Generalize (“Cartesian”) Doubt To Emotions

There is a difference between seeing something and integrating it in a system of thought… the latter being called understanding.

People can see corruption, inequality, fanaticism, fascism and many other noxious features, but still not understand them, and thus can’t project them into the future (and their inacceptable, disastrous consequences). 

Many individuals in Muscovy, China democracies, the “West” have become very powerful, and, or,wealthy while supposedly serving the people or engaging in publicly financed or arranged endeavors… say from a tax code which engages in discrimination favoring the wealthy. 

Mental inertia is a major problem… if one wants to stick to reality, as science, knowledge, perception and sensibilities, let alone problems and catastrophes, progress. 

If one wants to decrease mental inertia, one has to realize that few facts are left free-floating in one’s mind: they would be too hard to remember. The mind remembers logically, to a great extent, so facts have to be logically integrated. Facts tend to get integrated in a system of thought. They acquire meaning, moods and emotions connected to them. And the dominant systems of thought tend to integrate free floating facts.

 

For example the Catholic hierarchy decided that the Moon couldn’t be a physical object, because, if it were, the question of who lived there, and thus the problem of the non-unicity of the Lord’s creation, couldn’t be far behind. Islam followed obsequiously, as the Moon became a direct signal from God. Thus astronomers and the theory that the Earth orbited the Sun and the Moon, the Earth, were considered to be heresy during the Middle Ages. Astronomy got discouraged.

When looking at any fact or idea, and emotion or mood, we have to ask: where did it come from? 

Descartes recommended doubting everything at some point. That Cartesian doubt has to be extended to emotions. This logico-emotional systematic doubt has to be fostered, not just to become smarter, but also to become more ethical, or ethical enough for civilization to survive….

Patrice Ayme

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P/S: This is an extended version of a comment kindly published in the NYT by David Brooks. I may add a tech addendum on Descartes, his “error”, etc.

I emote, therefore I am, says Hautes Alpes 2022 denizen

Symmetry Breaking, Afghanistan, Islam, Psychology And Civilization: Steven Weinberg In Memoriam

Abstract: Symmetry Breaking, a key concept in modern physics, is actually useful all over the world of thought. Continually, thinkers grab inequivalent categories, say “Christian civilization” and “Islam”, proclaim them equivalent, when they are not, and then proceed with insane thoughts. Breaking a symmetry, and then reasoning by analogy, when the symmetry does not hold, is fraught.

Another example of groundless symmetry proclaimed, is to believe that, because history happened some way before, it always will. Of course, it will not, and the titanic climate calamity is an example. In truth, the breaking of symmetry is crucial, in all matters of analysis.

*** 

High minds call for high thoughts and instructive debates. As García Márquez noticed: “we are living in the age of vulgarity“… Better talk with a dead high mind than live creepy-crawlies. A top, unfortunately now defunct, physicist made an observation on civilization, which is particularly striking in light of those who claims there is a perfect symmetry between “Christian civilization” (something that is disqualified, because it never really happened, as Nietzsche pointed out) and Islam (a comically cosmic octopus, a superstition which pretends to be civilization itself). 

 

Steven Weinberg played a central part in formulating and establishing theoretical physics’ two standard models — the standard model of fundamental interactions and the standard model of cosmology. He was professor at Berkeley when he proposed the unified theory of electromagnetism and weak interactions, which is still in use, He would ultimately get the Nobel Prize for it in 1979. However, Berkeley did not deem that enough of an achievement, and did not give him tenure… 

Weinberg sometimes expressed strong views against religion, such as this: “Anything that we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion should be done and may in the end be our greatest contribution to civilization.”

By religion, what ties us together, Weinberg meant religious superstition, of course. (The religion of the Republic also exists… and it’s good!)

 

This is interesting in the light of Feynman, the most famous US born physicist, who tried to insinuate, idiotically, that philosophy was of no value… in physics (his son became a philosopher)… while in truth he made plenty of philosophy (including a bit with yours truly).  

 

Compare with Joe Biden’s assertion that “the US has no national interest in Afghanistan”. Whatever the usage of that present mode means! Does civilization have an interest in Afghanistan? Biden just gave Afghanistan, a country of 40 million, to the Taliban, a group of superstitious fanatics who contradict the naturally given religion of humanity, the cult of reason.

Some cynics will say, oh no, Biden just gave Afghanistan to Pakistan. Indeed, look at the map: they fit perfectly, and have in common the Pashtun country, the dominant ethnic group of Afghanistan… enemy of others… and with a traditional old moral system anterior to, and compatible with, Islam.

 

The weak minded make a symmetry between Afghanistan and Vietnam. Kissinger told Nixon that within two years nobody would care about Vietnam, and Vietnam would become a backwater. However the North Vietnamese military were, roughly, no less civilized than the South Vietnamese military. North and South were both corrupt, in different ways, there was a rough symmetry.

 

I know that specialists like Lewis claim that: “Why did the discoverers of America sail from Spain rather than from a Muslim Atlantic port, out of which such voyages were indeed attempted in earlier times? Why did the great scientific breakthrough occur in Europe and not, as one might reasonably have expected, in the richer, more advanced, and in most respects more enlightened realm of Islam?

