Savage, The Franks? Islam Is Worse

Our friend the half-philosophers may start to huff and puff, as “Franks” were citizens of a federation (actually two of them, the one of the Sea, and the one of the River; the one of the Sea, or more exactly, Salt, is now known as Salian, or Salic).

Whereas “Islam” is a thought system, devised by some Arab warriors (PBUH), who got a good gig going for themselves.

To put in the same basket an ethnicity and a religion  is what some half-philosophers would love to call a “category mistake”. The irony is that I know (the basics of) Category Theory, and they don’t.

In Category Theory, there is a concept called a functor, which allows to go from one category to another.

Is Islam a functor from life, to death?

In other words, because I know of functors, I can mix and match different categories such as Franks and Islam, and be relaxed about it (instead of being all gripped and unimaginative, as the average constipated half-philosopher; notice in passing that the concept “functor” was invented by the philosopher Carnap in linguistics).

The historian Pirenne, long ago, suggested the thesis that the collapse of the economy in the High Middle Ages was caused by the Islamists (Islam confiscated most of the Roman empire, and imposed a total embargo, cutting not just the Paper route, but the Silk Road).

In other news, On Fascism, Russian & Islamist Edition, Feb 26, 2015, a plan surfaced for the invasion of Ukraine, written more than a year ago, by some major Russian plutocrats, who have influence on Putin and are best buddies with the leadership of the Russian “Orthodox” Church.

Don’t worry, anybody involved will soon die, and things will calm down, this is Putin’s way.

There is a clear self-censorship going on throughout the West right now, because people are scared of these fanatics, the Putinists, and the Islamists. This, in turn, is deleterious to any critical mood, thus discourse, thus adverse to fixing any problem.

One cannot have a sane public discourse if one cannot even draw a human being. Having public insanity in place of public discourse will affect the Republic, to the point it will die, and that is why it died in all and any nation that submitted to Submission (aka “Islam”).

TODAY’S ISLAMISTS: MORE BARBARIAN THAN THE FRANKS, 16 CENTURIES AGO:

As it rose Christianism destroyed the Roman Republic (or what was left of it). In 363 CE, under fanatical emperor Jovian, an ex-general, a systematic policy of burning libraries got started (Jovian may have been behind the assassination of laic emperor Julian, I am speculating). In 381 CE under ex-general Theodosius, then emperor, laws were passed to enact a “War Against the Philosophers“. Heresy (“making a choice”) became punishable by death.

The Roman empire, which still had many characters of a Republic (which officially it was… Now a “Christian” Republic) exploded.

However, in the next century, in the West, the Franks took control, and build a Catholicism so moderate that it made Paganism, Judaism, and Apostasy all legal (and conversions in all directions).

Interestingly, the Franks, who soon built what they called “Europe”, as an empire, have the reputation of uncouth savages. “Frank” means Ferocious, not just Free.

But the Franks had no problem with Catholics becoming Jews: entire village converted, until the priest was the only Christian in town. Charlemagne himself, 4 centuries after the Franks acceded to power, had his friends call him “David”, because he wanted to be like Israel’s King David (not a friend of God, according to the Bible).

Compare with the savagery of Islam: somebody who leaves Islam is to be killed, say the Hadiths.

So what of the supposed great intellectual tradition of “Islam”? That sounds strange, on the face of it. What about the great intellectual tradition of Christianism? Well, the answer is that there is no such a thing: as soon as he became a fanatical Christian, Pascal produced nothing. All great “Christian” intellectuals are intellectuals first, and, second spent the reminder of their mental capabilities avoiding the fire in which the church wanted to throw them.

In France alone, around 1530, three major philosophers were burned alive for having contradicted Catholicism. This explains why Descartes, a century later, preferred to live in the Netherlands.

Contrarily to repute, the situation with Islam was even worse. At least, in the West, intellectuals could engage the Church in full combat, and they often won. This is a direct consequence of the Frankish leadership submitting the Christian leadership, starting in the Fifth Century. After that time, the Church was never again the government of the West (except inside the Papal states, a gift of Charlemagne, later de facto rescinded).

Famously, around 1300 CE Philippe IV of France and his vassal the English king engaged in full submission of the Pope and his army. The Pope and the Templars both ended judged, dead, and, more importantly, taxed.

So what of these great Muslim thinkers? The answer is that most of them were, truly Jewish or Christians, or very recently “converted”, or then did not finish too well.

ISLAMIST SCHOLARS WANT TO KILL YOU:

The fact is, the greatest Muslim university, Al Azhar in Cairo, is definitively founded on what the Franks, 15 centuries ago, would have viewed as barbarian principles. It actually refused to condemn the “Islamist State” as not conform to Islam.

Al Azhar has decided that those who renounce Islam and their children ought to be killed:

“In the name of Allah Most Gracious Most Merciful

Al-Azhar

Fatwa Committee

A question from Mr. Ahmed Darwish who presented the question through Mr. (Blanked out) of German nationality:

A Muslim man of Egyptian nationality married a Christian woman of German nationality. The two spouses agreed that the aforementioned Muslim man would enter the Christian religion and join the Christian creed.

1. What is the ruling of Islam regarding this person’s situation?
2. Are his children considered Muslims or Christians and what is their ruling? 

The Answer:

All praises are due to Allah, lord of all the worlds. And peace and blessings be upon the greatest of all messengers, our master Muhammad and upon his family and companions all together. As for what follows: 

We inform that he has apostatized after having been in a state of Islam, so he should be asked to repent. If he does not repent, he should be killed according to the sharia.

As for his children, so long as they are small they are Muslims. After they have attained maturity, if they remain in Islam then they are Muslims. If they leave it, then they should be asked to repent. If they do not repent, they should be killed. And Allah knows best.

President of the Fatwa Committee of Al-Azhar

Seal of the Committee

September 23, 1978”

http://www.councilofexmuslims.com/index.php?topic=24511.0

Our civilization was founded on rejecting this sort of savagery on the part of Christianism. When the Islamists appeared, the Franks considered them to be a Christian sect, the Sons of Sarah (Saracens). Let’s persist in rejecting the savagery.

Antique Greece was not just defined by what it built, but what it rejected, the Barbarians (those whose talk sounded animal-like: barr… baa). One cannot be positive all the times, otherwise positivity itself loses meaning.

Patrice Ayme’

P/S: After publishing the preceding, it came to light that the Islamist State, applying literally the savage texts that guide them, destroyed Mesopotamian art more than twice older than the invention of Islam by the raiders (Muhammad and the father of his 6 years old child bride, etc.). isil-video-shows-destruction-mosul-artifacts-150226153158545

There is no savagery but savagery, and Islam is its prophet?

