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Living Here
This week I am going to be “switching things up” and I guess there will be a big “change of pace”. In part, this may be due to a dearth of propaganda influencing me and causing me to react (and / or retaliate). But the way I will introduce this topic will probably trigger a few people. Before I introduce it, I would like to give a big “shout out” to Monica Guzman’s “A Braver Way” podcast, a recent episode of which provided the fodder for me to chew on long and hard, and yet to nonetheless hardly come to any significantly new conclusions at all.
Source: https://braverangels.org/abraverway That said: I now intend proceed with my triggering exercise. I am vehemently “pro-life”.
Before you jump, let me try to explain a little more. My pro-life stance is probably very little like the stance which most people consider to be “pro-life”. Before I move on, I should probably also acknowledge the two women who mostly stuck their necks out to produce the episode of “Kelly Corrigan Wonders” featured in the podcast episode — Kelly Corrigan and April Lawson.
I think my own “pro-life” stance first of all, and yet also somewhat ironically, matches up with Kelly’s “pro-choice” stance — namely that I am first and foremost standing up for my own life (and also for others like me). I also feel this is indeed not a choice, but rather an instinctive behavior.
There was a point in the discussion in which Kelly and April considered a question along the lines of “what current issues will future generations look at and say ‘they must have overlooked this (obvious) fact‘. I will now go out on a limb and say that one such issue is that the “pro-life” side usually means exclusively pro- human life. The supposed “pro-life” stance seems to be completely ignorant of the obvious fact that logically it is impossible to take a “pro-life” stance and at the same time carry out an “anti-habitat” existence.
A few years ago I engaged in a prolonged argument that I to this day cannot maintain has been resolved in a sort of “settled” way. Generally, it has to do with the degree of medical support given to people who are not only so sick that they are otherwise not able to keep living independently, but who are also diagnosed with this as a hereditary condition — plus: who were diagnosed with this hereditary condition before they were able to produce offspring. In these cases, I believe society ought to be able to offer these people a deal. The basic idea is that if these people voluntarily allow themselves to undergo sterilization, then they will not only receive the full medical treatment they would receive in any case, but they would also receive a full life pension and be allowed to adopt children (freely, healthy or otherwise) and also to help people living with this condition (if they want to). Basically, this means their own lives and livelihoods would be “guaranteed” in exchange for freely deciding to refrain from spreading the hereditary disease.
I feel as though I am fully aware of the problematic issues involved in such a deal. I also feel that such problematic issues are unavoidable. Most of all, I feel that whereas today issues related to discrimination are not addressed adequately, such discriminatory issues might potentially be significantly reduced under such a scheme.
This is a particular issue I feel very adamantly about. My hunch is that my own personal opinion is probably not a very popular opinion, and yet I maintain that I have a right to express my own opinion.
Likewise, my hunch is that arguments that there exists a sort of “natural right” to life are (on the other hand) quite popular. Yet seldom do people ask the very important follow-up question: which life does the mainstream view propagate? If a person (or other life form) is thereby condemned to an existence of exclusion from a life filled with social activities, from the ability to pursue experiencing happiness or similar conditions, then such condemnation appears much less appealing (at least to me).
At any rate, I feel that a world in which a miniscule minority are allowed to get filthy rich via methods that are clearly destroying the habitats of the vast majority of living beings, such that mass extinction on a global scale becomes the order of the day, then these are crimes against life, nature and prosperity. In conclusion, I would argue that it is much more important to consider whether future generations will exist at all than what such potential future generations might think.
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How to Make Natural Selection Work
Now that I have written this title, I wonder why I have never before considered the context in which the term “natural selection” arose (and how this context perhaps influenced the selection of the term natural selection“). So I pulled a few volumes of decades-old paper encyclopedias off my shelves and in one of them found this sentence:
In the 18th and early 19th centuries what today is called natural selection was thought to be simply a kind of divine government maintaining natural forms in their proper proportions.
“Darwinism” in Encyclopedia Britannica (1973)While this may sound antiquated, it is nonetheless documented (and therefore valid). In our world today, I believe we (humans) must evolve into a species which is somewhat more aware of our own role in the process of natural selection.
One example of this which also seems somewhat antiquated but is now becoming surprisingly relevant is the concept of nuclear annihilation. If a few humans — whether senile or otherwise deranged or not — decide to press a few buttons, the prospect of mass extinction on a scale no one alive has ever seen before can become quite realistic in a matter of minutes.