A more sophisticated form of the blame game finds its targets inside, rather than outside, Islamic society. One such target is religion—for some, specifically Islam. But to blame Islam as such is usually hazardous and not often attempted. Nor is it very plausible. For most of the Middle Ages it was neither the older cultures of the Orient nor the newer cultures of the West that were the major centers of civilization and progress but the world of Islam.”

Is Lewis lying, or just ignorant, or fundamentally stupid? Or is he just earning his stipend as a friend of the ruling fossil fuel plutocracy of the West and its love of Islam (Fundamentalism)? “Islam” meant, literally, that slavery was an integral part of society. Only servants of plutocracy like Lewis would consider that slavery is “civilization and progress”. This is just one point. That escaped slaves were rewarded by impalement doesn’t even need to be mentioned… 

Also Lewis observes that: “to blame Islam as such is usually hazardous and not often attempted.” In other words “Islam” is a sadistic hyper violent regime as hazardous as… as what?… a rattlesnake?

Religious apologists of violently interpretable superstitions (RAVIS) always evoke contexts. Here one can see that, in context, Islam apologist Lewis says slavery is OK, and “hazardous” religious terror is OK. Similarly, Biden says nobody has been killed yet, while terrorized Afghans fall from the sky. 

Islam is what one should call a war religion, a war superstition. Just read an unexpunged version of the Qur’an. Now the Jewish Bible, root of Judeo-Christianism, and thus Islam, is also a war superstition, where God order the Jews to holocaust an athnicity at least once. Islam is just more so (although there are versions of Islam which have their own version of the Qur’an, it’s not the case of the Shia and Suni).

 

Just as with pandemic and global heating from the climate calamity, some will say it does not matter. But Afghanistan was held by only 2,500 US soldiers for a total of 9,582 soldiers from NATO nations. No US soldier got killed in 18 months in Afghanistan. The mission in Afghanistan cost nearly nothing, to the USA, relative to the danger of letting fanatics in command of an enormous country, subjugating twenty million females into slavery.. 

 

Now that superstition is hyper powerful, What if the Taliban and his allies were to seize power in Pakistan, get control of the enormous nuclear force there? The senile Biden will say whatever about it. But the possibility has augmented enormously now, because Biden has shown that obstinacy in matters of fanaticism can win over anything, not just the military, but reason itself.

 

It is hard to see, at this point, how the electro-weak theory will contribute to civilization… But it can be done. The electro-weak depends upon SYMMETRY BREAKING. 

 

In physics, symmetry breaking is a phenomenon in which (infinitesimally) small fluctuations acting on a system crossing a critical point decide the system’s fate, by determining which branch of a bifurcation is taken. To an outside observer unaware of the fluctuations (or “noise”), the choice will appear arbitrary. This process is called symmetry “breaking”, because such transitions usually bring the system from a symmetric but disorderly state into one or more definite states. Symmetry breaking is thought to play a major role in pattern formation.

 

In his 1972 Science paper titled “MORE IS DIFFERENT” Nobel laureate (and great physicist, a co-inventor of the Higgs, if not more) Philip.W. Anderson used the idea of symmetry breaking to show that even if reductionism is true, its converse, constructionism, which is the idea that scientists can easily predict complex phenomena given theories describing their components, is not. Symmetry Breaking creates indeterminacy. 

 

Giving Afghanistan to violent supertitionists broke the symmetry, pandemonium will ensue. That pandemonium always favors the USA is an historical truth, it has become subconsciously institutional… Hence the will of the US Deep State to give Afghanistan back to the Taliban, obvious since 2001… However, what has always happened for some good reasons, does not have to stay true once these reasons are removed. Contrarily to the preceding centuries, North America is now vulnerable to attack… In more ways than one. For example, North America depends upon China… next to Afghanistan. So say:”Oh, let the Chinese discipline the Taliban!”. Yes, well, next dictator Xi of China would then discipline much more. And so on. 

On August 1, 1914, the fascist racist disciplinarian imperialists of Germany decided to take control of the French Republic. It would take just a few days. Then it would be Russia’s turn, and Great Britain would then negotiate. In the real world, the French fought like demons and five weeks later nearly destroyed the entire German army which had to precipitously retreat. So even trusting disciplinarian dictatorship to bring order is no sure thing, in the way of order. A branch of the Taliban is actually fighting the Pakistani government, and the Taliban, or its allies, one could well imagined, could be in control of Pakistan and its nukes… next year.

How one got into that calamity, traditionally called World War One, has to do with the envoy of US president Wilson waxing lyrical on the racial inferiority of the French, in Berlin, June 1, 1914, two months earlier, in the Kaiser’s office (and proposing an alliance, no less: crafty war mongering by US “Democrats” is nothing new, just ask Lincoln…)

Psychology matters, it’s symmetry breaking. Mania in crowds, and insanity in the collectives are all examples of symmetry breaking, and making more, completely different from the symmetrical order it arose from.

