Another SBS series

Next in the series of crazy, excellent SBS TV shows; it's a series called "Why Democracy".
One episode, called "For God, Tsar and Fatherland" features a fat man swimming in his freezing swimming pool while his servants do petty chores inside his sprawling castle and garden. He has convinced them that they need his religious guidance and that Imperial Russia needs a strong Orthodox faith to defeat the Imperialist, rotting West. The fat man illuminates, proving (quite convincingly) that God's soul is not democratic and (less convincingly), that therefore a society which doesn't recognise the necessity for an inherently hierarchical order in human society will inevitably crumble....Quasi-scientifically, he says that because successful wolf packs have this absence of equality, so too must humans follow God and then Tsar, and religion understands this "basic fact". I must that the plausibility of his argument [that religion allied to nationalism might prove a strong opponent to an increasingly divided, atheistic West] scares me a little. And also, within Western countries, those in the shrinking religious minority have more and more elitist, co-operatively inspired power than the rest of us divided atheists...look at the influence of the Christian far-right in USA and Australia especially. Oleg, a lawyer, is one of the adults oddly taken to this re-education camp by his ageing mother.

It is true that Russia is growing again, and the fat man has me thinking about the fact that more religiously observant societies tend to be poorer. Somebody once said that religion was only for the poor, weak or disillusioned, although now I think religion (at least in the modern world) causes the poverty which breeds national weakness and personal disillusionment, which reinforces the drive towards theocracy which then perpetuates the misery. Chicken and egg, and all chicken-or-egg problems have the same structure of solution...I suppose in the west the chickens are fewer and the eggs are easily broken.

Hey religious people out there, if citizens in a society are not striving for understanding and mastery of all things material (science)...in any case, what is non-material anyway? :p AND hoping for the most efficient acquisition of all things material (through capitalistic competition), it's not surprising that you should fail to obtain the material things which you desire, and so not surprising that your country lacks wealth and so global hard (military) and soft (cultural) power.
And down below, a man in Iran protesting against the Danish Mohammed cartoons holds a sign saying "Freedom of Expression Go To Hell" and in the backdrop, the words "Down with the USA" have been literally carved in to the wall, presumably an officially-funded artwork.

See whydemocracy.net -- The 10 questions posed by "Why Democracy?" are:

Who would you vote for as President of the World? What would make you start a revolution? Can terrorism destroy democracy? Is Democracy good for everyone? Are dictators ever good? Who rules the world? Are women more democratic than men? Why bother to vote? Is God democratic? Can politicians solve climate change?

Crazy Things

This post is dedicated towards the absurd scenes (newstainment) beamed in to our homes from SBS television. I don't mean to be cynical, I do love SBS, and it and the ABC are the only quality free TV stations.

On Forreign Correspondant, we are shown video of prisoners in a chronically overcrowded Philipino prison run despotically by the inept, cosmopolitan brother of the pretty Eurasian Cebu Governor, Gwen Garcia. Garcia has ordered these prisoners (many of whom were transferred there after spending up to 10 years STANDING due to lack of room in prisons WITHOUT TRIALS) to DANCE 2 hours a day. They're now dancing to a musical, led by transvestite murderers, who rock and shake to Michael Jackson's "Thriller" and other 80s songs.
Now that is exactly as Michael Jackson would have intended it to be.

When Sense is Nonsense

Religious people like to "make sense" out of random tragic events; the events assume a cosmic significance, or become part of the divine plan of a God.
Likewise, conspiracy theorists create conspiracies because it makes more sense to them that a big event should be caused by a powerful human agency; it is not comforting to realise how little control humans have over many events.

In doing so, these religious people and conspiracy theorists are creating a LOSS of sense...it takes sense to realise that many processes in the world are random, and therefore to truly understand.

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Bipedal genital displays to strangers are now considered an offence rather than a courtship ritual legacy

Democracy

I notice that a lot of people confuse the concept of democracy with the state of freedom from various forms of oppression [Hardly unexpected, for the neural networks in our brains are basically just elaborate systems of association maps which correlate the firings in our brain which constitute different concepts, memories, emotions and other thoughts...].

Some countries are relatively democratic and the citizens enjoy relative freedom from oppression (Australia, Canada, Sweden etc). In other countries, citizens enjoy freedom from oppression, but live in a non-democratic environment (something closer to Hong Kong), and, in other countries, citizens are neither particularly free, nor is there a democracy (eg Saudi Arabia, Sudan). I admit that there is a strong correlation between freedom from oppression and the level of democracy in a country, but it is still isn't useful to conflate the two concepts.
Dictionary definitions of democracy tend to usually mention "majority rule", or the rule of representatives elected by the people and for the people. An incredibly vague definition when you think about it, but good enough for most purposes. Basically, we think that each person should at least have an equal say in determining which party is elected, come election time.

