72 posts tagged “society”
Firstly, as I have already mentioned in other essays, such studies basically serve to take self-control away from humans as opposed to impressing upon them the need to be altruistic instead of being opportunistic and self-absorbed if they are not simultaneously complemented by the work of social scientists. Perhaps my issue with such articles is that sociological views do not accompany them to counter any tendencies amongst the masses of readers to interpret them self-servingly or/and unintelligently.
Secondly, if such studies do not incite investigators to perform longitudinal studies for the purpose of discerning if being AVPR1a-deficient is an inborn deficiency, then its impact would be confined to allowing people to add a disclaimer for their selfish acts with a, ‘Sorry mate, me AVPR1a deficient’ and excuse themselves from buying a round of drinks.
Thirdly, even if it is found, after longitudinal studies, that the aforementioned deficiency is inborn, this only argues for the case that we are a product of evolution. In this case, the negative impact of competitive and exploitative human history can be plausibly held up as the reason for the current non-altruistic tendencies of the masses.
Fourthly, rather than excuse the masses from exhibiting altruism, it might be prudential to view it as a reason why people ought to intentionally practice altruism so that future generations may not be similarly impaired.
Finally, people ought to start inquiring after how and if the current global socio-politico-economic milieu serves to ensure that future generations are or are not born with such deficiencies and the degree to which this retardation is pervasive. If not, we are not far off from taking as fact that humans are competitive and opportunistic beasts and proceed with evolution from that point.
Ed-infinitum
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There’s something seriously wrong with these people who worship, wave hankies, get teary-eyed and curtsy in the face of ‘royalty’ – same thing applies to that strange breed of humans called ‘fans’ who make millionaires out of people for kicking a ball, swinging a stick at one, pretending to be a hero on the silver screen, and singing an inane song. I would recommend psychiatric therapy to these people while taking away their right to vote till they’ve passed a constitutional test and proven their adulthood in ways other than arriving at a particular numerical age, being able to hold down a job, or be legally eligible to bear children.
But, I can understand the role the privileged play in ‘modern’ society. For without such a breed blinding the idiot masses, they would realise that without them, their own mutual competitive antagonism and alienation would lack justification. Humanity’s greed and mutual antagonism is justified by two methods. One, the worship of the privileged for being privileged, and Two, the theoretical opportunity to join their ranks and the instrumental freedom to trod on each other’s spines to do it. That is your laughable ‘modernity’. Medieval modernity would be more apt. For the rise of the ‘professional’ – one who is adept in one arena but generally ignorant – the belief that we are individuals – that allows our preprogrammed responses to be confused for self-motivated ones – the right to vote on the basis of age as opposed to intelligence – and the experience of ‘progress’ in salient technological arenas that detracts us from its regress in many other perspectival ones, amongst others, tell us that we can be wrong, but not wrong enough to doubt the very foundations upon which we appreciate reality, and upon which reality is built.
And thus, from
Thailand to the UK, we still see throngs of mammals curtsying, crying and
swooning upon the sight of some ‘royalty’ or pelvic thrusting, acting, or ball
kicking idiot. I am not against the worship
of Gods as they are, in essence, the worship of ideals. What ideal, pray tell, does any so-called ‘royalty’
or privileged individual, albeit unwitting, stand for? To do unto others what you do not want them to do unto you, so that you may be done unto like that which you do unto royalty? The ultimate source and justification of a colour gradient begins with a single distinguishable colour. Without this, the remaining shades of the gradient are not. Thus, the existence of royalty justifies the existence of its other shades. For is we can worship an individual for no other reason than the inherited status, we will surely be shorn off the ability to depreciate those who acquire their status with hard work, even if her/is boots be stained with the sweat and tears of others.
ed-infinitum
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I'll put it plainly.
The 'super-rich just get richer' by ensuring, with the aid of other organs of the elite, the pervasiveness of perspectival idiocy and gross ignorance amongst the non-rich and super-rich caste.
