Words, words, words.
Those who sling words in functional capacities, meaning not as entertainers, know painfully well how substance can be faked with appearance using words.
What matters is not the words, but their meaning — and not their meaning as intended, but as shared between receiver and sender. If only one party understands the meaning, it does not exist.
When meaning is shared, it exists in that two or more independent actors are enforcing it through their choices and ideation. It has taken on a form beyond that of a single notion, and grown.
But for most of the words spoken, printed or recorded here on planet earth, the purpose is not to share meaning but to lure the receiver into thinking something is being said that is not, and then to induce them to rely on that false meaning and act to the advantage of the sender.
The simplest example is the used car salesman: “It runs like a dream,” he said, not bothering to mention that his only dreams are nightmares.
Words mislead us in many ways but in politics perhaps the widest and vastest effects are seen. For example, we should ask ourselves: If we are such great humanists, why is daily life inhumane?
Most of our people go off to jobs. Very few of these require much effort, so there are all manners of “make work” activities invented: meetings, trainings, paper trails and compliance frameworks.
For those who have truly linear tasks, like factory work or food service, the day instead is a progression of repetitive actions which drive the personality into a recessive state.
Those who are in some position of leadership or power might have it worst, because they’re essentially janitors who clean up after the illogical, childish, emotional and judgmental outbursts of others.
Not to mention that our cities are inhumane. Most dwellings seem designed for the comfort of the machines that service them, and are loud, attract dust, provide unhealthy air, etc.
Even our products, which are better than the options thanks to the magic of free markets, are usually blockheaded. You can tell they are designed by committee, and thus try to do too many different things at once and do none well as a result.
Politics itself is inhumane because no one ultimately gets what they want. They get representation, which means they voice their opinion, everyone else does the same, and then some compromises are produced which can be voted for. Important change: none.
Then there are a number of problems which we pretend are just a part of life and we should all grow up and face them.
Crime is treated like solar rays — an inevitable part of existence for time immemorial — when most experts acknowledge that a relatively small minority commit most of the crime, and some societies clearly have beat high crime in part by confining or dissuading such people.
We figure that late hours at work, long lines at offices, traffic all over the place, and general incompetence are just like the weather too. But in some places they are beaten also, usually by better organization and filtering out the dysfunctional people and tasks.
The promise of industrial society was that it would reduce the amount of work and tedium in life, but instead it has just thinned it out. Where once we had intense work and tedium, now they have infected everything and we have a lot less free time.
Free time is essential for people to get to know themselves, to socialize and to spend with their families. It helps them develop skills that while not necessarily pay the bills, give back to society.
There is only one reason for our inhumane society and it is paradoxically our humanity. In a desire to include everyone and make everything equal, we have stretched out and evenly distributed the disadvantages of society.
As a result, people are constantly embittered and scheming, feeling that somehow they are getting screwed by a world that doesn’t care. It’s inhumane, they think, and demand more humanity, which restarts the cycle at a higher intensity.
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There is a lot of good stuff here, I just don’t know what to comment upon. Sigh.
I get the impression leftism is much worse in the US than Sweden, even though all our parties are in different degrees to the left. Perhaps that’s due to concensus.
The unhappy people feeling screwed over by the world is something I just don’t recognize. I believe it must be due to differences in population, pollution and general health. The air is clean here, you can fish prawnfish from the waters of the capital and they don’t carry the toxins to hurt you. In general, people exercise and sport or lift weights. Some are miserable, but overall it’s a comparatively healthy people. The population increases very slowly.
Except for our immigrants. They populate like crazy. They do act much more like leftism portrayed here. They belong to a subculture and help each other out.
Perhaps they have some tradition that the kids are supposed to take care of their parents when they get old. Very friendly and caring, they have a big need for people to like them. Not like socialist swedes at all.
They vote socialism so that they won’t have to deal with the problem. Let the government take care of the poor so that they won’t have to touch the problem. We are rich enough, anyways, so why not? It’s a humane people, but not very caring at all. In general.