And even apart from such a nuclear holocaust brought about by humanity, consider also other foolish ideas put forth by quasi-rational human beings — for example that one subset of the entire global population of humans could become independent of other subsets of humanity. Prominent politicians proudly pronounce such nonsense every day … and I cannot fathom how such screwballs actually manage to fool the public into paying them large sums of money to fly around in jets, stand in front of cameras and microphones and thereby to document their own stupidity for all of the world to witness.
Oh, I almost forgot: the whole world is sleeping.
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Human Resources are the Disconnect at the Intersection of Do-It-Yourself and Highly Regulated Markets
First, I would like to acknowledge the influence of the No Agenda podcast in contributing significantly to the conversation concerning the concept of “human resources“. In contrast, my own very lethargic enthusiasm for the topic has apparently taken many decades to crystallize and it was indeed not until I was actively pondering last night that my very long and hardly smouldering fuse has finally become sufficiently smelly as to irritate my senses enough for me to recognize that something seems to stink.
My hunch is that several centuries of dogmatic propaganda have led to my rather dire educational opportunities in this regard. I do not believe to have suffered from poor teachers as much as I seem to have suffered from poor teachings — and not all teachings deserve to be thrown out with the sewage, yet quite a few do indeed seem to be plagued with an insufferable stench.
Having read quite selectively from Adam Smith and Karl Marx alike (and many similar authors of treatises), I have been imbibed for most of my life with a quite steady diet (or should I say “flow”?) of bullshit. Now that the coin seems to be at least falling (although it may still not have completely dropped), I am beginning to wake up to the notion that humanity is actually somewhat unsuited for economics.
While sand and pebbles and rocks and fruit and vegetables and livestock and plants and animals and other life (and death?) forms and natural resources of each and every kind under the Almighty’s heaven may neatly fit into the mathematical formulas widely used to calculate supply and demand, I strongly doubt that the first thought to cross a human’s mind when a person from the homo sapiens species is suffering from bedroom eyes is anything like “oh, dear — we need more gravediggers” [1].
If the so-called “New Deal” (which is now nearly a century old) had mandated the government to pay minimum wages, and thereby enforced something like a minimal “universal” or “basic” income, then we might be living in something like a “Brand New World” — but that didn’t happen. Instead, what we got was war and death and destruction.
Yet I think I need to ponder quite a bit more before I reach a conclusion whether the coin has indeed dropped or whether the fuse has extinguished or blown or maybe whether something completely different has happened.
Source GIF https://y.yarn.co/ef45d2d3-ac41-4919-889e-8804aa475dec_text.gif “The Larch” (Monty Python Flying Circus, S 01 E 03 “How to Recognise Different Types of Trees from Quite a Long Way”) [1] See “Nothing is Certain but Death and Taxes“
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Quantity & Quality
Last week I wrote about what I consider to be an inordinate amount of trust in monetary instruments (see “Nothing is Certain but Death and Taxes“). This week I will follow up with a consideration of something that also seems to be trusted religiously: the specter of science.
I have long since been stupendously amazed at this quasi-religion — and I have little or no doubt that it is truly a matter of belief (if not even something like blind faith). Very few people have an adequate understanding of how science works, the scientific method and stuff like that.
I will spare you (and myself) the effort of trying to clarify such issues once and for all. Instead, let me try to draw your attention to one quite widespread notion that is based on a related misunderstanding of science. This is the very well-known (and therefore widely believed valid) distinction between “hard science” vs. “soft science“. Quite similar to the term “social media”, these terms are bandied about all over the place … yet I doubt they have been adequately defined anywhere. My experience with the term “social media” is that when I ask people to define the term they are usually completely baffled — and then they answer “facebook” or “twitter” or something like that. Just to clarify: If I were to ask someone to define the concept “planet”, then the answers “venus” or “mars” would not be adequate (these are merely examples of planets, they do not define the concept).
I have a vague hunch that many people view the nebulous distinction between “hard science” and “soft science” as roughly analogous (and perhaps even equivalent) to the distinction between quantitative statistics and qualitative statistics (by the latter term I predominantly mean “nominal”-level data, and perhaps also research methods such as the widely popular “case study”).
As I wrote a few years ago [1], I am rather skeptical about such muddy distinctions. Long before I became interested in scientific methods (and the so-called “scientific method” — as if there were actually something like a scientific Bible engraved in stone or at least clay tablets, or maybe a golden figurine of Archimedes bathing in a tub of water), I became familiar with the concept of GIGO (“Garbage In, Garbage Out”), a term which ought to be more widely recognized with respect to so-called “big data”. Today, many things beyond body parts are measured with rulers, tape measures and many more contraptions which will spit out numerical output streams and data streams streaming whatnot mind-numbing numbers.