‘Wealthy’ and ‘Super-rich’ are simply interchangeable terms with ‘aristocracy’ and ‘monarchy’. The relative fluidity of movement from the working classes to the non-working one does not undermine the fact that the space in the upper echelons of society is significantly limited. Find out how the latter two were maintained in the past and you’ll come closer to discovering how the former two are maintained in the present. That is when my personally coined term, ‘medival modernism’, will began to make sense, if not dollars and you’ll began to realise that the only significant distinction between yourself and the peasant of the past is a change in fashion.
Ed-infinitum
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The loss of life, the loss of freedom, the loss of democracy, the arrest and detention of Aung San Suu Kyi amongst others…...are not enough for a self-absorbed people to fight for change. If it is only economic hardship or necessity affecting individual interests that brings about demonstrative reaction, then, if successful, it does not bring about freedom, democracy and the value of life per se, but rather a status quo that empowers the people to do unto each other that which was previously done unto them, since those who stood up, did so for themselves.
Thus, the plight of the Burmese people, whilst deserving of our sympathies, is equally deserving of our suspicion….unless we are not unlike them ourselves.
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'Thousands' pose UK terror threat
Went one of the
headings in the BBC online site.
My first thought
before reading the aforementioned article was, “Hmmm...so there are still thousands of British troops on Arab soil?”
It’s just a matter, at times, of
substituting the 'cause' for the ‘effect’ and consider a phenomenon from that point if the conventional way of considering it seems to provide humanity the comfort of doing 'something about it' with immediacy as opposed to the discomfort of 'doing something about it' with more critical introspection and, hence, less immediacy - something I call a 'perspectival doodle' which I engage in for the relaxing pleasure of looking at things another way...that's 'entertainment' for me.
I suppose It requires a more pronounced ability to be historically and objectively retrospective to make a mistake such as the above.
ed-infinitum
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“How much idiocy does it take to say, ‘ahhhhh’, for the sake of the participants being able to count the number of people whom are willing to do it?
Warning: clicking the following links in the following excerpt might ‘hang’ your browser for quite a while.
The following is an excerpt from Miss Scotch’s ‘compelling’ post which has to-date hit ‘533 comments’. Thoughts follow.
“If you are that bored, I would like to draw your attention to the Vox post with the most comments of all time. Before I read it, I was so excited, assuming surely it would be scandalous, racially-charged or at the very least, incredibly compelling. Turns out, it is simply 355 comments from roughly the same 3 friends going back and forth. Genius! Why didn't I think of that? I don't want to do it with this post, but soon, I am going to attempt to post something compelling and attempt to solicit conversation with anyone else bored enough to contribute.”
‘Tis unfortunate. In these 'modern' times, that which is ‘compelling’ is not necessarily that which is ‘insightful’ or an experience one would arise from less dumb than one was before one was, well, compelled.
Sensationalism, and that which requires the least thought whilst promising maximal ‘entertainment’, sells when a market-supply of ‘Consumers’, ‘Fans’ and ‘Celebrity-worshippers’(CFCs), as opposed to multifariously developed and, consequentially, thoughtful Human beings, predominates – if not the word ‘cool’ might not be as pervasively utilised. The word, ‘cool’, in this context, basically validates the individual as one in her being able to ejaculate a monosyllabic response albeit as meaningful as a statement of preference('I'm cool, therefore I am'). Now the above is a supreme example of that which lies at the core of the universe of the CFCs – an opportunity to engage whilst being cranially disengaged. Now that’s ‘entertainment’ for you.
The list of ‘commentators’ in the aforementioned site, however, might serve, on the one hand, as a list of ‘who’s who’ amongst the idiots in the vox-blogging world, and, via the content of their ‘comments’, provide the bemused observer an insight into what nether regions of the human intellect their ‘minds’ dwell within.
