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.

blog 1

Everybody is a writer, everybody is a thinker. Well, people express themselves in different ways and most people do not dare to do so. I know I lack the corońes to express everything on my mind. I sincerely do not know where to start and how to start. I do not even think a confession to a priest would be what I need. Is repressing all my feelings, all my thoughts, all my desires, all my hatreds, everything I despise what builds me and the way I think? Or is there nothing in me and everything I repress is actually the stuff that is worthy to come out and the only thing I should work on is the form in which it is going to come out? 

I do not know where I stand. The real trauma of life is trying to understand that everybody else is also the centre of the universe. It is to see that everybody finds their ways to deal with life. No one knows how to deal with life so we all invent excuses. We legitimize the way we think in a way we think is reasonable and what we do not want to accept is that reason has no grounds to stand on. Reasons is just the universal lie to deal with life. The only frustrating thing is that the most popular the reason, the bigger the lie.

The French existentialists did try to share the idea that life is what you make of it, so deal with that freedom. Nietzsche held a more or less equivalent speech though he did not have much balls most of his life to act on his impulse, to run and get the girl he wanted, and the one time he got to act as he wanted people got surprised by the inconsistency of his behaviour and locked him up. Why do we freeze in front of the unexpected? We are all pussies. And we gang up on the cocks to drown them. But the cocks are to be admired! The real cocks, not the wanna-be cocks who dress in a fashionable ways for their bohemian ways.

Deal with the impossible should be our life motto. But there are so many me's. I suffer from my humanity and strive to accepted as well...I know that so many facets of my life would displease one or the other person. Where does this fear of rejection comes from? Are we only confronting ids and superegos? Are they one and the same? Should I really care? Should we really care? I find that not so many people care. Not many people realize that news are the same, wither it is about politics, economics or film stars, it is all some form of entertainment which will never change us until each of us try to make a single analysis, a real point of view on the questions. Knowing facts amounts to nothing except for our scientific mind. And for our scientific mind, everybody wants to be an expert. What about the real strive for universal knowledge where everything is interrelated as it is in reality?

I do not know where to put myself. I feel like a chameleon sometimes, having the knowledge at hand to perform a social interaction as expected. My mother taught me that it was an essential skill. She actually taught me that creating the improbable was a blasphemy. And I do, most of the times when I am with her, suffer from that repression. I do repress myself normally and my hypotheses is that everybody do. Could it be that it is only the 2^nd siblings that do? I am not sure. As I said, the first trauma is the misunderstanding that the centre of the universe is relative. My second trauma was my position in my family. It is normal to be a younger brother and an older brother at the same time. Is it supposed to be? There are so many researches on 2^nd siblings that the trauma gets wider.

Anyway, I rarely blog ( as put a purely personal segment of my frame of mind at a given space-time) but felt like it. I am writing at the moment a short history of the world where I am trying to understand what holds a society together and what are the processes of change. Synchronic/Diachronic;Wave/Particle- one of the real problems of contemporary philosophy alongside the existence of the fourth dimension (a dot lives on a page, how can he ever notice us?)

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...

Ode to the Jungle of the Virtual

Science-Fiction must be my favourite genre in literature. Science-Fiction has suffured for a long time, and still does, from a stigma. This stigma has origins somewhere, and I will try to think of a few hypothesis for it in this personal essay. I will also try to explain and outline different argument for my liking for this genre. This doesn't sound much like a personal essay, but it is because I write in parallel a book review for uni, so I am a bit lock in an academic frame of mind. But we are living in a future world where academic frame of mind is annihilated by itself. Thanks mainly to French thinkers, we know that everything that is done by pretending to know better has no justification but the one it gives itself. Observing this self-reference mechanism destroy the power held in such discourses. So I might sound like an academic, but I know and should let you know that it is idiotic.