Patrice Ayme

This is a picture of Bliss Park, above Lake Tahoe, California, at an altitude of 1900 meters (6,500 feet), August 22, 2021, today. The smoke is blatant, it’s coming from the Caldor Fire, located 50 kilometers way. But not just that: notice that some of the large tress are already dead. This is symmetry breaking in action: trees centuries old are already dead. The future will then not be as the past: the time symmetry has been broken. At the same time, millions of of centuries old trees, which were not already dead, are burning in other giant California fires. The smoke, often laden with half-burned industrial chemicals, is so vicious, there is evidence that it can kill trees directly…

TRUTH, SCIENCE: CONSTRUCT, Only Then Try To Falsify

The notion of truth is central to the human condition. “Belief”, “Faith” claim to solve it. But there is a better way: dynamics.

BUILD, THEN VERIFY: HOW SCIENCE & TRUTH PROGRESS. TRUTH IS AN ECOLOGY.

Popper’s Error: Science Is Not Just About Falsification. Science Is Construction First, Falsification Later:

Abstract: ‘Falsification’ ruled 20th-century science. However, falsification was always second to construction. First construct, only then falsify. Why? As simple as it gets: One cannot falsify something that one has not constructed.

So what is truth? For a hint: look at biological evolution: in a way evolution is a truth, any species solves a number of problems it is confronted to. (It could be the Ebola virus: the virus solves the problem of its own survival.) I will show truths are also denizens of an evolutionary process. (Leaving the Bible’s Logos in the dust…)i

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Detailed Examples Show That Falsification Is Always Second To Construction: the heliocentric theory jumps to mind.

Heliocentrism (Earth rotates around the Sun) was first proposed by the astronomer Aristarchus (320 BCE). At least so said Archimedes. The arguments were lost. However, Aristotelian physics was in the way. PPP Carefully Looking At The Phases Of Venus Falsified The Ptolemaic Model of the Solar System

Buridan (~ 1345 CE) demolished Aristotelian physics (no, islamophiles, Buridan was indeed first). Armed with his correct inertial theory, Buridan proposed that Earth turned around the sun. But he could not prove it. Copernicus said more of the same two centuries later: yet it could not be proven.

The philosophical argument had been known for 18 centuries: the Sun was the bigger thing, so the smaller thing, Earth, should rotate around the bigger thing. (Maybe some Ancient Greeks thought about another argument, relative to speed: if the Sun turned around, in just a day, its speed had got to be enormous; enormous speeds were unfriendly; if Earth rotated around, it needed to rotate on itself: would the clouds fly away? Aristotle’s erroneous physics said so, but Buridan explained  that Aristotle’s arrow experiment was false, by introducing rotary inertia.

Kepler came out with his laws, a stupendous achievement. Still one could not prove heliocentrism definitively. It had become the simpler description, though, by a long shot. 

Falsification Of The Egocentric Ptolemaic System Was Only Provided By The Goddess Venus; By The Way, I Protest Against The Adjective “Copernican”. Aristarchus, and Even More, Buridan, Were The Main Architects of Building The Truth About The Heliocentric System. Buridan threw Down Aristotelian Physics, Something Even Archimedes Did Not Do (that we know of!)

[In the Ptolemaic System, Venus Was Always Between Earth And Sol, Thus, Venus Always Appeared As A Crescent. Seeing Venus fully lighted by Sol showed Ptolemaic astronomers were full of it. Now, OK, they had to wait for the progress of European optics in the middle Middle Ages… Reading glasses and all that…]

And then Galileo found that the little things, the four satellites of Jupiter, were rotating around the big thing (Jupiter). Another indice.

At this point, there were several independent lines of arguments each pointing at heliocentrism as the most economical, most likely explanation (size, speed, lesser overall rotational inertia (rotational “impetus”, to speak as Buridan did), Kepler’s Laws, Jupiter’s satellites).

It was a “beast in the forest approach”: it sounded like a lion, it smelled like a lion, it had the color of a lion, it looked as if it had the ears of a lion. So what of Popper’s “falsification” approach in this? Suppose that it did not have the color of a lion. Does that prove it’s not a lion? No. It could be bright red, because it’s covered with blood, and it’s still a lion. Or all black, because it’s in the shade, yet, still a lion.

By 1613, though, Galileo’s telescope had enough power to resolve the phases of Venus (and dare to publish the result). Only then was the heliocentric theory definitively proven, and the Ptolemaic system ruled out. If the way the phases behaved had not come out right, heliocentrism would have been wrong. PPP Venus provided with the Popper Falsification. However, even before that, all astronomers had come to the conclusion that it was certain that the Earth turned around the Sun.

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Of The Bad Influence Of Popper & The Primacy Of Falsification:

Falsification is not fun and cuts down the impulse of imagination. Putting falsification from cognition first kills imagination. Imagination is more important than cognition. Imagination is the definition of the human condition.

To realize that only the phases of Venus were an incontrovertible proof, one had to have derived the heliocentric theory far enough to come to that conclusion. By the time it became clear that the Venus phases were the incontrovertible proof could be, 99% of the theory of heliocentrism was established. 

It was a question of mental chicken and egg: neither came first, the theory had to evolve. Actually, the phases of Venus can be resolved by exceptional observers with fantastic eyes, and special atmospheric conditions (the human eye can resolve a minute of arc, Venus apparent size is around two-third of that).