Surely this involves political parties not being allowed to accept donations from the public? From any type of institution, donations clearly motivate politicians not to govern in the interests of the general body of people, but on behalf of those that they receive money from, and especially those which helped them be elected. It's stupid, and it's certainly doesn't foster democracy. I don't know how the hell this practice could ever be justified, it doesn't smoothe the practical functioning of any democracy. But what irritates me is how easily people are seduced by gushing speeches from politicians about how great our democracy is, when, in fact, some citizens clearly have a far greater say in how the country is run than others by virtue of their greater wealth.

Even if you falsely believed that you had a say in who was elected, if you're poor you've got absolutely no chance of influencing the policies that the winning party actually implements when it gets in to power. All you can do is lodge a protest vote at the next election, which will simply hand power to another party who will also only listen to those that give it money...not a lot of voting power you have there, unless you've worked or bought your way to a position where you can donate money or advise the government....just like in Communist states where everyone tries to work for the government because of the priviledges one receives.
If you want to celebrate the fact that you live in Australia instead of in Saudi Arabia or Sudan, do so because you are relatively free from oppression in Australia, and enjoy a higher living standard in Australia. It is irrational pride to celebrate the democratic nature of our country, because we, like just about every other democratic country, have never been particularly democratic. Not that it's necessarily stupid for some to have more say than others; experts in science or history or anything else have to have more input on most matters than regular people (and perhaps the motivated deserve more influence than the apathetic), but the practise of donations [bribes] must stop.

While we're at it, it should be made illegal for political parties of any type to spend public money on advertising. It's so annoying to see the hundreds of millions of dollars pour down the drain in the lead up to the Australian election on politicians trying to get themselves re-elected.
There's no conceivable reason why citizens would want to pay to watch propaganda, unless that propaganda was bankrolled by people who want certain politicians to get in because they'll work for their agenda. And at the Ministry of Truth website, there are some good suggestions for making politicians more accountable for proven misinformation about facts. Another interesting website: http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/democracy.html

How strong is our democracy? Stronger than in say, Egypt, or Sudan, or China. But perhaps that's not enough to be proud of it, particularly if it may be weakening. Let's make these changes, and take further incremental steps towards a better democracy...

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Scared monkeys hold each others' penises. I can't help but find that really weird

Gross National Happiness #2

As mentioned before, whilst I agree that there's more to quality of life than total income, it would be absurd to measure Gross National Happiness and try to improve it.



I'm constantly amazed to hear people questioning material wealth, citing the true fact that while we've grown richer, we've not grown happier. So what? Increases in human life expectancy from 40 years to 80 years today weren't accompanied by an increase in happiness either. Does that mean we should go back to living 40 years only? Once again, what justification is there to try to change the status quo? And why would leading a less material life as humans have done in the past make us any happier?



As an aside, human happiness levels are invariant over time and circumstance; even the gravest of misfortunes tends to cause only a temporary decrease in happiness, after which the person returns to their baseline happiness rating (which has remained in the 7.2-7.3/10 range since people started measuring in the 19th century). Likewise for events such as winning the lotto. We didn't evolve to be happy, we evolved to survive, and in all likelihood, those who were always very happy wouldn't be very good at surviving, especially when the ones they're struggling against can be very determined buggers.

It seems to me that the average citizen could be poor and score a 7.3/10 on happiness, or be richer and score a 7.3/10 on happiness...it is up to us to decide whether the average person is wealthy and a 7.3/10 or poor and a 7.3/10.

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Sigmund Freud said the Irish cannot be psychoanalysed, and clitoral orgasm was a sign of madness

Immortality

Our bodies are sinking ships, and we like to salvage things from sinking ships before they go down. So we pass on our genes while we're alive, so that they don't go down with the vessel.

I've often wondered what profound changes human immortality would have for society. It is equally valid to wonder what profound changes would have to occur in society for us to figure out how to become immortal; I'll leave that to the science fiction writers.

In the meantime, being immortal would almost certainly reduce our incentive to have kids. As we live longer, we have kids when we're older and older. If we become immortal, we could always throw our genes off the sinking ship that is our bodies another time. Just as consumption goes down where there is deflation, why create a dependent NOW if our ship is not sinking but perhaps even being upgraded?

A great deal of people would do it anyway; it'd be strange, as a 900-year-old parent, to have kids who are 850, 700, 200 and 50 years old respectively. What would the concept of maturity mean when you have 700-year olds being taught by 800-year-olds? What would responsibility mean? Would there still be any social order to speak of? What would progress mean? [A sticky concept even today!] More disturbingly, what would people aim for? Thousand-year plans? Revolutionaries and conservatives alike mightn't be so happy to work towards anything in particular.
My best guess would be that the concept of a family would no longer make sense at all, and that we'd kill ourselves well before we turned 850. I'd also be betting humans wouldn't do so well as a species.
Anyone else like to speculate?