What is commonly overlooked is the simple fact that numbers do not inherently refer to anything. It is only in combination with unambiguous operational definitions that such quantitative data become meaningful in any way. If I were to say “I saw a dozen examples”, then it would be completely meaningless without answering the question: “Examples of what?”
Source: https://peanuts.fandom.com/wiki/Lucy%27s_psychiatry_booth [1] See “My Old Man” [ https://obit.news.blog/2021/04/30/my-old-man ]
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Nothing is Certain but Death and Taxes
Benjamin Franklin has long since been a role model to me — I consider him to be somewhat of a hero. There are a few other wise men who like Franklin have coined phrases related to certainty [1], but Mr. Franklin was probably the most prominent pioneer of turning coining phrases into coin [2].
image source: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/745697650772281545 Certainty, I believe, is something living beings instinctively crave. We choose our mates this way, we form social groups this way, inclusion and exclusion are not merely signs of success and failure — they are part and parcel of our instinctive inclination towards survival. Our brains are obviously wired this way, maybe simply because we are the survivors according to Darwin’s Law.
There is something deeply ironic about the fact that there seems to be no problem whatsoever in drumming up investment for projects that pollute the environment, while at the same time we consider ourselves to be the pinnacle of development despite the fact that we cannot seem to recognize that a healthy habitat is quite probably the most significant cornerstone to survival.
Yet offer money to dig a grave and gravediggers will show up ready, willing and able to dig it like there’s no tomorrow.
Speaking of nickel-and-dime-ing our lives, I recall that many coins (so-called “small change”) actually cost more to produce (due to the price of their metallic ingredients) than they are worth (i.e., in “face value” as opposed to in public markets). Why there continues to be so much trust and some kind of “sense of security” in such “monetary” currencies baffles me to no end. Granted, I’m also not (yet?) at the other extreme, generally caused by hyper-inflation, where people try to get rid of their cash as soon as possible.
There’s one intriguing huckster story about a guy who developed a scheme to get people to pay him money because he told them their lives are meaningless and empty. [3] In my humble opinion, there is nothing more meaningless and empty than money.
[1] Aside from Socrates, consider also more modern examples e.g. Albert Einstein’s quote “Two things are infinite: the universe and the human stupidity” (see https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein#Disputed ) or Frank Zappa’s quote “There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life”.
[2] I myself also plan to publish a collection of essays I have previously published at remediary.com in print / book form (if you feel like it, please “sign up” in a comment below to receive an autographed copy when they become available 😉 )
[3] See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landmark_Worldwide
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Cleansing Democracy
I think maybe democracy and cleansing have never been quite as closely associated as in this title, yet I also think that maybe it’s about time they are.
This past week or so, populations worldwide have been not only generally alarmed, but have indeed become bombarded with somewhat of a political frenzy. Hardly any of it can be called rational, but I will nonetheless try to make some sense of it.
On the face of it, the argument hardly holds water. Instead of a teapot filled with boiling water, perhaps a sieve filled with liquid glue might be a more appropriate analogy. Let’s take a look at the argument and see whether it holds up:
When voters vote for the wrong political party, that is a threat to our democracy.
No attribution, more or less out of “thin air”This assertion completely baffles me. It is so nonsensical, even George Orwell might have had difficulty comprehending it.
What might be an adequate solution? To cleanse our democracy of such voters? To ban political parties someone considers “wrong“? Or maybe to simply abolish democracy altogether?
Perhaps I should point out that mainstream media has long since been cleansed from the hairy armpits of dissenting opinions. Mainstreaming has become mainstream. Markets are no longer managed by humans. Ordinary people do not show up in the mainstream. They have been Google-washed [1] — and Google is the Pope of the Internet (well, at least for its quasi-catholic believers). [2]
If someone points their finger at you and calls you “fake news”, wouldn’t you be inclined to cleanse that person?
aSource: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Sam [1] According to wikipedia.org, “The term Googlewashing was coined by Andrew Orlowski in 2003 in order to describe the use of media manipulation to change the perception of a term, or push out competition from search engine results pages (SERPs).” See also https://www.theregister.com/2003/04/03/antiwar_slogan_coined_repurposed
[2] See also “If Google is the Pope of the Internet, Then Who Are You & I?“
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A New Perspective on Market Externality
I think the traditional view of the term “market externality” is (more or less) something which cannot be measured in the marketplace.
I think it’s hogwash — and I gave up on the idea that any market externalities might exist decades ago. In my opinion, anything (and everything) can be measured. How accurate and / or precise a measurement is — that is a separate issue. But we are exposed to ball park estimates every day — such as the idea that there might have been a Big Bang about 15 billion years ago.