If one had been guided by only finding a definitive proof of heliocentrism, one would have invented no science. For example Buridan and his students invented graphs. They also demonstrated early calculus theorems, but without any of the sophisticated formalism, equation, analytic geometry, which those theorems would push to discover…

By considering that only the last step of an inquiry makes that inquiry scientific, Popper and his falsification obsession make science impossible. (Down with Popper; make no mistake, I like Popper, but then I also “like” Ivanka Trump’s mien in the coach cabin of a Jetblue sardine can, when she kept calm in the middle seat, while being “harassed” by two PC college professor idiots… They were thrown out of the plane, came to regret their actions, and then deleted their Tweeter accounts where they wrote about the deedd they planned. Both the martyrized Ivanka and one of the cruel college professors of barbarity were with small children, including two infants…)

As Buridan pointed out, one could not tell the difference, experimentally , between the heliocentrism he proposed and Scripture (so one may as well believe scripture, he added insolently). But that impossibility to falsify did not prevent him to think about it, and to think about it as a science.

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Evolution theory is even more constructivist: 

The Greek philosopher Anaximander of Miletus, before the Persian fascist annihilated Miletus, proposed that people descended from fishes. Later, Aristotle, baffled by fossils, ordered his students to go out, observe and establish a registry of living forms.

By then evolution theory by mixed artificial and natural means was well-known in Greece, as related methods produced superlative cattle sold around the Mediterranean. Nobody can know how much was explicitly in writing about evolution (out of 700 Greco-Roman classics we know of, only 150 survived… through the Frankish controlled monasteries).

Evolutionary ideas were revived in the Eighteenth Century, until Lamarck proposed the theory of evolution in 1800 CE. Lamarck became quickly an object of hatred from the dictator Napoleon and the Christian Church. A bedrock of his conclusions were microscopic studies of fossils of mollusks (decades behind the microscope destroyed his eyesight). Lamarck was a research professor, not a falsification professor: he invented ideas, and even words: he used neologisms such as biology, mollusk, invertebrate, etc.

Lamarck also proposed a non-selective mechanism to explain evolution (as I said above, the Greeks were thoroughly familiar with natural and artificial selection). That obviously could not be disproven, and the mechanism was completely unfathomable. It is only now that epigenetics has been demonstrated to exist, and some mechanisms explaining it have been made explicit.

Methinks there is much more to come (because DNA is a Quantum machine in a Quantum environment, and all interactions are non-local…

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Those Who Don’t Want To Build, Don’t Want to Know:

We build theories, first. Then we test them, always. First build.

Those who don’t want to build, don’t want to falsify.

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Finding Truth By GOING BEYOND The BIBLICAL GOD:

To assuage and pacify the Neoplatonist leadership of the Roman empire, the evangel of John proclaims in its first few sentences that the “logos” was God, and God was the “logos”. In other words, logic, the discourse, ruled the universe.

Now the “logos” itself is its own truth: any logic defines a propositional truth from its axioms: well-formed propositions are “true” in a sense. HOWEVER, propositional truth is not ALL the truth in a logical system. That observation is the key to the problem of truth.   

Moreover, there is the problem of meta-truth. Meta-truth evolves out of truth (Godel famously proved that meta-truth existed). Logicians have been struggling with both non-propositional truth and metatruth (Godel’s proofs were proofs of existence, and did not provide with an explicit mechanism to build metatruths; later Godel and Cohen rolled out axioms which were independent of others, and thus could be considered true or not).

The preceding shows that building a scientific theory is a built-up of truth: Popper’s work was naive, removed from reality.

A scientific theory’s formation is an evolution of truth: it defines truth as it goes. Science is the best state of formal knowledge we have: thus truth is an evolution

Still, although truth evolves, that does not mean there is no absolute formal truth. There is: planes fly, don’t they? For a plane to fly one million formal truths need indeed to be true, at the same time, or the plane would crash.

Thus one can see that truth does not evolve like a species: metatruth evolves like an ecology does, generating on its way perfect species, local truths. An ecology evolves perfect species, such as sharks and oysters, which barreled, same as they always were, through massive extinction waves in the last few hundreds of millions of years. Evolution also produced species whose main business is to evolve, such as hominins (ourselves and all those cousins of us we used for dinner, in the past).

So, in the evolution of logic and metalogic, perfect truths are produced, so perfect they become part of the logos themselves (truths such as realizing that love is the engine of all things human!).

God is truth, and we make it up, as we debate reality with our imagination.

Patrice Ayme’

P/S: The essay is better appreciated if one is familiar with 20th century philosophy of science (and it penetrated the exercise of science itself, especially physics). Karl Popper claimed that, if a theory is falsifiable, then it is scientific. However, if I say, tomorrow the sky is blue, that’s falsifiable, but not necessarily scientific. The Popperian criterion excludes from the domain of science not unfalsifiable statements but only whole theories that contain no falsifiable statements. That’s silly, because Popper wanted to ‘prove’ that Marxism was not scientific… Yet clearly the work of Marx contains falsifiable statements. Moreover, Pauperism leaves one with the Duhemian problem of what constitutes a ‘whole theory’ as well as the problem of what makes a proposition ‘meaningful’.

My approach above pretty much throws the whole thing through the window. Science has to do with truth, and metatruth, which have architectures of truth, just as a building or a plane have them.

