Twitter, Isegoria, Parrheisia, Democracy

One of the advantages of democracy is debate, which brings a higher intelligence to the collective. What Musk can do at Twitter is to elevate the debate, while making Twitter a trusted source, a necessary condition. 

Here is an example of outrageous error which sets up an erroneous mindest. Stephen King wrote a sexist tweet alleging that Ukraine would not have been invaded, had Putin been a woman. That’s in complete contradiction with history; it’s Czarina Catherine II who invaded the five regions of Ukraine which Putin annexed, and then in her 1785 Charter of Nobility, imposed abject servitude to all peasants. This is an extremely important point of Russian history, and also even deeper, a crucial example of how perverse systems of thought can become. Catherine had tout pour plaire: but she was a horrendous human being… Early on, she had to… But later on she was fully basking in the Dark Side. 

Correcting these sorts of errors can set up the correct mindsets: elimiste errors to get at the truth, and eliminate especially facile, seductive errors. Truth in emotions is also important: top US politicians made often, quite deliberately, and for quasi-racist reasons, life very difficult in cities, but them we are supposed to cry in the loudest manner when they get hurt by the crime they fostered.

A way to do this is to correct immediately false or erroneous tweets with “community notes” statements which are false or out of context, and which Twitter is rolling out.  

This is not censorship. Correcting an error requires to exhibit it. Censorship is what the New York Times, when it blocks comments that its editorialists use later to write their own stuff.

The Greek term for citizenship is πολιτεία [politeia]: one could be called a citizen – πολίτης [polites]from πόλις[polis], the city-state. The Greek term for constitution is also politeia. In contemporary fake democracy, one equates politics with having an elected representative, but savage Germanic tribes had that already when they invaded and destroyed Greek democracies. One US “representative” “represents” 770,000 people, which seems several times klarger than the largest German tribes when they invaded the Greco-Roman empire.. 

Civilization Means Debate, Not Censorship

The next step for Twitter could be to rate with a star system various shades of truth, potential truths, inspirational truths, and truths which would be highly significant if there was something to them. It’s not just that statements could be more or less false, but also of more or less significance, potential or otherwise. Most of history is the fruit of conspiracies, too, and those need to exposed, past, present and future. That refined reputation system would allow in particular to extract out of extinguishing obscurity propositions which would otherwise never be seen and thus considered, by the public at large. 

The Greeks correctly thought that Isegoria (everybody has the right to address assemblies) and Parrheisia (everybody should be able to talk without self censoring) were pillars of democracy. That has been forgotten.

Isegoria and Parrheisia can be achieved with some sort of Twitter like system… which would then become a treasured public utility. So, Musk could succeed, should he succeed to install a system as sketched above, making truth and significance foremost. Truth is not made just of true propositions, but also of significant errors on the way to that truth, and how to detect them. 

Patrice Ayme

Greek temples divinized the city-state… They also were painted in vivid colors and came sometimes with up to nine disability ramps per temple. What is there not like?

On The Moral Necessity Of The Aggressive Method. Earth Against Apes.

“All it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing”

(Paraphrasing a well known expression of reality.)

Why? Bad people -evil- or individuals behaving diabolically are guaranteed: indeed not just are there zillions of ways to be bad, and they are hard to avoid… But there is a most fundamental psychological reason for evil:

Evil generates conflict, and conflict masters the human condition. Si vis bellum, para pacem. War generates neurological peace.

You will ask me: why don’t we humans want harmony instead? Because harmony brings the mental space for the contemplation of one’s human condition, that is of human’s desperately ominous fate. Harmony brings thus, neurologically speaking… nothing. Neurological peace is nihilism. Only the most debasing subjugation justifies it neurologically.

Neurology is made to be active: fight or flight is its friend, so is building, achieving, and, overall, strongly emoting. And not just that: neurology is made to handle complication, and, overall, debate, which means beat thoroughly.

Hence the seduction of mayhem, even when it makes no apparent sense, because that other, deeper, sense, filling up a metaphysical void, is always there. 

All this mayhem makes Putin a friend of nerves, indeed… Too much of a good thing in this case, of course. Russian gas has been cut off in France weeks ago. France is perfectly OK, didn’t even notice. The current account of Russia, from a deluge of oil, is catastrophically positive. The world war against the demented nuclear tyrant has to be won. All this is known. Repeating faithfully the insanities of Putin makes one a criminally insane fascist. All such matters are good neurological stuff, excellent material to forget that life ia scream told by an idiot, signifying nothing… Something that neurology knows is false, or it won’t exist…

A dominant way of achieving evil is through studied nonchalance, politeness galore. Politeness is what made the polis possible, except now old fashion politeness is killing the polis.

