increase exponentially and though they are small and weak, get us because of their number. I said that the first swarm I can think of in our culture are the morlocks in the H.G. Wells ' The Time Machine'. They represent the mass of workers having evolved in subhumans and are the enemy of the small elitist communities of Eloi. There is so this elitist representation of the proletarians that we can find in the end in zombie movies as well. Of course, swarms are also represented by science nowadays though diseases and infections, but the fear I think is the lost of power of the few who think themselves smarter against the mass of slow, small minded beings.

Finally, I add the hunters. The hunters are actually like human beings but generally feed on humans. The differences are only the differences we want to see. As such, it works like racism does, in the sense that we generalize an evil on a specie more or less similar to ours and the legitimization for hunting them down is the prejudice, without considering their weaknesses ( except as a mean to eradicate them). What is funny is that at the end of the 20^th and the beginning of the 21^st century, we have seen an interesting evolution that tries to show an open-minded humanity which seeks to understand how these hunters are unique individuals that might deserve life. I am of course speaking of this attitude towards humanizing vampires, werewolves, witches and the such to involve them in romances with humans. We are now trying to glamorize their weaknesses and show their powers as tools given to the chosen few to protect humanity ( from itself usually). We could ask ourselves if in our culture, there is not a slow glorification in the media for the sociopath as a rational egoist, which happened to be the perfect human in a neoliberalist system.

There is a fourth group which I do not want to consider at this time: the ghosts. They represent too many things at the same time ( gods, hunters, different teleologies on life,...).

Ok, so we have different monsters, and we have humanity. What humanity represents most of the time is a specie-centered group which loses any ideal of being one with an ecosystem. Of course, modernity has disconnected us ( except through different resistance group which tried to present a positive organic perspective of the world) from this reality for the illusion of control. Monsters though show that we cannot control everything. As I have pointed out, big monsters cannot be controlled like sheeps and swarms are by definition overwhelming. Here, the interesting part about control and the environment is that when we have increased our capacity to travel, we have had to write down laws, as norms are not shared for every communities. Laws represents how everybody should act within a given-space. Hunters represents what laws cannot stop. Hunters are far more problematic for humanity because they also represent the excuse for humanity to be unlawful. Of course, in the middle-age, we managed to legally condemned witched through godly trials but we have stopped believing ourselves and now we have no laws to hunt hunters. We do now give them the rights we give ourselves or the one we give animals.

In a lot of cases with monsters, we become so obsessed with the survival of our species that we do not even consider other animals we used to live with. All the stories turn around the humans and how they confront the new threat. Of course, animal centered stories are not that common. It does show that monsters reinstate the dichotomy human vs. nature. They somehow legitimize our superiority because we can talk about our fear of them and find ourselves as victims ( what christian societies love to see themselves as). It is a human vs. nature where the sign-system disappears. With monsters, who cares that Britney Spears was a best-selling artist. The past and the future disappears, so knowledge of the signs created by humanity get in the background, excepted possibly for the hunters where their weaknesses are often hidden in some old books.

It is a paradoxical situation, to see that monsters represent the end of modernity and also the end of traditions. Traditions have never disappeared, but most of the time just transformed themselves. When I use the word tradition, I am speaking of ritualized social interactions. This is especially true with swarms. They oblige the humans to be constantly on the move to find an island of peace. This constant traveling, continuous escape, might be actually the ideal-type of true modernity, where no one is bound in a space or a time but has to always reflect. It does of course challenge our ethics, as knowing whether protecting the weak is something the group has to do, as it might put in danger everybody.

The final question when doing a laying down the problematics of a sociology of monsters is the question of the Nation-State. I will repeat the Weberian definition of the nation-state as the entity that has the legitimized monopoly of violence. Of course, this notion is anchored in the Hobbes' prince to whom we give all our force so this prince ( State) can protect us. The Nation-State though has rarely got the power to save us from monsters. It does echo the previous paragraph that states that modernity becomes ambiguous with swarm monsters, but the nation-state problematic appears with all the monsters. If the State cannot protect us, it is also too big to unite us all, it is too slow to pass useful laws and it is why militia appears and it is not even some form of idealized anarchism that takes place. The question of reinstating a State at the end of stories is not even often raised ( the exception I have in mind is Independence day where running the State becomes a hereditary profession).

So, I will stop here with just to never diminish the potential of fiction to question our society and I will dwell into more reflective entertainment now for our next discussion.

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?