 

DISRESPECT Then OUTLAW (Salafist) ISLAM

Do you respect the Aztecs’ religion? No. Because that religion, that system of thought, called to kill adults. 10,000 religions have been outlawed and extinguished. It’s called progress, it represents civilization advancing. Why? Because those religions were too primitive, too lethal, too tied up with predatory elites. Here is an order from a religion which ought to outlawed:“slay the idolaters wherever you find them...”

Those to be assassinated include small children, who were deliberately targeted in Nice, France, July 2016, after they watched fireworks. (By the way, raw footage shown on French TV live was later censored, including on social networks, worldwide; I see such censorship as a collaboration with terrorism. Why to hide the atrocious assassination of toddlers? By love of the religion which ordered them killed? It is the same mindset as hiding Auschwitz.)

To this day, in 2016, university professors of that ideology declare that such orders to kill should be taken literally (and they are employed to say that). Indeed that religion has engaged in thousands of deadly attacks, worldwide, by following the mood that “idolaters” should be killed. In 2015, ‘Radical’ Islam killed, officially, 28,000 people (a few years earlier it was only an average of 3,000 a year). 

This Is Not Even 1% Of The Worst Violence In Islamist “Holy” Texts. Imposing That Violence Is The Greatest Success Of Islam. Enjoy. Idiots Claim They Don’t See The Connection Between These Orders, And the Blight Islam Visits On the World For 13 Centuries.

A Religion Is Most Significant In What It Says Is Most Significant. What’s Most Significant Than Killing People? Especially For No Good Reason?

How could any activity presenting such statements as orders from a Deity to be rigorously obeyed, as it is basically the universe itself, be viewed any differently from a hate crime of the maximally hating and lethal type?  

Any religion ordering to kill other people on the ground not of what they did, but of who they were at birth, is clearly a religion ordering and inducing human sacrifices.

Not to think so is not just an ethical failure, it is a logical failure. 

The Romans, during Republican times, outlawed all religions requiring, or inducing, human sacrifices.

The Truck Was Finally Stopped By Police. Truck Was Rented 3 Days Prior. Bodies Everywhere: Everything To Do With Islam: The Martyr Will Go To the Right Of Allah, For Killing All The Little Children Of Idolaters

How could any activity presenting such statements as orders from a Deity to be rigorously obeyed, as it is basically the universe itself, be viewed any differently from a hate crime of the maximally hating and lethal type?   

Not to think so is not just an ethical failure, it is a logical failure.

So say it is racist to view such orders to kill for what they are, orders to kill. Once again, such people obviously suffered previously major mental dysfunction..

I was brought up in countries where forms of very modern Islams were practiced. Some, such as types of Sufism long practiced in Senegal, viewed some of the founders as more important than Muhammad, the initial prophet of Islam. This is a statement of fact, and a historical fact well-known for generations. However, nowadays, just saying that would get you killed in many parts.

These forms of very advanced Islam have been annihilated by Literal, Salafist Islam. And you know what?

This replacement of advanced Islam by backwards, literal Islam, was, is OK, with the so-called “leaders of the West”. Here by leadership I mean more than the corrupt politicians, who are intrinsically corrupt, per the way they get where they are, and the prerogatives they are endowed with, and consider natural and moral to have (it’s not).

Laws of peace are not sufficient to deal with a State of war. Clearly, the secret services and police should be given full latitude, as they would be given when fighting Nazism. Actually Hitler was heavily inspired by Islam, he said it himself, so here, in Islam, we are confronted with the mothership.

Donald Trump suggested to block any new Muslim entering the USA. This will not help with the 10,000 (or so) Frenchmen who have embraced Islam full metal jacket. What to do with them? The idea had been to watch them. But one needs four of five times that number to watch them. So? Round them up. Put them in concentration camps (Konzentrationslager in Deutsch).

When Nazism was destroyed, millions of soldiers Nazism gave orders to, where imprisoned. In camps.  For years. There they could meditate, and see the error of their ways. In the URSS, most of them did not come back.

Maybe it is time to realize we are in a world war, the West is, against hard-core Islam, for more than 13 centuries. It’s time to finish it, because it is increasingly easier to find weapons of mass destruction. Trump is upset that Obama refuses to use the term “radical Islam terror” (radical, as in “root”).

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The bottom line is that hard-core Islam got support from the leaders of the West since the 1930’s: 

First the American oil men, used Islam as an instrument… to become richer and more powerful: we give you money, you put it back on Wall Street, you enforce terror with Literal (Salafist) Islam. This was enshrined by the government of the USA in 1945, in the Great Bitter Lake conspiracy.

World War Two had made the USA, and its oilmen, much more powerful. That’s where the money was. So “philosophers” such as De Beauvoir and Sartre who had just ingratiated themselves with the Nazis (Beauvoir was literally employed by them), fell in love with all things Islamist. When the FNL in Algeria (supposedly fighting for “liberation” whatever that meant) fought the “French”, it ordered its soldiers to torture to death little French children, especially little girls.

When the depressed Muslim charged with his truck, for two kilometers through the celebrating crowd full of small children who had watched the fireworks, it was more of the same. The despicable Sartre thought that this sort of behavior was great… As long as it happened far away, for example Algeria.