The Brain Is A Web, Thus So Is Reason

When one looks at linguistics, biological evolution (in the most general sense, including eco-systems), neurology, civilization, one does not see trees, inasmuch as we see webs with reactive (not to say intelligent) strands.

The latest news, in neurology is, indeed, that the white matter, made of glial cells, axons, oligodendrocytes, etc. itself reacts (not to say “think”).

Why should not reason itself be the same?

Should the brain be according to reason, or reason, according to the brain?

Once reason has become a web, it has a non-trivial topology (in particular with a genus).

Old Explanation: Genetic Evaluation. Truth: Plain Scary

The genius of genus.

The next natural question is whether reason has a metric, a geometry, a notion of proximity. Indeed look at the brain, namely, the mind. Some nerve impulses go as far as possible, all along a motor neuron, or along a long axon. However, others go short, and are manipulated, not just at the first synapse they meet, but even before this, along the axons themselves.

Some will fear for reason, as they read these lines.

But a model exists, in physics. Renormalization.

As a field strength augments, approaching its putative source, the field itself modifies the effect it is supposed to describe. There is no general theory of how this works (although some field theories are known as “renormalizable”).

To put it in terms non-specialists may understand, the force varies with, and because of, the force itself. In any case, electromagnetism starts with 1/d^2, and ends up very different.

Actually, any physical explanation adorned with a non-linear feedback resists to linear logic (hence the problems modelling a lot of natural phenomena, from thermonuclear fusion to hypersonic flow).

Look at the mood of submission to Islam: ever since the Charlie Hebdo attack, a general bending of reason to savagery, a vile submission to unreason, with the pretext of tranquility, has imposed itself. Representing something resembling what some imagined a so-called “Messenger” would look like is frowned upon. Outright censorship is applied in the Anglosphere.

(It is not just ironical, but an example of thoroughly dysfunctional, discontinuous, self-contradictory reason: as depicting human beings and gods is forbidden in Islam, so how would true Islamists know what their god, dog, messenger, or whatever would look like?)

Another meta-example is graciously offered by mathematics itself. Mathematics is the field depicting reason itself. However, it does not have safe foundations.

Category Theory was actually strong, because of the mood that underlays it. Namely that foundations, globally, should not be worried about, while, locally, much progress can done by making them richer (that’s what Grothendieck did).

So, once again, we see that reason is rich, and can get richer, but it is local, not global.

Evolution, as understood for most of the Twentieth Century, was driven by chance or weird considerations about reproduction (animals were supposed to prefer so and so because it allowed them to reproduce better… as if they cared!) For example, we were told the Peacock’s tail was there to show to females the beholder was healthy, hence would bear them more children.

(More refined recent studies show the obvious, just as with eyes on butterfly wings, Peacock tails may rather be scary devices, as anybody who has deployed an umbrella for a lions would know.)

Chance is here to say, but the big Damocles sword over facile explanations is Quantum Physics itself: the Quantum is teleological, and no doubt impact both genetics and epigenetics.

This means that the most inner machinery is not just potentially teleological, but really teleological.

That Biological Evolution did not exploit what is, after all, the most fundamental law of the physical world, the Quantum Process, as it progressed according to physics for 4 billion years, is, frankly, impossible.

Patrice Ayme’

Tangled Network of Civilization

Civilization is like a living organism, it’s even a living creature which has to be created again continuously.

Consider a few examples:

“Monetary policy is a serious issue. We should discuss this in secret, in the Eurogroup,” Jean-Claude Juncker, then chief of the Eurogroup, said at a Brussels conference on economic governance in 2011.

Indeed. Juncker allowed some of the largest plutocratic institutions in the world to escape taxes, in the order of trillions of dollars. He is, morally, a criminal, one of the most prominent. Thus, he is in charge.

Mr. Dijsselbloem replaced Mr. Junk. He is sour. He has a problem with the Greeks.

Westerners Came From The Orient

Or, more exactly, the Middle Earth. On top, in orange, the Steppe Origin of English, 6500 years old. On bottom, the Anatolian origin, older by 2,500 years. In an intermediate theory, Anatolian roots went up to the steppe, first. This sounds more natural, because the first cities came from Anatolia. Agriculture followed an even more southern route, through Crete and other Greek islands. In any case, (white man) language then went down to India.

Dijsselbloem is chief of the Eurogroup, since 2012, he whispered to Varoufakis, the Greek Finance Minister. “Congratulations, you just killed the Troika!”. Varoufakis said:”Wow!”

Dijsselbloem does not represent the Troika… So what does he represent? The desire for a career similar to that of the guy who took over the party that Dijsselbloem joined straight out of high school.

That guy, Kok, became Prime Minister of the Netherlands, and later, after stepping down in 2002, became one of the most importantly rewarded politicians in the European Union, getting onto countless boards of “private” companies, such as Royal Dutch Shell, the ING bank, the privatized TNT-Post, etc.

Professional politicians ought to be outlawed, just like professional slave traders have been. And for the same reasons.

Civilization needs to be defended. Against the atavistic impulsion of the few to kill and abuse the many.

The CEO of HSBC, a bank suspected by authorities to finance hard drug networks and Al Qaeda, among other unsavory activities, is 55 years old. In 2003, 12 years ago, this remarkable creature got a secret bonus, worth ten million dollars or so. The bonus was so secret that nobody at the present HSBC knew about it. The money was in Singapore (did I need to say so?)

As Mr Junck above said, financial conspiracies are best conducted in secret. Only thus are they highly profitable. All the so called “Dark Pool” money passes through numbered accounts, diamonds, drugs, weapon and terror… to get cleaned and untraceable. HSBC Switzerland had 1,500 secret Saudi accounts.

As the Libyan dictator charged with his entire tank army into rebel Benghazi, after proclaiming all rebels would be kill to the last, the French Republic was right to destroy it. Civilization has to be saved, and this starts with destroying the enemies of civilization and humanity. However, after some French troops helped in the taking of Tripoli, the West got cold feet, and then unwisely left Lybia to its own instruments.

The situation in Libya was not going to be simple.

The West had a duty to send ground troops and help set-up a highly federalized society, where the oldest civilization could thrive again. Several part of vast Libya are vastly pre-Islamist, and even pre-Hellenistic.

But Libya is part of the roots of the West: Roman emperors’ families came from there. So Libya, and these roots, have to saved, just because they remind us of, and preserve, the reasons that helped bring us where we are. So they explain us, and embody our principles.

Some of the people who are the direct descendants of one of the oldest civilization fight for that, and their 3,200 year old Tifinagh alphabet. They need help. We did not give it to them. In no small reason because we obey force.

After he caged the FNL (Algerian Front National de Liberation) leader, (then French president) De Gaulle went to negotiate with him. Why? Not because Ben Bella was right and carrying the torch of civilization. No. Just because Ben Bella was strong. Being the leader of a terrorist group.