The question I’m left with, in consideration of MissScotch’s post, is,
How much idiocy does it take to say, ‘ahhhhh’, for the sake of the participants being able to count the number of people whom are willing to do it?
ed-infinitum
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Friday, 26 October 2007
"Che Guevara hair
sold at auction
Strands of hair taken from the body of Ernesto Che Guevara by a former CIA officer involved in his death have sold for $119,000 (£58,000) at auction."
Buddhist relics, Christian relics, a chip of a friend of a chip of the ‘wood of The Cross’, a fragment of Buddha’s toenail….relics, relics, relics, whilst stocks last.
All wanting to
possess a piece of Heaven in the hope that may exert control over the Gods so that They may be more inclined to grant them their wishes; so that, whilst bathing in its hallowed glow, they might claim lineage and thus, control over the masses; so that they might feel
some closeness to the Heavens; so that they might feel celestial whilst
interned in the terrestrial; so that they might be inspired to aspire to that
espoused by those of whom the relics are a part whenever they look upon it…..a host of reasons for relic-possession in the past.
To possess a chip of the wood of Hendrix’s smashed guitar, or a drop of the vomit he choked to death on; the comb used by James Dean on ‘rebel without a cause’, or strand of hair left behind in its teeth; one of the barbiturates left untaken by Marilyn Monroe; a piece of Che’s hair, pubic or public; what do those who desire to possess it truly desire to possess? What void does such possession, in these 'modern times', attempt to exorcise?
Fame? If they could bottle a part of the glow that
fell on this or that ‘star’ during this or that concert, award ceremony, or
that emitted from the headlights of their respective cars, or the glow of their
teeth, the ‘fans’, mistakenly known as ‘citizens’, ‘modern people’, hailing
from ‘secular’ states, would queue in sleeping bags to acquire it. All subconsciously aware of their gross insignificance
and yet proudly holding their heads up as they walk the streets because they
subscribe to the teachings or lives of this or that crooner, actor,
ball-kicker, ball-kicking team, golfer, etc, etc. And through this, they feel that their lives
have some semblance of a shadow of a meaning.
And those that can afford it, savage and ravage the graves of
long-decomposed ‘stars’, oblivious to their intrinsic significance or
insignificance in search of some fecal remnants to pocket and pendant so that
they too might be distracted from their cog&wheel existence and be
significant, vicariously.
Where Fame becomes a commodity in itself and to this degree, and where the people are emancipated to attempt to acquire that which they cannot have unless another has it not, we can understand it as a 'pop'ular practice and validation of the general inequitable and mutually antagonistic status quo, and a simultaneous acceptance of collective insignificance.
Fools.
ed-infinitum
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“Our food likes and dislikes may have more to do with genes than choice, UK researchers believe….Professor Tim Spector, who led the research, said: "For so long we have assumed that our upbringing and social environment determine what we like to eat.
"This has blown that theory out of the water - more often than not, our genetic make-up influences our dietary patterns.”
The Problem with studies like these…
…is that it focuses us on what we are as opposed to what we can be. What many of these so-called ‘scientists’ consistently fail to appreciate is that just as our proclivities are determined to some degree by our genes, our genetic composition is determined by the social experiences of our distant ancestors. In other words, just as our genetic composition today is due to our experiences yesterday, our genetic composition tomorrow is dependent on how we take charge of our social experiences today. It is this ‘take charge’ factor that distinguishes us from our counterparts in the non-human animal kingdom.
But, this is to be expected.
As we have been fooled into believing that we are residing within a ‘modern’ age (which, I more aptly term, ‘medieval modernism’, or ‘modern medievalism’, or ‘contemporary medievalism’, due to our occupying a further point on the selfsame socio-economic-perspectival trajectory of the ‘preceding’ age). This is when ‘scientists’ mutate into ‘technicians’ who operate within a particular way of looking at things and aim to just fix that which is ‘broke’ instead of inventing another. In other words, instead of inventing new ‘lifts’, they just try to make the existing one more efficient.