Sartre followed a tradition of bloody violence launched by Karl Marx, and very different from that of the French Member of Parliament Proudhon (Proudhon is famous for his youthful, amusing tweet: “La propriete’ c’est le vol!”, property is theft). Proudhon confronted Marx to his face. Proudhon thought that philosophical precision is of the essence.

It is. Islam is at war with democracy and the West, ever since the early Seventh Century. Muhammad himself said so.

Let me give a related example. In a Crusade, which overall, lasted around a century, the Catholic religion annihilated the Cathars, and all their works. One million dead. To this day, the word “Heresy” is used to qualify Catharism. (Heresy means:’to choose’; for the Catholic religion, Salafist version, to ‘choose’ was a capital crime. Just as in Salafist Islam today.)

However, Catharism was completely innocuous. Cathars lived minimally. Catholicism, at the time was immensely powerful and fanatically cruel, trying its best to bury civilization, and replace it by itself. In the end, Catholicism did not bury civilization, because the states were more powerful:

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I was asked the following question by a PhD armed lawyer:

How Did We Get Rid Of Rabid Christianism?

Answer: In one sentence: Christianism was always subordinated to the Roman State, and its descendant states. When the State had no more use for Christianism, it smothered it. It is a long tale, spread over 20 centuries. It started with the mythical Jesus separating Church and State, and Nero conveniently accusing the Christians to have burned Rome. A recent milepost was the definitive nationalization of all Judeo–Christian Temples-Churches by the French state in 1905 (they lease them back).

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Whereas Islam was the religion of a caravan raider, who then founded a state:

This is the history of the first prophet of Islam, in a nutshell. Thus, in Islam, the religion is the state. It is a completely different situation from Chrisitianism, then, pointed out my PhD lawyer. Indeed. And the solution is where it was left when the huge Roman army got annihilated in Syria by the tiny Arab army. It can only be a military solution. That’s always how bandits were dealt with.

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Why do nuts balls embrace Islam and go kill people?

Because people who are really very upset want to kill other people, any other people. The sacred writings of Islam say that, as long as these people are not believers, killing them will bring the “martyr” (that’s the killer), to the “right of Allah”. Then the killers and  Allah will have a party until Judgment Day (that’s after killing all the Jews). The martyrs/assassins will not be judged, but go straight to Paradise.

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Islam Derangement Syndrome:

Anybody taking apparently seriously the writings of Islam should be viewed with IDS, Islam Derangement Syndrome, and be put in a psychiatric hospital. OK, right, there are a lot of them, hence the idea of concentration camps. Evaluations are that as many as half a million violent Jihadists with IDS exist.  Yes, 500,000.

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Use The Military To Re-Establish SECULAR LAW:

Too much Islam means too much of a fascist, dictatorial approach to all of society,  only resolvable through even stronger military solution. Therefore I approve somewhat the attempted coup in Turkey. Erdogan has been chopping down secularism as much as he could get away with.

We have a precedent: the military coup which did not happen against Hitler. Unfortunately. (And of this attempted coup, I have talked a lot, in many essays.).

Fascists like Erdogan, or Hitler, could use democracy against itself. Only military means allow to get out of such a vicious spiral. Erdogan, Turkish Islamizing president, has been using Islam to increase his power. It came back to bite him, and others, in more ways than one.

Arguably, Islam is more into human sacrifices than the Aztec religion.

Need I say more?

Disrespecting yesterday’s religions is how humanity grows up. Time to grow up, people, and get rid of the same old same old, blood bath.

The Aztecs had a serious protein problem (caused by their location, singularly deprived in protein source). There was their excuse. It is regrettable they were dispatched so fast. They had much to say, which the all too Catholic Conquistadores deliberately annihilated.

The excuses for Islam are many. Some small, some big, some bad, some good. But the bottom line is that Islam is neither compatible with democracy or civilization, looking forward, at least if interpreted literally. So it should be made completely unlawful, in its literal form. To launch the outlawing process, philosophers have to start with pointing out that, globally, literal Islam is not a system of thought worth our respect. Actually, quite the opposite. Although some points can be saved (I don’t drink alcohol, at all), overall, the most significant parts have to be jettisoned. ASAP.

Patrice Ayme’

American Uncivil War

People pass away, mentalities perdure.

The English were not the first colonizers of North America. However, when they finally got there, it was with the most effective ethics to enforce the objectives of ultimate greed. England had been too busy with recalcitrant Scotland and Ireland to join the early conquistadores (meanwhile, the French re-conquered much of the Mediterranean from the Muslims, and even the Canaries archipelago).

The English arrived nearly a century after the Spaniards and the French… and six centuries after the Vikings! With a very different sort of leaders. And with a very different mood, uncontrolled greed foremost.

The reason that the Vikings did not conquer North America was that the aboriginals strongly objected to the Scandinavian presence. When Jacques Cartier arrived in 1534 CE in Quebec, the story repeated itself. The French had firearms, but they were taken aback by the sophisticated discourses of the inhabitants, who explained to the French that there was no space for both the aborigines, and the French. And if the French insisted upon invading the place, there would be war. In due course, over many generations, the French government persuaded the Natives that they could learn to farm, too, and then there was space for everybody.