De Gaulle thought he could make Ben Bella an offer he could not refuse, gangster to gangster. (‘I give you Algeria, and also the Sahara with the oil, and the people therein who hate your guts, in exchange you give me UN votes.’) It was favorable to Ben Bella and the FNL, but De Gaulle just wanted to cleanse France from the non-French Algerians (I withdrew momentarily the appropriate epithets).

This is no way to build civilization.

At some point, it used to be fashionable, in the USA, to accuse some (typically French) intellectuals of “Orientalism”. (Those behind the fashion could be tracked to oil interests, of course.)

However, “Orient” was the notion used even before the rise of Rome… In fear of the future rise of something in Occident: as agriculture migrated West, with the rains, people in the Middle East could guess that the next superpower would be in the West (the sacred prophecies were kept in Republican Rome, as the most sacred book).

We are all from the Orient, and recent genetic studies have show just this: as agriculture migrated west, so did the farmers, through the Aegean islands such as Crete (the first publications on the genetics of this appeared in 2014, although the overall theory is much older).

The New York Times has this long article on the origin of English, the “Tangled Roots of English”, admitting finally that some cherished notions of linguistic are silly. Well, the silliness goes further than that: French (Germanized, abstracted and simplified Latin) and English (greatly a Franco-Normand invention), have about 80% words in common.

So the tree of linguistics is wrong. It’s not a tree. Just as with genetics, it’s more a network than a tree.

And it’s of course the same with civilization: a network, not a tree, and one, with many roots, not many, with no roots.

We come from everywhere, thus everywhere is our business. There is no civilization but civilization, and entanglement is its nature.

Patrice Ayme’

Power Hinders Knowledge

Man is the wisdom animal, Homo Sapiens, yet, still first a beast, when wisdom is not brought to bear.

Wisdom has a soul of its own. The human beast has a different problem: eliminating the competition, hence an obsession with power, the first step towards eating the enemy. Interestingly, Paul Krugman is increasingly entering this dark universe, with explanatory schemes fully compatible with them (although they may leave many of his normal readership behind for now).

Wisdom, in man, has always been technological. The genus Homo evolved without serious canines, no claws, or (generally) horns,  and little strength, because his hands were made to carry weapons, and his arms to swing them hard, and precisely. This made humans, even female and young, obviously extremely dangerous to all mighty beasts (who therefore learned to take a wide berth, from buffalo to lion). We have evolved with that, and through that, this technological singularity, not to say singularization, for at least five million years.

Earliest Glasses Depicted, Starring Hughes de Provence (1352).

A bane of civilization was that as it advanced and became ever more precise and learned, the most competent scholars and artisans, upon reaching the age of their greatest expertise, middle age in the Middle-Ages, were unable to work or study. Glasses were invented around 1285 CE in the republic of Florence (please notice the word “republic”; the republic was established in 1115 CE; because it cared about the public, it invented glasses, or so I say).

Science is us, and it protects.

In “Knowledge Isn’t Power”, Paul Krugman observes that: “sounding serious and being serious are by no means the same thing, and some of those seemingly tough-minded positions are actually ways to dodge the truly hard issues.

The prime example of recent years was, of course, Bowles-Simpsonism — the diversion of elite discourse away from the ongoing tragedy of high unemployment and into the supposedly crucial issue of how, exactly, we will pay for social insurance programs a couple of decades from now. That particular obsession, I’m happy to say, seems to be on the wane.”

It was both an obsession, and a delusion. An obsessive delusion: creating a terrible crisis now to avoid a possible one, in a few decades. It worked; much of the Obama years were wasted, pondering it, and making savage cuts, including in future defense systems and science.

Then Paul turns to “a new form of issue-dodging packaged as seriousness on the rise. This time, the evasion involves trying to divert our national discourse about inequality into a discussion of alleged problems with education.

And the reason this is an evasion is that whatever serious people may want to believe, soaring inequality isn’t about education; it’s about power.

Just to be clear: I’m in favor of better education. Education is a friend of mine. And it should be available and affordable for all. But what I keep seeing is people insisting that educational failings are at the root of still-weak job creation, stagnating wages and rising inequality. This sounds serious and thoughtful. But it’s actually a view very much at odds with the evidence”

Paul ought to have been more precise here. The plutocrats and their obsequious servants allege workers don’t have enough brains to work, except in low qualification jobs… As demonstrated by the fact they earn little.

It’s like saying that the king of France wore a 15 million euros costume because he had been chosen by god.

The Rate Of Return on Investment is highly dependent upon new technology, and thus new science, and thus education and even intellectuality.

Thus fighting savagery is not just a question of civilization, it’s a question of ROI.

Rising profits for the few is both cause and consequence of monopoly power. Ultimately, the monopolist capture education itself. To get a post high school education in the USA right now, in a prestigious university comes easily for those who can pay the university twice the post-tax income of the median family income. In other words, it is reserved to the 1% or so.

The CEO class is entangled with the hereditary plutocratic class, which justifies its existence by giving exaggerated salaries to CEOs.

Any civilization is in a race between technological progress and ecological exhaustion. That means a race between education, science, philosophy and savagery, obscurantism, superstition. Any society is in a race between inequality and justice. To persist, let alone improve, the human condition, these races need to be won.

Humanity is in a quiet period right now, a bit similar to the withdrawal of the sea before a tsunami. It’s obvious terrible, never seen before problems are brewing at the horizon. The greenhouse effect is going to enter non-linear acceleration any year now. The human population is soon to be nine billions while the climate becomes ever more erratic.

All sustainable societies, those which lasted centuries, made it so that the few could not end up with all the power. Otherwise they quickly went from Republic to plutocracy: the Middle-Age Florence is an example.

The Roman Republic lasted 5 centuries, but it had an absolute limit on the wealth a family could control. That law broke apart when Rome became a global power, as the plutocrats were able to evade taxation. A century later the Roman empire at its apogee was able to use taxes on wealth to finance education and welfare, but, after the death of Trajan, this system broke apart, and Rome fell in terminal plutocracy. The fate that awaits us.

***

In the 1960s, a young university professor could achieve instantaneously an upper middle class way of life. Now only senior professors, after a few decades of career, can hope to do so.

And this “career” itself is a continual harassment, with less than half the “professors” achieving tenure.

And this is true all over the economy. And not just in the USA. In countries such as France, the teachers’ salaries and the esteem the profession gets, are so low, that the state is reduced to find volunteers at the National Agency for Employment (that is among the unemployed).

The piling up of money on a few individuals has broken down the meritocracy. “Merit” is now defined as the moral ability to admire financial gouging, and the will to partake in it.