If Putin will only trade natural resources for rubles — well, that is his prerogative. If someone refuses to trade in rubles — well, that is their prerogative. Markets are essentially exchanges (or trades) of some things for other things — whatever things. Yet if people refuse to trade in one thing or another, then the market’s liquidity can freeze up, thereby leading to market failure.
Let’s try to translate this phenomenon into natural languages. If I understand only one language and another person understands only another language, what chance is there of something resembling adequate communication to take place? Pretty much: nil. Artificial intelligence will not help — all AI is capable of is extracting tepid insights from shallow waters.
In general, I am leaning towards the insight that “market externality” ought to refer to the cases in which individuals exercise their own independence and free will to explore their own ideas and interests rather than limiting their behavior to a mere consumer orientation, thereby refusing to pay only parochial attention to the limited palette of offers in marketplaces. While there seems to have been a brief period in history where the antecedents of such ideas became momentarily available in a widespread fashion, these green sprouts were militarily crushed by capitalist interests who feared such threats to mass industrialization, propagated via mass media to mass audiences, thereby spreading beliefs in mass attention to massive forces and mob mentality (and mob rule).
Source: https://theredheadriter.com/2013/07/to-boldly-go-where-no-man-has-gone-before# In contrast, our own era’s green shoots are rising in an atmosphere of skepticism with respect to religions, propaganda campaigns and bullshit like that. These new green shoots are oriented towards exploring new ideas off the grid, in seceding from mass markets and marketing altogether. These new orientations are more focused on those frontiers which remain wild and free, and which are governed by nothing more than the forces of nature. These efforts and initiatives seek to escape the lethargic mass markets, to liberate themselves from the constraints of industries and governments alike. They are fed up to the gills with the evil pollution propagated via advertising. They no longer hunger for a free lunch. Instead, they are willing to risk going where no market has gone before.
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Trustworthy + Distrustworthy
I’ve experienced a few fascinating experiences recently, one of them reminding me of the song “Thin Ice” (by Pink Floyd, from the album “The Wall”). As a teenager, I was very much “into” Pink Floyd — for example, I might have said something like “I am inspired by Floydian ideas”. I decided to watch the movie again, and I still find it more insightful than simply mesmerizing (though it certainly is hardly sparing with elements of fascination that go pretty far beyond the pale). A while ago I got a hold of “Live at Pompeii” (the “Director’s Cut” version), and I have to say while it is no less mesmerizing, at the same time it is also very clear and revealing of what Pink Floyd is / was all about (in my humble opinion). Although this is quite tangetial to what I want to write about today, there is one point in the earlier movie in which David Gilmour speaks to the camera and says very directly: “you can trust us”.
David Gilmour: “You can trust us.” (from “Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii” [“Director’s Cut”] ) The words I am using in this post are almost all listed in common dictionaries — and that is perhaps one reason why I can say here that you can trust them. In saying something like that, I may very well make Ludwig Wittgenstein turn over in his grave (at least metaphorically speaking 😉 ). Generally, most linguists are quite likely to agree with Wittgenstein that language is a natural phenomenon to be observed rather than being ruled by mathematical logic. We can live unrestrained by the so-called real world around us and simply invent words whenever we feel like it. That said, whether we can employ such inventions as “Floydian” or “distrustworthy” as effective instruments of communication is not only up to ourselves as individuals, but also up to ourselves as members of linguistic communities (of which other members may very well start searching in a dictionary for terms they are unfamiliar with). Which dictionary (or dictionaries) we might reach for is, however, up to ourselves as self-determined individuals.
Personally, I find myself increasingly trusting the entire Internet (as my reference source). I realize that many if not even most people are far more loyal to particular brand names. Let me remind my readers that brands are all about the past, and besides that: they are also irrational media. [1] As such, I find them more untrustworthy than trustworthy. To be downright distrustworthy requires a clear and obvious display of bad intent — such as a business model of misleading naive people (i.e., through propaganda, manipulation, etc.) for hire (which is central to many companies from Silicon Valley — first and foremost: Google).