We could say
that these times are the ‘modern’ variant of ‘Christendom’...
...where good and evil, true and false, etc, etc, is determined by our prior taking the Christian cosmological universe as true. It was quite simple to bring down the latter in the past (ref. Scientific Revolution’ period of western history) as we just needed to disprove particular cosmological claims of the church, i.e. ‘geocentric’ view of the universe, which was aided by scientific inquiry. But with ‘science’ having become the consort of ‘modernism’, it is disabled from critiquing modernism itself. All the ‘modernists’ have to forward as a claim that ‘modernism’ is true is to present an ‘ipod nano’ as a clear indicator that this site is ‘talking rubbish’ and that Humanity ‘has arrived’ exodus-like to the promised land of ‘modernity’. Humanity is in quite the quandary at present as the only way to disprove claims that we are living in ‘modernity’ is for it to suffer abject failure.
But, with the
advance in technology,...
...the political enfranchisement of many, and the increasing economic affluence of the 'modern' peasantry, nations and people can do more to technically weed out the consequences of The System via ‘wars on terror’, ‘(musical)band-aids’, ‘protest marches’, etc, etc. In other words, when we think we can do more, we will take this 'more' as evidence that we have done enough. That is when humanity gradually loses the ability to critically introspect, and any ‘critique’ forwarded by those who believe that they are the ‘chosen people’ because of their perceiving that they are in the ‘modern’ ‘land of milk and honey’, is turned outwards. That is when the philosopher, who questions the very foundations of the beliefs the pillarise this ‘civilisation’ is banished to oblivion whilst the ‘enlightened’ masses revel in their refuge of ‘modern’ variants of exorcism and other ritualistic observations like their counterparts in ‘past’ times in a wholly un-Christian Christendom. That is when people switch spiritual determinism for ‘genetic determinism’ and, yet again, abdicate control over their lives. All that the peasants of these ‘modern’ times require is proof that it is true. And so long as it can be proven to be significant in their personal and reduced lives, other alternatives are discarded in the quest by the masses to excuse themselves from the discomforting Act of Contrition via critical introspection. To the contemporary mind, mistaking itself for the ‘modern’ mind just because it occupies the present as opposed to an ipod-less past, collective critical introspection aimed at our most cherished of beliefs and celebrated saints of these allegedly ‘secular’ times, is to direct skepticism at ‘modernity’ itself and the identity which they wear oh-so-proudly via a myriad of self-nullifying ‘brands’.
“Just Do it” goes ‘Nike’. That is founded on, and reinforces nothing other than the belief that we ‘have arrived’ and may hence be spared the discomfort of collective, critical and introspective time in the confessional.
ed-infinitum
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'Monkeys Kill Delhi Deputy Mayor'
Went the heading.
It would however, I discovered upon reading the related article, be more accurate to
have the heading,
'Cement Floor Kills Delhi Deputy Mayor',
since,
"...SS Bajwa suffered serious head injuries when he fell from the first-floor terrace of his home on Saturday morning trying to fight off the monkeys."
But, I suppose, such headings wouldn't sell as much.
Unless the BBC has evidence indicating that the said monkeys attacked the Mayor with the intention of pushing him of his concrete perch, the above heading is quite misleading. But, I suppose, libel sells, especially where the accused is not able to sue for their being linguistically-challenged. The BBC ought to be mindful of the difference between 'putting news first' and 'embellishing news first'.
The last I heard, Delhi
police have been investigating oppositional parties for alleged connections to the
said monkeys. The US anti-terrorist department has also been informed of this as it seems to be a politically-motivated 'Act of Terror'. No group has claimed responsibility for this act to-date.
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“Tibet Leader Accepts Top US Medal
The Dalai
Lama has been awarded a Congressional Gold Medal - the top US civilian honour - in a move that has
infuriated China.