PRAGMATIC ME

I am not an idealist, though I did in the past claim I was, I now believe with a slight arrogance that I am not more an idealist than anyone else. Idealism is synonymous to religiosity and ideology, as it is just a belief leading the lives of individuals. There is a probably difference in the fact that religious people are effectively slightly more sincere about their faith than the idealism of the lay person.




Idealism is the stuff of the everyday man everybody, whether they are aware of it or not, is idealist. The ideologies we have seen throughout history lead most of the time everybody to accept the world as it is. Though I am wrong when I say ‘as it is’ since everybody wishes some tiny or important changes in their life or in society. Idealism is hidden in the lies we tell ourselves everyday when we think that some ideas are impossible. That is true idealism, as it shows the ideal of the world we now live in.



I have somehow discovered an example of problematic hidden idealism in a discussion that often comes to be heated. A multi-party democracy is the regime under which we live now. It is also our excuse to judge in an ethnically-centred use of the Human Rights any other types of regime. This is the idealism I am talking about.



Now reflecting on idealism, I see suddenly myself as a hyper-pragmatic as I saw all the logical sense of a one party regime against the blind ideology of our system. The argument often used to judge one-party regimes is that they do not allow dissent or opposition. I have now a few questions and observations about both system that could show that both regimes are as faulty in their current states. And we might have no right to judge a regime over an other regime.



Every party has oppositions within their own party. As an example, some British conservative party members accept that homosexuals receive the same rights as heterosexuals while others do not. Now, because most parties do not want to fall into the disarray of looking inconsistent, they have accepted in the 20th century the dictatorial form of party discipline. This concept of party discipline, as a tool of control, is far more dangerous in a lot of ways than the idea of a one party regime.



I have a problem with multiple parties as it is still only a social representation of archaic tribal disputes where no one is concerned in the end with the goal of the policies for everybody on a long term, but instead with the concern is on the pure defence of the party lines told to follow. Of course, party members do have the right to vote on the party lines of thoughts but we can now observe today in politics that opposition parties are most of the times against the governing party choices out of principle rather than out of reason.



Would an opposition party make good arguments, should the party in power normally not admit that it has made a mistake and then accepts the laws proposed by the opposition. Or is the ideal of a multi-party democracy not inherently forbidding accepting the opposition’s point of view as it would mean to admit defeat on some level. “How could we let a minority tribe make a decision!?” is the shock of our regime ideology. The issue is even more complicated as accepting that the other is right would effectively prove that a one party democracy is far more intelligent than the stubbornness of a multiple party one.



Another level where a governing party cannot accept the opposition’s ideas is because, as I’ve already said, politics nowadays is mainly tribal. I vote left because my parents and my friends vote left. I vote right because my parents and my friends vote right. I vote centre because I have changed social milieu I used to live in and I am a bit lost – it is by the way why Europe finds itself nowadays in an in-between state where all the parties set themselves in the centre as they know that society is shifting - and the centre is the safest position to take as it accepts as many ideas as possible. Somehow a one party regime could let this question out on a public sphere and also let the voice of the extremes at least be heard. Why would extremes be heard? Be extremisms is only relative to the perceive centre set by the main parties…



I do not have many examples of countries where a one-party regime lives in a comfortable society and where repression never happens. Then again, no country exists where some form of repression does not exist. This is where hyper-pragmatism comes into play and states that the best of everything should be á goal for everybody and not merely accepts what is going on or ask for some slight liberal changes because we deny to ourselves there is something wrong with the system.



Viet Nam has actually a one-party policy which until the 21rst century did not work too badly. It has sent to prison some of its opponent, some allegedly intelligent dissents not deserving such a fate, some allegedly supported by the American government and its allies, others being just religious nuts wanting to make public what could have been private. Yet, it has a sensible one-party regime where people often vote for the person they find to be the most qualified for the job, and not for the person with the best facial symmetry on the list they think they ought to vote on.



Also, it has to be observed that Viet Nam does not exactly have only one parliament, but authorizes that passed laws be contested by interests groups like workers unions. This is somehow fairer for the common worker than a system where the majority in both electoral chambers passes a law which affects groups and they cannot go to a higher court to contest it except if it breaches the European declaration of Human Rights. And even in this case, I am waiting to see how long it will take for British prisoners to get the right to vote.