This rapacious mood, of serving high finance, has infected all of society, and has made more sedate activities such as teaching, or thinking, less valued.

The continual evaluation of the worth of individual according to how much they earn and can afford, as the public sector shrink, is ruining not just the economy, but also souls and minds, thus leading to a lack of ability to soberly assess what ails us.

What ails us is the shrinking of the public sector. Education ought to be essentially something for everybody, something for the public. Instead it has turn into what privilege can enjoy, the entry to the higher class.

That was tried before, by the Celts. Only the upper class could access to reading and writing, jealously guarded by the Druids. Thus the Celts got defeated by the better educated Roman masses.

The Celts (aka “Gauls”, Gaulois) had a much larger army, with a much larger cavalry. They also had better weapons (they actually fabricated and sold to the Roman the weapons which equipped the Roman army)

However, although Caesar succeeded at some point to infuriate most of Gallia, deep down inside, the Celts knew that the Roman civilization, Romanitas, was founded on a better mentality.

This why the Celts, Germans, and Brits once converted to Romanitas, never rejected it (the Boudicca revolt in Britannia, just as the Vercingetorix revolt in Gallia, were pretty much driven by hot heads; differently from what happened in Judea, they were not repeated).

This is also why, once the Franks came up with their superior No-Slavery model of civilization, that was not rejected, either (except for the outcast movement to enslave Africans, launched by the king of Portugal in the Middle -Ages, which ended miserably in 1865).

Fighting inequality enables more to contribute their minds to the advancement of wisdom, thus brings higher wisdom.

That’s why the Punic and Celts civilizations (truly rough plutocracies) were replaced by the Greco-Roman, in turn replaced by the Franks, and why the Franks, by 1000 CE, had the most advanced technological civilization.

Overall, although here and there China, India and the Middle Earth had some elements of superiority. Europe was pulling ahead, because the lack of slaves forced to use machines and devices (glasses, clocks) ever more. Where a Chinese or Indian emperor wanted something done, an army of slave children could do it. Whereas in Europe, sovereigns had to negotiate with grouchy old men.

That was so true that, when the Mongol Khans ruled from Hungary to Vietnam, and Moscow to Southern India, they made irresistible offers to Parisian artisans to build fancy machines in Karakorum.

Education in a civilization means equality first. Power to knowledge means no power to the few, because power to the few means power to the worst. And very little brainpower, overall.

It is because woman was weak, that she became ever wiser. Making a few humans strong as gods, we go against the very principle that made humanity evolve as the better angel of creation.

Patrice Ayme’

Non-Conservation Of Energy & Multiverse Madness

Before unreason took over physics, one of the major principles was energy conservation. However, this was before. Now Sean Carroll, following other Multiversists (as I call them insolently) crucially depend upon nonconservation of energy.

Sean wrote an article, short and to the point: “Energy is not conserved.”

Well written, indeed. Carroll glibly asserts that “see, it was not so hard” (to throw away the most fundamental principle of physics, energy conservation).

Galactic Cluster Focuses Blue Galaxy Light

All the blue blotches are images of a far-away galaxy, which are focused by the cluster of galaxies in front. By the way, both Newtonian Theory and Einstein Theory predict the deviation of light by matter (more so with Einstein, as time slows down, allowing for more time to deviate).

The Universe we have, and can see, is so immense, we can’t comprehend it. There is no need to claim there are more of them than atoms. Except if there is a need to go completely crazy (something Putin and other plutocrats are all for!)

That energy is NOT conserved is essential to enable the creation of universes at the drop of a hat.

Nothing is really true anymore, even energy is not conserved. It costs nothing to create a universe.

Next we will all be led to believe plutocrats create not just jobs, but universes.

It’s probably related. Thanks, Sean.

So take two galaxies clusters, G1 and G2. Suppose they separate from the expansion of the universe. Sean Carroll, following the Multiverse fashion, asserts that it cost no energy to separate said galaxies.

Then he has a photon P travelling from G1 to G2, and he sees it has lost energy, so energy is not conserved. Multiversists repeat this argument ad nauseam.

In truth, what they stumbled upon is that the definition of mass-energy in the Theory of Gravitation is not clear. That’s all. The difficulty has been known for generations of mathematicians (behind closed doors). However, it does not mean that physics reduces to dust.

It just means one has to go back to Riemann’s intuition of the 1860s, and reconsider it carefully. Riemann tried to reduce force to geodesic separation. I would suggest to reduce energy to a function related to geodesics density. As geodesics separate, energy is put in the system. With this notion, the fact that it costs nothing to create a universe disappear. https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2013/08/08/quantum-trumps-spacetime/

Physicists can’t reduce the universe just to physics, physics has to reduce to mathematics, too, at least in part.

One may wonder what the Multiversists reduce physics to. Apparently, having done away with energy conservation, a fundamental axiom, they replace it by universe creation. They reduce all of physics to the creation of universes.

Dark Energy, the accelerated expansion of the universe, questions the entire scheme of present day cosmology, let alone physics. Starting the conversation (logos) by throwing out the most sacred principle of physics (energy conservation), and replacing it with instant karma is as glib as glib gets.

Instant karma? Thanks to the alleged non-conservation of energy, the creation of trillions of universes per second per cubic meter is eminently reasonable.

Does that makes Middle –Age theology sitting angels on pinheads a plausible outcome? This is reductio ad absurdum, if I ever saw it.

Quantum Field Theorists may smirk, and accuse me of not knowing that energy is not conserved in QFT

The time-energy uncertainty relation seems indeed to allow for large energy excursions, if they happened in a short time. But that’s related to “virtual particles”, which admittedly are neither virtual, nor particles… Just resting on that would allow a universe in a length of time so short it has no meaning (because it has no clock).

Agreed, physics is hard. Agreed, today’s “Standard Model” of High Energy Physics explains only 4% of the universe.

But that’s no excuse to go crazy, and see gazillion universes on every pinhead.

That only help the crazies.

Crazy like foxes, crazy like plutocrats.

Patrice Ayme

The Future Of The Soul?

Evolving, And Collective, The Soul Still Exists, And Science Is Its Prophet:

Is it useful to speak of the “soul”? Why not? Why to deprive us of words? Over the millennia, the word “soul” had many meanings. No, immortality is not necessarily a property of the soul.

There was always physics, and, thus, there was always metaphysics. The latter being the logical universe of the former. There will be always physics, and thus there always will be metaphysics.

Metaphysics is what is beyond physics. Any logical discourse has a universe that is beyond itself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_of_discourse

Our Soul Decides What It Means

And mathematicians have agreed to disagree with themselves about metamathematics:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universe

Thus, both physics and metaphysics are moving targets. So the soul, naturally, should be, as understanding progresses. But we thinkers, are hunters, and we go after the biggest preys. We need an unending chase, to feed our souls.