***

So here I was, confronting a number of authoritative types, elected to various functions and owners of this, that and the other thing, who had concocted in combination with landscape architects, arborists, board members, and official government organization (French ONF, Office National des Forets) and the like, a plan to cut more than 60% of the trees in a park, some of them 100 feet tall. All the reasons they gave are bogus. My preferred one was that, if one did not cut some of the trees now, they may die in ten or twenty years.

Unfortunately for these learned powers, I have used this park for decades, often writing below the trees. And so did my dying mom. A number of individuals, very much in opposition to the project, tried many things to block it, and then sued (I am part of the lawsuit). At a party, though, I had the occasion to meet with some of the proponent of the project, who head some board(s), acted important, and hid their cut-60%-of-trees determination behind nebulous considerations about the elective process.

My position: those who cut large trees without extremely good reasons are criminals, and nebulous hypocrisy or authoritative mines are no refuge. I duly expressed very loudly my decisive position, adding that the governmental ONF was corrupt (it makes money and power from cutting trees).

***

Many participants were outraged by my outrage… But, this is the sixth extinction. And the invasion of Ukraine is part of it (Putin wants to grab one of the world’s wealthiest agricultural regions).  

Truth and reality is what will save us, as determined through debates. If authorities can’t dominate a debate and all they do is to use the Führerprinzip (we the authorities rule absolutely), they should be, at least, attacked verbally.

***

Long ago, I knew a very high level (C suite) executive of a major oil company (Total). A major real estate development was going to happen next to his birthplace, in the Calanques (seeadjoined picture). He used his considerable technical knowledge, and James Bond like personality, to physically sabotage the project, causing millions of dollars of destruction to enemy machinery. The project was abandoned as a result, and the area is now part of the National Park of Calanques… This was long ago, passed all legal delays, and my friend died (violently, for principle in an unrelated matter as he refused unethical orders). 

***

Eco-terrorism is sometimes terrorization of eco-criminals and that’s terror, as deserved and ethically required.

We, and our planet, are past the time of niceties. Or even the time of blahblahblah, as Greta Thunberg pointed out…

Most of the leaders of the planet exude stupidity, arrogance, mediocrity and astronomic vileness. Those infamous inclinations are not just their motivation, but their propellant. The very way according to which leadership is established, that is the present leadership by greedy, haughty apes, instead of a leadership by strong debates and creative ideas is what is bringing disaster.

Respect for said leaders and how they got selected (by the powers that be, mustering elections) is what ciments the process. 

Aggressively denouncing that violence, or aggressively counterattacking it, is the only way to get out of it. 

Far from calling for stoicism, the insufferable, when there is still hope, doesn’t call for the other cheek, but for stabbing through the heart, as John Snow does to his lover and queen, who “always will be his queen”, the beautiful and heroic warrior queen in Games Of Thrones, Mother of Dragons, after she says, all mesmerized by her own power:”they don’t get to choose”… Speaking of everybody else.

John Snow was doing the aggressive thing, the most aggressive thing, as advised by his closest counselors, and flowing down from his two sisters… And he did it in a fully timely manner. We are all victim of our beautiful queen, this so-called “democratic” system, which doesn’t work: it fed Putin, and this year the emissions of Greenhouse Gasses will probably be the highest, ever (so much for the ridiculous Paris Accord). 

There is still hope for saving the biosphere. But there is no hope for the present world political system. We must act accordingly. 

Saving all big trees from destruction should be one of the tenets of the new religion we need to rest our ethical system upon [1]… That and another few hundred ecological commands.

And we should call them commandments, as the old religions had it.

As it is, our self-congratulating leaders are just apes. We, and the planet, deserve better. We deserve debate… ethymologically the most aggressive thing, neurologically speaking….

Patrice Ayme

What my friend saved through eco-sabotage.

[1] In its biased and soporifically soothing climate projections, the UN climate panel (GIEC in French; IPCC, International Panel of Climate Experts) always stuffs in a mysterious, and misleading carbon capture mechanism. In truth, that man-made carbon capture does not, and will not exist (before we get free energy, say from fusion, freeze the CO2 out of the air, and inject it in basalt). The only carbon capture mechanism we have is forests made of large trees (besides plankton in the sea, and deep ocean currents, for now). Big trees are not enough per se, but they will certainly mitigate… even before using genetic engineering to grow fast really enormous trees… which is one modest solution I would propose….