Academic discourses are scientists lying to themselves not admitting that objectivities can be reach only be reached by shared honest subjectivities. As such, every truth we want to share, we have to do it in our own language, and not in an adopted one. It is in a ideal situation then that these shared subjectivities can be transformed in objectivities – theories on how the word is truthfully, knowing the truth exist and doesn't exist. This is more or less where epistemology is at, or should at least be, nowadays. This paradoxic state of collecting knowledge we are now was outline by Lyotard. No more meta-narratives, no more generalized way to see the world, a lot of ways of observing are good, even better, in knowing that they hold some truth when one single way to observe/tell the truth serves only to blind ourselves from other ways to understand our world.

Another similar way to see where we are in our observation of the world is by adopting Baudrillard dark lense. In his view, because all truth are appreciated, reality doesn't exist anymore. But has it ever existed ? Hasn't it been 5000 thousand years that we have transformed reality through constantly changing meaning ? Of course, Baudrillard is scared of the accelerating way through which objects have different meanings, the fight over meanings become more important ergo the real object is forgotten. Look at Christmas: who knows what it is about ? Anyway, for Baudrillard, everything loose its meaning by being too meaningful and paradoxic. But reality has always changed meaning. For Baudrillard, looking back is now reconstructing a false past and imagining the future is building a false present – the present then not existing anymore. But the present has never existed, has it ?

So what is left for us ? Well to tell each other how our life is, how we want our life to be, how we see our world, how we would want our life to be and more importantly how it could be. Wouldn't it be only an exercise in dreaming utopia that could never exist ? Yes and no. It is an exercise in dreaming utopia, but it is also an exercise in creating future societies. Projecting is the first step towards creating. That is when science-fiction come into play. Science-fiction displays possible and impossible future. The chances for the possible world to happen are objectively unknown to us. We can say that as science is today, we can't recreate a science-fiction world. Of course that is not entirely true, has science has reached today far more than what Jules Verne could imagine a century ago. Science sometimes come to bit science-fiction, but to do so, it needs to know what challenge science-fiction offers.

That is a good point for Science-Fiction, which does here as much as environmentalists and economists at predicting possible future. Of course, environmentalists and economists do not pretend to look so far into the future, but science fiction never pretended to make the future so quickly. We have reduced the size of the world in our mind with the internet. Information is the same everywhere at the same time. 3D printers helps neurology-surgeons operates. Tactile screens helps us communicate kinetically with computers. We can operate moving vehicles with chips in our head. We can produce energy unseen in our solar system in more than a million years. Robots are walking and hopefully artificial intelligence will be self-learning.

But how did we come up with these technological inventions ? By inventing, imagining, observing and changing reality. None of our forms of knowledge are not the source of imagination. Of course, imagination was the source but not the end product. The end product was constructed by making the imagination participate with reality. Ideas and imaginations are more and more conflicting in some fields of thoughts, but that make more realities possible.

The stigma of science-fiction might be held then in a strictly pseudo-materialist perspective. Enlightenment was afflicted by this burden this view: the world is full of pseudo-mysteries. Mysteries since only exists as unresolved natural fact that can be explained through in depth empirical research. Therefore, creating mysteries is deemed useless. The only mysteries we thought we had to work on were the one observable in reality. What was the point of talking about dark-matter before it could be observed? The concept though came before reality. Same thing for robots or pretty much anything discovered/invented in the 20^th century. The imagined uselessness of science-fiction came from the blind we have put on our eyes when we thought that it is entertainment – when we don't understand its potential as a tool.

That is where virtual reality is one of the future tools for humanity to discover itself and its possibilities. Virtual realities are not yet what they could be. Google Maps gives us a virtual representation of our world. Wikipedia is a virtual space of shared knowledge. Facebook provides us with a tool to virtualize ourself as we want to be. Games provide us with virtual active entertainment. We are still too passive in virtual worlds, but the internet provided us with examples of a shared virtual realities where we do act. The virtual worlds also hold us with the promise that none of it is real. Consequences and responsibilities disappear in a lot of virtual world – and inconsequential virtual worlds could exist and there, we could do anything we want. It would provide a mirror to our life. We could understand why we do the things we do in the real world. Give our life a new meaning when we understand how our past formed what we are, and paradoxically liberated by this understanding, and the future becomes something to work on and not something we are afraid to be judged on.