On the question of idealism and pragmatism, I am now to realize that my pragmatism is actually an attempt at going beyond the ideology in which we are lock due to a misunderstanding of our history. The First World War is often blamed on the accumulation of spending on ‘defence’ budget of European countries. Whenever I ask about military spending, the counter argument is exactly the language one based on the use of ‘defence’. It is though inconsistent as defence in our contemporary western countries means the collection of a variety of ballistic armaments we could not use in our own country for it would destroy our own basic infrastructures.



More than that, military spending is purely ideological as it is based on a socially constructed fear of being attacked. Costa Rica since its creation almost never had any army and yet has never been invaded. Now, this could mean that it is because it has strong allies pressuring the world not to attack this country. On the other hand, Switzerland has one of the most important army in the world and yet never had to use it at all. Switzerland is more vicious in the fact that even if it has a strong army, it would always anyway support and bow to the strongest whatever the moral sacrifice it means.



On the other hand, we find heroes of history from which we have learned nothing like Gandhi, who have fought off a whole empire without raising a weapon. Somehow these forgotten heroes of pure pragmatism have not inspired us enough.

Mea culpa si non intelligis nec me

I know, my perspective on society only reflects the perspective I have on myself. Most of the criticism I put unto someone or something is only a distorted idea of a self-loathing instinct that has followed me since... I can't remember. I do not mind, this is not a self-pity call, it is only a sincere observation. Most criticism I have ever said, I have always felt there was some truth of it in me.

I will not go into a written psychoanalysis of my youth and me. It would be long, I do not have a Lacanian Master to have an imagined truth I can look for. I have only self-reflection. It is me. I have to accept that my mediocrity is at the same time my drive to be better. My admitted mediocrity is my drive to think others are mediocre. It is my drive for my pretended arrogance because I do not like to admit to myself that I could be better.

Everybody is telling me I can be better. I could have been better by now. I could have been content. What then? Would have I read science-fiction and accepted that it is only a distorted mirror to society on which we can learn ? Or would have I read only entertaining fictions and voyeuristic biographies ? Would I have accepted that life cannot change, society cannot change and live without frustration? Probably.

I know I could have been better. I know I could have had more self-discipline earlier in my life. I know I could have been more easily entertained by casual conversations. I could have found a sport or a game I would love and socialize there. I could have... But it wasn't my life and I don't know why. So I am left with all the frustration of seeing abuses of power, lack of accountability on a world scale, our self-blindness towards our self-destruction, our lack of consideration for the others, our fear of change, our contempt for a horrible world. It is only because I have self-destructed step by step my life that I feel that. 

Would have I really felt that radical change should happen and not only be advocated, I would have followed the steps of the Unabomber, this misunderstood genius of the 20^th century that everybody chose to ignore. I would have had the courage to lead the life of Henry David Thoreau. I would have burn myself on Place du Luxembourg to show that there is something clearly wrong with this world. There isn't though anything clearly wrong with this world. There is something wrong with me. 

If there was something clearly wrong this this world, what would it be ? Would it be the fact that no one is born equal in right and in chances in life ? Would it be that everybody wants to be a tiny bit better than their neighbor without knowing what better means. Is it our fear to self-reflect, to admit that it is a sad sad world. Is our problem that we do not cry in front of the news anymore ? 

No, there is nothing wrong with the world. Everybody is content with the world. Everybody has small problems with their lives and those constitutes the real challenges and obstacles of life. I blind myself from the challenges and obstacles of my life and find myself instead looking at the world and think that's my life. I am not an idealist, not more than anyone else. I am quite the opposite. I am the hight of a closet-pragmatic. I am a self-hating pragmatist. 

I spend my days reading academical articles, newspaper articles, judging the cultural outputs of the world to find myself arguing against an ignorant imagined other. There is no ignorant person. There is just people wanting to know less. And it is such a wise choice. 

This week I have to publish this article in advance, as I will be going back to Brussels over the weekend. I have this week been told that I am never more arrogant than when I feel like the lowest of the low. It is a paradox, but it only lies in the fact that I have a need to lie to myself. What would I do once I'd accept how I see myself ? Would I just make theories after theories trying to explain what is wrong and how to make myself better ? I do that already. I grow better, but oh so slowly. 

I just do not know how to kill that pretense of arrogance. I do not know how to kill that self-loathing. I need to stand up for myself. I will stop expecting anything of the world. It is not because philosophers and critiques justify my point of view that it is the right one. In the end, it is not because I have looked up to the philosophers that I should strive to be one. 