George W Bush attended the ceremony in Washington, the first time a sitting US president has appeared in public with the exiled Tibetan leader.
Chinese state media had warned it would "cast a shadow" over ties with the US.
Beijing described it as a "gross interference in China's internal affairs".”
Firstly, I fail to see any honour in receiving a ‘congressional gold medal’ from the so-called ‘greatest nation on earth’. Quite patronizing. ‘Tis not unlike a child awarding her sage-master for doing a good job.
The granting of awards effects a two-fold recognition…
…whereby the greater the status of the recipient – provided s/he accepts it – the greater becomes the award-giver in the eyes of the masses (same applies to academy/oscar/grammy awards.) If this continues, as it unfortunately has – with even Pope John Paul II being short-sighted enough to accept this dubious accolade from an equally dubious source – not only is the US validated in the specific sense, as in its implied claim to appreciate virtue via the granting of awards to those who's business is supposed to be in the celebration of virtue, but in the generic sense as well where it can be generally viewed as a nation guided by virtue. Thus, it's past, present and future actions will elicit less reflexive resistance and scrutiny by the global mass of thus-created 'fans'. This is further amplified by awards to globally recognised spiritual leaders whose congregation spans nations. In consequence, alternative streams of thought and consciousness, along with its adherents, are incorporated, departmentalised, and lobotomised within The Corporation. The 'Devil's' way is not a foolish one. It is a way that accesses the pathways to a persons soul via roads paved by those or that s/he cherishes.
Thus, the myth
of the US
being ‘the greatest nation on earth’ is reinforced and perpetuated.
With time, such awards basically amplify the ‘celebrity’ status of both, and their status in a thus-perspectivally malformed public begins to have less and less to do with the intrinsic worth of what they have to say or do, or what they have failed to say or do, and more with the frequency with which they are bathed, and thus ‘transfigured’, in the hallowed glow of an American-orchestrated spotlight. There is a significant difference between a ‘thank you’ gift and a ‘good job’ award. In the former is appreciation, in the latter, and in this instance, condescension. I’ve often been inclined to say,
“Too much time on the pew, and not enough time in non-ecclesiastical libraries, turns one into the pawn of a 'devil' who thrives on the ‘good works’ of those who keep their eyes toward the heavens and mind not the pitfalls on the road”.
Didn’t you know that The Devil is an academic with Phds in all subjects?
In this, it can be thus argued, that both the Dalai Lama and Pope John Paul are unwittingly guilty of taking awards from the nemesis of those Gods they think they are terrestrial satellites of. And in this, they have opened the trapdoor to hell at the foot of the stairway to Heaven.
Thou shall not judge till thou art qualified to judge
If thou still doth judge
And draw the validity of thy judgment from thy prominence in unrelated matters
Thou shall contract the criteria via which judgment ought to be made
And, as a consequence, create swooning fans in place of a future judicious jury
Secondly, the Chinese ought to be
reminded that ‘gross interference in China’s internal affairs’ is not an
‘argument’ and simply a paraphrasing of ‘mind your own damn business!’. But, they are not to be faulted for
confounding a juvenile rant for an argument.
After all, when we consider the fact that the Chinese Imperium thrives
on mass ignorance-hence-subservience, their reasoning faculties would be quite
underdeveloped given the lack of critical opposition. Generic intelligence is, after all, developed
by intelligent challenge. Where the
latter is detained-without-trial, shot-with-little ceremony, or
beaten-to-a-pulp-in-public-streets, the former suffers severe compromise. It is no wonder that it is those nations that
abide by such methods of perpetuating (mis)rule that do not seem to be able to forward more than, ‘gross interference in internal affairs!’ whilst confusing it for an argument as the only paltry cover
for an infernal state of affairs.
ed-infinitum
reference:
'Mayan', in the title, derived from the Hindu/Buddhist term Maya, meaning 'illusion', 'temptation', 'mammon', amongst others.
on Pope John Paul's congressional gold medal