The fear that exist nowadays linked to hyper-realities and virtual worlds is because we do live in a real world. But the real world is viewed through our mind. And our mind is not real anymore. We are dependent on symbolic representation of the world. Languages are the best examples of how our world is only symbolically representative to us. Even if, in a face to face interactions, there is more communicated than words but we are learning to control natural communication and to transform it into a symbols. Facial expression are natural reactions to emotions, but poker players are training to control them and read them. So the real has started to disappear a long time ago, to give our mind more power. Acknowledging this power of our mind and working on it, through worlds we can create and live, might prepare us to the next evolutions of humanity. Virtual worlds in cyberspace ( and cyberspace is only an infinite virtual playground) are a lot of time shared, and as such are tools for this shared project that is our future.

This post makes me look good when you read the one before!

Stuck in Social Constructions


Cultural relativism exists since I don't know when. It actually appear in lot of texts, not under the heading cultural relativism, but under the image of a heuristic device meant to criticize a society. Voltaire, a French philosopher of the enlightenment period would use it a lot to mirror the French society and its given ideas. Cultural relativism also implies that most of our thoughts, attitudes and behaviours are the result of a social construction. We are animals, but how we see the world is not in animal way at all, it is as a political animal. The Chinese would tell the Japanese for example that there is no hierarchy of Teas in nature, but only the person tasting the tea would make that hierarchy.

But this idea that everything is the result of a given society, and is therefore not absolute, can be criticize to be ameliorated is not growing as the technologies of the world are. Logic would have said that as we have more comparative examples to make, we could liberate ourselves more from our societal cages of thoughts.

Well this conclusion has easily some counter-arguments to be made. Cultural relativism was well explained by the French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, who had the occasion to visit South-American tribes in the middle 20th century. Also, the different movements of the sixties were based on this idea that society wasn't and shouldn't be such a cements of thoughts and hierarchies. So what do I mean ?

Well I believe that as much as we have grown wiser maybe, we still have a long way to go to be free, and the first step is still to admit that we are far from intellectual freedom as we can be. It is in my everyday life that I do notice this conflicting processes of global-village and cultural absolutism growing without bring to us much more liberty of the mind.

The first example is the question of the nation-state. Throughout history, our spacial identity has changed. But this is something that we are not accept to see, except when our ethical education lets us use this fact as an argument. But there are not many people who are ready to accept that countries do not represent much. Coming from Belgium, it is maybe easier for me to say it, Belgium being a construction of foreign powers, and our national identity never existed before, and it is still an on-going discussion to know if there is still one. The thing is that it is the same for most countries. Belgian are maybe the only one ready to accept that there country is not an absolute.

I'll take the Irish as an opposite example. They are an island, so there is more an idea of a spacial identity there that has lived maybe throughout history. But that is the only thing. Their Celtic culture and origins can be found as well in Ireland as in England as in France or even in Spain. They do have their own language, but it is living alongside English, and as proud they are of their identity, when it facilitates them, there are not ready to get rid of the colonial language. But when it comes to Euro-phobia, they invoke, like their ex-colonial power, a defence of their culture and new nation-state as arguments against the facility of a powerful alliance. The logic of the nation-state is not a irrefutable one, since all nation-states are the products of an international history, of an international population, defending a nation-state has no real logic, except this illusion of protection of the immutable. ( I would also like to point out that nationalism is the excuse of lazy minds for not being capable of imagining an alternative global world).