To each stage in the mentalization of the universe, to each stage in human understanding, its own physics, metaphysics, and thus, then notion of a soul.

Neurology indeed enables to embody some of the notions of soul Aristotle floated across. One can speak of the “German soul”. And the “German soul” has changed.

Quantum Physics has started to spawn Quantum Biology, thus, soon, a scientific system of ideas that will be best described as “Quantum Minds”, not to say Quantum Mentalization.

If one brings all what we know about Quantum Physics, to bear on what the soul could be, our mental universe, the universe of possibilities and the imagination, tremendously expands.

The Quantum is characterized by waves, something intrinsically vague (pun intended, except it’s not a pun: “wave” and “vague” have the same root).

Quantum waves are non-local, and entangled, so they embody (sort of, as they constitute, de facto, the “ether”) something going much further than the body.

When a mind is operating, a beyond-astronomical, beyond-set, beyond-category, entanglement of wavy delocalizations is self interacting. This is the soul.

The Quantum Mind, per its very nature, is hard to know: it’s always changing, and interacting with it is a more-than-delicate matter. So the very question of whether it survives is inappropriate.

Souls are always interacting with souls. Quantum-interacting (even though the interaction goes through classical means, that is, particles, at some point).

Thus souls survive in the collective.

Ever more arguments, and even now experiments, show that those waves, while not particles, are endowed with an ethereal existence capable of differences, thus identity.https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2015/02/14/structured-light-why-light-slows-down-in-water/

One of the philosophical lessons of Quantum Physics is that local is global. Another lesson is that the particular world (the world of particles), is only a minute part of the world. This universe is full of waves, and Dark matter is its prophet.

Full Quantum Neurology is a soul in waiting. Only thus will consciousness be explained. Meanwhile, as physics cannot even get started on consciousness, we have to admit, just because of that, its incompleteness.

Notice in passing that the Quantum Biology based soul does not suffer of predestination problem often plaguing old fashion religion. The Quantum seems to say that the spirit is everything, and has a global reach, but still, it is, somehow, local. That’s unifying, somehow, very disparate and traditionally contradictory notions.

Our moral discourse needs to know there is more than us, because our discourse itself is more than us, and Quantum Wavy, besides. Morality needs a universe, the framework Nihilism is deprived of. And, logically there is more than us. This supplement d’ame, we give it a name, the soul. We are a discourse, the soul is our universe. Amen.

To diminish words and concepts diminishes the reach of our poetical imagination, central to mental creativity. Let’s not be afraid of words. Let’s, instead, endow them with refresh meaning.

Patrice Ayme’

Commonly Accepted DELUSIONS: FOLLIES That BIND

It is common to condemn the madness of the crowds, and to wonder about all sorts of follies, conflicts, moods and ideas favorable to mayhem.

Why so little wisdom in so many moods and thoughts systems?

Because there is a higher sort of wisdom therein.

For millions of years, the greatest enemy of man has been man, the man of the distant tribe. Proper ecology required to find them repulsive.

Atrocious Delusion Binds Judaism, Christianism, & Islamism

[Crime binding innocence to extinguish it. Should we call Abrahamism, the “Would-be Child Killer religion“? That would distinguish it from Hinduism, Buddhism, Shintoism, Taoism, etc.]

DELUSION IS A SIGN THAT WE BELONG:

How does one recognize friend from foe? By a signal. It could be the color of a skin, the color of a badge, a flag, and other visual or auditory signal (an accent, say). However, the ultimate structure is a brain structure. They fall in two classes: ideas, and moods.

So, to recognize the friend, the one who has the signal, and the foe, the one who does not, it’s best to entertain a particularly strong signal.

One not seen in nature. That will be best, because no doubt very special.

But are not the most clever, and wisest ideas and moods, faithful reproductions of nature?

Yes.

So the best way to identify a friend, and thus foe, are most stupid and most unwise ideas, and moods.

This is why Judaism, Christianism and Islamism celebrate the would-be child killer, Abraham his name, as their founder. The idea of killing one’s child is assuredly unnatural, unwise, most cruel, and grotesquely inhuman. It’s the ultimate dumb atrocity: destroying the species, starting with one’s flesh and blood.

It’s abominable. Thus it’s best to identify friend (the one who expresses intense admiration for the same despicable madness) and foe (the one who has kept common decency, readily distinguishable as alien, therefore).

What do we see here?

The madness, the insanity which binds.

Thus many delusions are the cement that does not just unite the group, but even defines it.

No doubt delusions will also help to unite those scatterbrains (schizophrenic) minds some of us suffer from.

Delusion can be the crucible of the many, and the cement of the one.

Madness in crowds and madness of the one, thus spring from a common logic of human ethology.

Are all groups defined by delusions? No, the Directly Democratic Republic can define itself without a common madness (this is why Switzerland holds together, in spite of its four official languages and several religions). By insisting on the basic ideas and moods of our common humanity.

This is why the Republic can be enough of a religion, the one that works, without delusion.

Human nature is made to make one out of many (mental fascism). That’s how lions and hyenas were fought (just as baboons still do it: by making the troop into one giant superorganism). Making one of many was also what was necessary to stay competitive on the (human meat) market: if one did not want to become dinner for the other guys, one had to stay united.

Thus humans sharing a group have a strong instinct to think all the same. In two ways: to define the group, even if it means through a delusion, and to make the group fight as one.

(The more crowded the human population, the more delusions will have to define groups; this is why nationalism grows with the crowding… the latter being relative: considering its technology then, in 1900, Germany was relatively more crowded than now; hence the rise of German fascism, which went in parallel with the explosion of the German population, 1850-1914…)

Yet, human beings are truth machines. That’s an instinct going the other way. Because herd animals think all the same, they cannot think anew. Except to stampede, somewhere., or search for the simplest things: new grass, water.

Those who search for truth will avoid the group (all the more as it is all too often defined by a delusion).

Searching for truth is more human, and a way to reach for greater survivability.

Hence the one, the philosopher, will, by necessity, fight the group. Between the delusion which define the groups and the truths, which define the philosopher, it’s a fight to death. The spirit of philosophers always won over the madness of the crowds.

Yes, delusionists, and illusionists are fit for attack, especially when they engage in mass delusion. It’s a matter of collective safety, for the world community. The reason for this is that delusions feed aggression. Delusion is entertained to create the group, the troop, with aggressive purpose in mind.

In particular, theists. Especially of the would-be child sacrifice type (Abraham his name).

As I explained, the main reason for collective delusion, just as for individual delusion is to create a system of mind (moods plus thoughts) that binds.