I see food price grow due to the expanding demand for fuel and meat, I see the growth of inequality due to the inherent problems of our system, I see solidarity going down the drain and I am wondering if I am not just an anachronistic dreamer. There is a path towards a simpler life for me and I do not know if I want to take it.

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

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.

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.

a first draft to a beginning of a theory of everything

Here is the outline of a phenomenology of the world as we know it. It is based on different esoteric sources, acclaimed or ignore by our history, from the Bible to Zizek, only understood by the initiated and the learned. I will try to write a vulgarised version of the world we see. I will take 7 basic principles, as 7 has historically been one of this number easily remembered, a number reaching the sky but still balancing on earth, before the fall into eternity. 

The first principle is the one of the verb, the one that settles this long long philosophical dialectic, probably the first one : all is mind. It is a very solipsistic approach, one that denies maybe the existence of others, therefore unsympathetic. But it is one of the truth maybe of our specie, we grew out of empathy. I am not stating that I am not in favour of the consideration of the other, but it is not in our essence any more.

The second principle is the power of the verb to hide the lack of subject. There is nothing if we don't put a name to it. The tree in the forest does make a sounds when he falls is true when I state it. It isn't true if I'm there and I am incapable of naming anything, but I am just an observer that doesn't externalize whatever can be externalize with words and meaning. A sign hides the lack of sign, language is both our power and our lie. There is no “I” whenever I do something, but only when I instantaneously look back to create this “I”. The micro-second based between the past and the future is this lack.

The third principle is that everything is changing, as language is changing, as meaning add to each other, everything moves and will move and multiply as everybody share their verbs and their meaning of the world to transform everything constantly.

The fourth principle is that opposite meets over and are just the opposite side of a Möbius band trying to reach the lack, the unreachable emptiness. For example, sex and death are opposite only in our mind, as they are only both sides of the spectrum that is life, which doesn't exist without either.

The fifth principle is that everything has a rhythm, a frequency, a wave. Historical dialectic exist in our lives, where we first want to live the life now with others, and other times we want to reach the heavens by our own self-development. Humanity will fill part of him-self at some point, to fall back onto a localistic mind. The faith in the “economy” will be more powerful than the politic to then see the politic be more powerful than the faith in the “economy”.

The sixth principle is the gender bias of every action. We are sexualized by our condition so we observe every actions from a gender perspective. This does not mean that men see the world in one way and women in another – but simply that there is always two way to see an action : pushing and pulling, constructing and destroying, leaving coming...

The seventh principle is the empowerment of causality. Everything in our mind has consequences. Emancipation is just the knowledge of all the rules we created in our mind. Once ourself mastered, we understand the relativity of regulation to change the rhythm of everything we see unfolding under our eyes. Pushing one way the balance to have a reaction, extending the space of emptiness to create complexity on a spectrum or closing it to create tension.

But empowerment is nothing, it is just a word put over the nothingness of life. Anything is worth being done, for the sake of being done. Jeecee, Fat B'dda, lil Epictetus all found these truths before me. It is just that since Bearded Marx came in, he changes the balance for a while, and it is good thing as wisdom was disappearing under the verbs of uncontrollable institutional vehicles. We just need to find truth in ourself. Just do not tell too many people I am spiritual ( for god sake I am not – only for mine). It is just useful principles to understand why the rest is complicated and senseless...

Artistic Tergiversation

The first academy was created by Plato. It was the name given to his school as a means to separate it from his Master's ( Socrates) lyceum. Nowadays different academies have been recreated. I won't talk about English academies, which are just semi-private schools. I will talk about art academies and French academies. They are not open to anyone. The entry selection relates them to Plato more than to Socrates. There is this elite position of being able to judge someone's artistic qualities.

This simple initial process prevents changes. There is this totalitarian ideal in Plato's republic, where a Philosopher-King knows better than anyone else. Now, if someone is chosen by this Philosopher-King, it is an honour that when once accepted and legitimized the King's position. No one thinks they don't deserve some honour, some recognition.

But we find at academies different people arguing about different positions. This idea of different people joined to discuss each other's art is an ideal to work on. Reflection behind art provides it with the force for change and a quality going beyond aesthetic.

In the world of ideas though, some are more consistent than others. The extent to which consistency provides quality goes only as far as if the ideas need to be put in practice.

So what is this force beyond aesthetics and consistency ? It is an impossible possibility mirroring our world. A yardstick amongst many helping us to compare our world. It is the force of the virtual, an ideal freedom which can't exist in a secular world.

Would Plato appreciate this idea ? Probably not, as for him, ideas have a hierarchy and are only important if expressed clearly. He had no patience for poets.