My experience tells me Cesar Millan is very to the point with managing a pact. “Exercise, dicipline, then affection.” Nixon must have made a very bad move when he introduced high fructose corn syrup amongst other things. Bad health must have turned the american left into something very strange.
“I just don’t know what to comment upon.”
In this case you can tell a story that has no connection to the original post. Many do so.
Geu dolen zie sheubenhauber?
Ras auchen doe fischitzeuben im dar auberwurtzenschoebeneiger.
Im zo scheizen!
Не понял.
You don’t know the half of it, Tucken. I’ve been to Sweden and observed how there are so many things that are together, and I admire things like the folkhogskola which are like our vocational schools here, but much more of a quality, respected institutions where in the US we treat them like the places kids go when they can’t handle the classroom and the desk. We are just barely getting any inkling that not all young people are cut out to be trained for desk work, as most of our school system wants to do.
I loved how Stockholm proper is full of woods and paths because Swedes consider it part of their heritage to have a little wild space around them.
I did also see that there are many immigrants. My host family would make racist remarks about them but not as bad as the ones the folks back home would make.
I consider that Sweden started out with a more homogenous (sp?) cultural population and it was easier for people to come to a consensus that they were going to put health and wellbeing at the top of the priority list. I remember the word ‘lagom’. They wanted to make everything good and right. The immigrants were allowed in for humanitarian reasons but I’m sure it was also for a cheaper labor pool as in the US.
So here in the States poor people often are uneducated and have poor nutrition because of the compounded problems of culture, alienation, and it just being a young country. The people we call rednecks are there because of historic issues. If you want to see what they’re about watch a documentary called The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia, which is an extreme example. Great show.
I don’t see how we could directly address their issues because when you put them on welfare it rewards the worst quality of that culture. They do best when they’ve got something to prove and something good to fight for, as their original roots were the fighters in the Cumberland Gap and the American Revolution. Now they’re a mess! There’s nothing to say to them. Helping them with welfare is not helping.
There are all kinds of ways to live and all kinds of successes that come out of failures here, and then failures born of successes. This is why even if the US improves, it will probably not be in a way that socialist Europe might recognize. For example, I would rather see healthcare uncoupled from employers and government and make it perhaps nonprofit but perhaps more like our telephone networks. If you don’t like one cellular company you can find a better one.
I’m kind of rambling but I like your last point about Cesar Milan: Exercise, then discipline, then affection. I need that myself!
The US is different, indeed.
I believe socialism had it’s place in history but now it’s time to move on. The only saving grace is the general political consensus which exist over here. That’s why it works, and socialism have the quality to get the people on it’s side. Otherwise it’s really not that great. In my opinion. But having people on your side is more important than politics.
People ARE spoiled now, so what do we do about it? They won’t let go of their wealth.
Liberalism is old also, a dead idea. The men who came up with it are dead, only the idea lingers on. Something fresh is needed. We can take what we want from history and make use of it, but I don’t see how it’s possible to reimplement century old politics.
With something new, people will feel refreshed. They can unite and step forward. 5% of America is not enough. The collapse will happen anyways. Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Japan, India. Etc. There will be a chain reaction. We may not be able to afford it. There’s not much time. =(
A peaceful cultural revolution is needed, indeed. Honesty is a great concept, but so far it has a very political angle. Most of all leadership is needed, someone who unites people under a new fresh banner. It won’t work if it stinks left or right. It’s easier to walk forwards than it is to convince people to step backwards.
Making most use of the web is a great idea, in my opinion. More people movement, less politics. A web-based people movement could prove far stronger than pushing politics.
p.s. I do believe Millan says it goes only for dogs, not humans =). But for a pack of humans?, a people, it sounds just great.
Words are a carrier. People put too much faith in them. All our thoughts are rooted in pictures. The bigger the word, the less it means. (first thing I learned getting my MA in linguistics many years ago.)