Thus, the fundamental reason for the collective to bind through delusion is aggression. Either real, or potential. Exclusion and alienation are aggressions. Mass delusions enable them.

Mass delusions such as various sects of Abraham (the word ‘sect’ comes from cutting: chopping heads is what sects do best).

Mass delusions are obsessive about aggression. Be it supposedly for resisting aggression (real or imagined), or committing it, in any case, making it as the big thing in life, worth deluding one’s mind, just to identify as a group, and enjoy the pleasures thereof.

Delusion such as: ’I am the Elected People, not that’s me; I prove it, by exterminating you, etc.’

When a religious group goes around, exhibiting its religious appurtenance, it exhibits its delusion. Thus, implicitly, its aggression.

And size matters. Because the size of a threat matters: when groups of predators fight each other, say lions versus hyenas, generally the side with the greatest total mass wins.

This is why French public schools forbid religious symbols of more than such and such a size, or why schools in Britain impose uniforms (and that’s even better).

WE ARE ALL SCIENTISTS; “BELIEVERS” KNOW THEY ARE DELUDED:

Believers know they are deluded, deep down inside. That’s why they are so aggressive, when confronted to their incoherence.

In Copenhagen last week, an Islamist assassin shot at a Freedom of Expression meeting, killing and wounding, and then repeated the performance at a Synagogue, killing and wounding. In a freezing rain, 500 deluded fanatics came to the killer’s burial. Let’s hope the police and secret services took a lot of pictures.

Experience shows fanaticism makes a universe most pleasant to those who dominate it.

Experience is what gives us a ground for all our propositions. This is important, because it means, whether they know it, or not, all human beings are scientists.

This is why the notion of “believer” has been introduced. It, all by itself, is a delusion. A deliberate, collective delusion, to create the group (and then proceed with some crusade, jihad, ghetto).

“Believers” are precisely those who believe in NOT applying science, for the most important metaprinciples.

However, what they have to apply every day to function as animals, and full human beings, is based on what is called “the scientific method”, but which is simply common sense, systematized industrially.

Thus “believers” fundamentally, do not believe!

Patrice Ayme’

 

Deluded Leaders: Eurogroup, Saudis, Netanyahu. Obama?

Obama is asking Muslim leaders to “do more to discredit the notion that our nations are determined to suppress Islam, that there is an inherent clash in civilizations.”

Sure, there is no clash of civilization. Civilization is one. Islam is just a religion. One of a great many. Islam itself is many variants, at war with themselves. To define a civilization from the religion(s) it harbors is not just abhorrent, it is silly.

There is no civilization but civilization, and reason is its messenger.

Verily, reason is not everything, experience is both its prophet, and its ground.

Some countries are led by savages. They can call themselves judges, kings, whatever. Savages them all. A savage judge, or a savage king, and a savage intellectual or doctor of the faith, are all, still, savages.

Can we share our small Earth with savages, in the age of nukes? Likely not a sustainable proposition.

Charlemagne Was Most Ferocious, But Magnus, Indeed

[Charles the Great, with his nephew, Roland, on the Parvis de Notre Dame.]

Saudi Arabia is owned by some of the world’s most savage Plutos. Raif Badawi was condemned to 10 years in jail, to be struck a thousand times with the whip, and a huge fine. His lawyer, for daring to defend him, got 15 years.

What is Raif’s crime? He wrote: “Muslims, Christians, Jews, Atheists are all equal”. Raif protested the religious authorities who wanted to condemn astronomers in general: in Islam, the Moon is not a physical body, but a signal from god (the savages got that from the Pagan religion in Mecca, before Islam; it was centered on the Moon, accompanied by 360 deities… hence the “Satanic” verses).

The Saudi authorities said that astronomers relativize everything (a charge made by the Christianofascists to burn, alive, after piercing his mouth, astronomer Giordano Bruno four centuries ago). Relativizing everything makes Sharia impossible to apply, whined the Islamofascists in Arabia..

So Raif got 50 lashes of the whip. He has only 950 lashes to go. That’s lenient, if the authorities had decided he was an apostate, he would have got death.

Is somebody in Saudi Arabia culprit of adultery? The punishment is stoning to death. Don’t fear for Jihadists: they can grab and rape whoever they want. They just call their prey a “battlefield bride”.

Hey, Muhammad, the “Messenger of dog god”, showed the way: he took many “battlefield brides”. Including the seventeen year old Safiyaah, and the twenty-year-old, Juwayriya, both Jewish girls.

Islam is not a civilization. It’s just a superstition.

So what is Obama talking about? A clash of civilization with a superstition has happened before: twice Christianity had to be crushed into submission. The first time by the Franks, over a period of four centuries, which culminated when the Pope “surprised” Carolus Magnus (Charlemagne) on Christmas 800, by crowning the imperator of the Franks, Roman Augustus (“Roman emperor”) in Rome.

(As Constantinople did not have an Augustus at the time, Charlemagne was technically single emperor of the entire Roman Empire, a feat that infuriated leaders in the Greek speaking part, the Pars Orientalis.)

Juncker, the organized criminal who heads the EC, has received the letter from the democratically elected Greek government. Juncker transferred, over the years, trillions of euros of tax evasion from We the Peoples of Europe, to plutocrats and their private jumbo jets, islands, foundations, palace, etc.

“If we break our mutual trust, we break Europe,” croaked German finance minister Schauble. He added, trying to sound perfidious: “I have compassion for the Greeks as they have an irresponsible government.” Me, I have compassion for Schauble, and want to push his wheelchair around the Grand Canyon’s rim, as I discuss the error of his ways.

Inside the Eurogroup. Varoufakis screamed to the Dutch finance minister that he was a liar. Ministers of the Eurogroup feared that the two were going to come to blows.

Is the Dutch finance minister a liar? Certainly so. The Dutch finance minister probably wants a cushy job offered by Wall Street, as all his peers and predecessors did, so he would say whatever it takes to please Goldman Sachs, a plutocratic USA government entity which got 60 billion dollars from the government of the USA in 2008 (which it later reimbursed with more money given under the table by another agency of the government).

The European leadership is crawling with High Finance employees, past and future. It should be as high a priority to put them in jail as Jihadist. Indeed, they caused the later. Hey, even president Obama said this!

Obama said that poverty alone doesn’t cause terrorism, but “resentments fester” and extremism grows when millions of people are impoverished.

“We do have to address the grievances that terrorists exploit including economic grievances,” Obama said.

And who has caused the global economic crisis? Foremost, High Finance. Fundamentally, it’s the same mood that brought us slavery, and the worst imperialisms and colonialisms, let alone holocausts.

Obama also revealed one of my favorite themes: no single religion was responsible for violence and terrorism. By this he means that, in the fullness of causality exposed, the violence of Islamism is just an amplification of the one that made the fortune of Christianism.