Couldn't a beautiful place of art be a Socratic lyceum where only questions are asked, without judgement, just because questions hold more answers than an affirmation? Socrates asked anybody and everybody his questions. If we'd ask everybody to create, wouldn't we offer a tool for every individual's self-development and confidence in the hidden power of art?

For a century now, we have given the tool to read and write to everybody. We are slowly coming to understand that no language is more powerful than another. There are some skills involved in communicating with art, but like anything, practice is the only secret for results.

Shame is probably a symbolically violent tool of the elite to prevent an egalitarian approach to art. Who doesn't think that they are crap at what they try a first time, and therefore doesn't have the courage to persevere, to offer the world what they have imagined ?

Down with shame! If it is balanced by lucidity and sincerity with one-self. Imagine a possibility, an alternative, an original idea, take the tool of your choice (if you don't know your tool, find it, it is the one you love) and practice at representing that idea so you can offer it to humanity exactly as you've imagined it.

In our world now, we have to admit it is great to be part of a collective beautiful and powerful project to produce an unreal. There are some factions who want to have some supremacy, but history has proven elitists wrong, constantly. The only person who can account for the question of the quality of a given piece of art is the artist him-self. Ideas are not attached to reality, can be but are not, and are therefore all worthy of being explored through different lenses and presented as a goal to extend our limitless minds.

Nothing is bad doesn't mean nothing is good in art, only that it is all good.

Unveiling the french veil problem

The question of the veil ( in all its forms ( niquab or burqua) and its interdiction in public spaces is the question that devides the population of France like the question on abortion is in U.S.A.. The question of the right of aborttion in USA is discussed without an historicity on the problems, something usual for the USA. My little brother pointed out to my attention that the moral compass of values of "pro-lifes", the christian churches, has only been recently considered abortion a crime.

Just like the lack of historical perspectives on the abortion question, there is an anachronistic element in the introduction against the veil. It is in the name of laicity that the interdiction is legitimized. Laicity was important in France in the 19th century as an ideology, because the church had still legal powers (e.g. over marriage) in the name of their god. The church being a bit of an ademocratic institutions, the battle against the church as hegemonic secular institutions ras rightfull. As much as atheism rights are not that defended, laicity is here used as an ideology to combat an evilized religion, not defend democraty.

So we can observed the history of the separation of the state and the church. But as much as French can defend whatever moral values they find behind their subjective opinion of laicity, they should admit that a deeply ethnocentered idea push too far can easily be seen as a violation of human rights. It's ironic that laicity has an element of trying to free people from ethnocentrism, but is used for such restricted ideas.

A solid argument, my mother's excalibur argument on the question, for the interdiction is that it is a symbole of patriarchal oppression. And in some ways it is. Families, husbands and cohorts who force women to be covered should be prosecuted for psychological harrassement. It is though also a form of symbolic violence when women are brainwashed to believe that they are inferiors or servants.

The other party has a counter-argument, individuals right. There are more women who chooses individually to wear a veil than forced to do so in our countries. More over, from my experience, and it is a shared perception, most of the musulman women I've met in the developping world where proud of wearing a veil. From the biology teacher in Thailand to the multilingual guide egyptian, intelligent women told me that they honoured their faith and didn't ask the west to come to their rescue.

This argument doesn't hold when we observed that embedded practice of oppression against women, that the veil represents, exist. So France said let's forget the right to practice a faith, let's protect women.

And what of the consequences France ? First of all, what about the limitless collateral damages of not allowing any religious signs at school? The law was passed against the veil, but not to look islamophobic, they decided it should extent to all religious signs. As an example, let's picture a sikh in France. These peacefull people believe it is forbidden to cut or shave their hair. They do then have to wear a turban hat to hide all their hair, explaining why they can be stupidly mistaken for a afghan hat. Sikhs have already abandonned their ritual knife, understanding the fear of it, but is the french government asking them to cut all their hair, or let the hair hang and be misunderstandbly stigmatised?

Another consequence that French do not want to observe is that they do present themselves as being on a crusade against Islam, but only their imagined version of Islam. They are fuelling primordialism and political racism in islamic countries by victimizing Islam. How can the west lead by example if it imposes sets of behaviors and dressings. How not to be insulted by being targeted by a governments because of a few dangerous people that shares the same faith in name only and not in practice. It is a good way to create anti-racism racism.