When Judges Err

Haha Judge Judy is funny, and generally, being smart, a good debater. She was wrong about one thing though. That cute little dog that attacked that cute little kid wasn't a poor little defenseless dog as she had said. To be sure, dogs have the ability to defend themselves against small children. That cute little dog took matters in to its own hands (or teeth), and took assertive, confident, and ultimately righteous steps to defend itself against the annoyance of that little girl poking at it with a stick, as her temporary cut attests. After all, the dog was in the right, and the cute but sadistic little girl was in the wrong.

The Schizophrenia Of Losing One's Faith

The old religious person in you dies, causing discomfort for the person, or even to more than one of the people inside of you, who has a dying individual inside himself/themselves.
Religion is an enormously powerful, well-adapted memeplex (combination of self-perpetuating ideas, habits, imitations, compulsions, social customs and expectations), and it, being enormously powerful and encompassing of the identity to which religion so expertly attaches itself, was very difficult to extricate. When one does, a great part of one's identity dies, and another is born; I'm just glad I managed to do it sooner rather than later, so that I developed a much stronger identity than that of belonging to this or that religion/tribe, dependent on just another person, or in this case, non-entity, for my fulfillment and to govern my thought.

Changing the rules before China rules

I like my own type of study on nationalism. Ask people to rate different countries out of 10. How much they like them. That simple.

France? 7/10, they say. Romania? 4/10. Germany? 8/10. Ivory Coast? 3/10.

What about China? What do you give it?

At APEC, some legitimately expressed their dislike of George Bush, which I happen to share. But where was the protest against leaders other than Bush who have committed far more heinous crimes? And where was the pressure on countries like China to change the conditions for its own citizens? I welcome Beijing to balance the power of Washington, but ultimately, I'd prefer to live under the autocratical rule of the USA than China.
Issues under which world governments are likely to unite in order to pressure China.

Environmentalism, Equality, Human rights, Corruption and Governance, Good Institutions, Safe Products.
The stress should be to change, but slowly...we cannot force these things on China overnight, and the prosperity of the whole world is dependent on the prosperity and stability of China.

In the mean-time, is there really a decline, a decadence in our own societies which threaten their ongoing viability? We're so dependent on our cheap imports from China! Where will the next great factories be? And it seems to me that 1860-1939 was where such a great flurry of important scientific, philosophical and economic work was done, and more is being outsourced offshore all the time. Obviously since then, we've also had the computer and Internet revolutions, but standards seem to have dropped according to longitudinal studies, with the exception of amongst skilled migrants.

Language Again

I continuously am fascinated by language.

Somebody once told me that I should be grateful to the English because they helped my native tongue conquer the globe, so that now I can communicate with so many people. I might've learnt the language of another conqueror or English anyway, but knowing English is advantageous over being say a Russian monolingual. I will learn more about the roots of this language.
"The adventures of English" TV show was fascinating and taught me more about English, which is a West Germanic language not a Romance one like French or Italian.
What makes English a superior language is that it has grabbed words from so many different languages, and this in term glorified English society and continuously legitimated the Monarchy, although stealing huge quantities of Gold from Spanish ships also probably was indispensable for British survival, just as a mosquito or lead piping probably brought down the Roman Empire.

English coevolved mostly with French following the Norman invasion of 1066 in which rich French people all ate the produce of the English, who became a slave race. Most of the wealthy Englishmen (who also spoke French) died at the hands of the black plague later, which is why fewer Brits know French now.
English has grabbed many German and Scandinavian words too, as well as mathematical ones from Arabic, and scientific ones from the Latin as well as other Romance languages.
It is fascinating to trace the roots back to Olde English, where Northern England people seemed to be speaking German. Or to hear the varied dialects of English spoken in Singapore or in Africa by the Iron Ladies of Liberia, or in different corners of any city by Italian or Chinese or Lebanese people (strange how it varies!). And to see the physiological changes produced by speaking a certain language.

Many Old English words narrowed in meaning - "wasten" for apple disappeared, and the word "apple", which used to refer to fruit in general, came to refer to apples only. A codger was a man that handled birds of prey, and now any old dude could be a codger. Weird indeed.

Overempathising

Is just one kind of multiple-personality disorder?
I, like Douglas Hofstadter, am a strange loop!

Learned Helplessness

We're apathetic about politics because we've learnt our helplessness, as a dog might. It follows that people will only become politically active if they are powerful or could be powerful; where they can see or could imagine that they do have influence and the ability to change things (if only by changing the opinions of others). The unabomber was certainly a madman, and a criminal. But he was right that people need to be involved in "the power process" more than they are today. Perhaps had he been he wouldn't have committed the crimes that he did.