Obama wants to lift up the voice of tolerance in the United States and beyond, he said. Well, there is a name for that: Laicity.

***

THE ELECTED MOISE OF THE ISRAELI GHETTO?

Israel PM, Netanyahu wants all Jews to come to Israel. Apparently his model for the future of Judaism, is something in between the Warsaw ghetto and Auschwitz. Maybe one should present to Netanyahu another part Jew (suggested the governor-general of Poland, Hans Frank).

Netannyahu does not know history enough.

There were Jews in Gaul, three centuries before the first Christians showed up. Later, for something like seven centuries, in the empire of the Franks, and the “Renovated Roman empire” that followed it, people were free to convert from Catholicism, to Judaism. As Catholicism was rather ferocious, entire European villages converted.

Thus Judaism is more of a European religion than Christianism itself.

After the mad return of Christian fascism around 1095, with the First Crusade, which started with massacring Jews in Germanic lands, many Jews converted to Catholicism (whether voluntarily, or not). Thus many Europeans have Jewish ancestors.

To say that “the majority of Europeans were complicit in the attempted annihilation of the Jews,” as Roger Cohen did in the New York Times, is a heavy accusation. My own family saved more than 100 Jews, at enormous risk, barely escaping a hunt by the Gestapo, and I just don’t believe that, at least not in Western Europe (for complicated reasons, Eastern Europe, with the exception of Poland, was different).

Most French Jews survived: of the 75,000 Jews deported and killed in France, most were central European refugees, that the USA had refused to admit.

Now as far as the Great Leader’s ardent invitation to all Jews, the following problems arise:

1) Where to put them? In the rest of the occupied Left Bank of the Jordan river?

2) The inhabited part of Israel, so far, is very small. Half a dozen H bombs would annihilate all the population there. Thus, if the Great Leader assembles there all the World’s Jews, he potentially creates the ultimate ghetto, the ultimate extermination place for Judaism.

Supporters of Chelsea football club (7 to 8 blacks, owner, a Jew) ejected from a Paris subway carriage a French citizen, Mr. Souleymane, because he is black. They started to sing: We are racist and we like it. Other black passengers left the carriage, including a woman.

Souleymane brought a formal complaint, Scottland Yard and the French police are inquiring. Meanwhile a group of teenagers were arrested.

Meanwhile Obama said: “We have to confront the warped ideology, [the “extremists”] attempt to use Islam.” He added: “it’s not a clash of civilization. That the West is in war against Islam is an ugly lie.”

Indeed, there is no clash of civilization. Please, don’t tire me by calling the Greco-Romano-Frankish civilization “Christian”. It’s ignorance to do so. The Imperium Francorum had no state religion. Nor did the Renovated Roman Empire, starting in 800 CE (nor does the USA, by the way).

The Franks picked up what they wanted, or invented, in Christianism. Two centuries, but a universe, separate emperor Constantine, and Consul Clovis.

Christianism was never the state religion of the West. OK, not quite: the deluded plutocrat Louis XIV (War Be Upon Him! WBUH!) established a state religion in France, Crapolicism Catholicism, while destroying the country, and his name ought to be dragged in the mud, and burned through the sun of Enlightenment,  five times a day, by Western civilization patriots. (Instead of gawking around some monuments the maniac erected, with gaping mouths.)

Even Saint Louis, who ejected the Jews, had to admit he could not kill the unbelievers as he wished, because that was against the law. Even Louis XI, two centuries later, who cracked down on the heliocentric theory of Buridan (1320 CE), protected the Protestants, using his soldiers and force (yes, that was before Luther’s birth).

On day one of Islam, Muslims started to kill each other about what Islam exactly was. That’s when the divide between Shia and Sunni started.

Well, civilization has an answer: Islam can be all it can be. As long as it is compatible with civilization.

Patrice Ayme’

Delusion here, observation there

A delusion is a belief held with conviction despite superior evidence to the contrary. Yes, but what is a “belief”, and what is the “evidence” and who holds it? Moreover, who is “superior”? Well, of course, the holder of superior wisdom.

Thus “delusion” is an imminently relative term.

Sometimes, it can be profitable to entertain a delusion, points out a professional philosopher in Scientia Salon in “The upside of delusional beliefs”. Just as many a psychoactive drug can be beneficial to avoid pain.

To a non-theist, all theists are delusional. And their madness is far from being always innocuous.

Viewed As A “Jew”, Freud Had To Flee His Native Austria

What’s a “belief”? First of all, it’s a conclusion, an abstraction. Sincere Muslims of the Wahhabist cult decided the Qur’an, Hadith, and Sunna are real.

Someone who is not a Muslim, reading an Hadith saying that the “Messenger of God” ordered to kill all Muslims who were viewed as having abandoned Islam, will feel that the Muslims are gravely deluded.

Deluded about what?

Deluded about the whole thing. Deluded about the existence of the “Messenger of God” as really a messenger of god, and a messenger of a real god, deluded to believe really Muhammad said this, and deluded that this so-called “Messenger of God” still should be admired, followed, enacted, etc.

Tied to any delusion are entire systems of thought and moods. Including a universe of “observations”.

Once people have decided something is real, it becomes real enough. At least for them. If it has become real for them, it’s not a delusion anymore. As far as they are concerned.

Many people with cancer entertaining the delusion that they have been cured, although they are dying from it, have made the decision, at the deepest levels of their minds, to believe that they are doing well. So does the antelope devoured by the predator. What choice do they have? Making themselves even more unhappy by giving up all hope?

“Delusionem” means a “deceiving”. Sometimes we have interest to deceive ourselves. But then the question arises whether the interest is short, medium, or long term. Or if it profits one’s parents, friends, tribe, species, or highest valued principles.

American humor tends to be delusional: under the guise of playing around (ludere), it plays down (“de”), the dignity of the human spirit. That’s why it tends to be self-deprecatory.

What would be the interest of that delusion?

To please those who fear the honor of the human spirit, the plutocrats…

Self-imposed delusion is a belief that, though initially known to be false, or unlikely, has been surrendered to and accepted by the whole mind as a truth; illusion is an impression that, though false, is entertained provisionally on the recommendation of the senses or the imagination, but awaits full acceptance and may not influence action.

Delusions can hide in moods. In the USA, height is more important than in Europe.

The Fed website gave the physical height of its chair, Janet Yellen. Now that it’s clear that Yellen is not a towering figure, it will be felt that her ideas are coming short…

American CEOs, and other leaders are, in general taller (in absolute and relative terms) than their European peers. The best way to measure ideas?

This shows a delusion can show up as a mood, mostly: the citizens of the USA, at least the upper class, is more impressed by sheer physical size (reflecting a lack of other factors to evaluate greatness?)