[1] See also “Rational Media” [ https://phlat.design.blog/2024/01/14/rational-media ]
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Literacy + Publicacy, School + Society
Today I was reminded of an article I wrote probably well over a decade ago, but for which my language at the time had not developed enough vocabulary to talk about the topic in a way that made sense to most people. It made sense to a few, but a few people do not make an audience,
I had not yet begun to work on the term “publicacy” [ https://socio.business.blog/2024/04/29/what-is-publicacy-why-does-it-matter ], and had to therefore work with the more-or-less adequate terms I had at my disposal, mostly “literacy”. [1]
The article explained why schools fail at adequately teaching literacy skills. The long and short of it is that market forces prevent the schools from teaching children about propaganda (and related topics). I myself had never adequately learned about propaganda until I left the so-called “learned institutions” of higher education and stepped out into the so-called “real world” of information. [2]
Source: https://coloringpagesmockup.netlify.app/alphabet-wooden-blocks Neither governments nor businesses, nor even one single industrial sector is truly interested in widespread literacy, transparency or anything like that. If the 99% were able to understand what’s going on, the 1% would be heading for the hills faster than you can say “tidewater aristocracy”. All that literacy is supposed to do is to generate “obedient workers“. [3]
The way so-called “civilized society” has done that for several hundred years is to tell the people to shut up whenever they open their mouths on their own and otherwise to hold their noses closed while they pour in the propaganda … and of course people are not supposed to understand why they salivate like a Pavlov dog whenever they do. [4]
[1] I had also used the term “retard media”, which was by and large completely misunderstood. I am considering at some point perhaps writing a book includnig articles from that era.
[2] I say this even though because such learned institutions assigned texts as “Manufacturing Consent” (see e.g. “A Propaganda Model” [ https://chomsky.info/consent01 ] ) Of course the term “information” is incredibly vast. Let me simply point out that this quadrisyllabic term apparently grossly violates Zipf’s Law.
[3] For your information: the majority of “top ten” results for that search phrase attribute the source to none other than George Carlin 😉
[4] Rolling Stones, “Bitch” (1971)
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Hello … (Not a Song)
Moving right along, many things are wrong. Several things are right, please try them and you might be surprised! 😀
This nugget of an idea came to me (at least in part) via Josepha Haden-Chomphosy, who recently reminded me of this little piece of wisdom by referring to one of her own earlier podcast episodes. [1]
Likewise, the stuff I want to write about today is (of course) also related to stuff I’ve written about earlier. [2]
Many decades ago (and sometimes still today in Germany), people randomly call on the telephone and bluntly ask if you have a few minutes to answer some questions. I always answer equally bluntly: “No.” Such calls usually result in some sort of quasi-research publication, and the results are representative of the the opinions of morons who are not smart enough to answer “no” (or to perhaps simply abort the simulated connection).
Source: https://www.sheknows.com/entertainment/articles/1069893/marlboro-man-darrell-winfields-legacy-not-about-smoking-photos In the USA today, they have moved on beyond this method (of propaganda). In the Wild West, amidst the tumbleweeds, cattle and an occasional Marlboro Man, there exists a vast database of sound recordings simulating real voices of real people. They also have machines, and these contraptions call up telephone numbers and spout marketing message from the moment they get a response. Only in America! (for now …)
Are these studies, communications technology, outdoor advertising (also known as “billboards”) and such “public information”? How about the radios, tv-sets (remember those?) and the so-called daily news? Would you call these things (and their outputs) “common knowledge”? Is this commonplace?
A while back (about a decade or two ago), I quoted a song by King Crimson [3]:
“I repeat myself when under stress … I repeat myself when under stress … I repeat myself when under stress … “
King Crimson, “Indiscipline”One of my friends (who happens to be in the advertising business) immediately remarked that this was one of his all-time favorite albums (and he is probably even more of a avid music-listener than I am). At the time, I didn’t put “2 + 2” together — but now I believe I have.
Several years ago (it was pre-Corona, I think), I called in to a radio program about a new book on the general topic of propaganda. [4] I remarked that since today everything is searchable, there is no need to repeat any “news” … and that since repetition is the non-plus-ultra of propaganda (and advertising), that therefore one very easy way to identify propaganda (and advertising) is the degree to which it is repeated. This observation set the show on fire — and there was a heated discussion between the book author (who wholeheartedly agreed with my opinion) and the so-called “moderator” (who vehemently disagreed with my point of view).
I think moving forward, one crucial publicacy skill ought to be the realisation that whenever we experience an advertisement or a piece of propaganda, that this crap is not a sign of success but rather of distress.
[1] See “Re-podcast: Finding the Good in Disagreement” [ https://josepha.blog/2023/09/04/re-podcast-finding-the-good-in-disagreement ]
[2] Ideally, you would have read every blog post I’ve ever written, but more realistically at least every blog post on this blog, and otherwise I will simply refer to “The Social Construction of Publishing” [ https://socio.business.blog/social-business/the-social-construction-of-publishing ].
[3] Although it was undoubtedly a group effort, the authors can hardly deny the particularly strong impact of Adrian Belew
[4] See “Albrecht Müller: Glaube wenig, hinterfrage alles, denke selbst” [ https://www.sr-mediathek.de/index.php?seite=7&id=13773&pnr=&tbl=pf ]
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