“If only one party understands the meaning, it does not exist.”
If a party understands something that does not exist, it’s a mental disorder.
An understanding man becomes normal, or even a genius, only after being understood at least by one another man. Before that he must be kept in a mental asylum.
I will ponder upon this.
An understanding man could never “understand” if he knew no language, because consciousness is based on language.
“Con-sciousness”, by the way. The word speaks for itself.
It’s rather Talmudic logic that is a mental disorder.
“When meaning is shared, it exists in that two or more independent actors…”
The process of sharing of something that does not exist until shared!
It’s a leftist idea: one has no money, then shares it among others, and everybody are rich after that.
“The promise of industrial society was that it would reduce the amount of work and tedium in life…”
I’ve never heard about such a promise. I’ve heard about people making money in a competitive environment.
“Free time is essential for people to get to know themselves, to socialize and to spend with their families.”
It’s a part of the Quality Of Life (not the Living Standard that can be reduced to making profit).
If people were informed about this notion of QOF, our life would be different:
people would be able to care about traditions, education, arts, spirituality, sef-improvement, etc.
Labels, definitions, concepts etc etc etc
If people were more concerned with living and being human, instead of inventing all sorts of quasi-useless academic labels and concepts that are just some mental abstractions, with no influence on reality, we would still have humanity, instead of inhumanity.
Just because some people are “concerned with living and being human”, they have found that income, profit, etc., do not help them living human life. These people tried to understand what we have to pay attention to instead, and came with this conservative notion of Quality Of Life, which includes echology, culture, and the like.
Many people simply cannot articulate what they need in order to differ from pigs; this notion helps.
If you are so negative about definitions, “concepts etc etc etc” and regard all that as a useless stuff, why not to forget for a while all letters, words, your own name (they are merely labels, after all), and to be perfectly human at last?
Share with us the results of this experiment.
Are you really believe one have to be under-educated in order to be human?
You are distorting my words to mean what you would like them to mean- just like the person who, when being faced with a critique of excessive use of technology retorts “ohh, you want to live in the stone age with sticks and stones”.
Now, my post doesn’t attack real education (as opposed to modern institutionalized one), words, letters or whatever you say, does it ?
There is only one thing each person needs in order to “differ from pigs” – that is to find the meaning of his life in what transcends life. Each traditional civilization illustrated it very simple, without applying labels or “systems”, and each person’s responsibility is to live up to this ideal to the best of one’s ability and with the means available to each. To try to force such a vision to fit in some sterile definition, devoid of actual principles, is to kill it completely.
Abstractions such as the “QoF” do not serve for anything, except more academical, sterile and impotent talk.
People who are not caught in the net of the modern mentality and still organize their life according to timeless principles simply participate to quality, without the help of academia. Those who are afflicted by the (post)modern chaos are not going to be saved by mechanically following some definitions and “standards” set forth by armchair philosophers.
Can you tell the difference between the standard of living and the QoL? Most people are unaware about QoL and believe the higher the standard of living we have the better is our life, when in reality this belief is destroying our society.
QoL and QoL Index are useful practical tools that have nothing to do with abstractions.
I don’t know whether I should try to prove it or not. From your comment “Abstractions such as the “QoF” do not serve for anything…” is impossible to figure out why you don’t like it: because you know what is wrong with it (but decided to keep this knowledge for yourself), or you have decided that QoL sounds like something that cannot be useful in principle, and it would be better not to waste time on checking the definition.
I don’t know why I’m writing all that after I shared my opinion that was commented with “Labels, definitions, concepts etc etc etc” and nothing specific except finding the meaning of the life in what transcends it.
If it’s so concrete and simple, why are we talking? Let’s better start looking for that meaning, without trying to use any ideas and concepts that are close to values of traditional civilizations.
But be sure, if you are not trying to use every opportunity to promote these traditional values, you will be a member of a small group that does not grow, and there will be no chance of resurrecting a traditional civilization.