Have human minds been designed?

Conventional Delusion: No. Evolution proceeds haphazardly.

Advanced Wisdom: Yes. Even so-called “Darwinism” selects a selection process explaining evolution is adaptable. “Signare” means to choose, mark, appoint. Clearly, at the very least “natural selection” (and especially of the quantum kind, soon to become evident) is such a choosing.

And what is selected by natural selection? A species survival. Species are designed to survive.

Survival can be short term, and psychological, in term of a dying patient, or being measured in terms of hundreds of millions of years.

Blaise Pascal wrote:’Vérité en deçà des Pyrénées, erreur au delà’ (Truth becomes falsehood when crossing a mountain range). Delusion here, observation there, goes even further.

Plato in his cave, complained all was illusion. However, the entire evolution of the human species is about acquainting ourselves with truth, abhorring illusions, embracing delusions only as drugs, psychological extensions of massive endorphin release (“useful” when devoured… Useful to the one devouring, of course!)

Evolution is a complicated thing, delusion, simple.

Patrice Ayme’

High Finance Mafia’s Ultimatum to Greece

Moods rule the world. When the mood was tolerant upon making fortunes from overseas slavery, fortunes were made in Europe and the USA.

George Washington inherited ten slaves at the age of ten, when his dad passed away. When he died he and his wife had hundreds of slaves. Washington spent a last few weeks of his life making great efforts to catch a slave of his wife, the 22 year old Ms. Judge, who had escaped to the north. Washington never freed one slave, in spite of the huge pressure from his friend Lafayette.

Lafayette to whom, after all, Washington owed his presidency: Lafayette persuaded Louis XVI to go to all-out war to create the USA; on the way, he disobeyed the King’s orders, and the monarch sent him to prison.

Enough Games With High Finance, Time For War

At Thermopylae, 300 Spartans blocked an army of several hundred thousand savage slaves of plutocracy for days, before being literally stabbed in the back. However, the Spartan delaying action allowed the Athenians to evacuate Athens and prepare for the battle of Salamis, where the giant Persian fleet (composed in great part of captive nations), was sent to the bottom of the sea.

That was in 480 BCE. A time when the Greek invented, and defended a new civilization, Direct Democracy. That time is with us again. The despicable suspects of the Eurogroup are the new savages. They have to be fought, and for that, the mood has to change. Enough tolerance for High Finance.

Lafayette was a mood changer. Later, given the order to fire on We The People, as commander of the National Guard, he refused, and made the Revolution of 1789 possible.

Slavery was a mood. A satanic mood.

What are today’s satanic moods?

Moods depend upon moods. Putin’s mood depends upon the fact he has seen Western plutocrats getting away with murder and ridiculous assertions.

The mood, in the world, is that those who create, and get to play with, money, rule the universe.

Unbelievably, the “Eurogroup” (all the finance ministers of the governments of the Eurozone) sent Greece an ultimatum.

“The Greek authorities committed to ensure appropriate primary fiscal surpluses and financing in order to guarantee debt sustainability in line with the targets agreed in the November 2012 Eurogroup statement. Moreover, any new measures should be funded, and not endanger financial stability.”

As Paul Krugman puts it: “Translation (if you look back at that Eurogroup statement): no give whatsoever on the primary surplus of 4.5 percent of GDP.

There was absolutely no way Tsipras and company could sign on to such a statement, which makes you wonder what the Eurogroup ministers think they’re doing.”

Krugman is right on that one.

What the Eurogroup ministers are thinking is that, if they want their careers and retirements to advance nicely, they better abide by the mood of High Finance.

Varoufakis replied with: ”No Time For Games In Europe.”

He starts this way: “ATHENS — I am writing this piece on the margins of a crucial negotiation with my country’s creditors — a negotiation the result of which may mark a generation, and even prove a turning point for Europe’s unfolding experiment with monetary union.

Game theorists analyze negotiations as if they were split-a-pie games involving selfish players. Because I spent many years during my previous life as an academic researching game theory, some commentators rushed to presume that as Greece’s new finance minister I was busily devising bluffs, stratagems and outside options, struggling to improve upon a weak hand.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

If anything, my game-theory background convinced me that it would be pure folly to think of the current deliberations between Greece and our partners as a bargaining game to be won or lost via bluffs and tactical subterfuge.

The trouble with game theory, as I used to tell my students, is that it takes for granted the players’ motives. In poker or blackjack this assumption is unproblematic. But in the current deliberations between our European partners and Greece’s new government, the whole point is to forge new motives. To fashion a fresh mind-set that transcends national divides, dissolves the creditor-debtor distinction in favor of a pan-European perspective, and places the common European good above petty politics, dogma that proves toxic if universalized, and an us-versus-them mind-set.”

I sent this letter to Varoufakis (the New York Times published an abridge version):

Dear Mr. Varoufakis, Finance Minister of Greece. Civilization is not a game, indeed. Game theory assumes selfish players (as you, an academic with a career in Game Theory says). Civilization is not about selfish players exclusively. High Finance is, though.

Civilization is just the amplification of human nature as it is meant to be, at its best, inside a tribe. However the peaceful life of a tribe depends upon the fundament of humanity, and that is love.

Without love, no human baby would ever survive more than a few days. We are born out of love. So is civilization. Sustainable civilization, that is.

In the past century, Germany had a pattern of atrocities that rested on the meta-principle of obeying orders from authority, no matter what.

That is in Kant, as Eichmann pointed out for his “defense”. Anything else was “Schuld” (debt, fault).

So Germany had a pattern of finding “right” only what fit its leadership. So far the banking crisis in Europe has brought Germany 40 billion Euros in profits it would not otherwise have made (as investors flocked to German sovereign debt). Something similar has happened with France (making lots of money from the crisis).

What authorities are German authorities now evoking, to act as robots anxious to keep Greece as a “debt colony”?

Obviously those who escaped after extending the loans that could not be repaid, private bankers from such nations as Britain, France and Germany.

The world is still under the order of High Finance. For High Finance, Greece is an example that needs to be made. For those who want to break High Finance, the new Greek government shows the way.

Because “right” has to be defined according to the Greek people, not a world of High Finance, which has long gone completely mad.

To check for madness, see the $800 trillions of financial “derivatives”, more than ten times world GDP. Contemplate also France, which has four banks that, should any of them fail, would bring down the world financial system.

You suggest to target “large-scale corruption” instead of the Greek middle-class with its privately owned pharmacies. However, the largest-scale corruption in this world is High Finance itself, the authorities German authorities abide to.

Greece saw worse, at Thermopylae and Salamis. Sometimes, it is right to fight, just because it’s right, no matter what.

If one is to die, one better die, standing up in defense of the right principles.

Patrice Ayme’