An other example of social construction that people tend to favour and stick to are technologies. Technologies are embedded within a society, and other technologies, or information sources or informations tend not to change much. Even in the promises of the world wide web, individuals keep themselves to their society. A good example is the variety of social networks within the web which are restricted to only certain cultures and economies. Facebook might be a huge one, but it represents only a small part of the population. Facebook groups are only the one to which our close friends have invited us or we found, but our researches are restricted to our social knowledge. Facebook has never opened much minds, at most it embeds us into our identity because we use it as a tool of identity reaffirmation more than a tool of intellectual development. Of course, certain fields in society do use internet as the globalizing tool it should be. I have mention technologies, and to show an other example of our incapacity of opening our mind to other technologies: new operating system scare us. Who is not on Windows or Mac ? Who would want to get out of these operating systems of our prime cyborg resources to try a new things that could liberate us from this two multi-nationals monopoly? It does require someone to accept that our society can change, especially that we could be freed from a strict capitalistic system which took the appearance of monopolizing the technological field. But it is a social construct also that we are too deep in our societal structure to resist it.

Where cultural relativism does not find its place where it seems the most logical, in this global world is the field of cultures. I will talk about taste being a pure social construction because it is. We like what we like because of the society we've grown in, our education and our restricted degree of personal interest. It is no excuse that we are stuck within a taste, within a culture, to make fun of others. And that is what still happen. The most interesting thing to observe is how people stuck within such a frame will make fun of people with a high degree of personal interest. Our cultural paradigm is attached with ethical paradigm which forbid us of any openly tribal criticism, most of the time. Though how many people haven't I seen laugh at a witch doctor ceremony. But the restricted frame people find themselves in is most observable when on television, someone has a deep personal interest in one subject under all its angles. This people are treated by TV-shows and their spectators as modern freaks, because they are capable of ignoring the general consensus of taste and behaviours.

Culturally, it is funny to also observe how people selects their team in national sports. It has nothing to do with the sportive quality of the team. It is only mildly related to the region of the team. It is highly related to the media representation of the team spirit. The team spirit is not related at all to some sport spirit in any way. The team spirit represented is only an image of the socio-economic background of the fans. The big winning team of a country will most of the time be the one supported by the powerful class and the easily manipulable population of the nation. The rival team will represent the opposite majority. The third team will represent the new-comers in a high class, the people who believe in the American dream, the nouveau-rich. The other more local clubs will be supported by the local population, in a quasi-tribal way, and most of the time, there will be two teams so class conflict can be represented. Of course, cultural construction will forbid fans such observation to the selection of their team, and only pseudo-sportive arguments will be presented.

Finally, I would like to present two important examples of the impossibility of thinking of our culture relativity in the field of morals and ethics. My first example is on our political ideals. Population have real difficulties changing political perspectives. Fukuyama was really wrong when he said that the end of history was represented by our liberal democracies. African multi-ethnic populations will admit that democracy is only creating a battlefield for them. A dictator is not any better because he will have fight to have power without learning the responsibilities of powers. But are we, the previous colonial powers, ready to see a monarchy re-establishing itself once again in a country? No, just like no parties will propose a truthful universal welfare state on its program, because as much as it is proven the best social help structure, it involves to much change, and too much change or difference do scare us.

The second example is our view on genders. There are lots of voices still raised for gender equality in the world, but without considering that gender equality does represent only a culturally constructed vision of gender equity. Of course, our system is as biased as societies were choice is not given. But should a couple decide as a couple who has what kind of power through discussion and through giving and receiving power? So if men, for example, would help for the chores in the house, that does give him real power within the house, he can decide what furnitures and how to raise the children. But if he wants to have a bigger buying power for himself by working only in the office and not doing much for the house, shouldn't he have only a restricted power of decision within the house ? Then what is wrong with women working at home and having full power at home ? There is only the illusion, within each society, of gender equity or equality, at least at home, but not one society has reached a true fair system, so no society should allow itself only to criticize others.