The Spaniards were not as kind. In 1529, Francisco Pizarro received royal approval to conquer the region and be its viceroy. The letter read: “In July 1529 the queen of Spain signed a charter allowing Pizarro to conquer the Incas. Pizarro was named governor and captain of all conquests in New Castile”. It is not just a question of race. The Spaniards also used Black Conquistadores, professional soldiers who had been captured in Africa, in African wars, and sold to the Spaniards. Then those African soldiers were freed to do what they did best again…in the Americas, with European weapons.

Colombus exploited, according to Satan, Las Casas revolted against Satan. The Spaniards taught their ferocity in the Canaries islands, once they took over from the French, massacring the tall, white blonde aborigines. Ferocity can procreate and multiply. The worse being that it works.

Las Casas took part in the conquest of Cuba, and was granted by the crown a huge land, an encomienda, complete with slaves. Then he moved to the continent. Finally, Bartolomé de las Casas had enough of the “unbelievable” holocaust he was a witness of, since its inception. Bartolomé went from adventurer to bishop, and tried to enforce the good side of God. Happily, the (French-born and educated) Spanish king and Roman emperor Charles V ordered an inquiry and trial on the Spanish induced Holocaust in the Americas. The ensuing Valladolid debate was conclusive enough to bring Charles V, the would-be conqueror of Europe blocked by France, into ordering the halt of the Conquista (here I differ from Wikipedia, because I know much more). More exactly, Charles V ordered the halt of completely new conquista, and then resigned (1551 CE, although said resignation was official and final only in 1558 CE).

So the Spaniards did not conquer most of North America…. which should have been a military walk in the park; Spanish exploratory raids had gone all the way to present day Washington DC, finding most of the country emptied by (European generated) epidemics.

The English colony, though, was not founded by a government, inasmuch as a mercantilist collusion of the “West Country Men” and the English government, famous for lining alleyways with skulls in Ireland. One of the investors was the king of England. The English colony was powered by slave labor, from inception. Whites, Indians, Blacks were enslaved. The whites often with the subtlety of “endured servants” contracts (if they ate a pig in the forest, they got another five years, if they escaped to the Indians, they got quartered alive, a disagreeable prospect to keep them in line obsequiously, etc.)

I have long described the “West Country Men” mentality. It is alive and well. What made the English colony profitable was tobacco exploitation, thanks to hundreds of thousands of slaves. Never mind that the king of England execrated tobacco smoking. It was good, very good money, and profits are the supreme value. Never mind the satanic aspects. That’s why it’s called plutocracy.

In the present day USA, governmental violence is a fact. First there is the political violence of “representatives” elected by money, as surely as in the Eighteenth Century England.

In the USA police violence, revolting by Western European standards, is a fact. It is not just after “blacks”. It is the violence of car chases (try 100 mph in a city). The violence which results when not putting the hands on the wheel, when stopped for bogus reasons.

Police officers, armed to the hilt, with a mentality which shoots first and ask question later, are very well paid. The total compensation of a police officer at the University of California, Berkeley, is 200,000 dollars. More than three times the US median family income. That is gigantic, even by American standards. It is also how the 1% buy the army which protects them (so drive a BMW, or a Tesla Model S, to be left alone by police: class solidarity operates…)

Violence in the service of plutocracy is also judicial violence, not just police and political violence. In California, that America of America, full of silicon, and engineers from all over the world, keen to make a fortune, American born citizens were condemned to life in prison, without possibility of parole. For… stealing a slice of pizza.

Why? It insures the peace. The upper middle class will think twice before launching a revolution. If eating pizza can get you killed, imagine what having to eat your own words get you.

Remember Victor Hugo? He wrote, among many other great works, “The Miserables”. The main protagonist, Jean Valjean, early in the Nineteenth Century, is condemned to twenty years prison for stealing a bread. That was was viewed as a horrible injustice, and, at some point the french Republic passed a law saying one cannot be condemned for stealing food.

Just as one cannot be condemned in France, just for fleeing (fleeing being viewed as a fundamental right; although not obeying police is a crime: subtleties, subtleties…)

Now compare again with California, where eating a slice of pizza can get you to the slammer forever… In the 2000’s (the law was amended slightly since: gulping American pizza does not qualify as a major crime anymore, although, of course, it is, for other reasons…).

This was just an example. Possession of “crack cocaine” is punished at twenty times the rate of “cocaine powder” (blacks use rock cocaine, Wall Street uses cocaine powder).

And so on. Meanwhile Federal Magistrates are nominated, and serve a couple of years earning a measly 180,000 dollars, while being extremely partial to Silicon Valley oligopolies, from their judges’ benches. Then they resign, and are employed by the usual suspects, said Silicon Valley oligopolies, earning many millions (I have seen cases, close and personal). “Free market”, anyone?

The educational system is by the wealthiest, for the wealthiest. And ever more so. Educational violence: preventing the lower class to access quality education.

Of course the Whiter House, white as the driven snow, after spending an inordinate amount of time and money plotting with Silicon Valley, knows all of this. It’s Mercantilism on steroids. It does not matter. Obama is gathering plutocrats to pay for his hyper expensive “library” to the greater glory of Uncle Barry’s sedate reign 

And all this violence, direct or indirect, works. Watch the rigged presidential elections, with thoroughly corrupt plutocrats running against each other, in a parody of representative democracy.