My final point is that all in all, it is a political decision that is only trying to look like the average voter is protected of his fears. The average voter is racist, so lets create a problem and proposes to solve it. But as much as the problem could exist maybe before, they don't tackle anything. Forcing people to behave in a certain way has no educationnal value. The veil can be a representation of oppression, but getting read of the representation only is not getting rid of the real problem. Other forms of oppression will exist as long as the social structures that feed that oppression exist.

And what about women magazines promoting a stricter body-discipline than men in the name of beauty? Women reading this message are victim of symbolic violence, but no measures has been made against it. We do tell ourselves that forbidding women magazines will not solve anorexia in top-models or the social construction of womenhood being only a beautifull object. Telling women what are the different forms of oppression and prosecuting the people forcing a symbol on them should be the solution. Restriction is no synomym of education. Also, giving them the informations so they can come to a rational conclusion was the central ideal of real laicity, not justified racism.

Remembrance day is coming slowly but surely. And for my international readers, I'll explain to youwhat gave it away. Everybody here in England is wearing a red fake puppy flower on their coat. It's been a really long time that the poppy has been a symbol of war and its consequences, but it is after a canadian officer's poem thatn their red poppy took its meaning:



In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders Fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders Fields.

- John McCrae

But I am not after the poem. I am after people wearing this plastic red poppy flower. This came after a few discussions with fellow students who were either proudly wearing it,or proudly defending the charity it represents. I started as my usual devil's advocate role to point out all the effects of this charity but I got badly attacked on my arguments and it pushed me to the point where I do now believe my talk ( I might later go on my self-corruption of the mind).
To state my argument simply, if you were a red poppy, you support the war. Obviously, stated like that,people get offended and react on the defensive. "Wouldn't you support someone who got mugged?" Was the first
rgument I had to put away. I hope that you are a smart reader and I don't need to go too much in details to state how ridiculous it is. An officer is not payed to get mugged, he is pay to mug people. "But wouldn't you support a fireman who got badly burn". Well of course I would think about it. But a fireman is not payed to kill anything but fire and bees (and then again, bees will soon be an endangered species). An officer is payed to got to war, and I don't approve of most wars.
Another argument is that a soldier doesn't make the choice to go to war, he is ordered to. I even heard " the don't know they might need help afterward". But ignorance is no excuse. Ignorance is rarely an excuse, especially for someone who enlisted to the army, I would consider him an ignorant doubled by stupidity. If the army accept such unaware soldiers, why would I support the charity of the ex-army members. But talking sincerely and not taking into account the different remarks I received, noone is stupid enough to enlist to the army without knowing they have chances to come back impaired by their experience. If they are not prepared to suffer the consequence of their choice, why did they enlist?
I have been told that I'm ignoring the consequences of war by not buying a red puppy. I'm not buying one because I am aware of the consequences and I don't want to support the consequences of it because I don't want to support the origin of these consequences. The red puppy for remembrance day started as the soldiers fallen in world war one. I remember them for being the victims of one the most horrible war in history. But I'm not going to be the one who will backup the soldier who says "To you from failing hands we throw/The torch; be yours to hold it high." I don't want soldiers to go to war and I don't want them to be back hailed like heroes. Most of them are not. And the charity support the living "heroes" because we, as a society, haven't considered all the effects of war. The government, representative of the people, should be there for them. I don't know what position people put themselves in with this red puppy. They directly help soldiers who went to commit themselves to horrible actions, and blame at the same their representatives who ordered the horrible actions. They find the power to honour the soldiers, but have no will to criticize with as much a high profile war.
"Wars will always exist" was the second argument given to me by the guy who told me I was ignoring the consequences of war and being inactive. Again, are you smart enough to see how he brought up an argument against real inaction ? Real inaction is following the public with this charity that has the highest profile in U.-K. Real inaction is not willing to change humanity for the best. We can fight war. War doesn't have to be a constant in history. Supporting the consequences of war, making it the norm in our society, is showing a deep lack of will to fight this foe of humanity.

I made my point as clear as I could, I hope it did strike someone. This red puppy is a real narcotic. It gives everybody a sense of belonging, a sense of helping the one in need, a sense of pride to have people fighting for us, a sense of pity for those who are wounded. But it doesn't make us dream for a day where we wouldn't need any red poppy. It doesn't make us think that if we change the ground this poppies grow on, they might be white someday. By the way, white puppy flowers are extinct here in England - no one will support peace anymore. So I'll burn a red puppy, in remembrance of the people who fought against war.