My final point is the one where in discussions, has raised the most voices. It's my belief that our view on paedophilia is highly restricted to our social construct of it, and that we still have a long way of self-criticism to go before we can find a solution to the problem. People have a lot of difficulties to understand how paedophilia is a social construct. They have no knowledge of the evolution of the representation of childhood within our society, and our representation of sexuality and emotional involvement as well. The most difficult part for people to understand is that our social view of paedophilia probably created the atrocities that paedophilia has created. Because we have represented paedophilia as an evil incarnated, people who are attracted by children will fall into a vicious circle of shame and alienation which will not give them the occasion to openly talk about their fantasies. This self-hatred or the hatred for such a judging society can only lead to the preservation of this secret and if they are too pushed by society, to act on their fantasies in the secret, with evilness. Their intentions will not be in their eyes acceptable to anyone else, so how can they come up to people before to talk about and see if there is another way out?

I don't know, it seems to me that our incapacity to liberate ourselves from our social perspectives, to adopt, if not for only a little while, other perspectives is growing. Our history permits us to make giant steps towards real peaceful discussions. But weak people will hide themselves behind modern society as an unmoveable society, as the idea of a better world being impossible. Or worst, I do know people who can only imagine living in idealized past, like conservatives,or ideals of the past, like French republicans, both perspectives only representing limited minds.

Small post on cultural studies and elitism

So this article is the result of a discussion with a french scholar and a french student for whom I both have esteem, and through our disagreements, I tend to develop certain ideas. This one is on our culture and the easy rejection sometimes made by the intellectuals of our world. It started with a television program on astrology. And jokes were made on the comment made by the astrologers on the show.

I was a bit uneasy at the jokes made, since the student and the scholars had both no knowledge of astrology. I wouldn't say I'm an expert on it either. But I am victim of this curiosity for every kind of knowledge and sciences made throughout the ages. That is where our disagreement started. The student had a problem with the term astrology I guessed. Since he does classical studies and philosophy, there was no apparent logos in this term, since it was based purely on invented concepts, and the facts were improperly studied. To which I retorted that metaphysics was more or less the same. But in his opinion, metaphysics are based on some facts. Something I yet need to see, if that's possible. His second argument was that just like alchemy, astrology was an outdated science for our world to still consider it relevant in any way. Which I thought was funny coming from a classical study student.

The scholar had a problem on the fact that astrology was a belief, therefore not being a subject of quality for a study. I proposed theology to that. And he explained me that most of the important scholars in this discipline would never believed in miracles, but would interpret the miracles in the bibles to explain concepts inside the religion.

I actually agreed on both these points, but I still wouldn't accept there objection of astrology. Astrology is actually one of the oldest science on earth. It has the interesting aspect of having existed in most of the important cultures on earth.

Though it is not a science since it's theory are hardly provable, it is too stupid to reject it. I'm not saying that we should believe in it. I'm not saying that every astrologers are worth listening to. I guess most of them are charlatans. But I would listen to someone who studied astrology, who would explained me the different concepts developed by astrologers throughout history, its evolution and the difference in the angle taken towards this belief in the different cultures.

But astrology is here only an example of this presumption of people to know what is worthy of knowledge or not. These people I had these arguments with are both guys I respect. They are not pragmatist as such. They do favour culture over practice I'd say. But it is the culture of the elite more that a widespread view on culture. It is in a way restrictive. I understand the fear of letting the unworthy culture, if such a thing exists really, enter the realm of the intellectuals. But I think that such a fear shouldn't really be. What should be feared is only the person pretending to be master of a certain culture, and be rejected for his knowledge of the culture for the sole fact it is not recognised as a valuable culture, instead of having qualified authorities in this certain culture that can properly judge each other, under a proper epistemological scrutiny.

In a way, every angle of our culture is worthy of being known, but there is a certain minimum to be known every time to be able to properly talk about it. I wouldn't reject an astrologers as long as he knows well his subject, nor would I reject a good alchemist, a good lawyer and so on. As Jet Li said in Fearless, as Huo Yuanjiia, “ Every martial art is good, it is the knowledge the fighter has of his martial art that would make him a suitable fighter or not”. And this is true for every aspect of our culture.