As long as We The People don’t shoot back. That it does not happen more often, and that militant Islam does not get more recruits, is rather surprising. But times may change. Any day. What will the plutocratic establishment do? Load bigger guns, with more ammunition, and more science fiction weapons. In this particular case of 12 police officers shot, wounded, and killed in Dallas, the gunman, 25, had been trained, apparently very well, as an exterminator in Afghanistan. He was killed by… a robot. Times they are changing, even if plutocracy only grows. What plutocracy needs, is even more spying on the Internet (the gunman had a Facebook account where he expressed his displeasure for the white man…)  Inequality can be an expensive call.

The Spanish and English colonies were founded as wars against the Peoples, to satisfy the god of greed, and domination, and the attending mentalities endure.

Patrice Ayme’

 

Of Nukes, Dogs, North Korea, & Necessary Evil

KIM, THE HEREDITARY KING OF NORTH KOREA, MAKES A NEW NUCLEAR H BOMB EVERY SIX WEEKS. His engineers are trying to build reliable intercontinental missiles. The fear of a heat wave in Los Angeles will take a whole new meaning soon. (And what did the president do about this security problem? Less than Bill Clinton. Oops.)

Kim Jong Un killed entire “groups” of people in his own family, including his uncle, who was instrumental to get him to power: “the discovery and purge of the Jang group… made our party and revolutionary ranks purer…”[117 In 2015, the defence minister was executed by anti-aircraft fire, for “talking back”.

Certainly the uncle was arrested, humiliated, and executed. “Despicable human scum…worse than a dog” is how North Korean state media described the once-powerful uncle of leader Kim Jong-un. It was claimed that Jang Song Thaek admitted trying to “overthrow the state”.

Kim & Wife: Expensive Dior Purse. Feeding People To Dogs. Not Yet Personally On The Menu.

Speaking of dogs, four star general Jan Song Thaek, once thought to be the most powerful leader in North Korea, was stripped naked, with five colleagues, thrown into a cage, and eaten alive by a pack of ravenous dogs… according to a newspaper close to China’s Communist Party. The dogs had not eaten for five days, and the execution lasted an hour. In the end, the dogs cleaned the plate. (Others said that he was executed by machine gun.)

Whatever the rumors, higher-ups in North Korea, and their families, have been executed in large numbers. Differently from Stalin, Kim does not even bother with the appearances of fake trials. Yesterday’s horrors have become quaint.

Kim has gone to the furthest, darkest side. Supremely educated in Switzerland, the North Korean dictator knows all too well that any reason too removed from the law of the jungle, would be his demise. The North Korean leaders have long made Switzerland their central access point (say to the French Riviera and French medical treatments).

With North Korea, the world is confronted with the Hitler problem, not just an uneducated immigrant loser, of the most modest origin, but with someone who is immensely rich, a proven killer, close, personal, whimsical, well-educated and in command of weapons Hitler could not even dream of.

If Kim has the choice between being eaten alive by dogs and threatening, or starting, a nuclear war, he will, of course, chose the latter. Indeed, people who brought him up have explained he was definitively a brat, even as an eight year old (see the Washington Post report of May 27, 2016).

Unfortunately, the only reasonable prospect, then, is for democracies to prepare for what Kim is, namely, the worst: very clever, and very nasty. And that reasoning with him will not help. This is clearly a case where the strongest, darkest means are required.

We have to dial back to 1935, and ponder another crazed, demonic dictator, Hitler (who had just consolidated power with an accord with the German army making him Chancellor and President).

What should have been done with Hitler? What should the democracies have done? Now we know, with today’s mentality and morality: going all out against him.

(But the sordid truth is that it was in the best national interest of the USA to proceed with Nazism and the Second World War… just as it was to have Jefferson and Jackson massacre the Indians, steal their lands, and quintuple the area of the US… Agreed, the USA has changed: the collaboration of the US with Hitler could happen, and did happen, because of the mentality reigning then).

So let’s reconsider Hitler 1935 with today’s mentality: let’s do as if we wanted to avoid World War Two, the death of 5% of humanity, and serious fears, threats, hardships and problems for much of the rest.

Before I come to what to do, we have to remember that this time the stakes are much higher: Kim intents to use nuclear blackmail, with intercontinental missiles aimed at the largest cities of the West. Kim’s government said as much last year, he will do it again, and, this time, with power to back him up.

North Korea, right now is the Nazi Reich, in a potentially even worse version, but this time, we know the program ahead of its attempted implementation, through vast annihilation of uncountable multitudes. Insane? Sure. That’s the entire point, and that is why Obama could not handle it. Obama, fed on a steady diet of Financial Times and University of Chicago, believe people are rationally greedy. But of course, there is much more to humanity than that: the Will to Extermination, for example. The Will to Extermination is a gift: like playing tennis, it can be developed to a fine art, through enough practiced. Kim had plenty of practice (just as Hitler did).

So what to do? Forget the sanctions against North Korea as a plausible long-term solution: that would be about reason. Kim is not about reason (and he can leverage China, as his family long did). Get ready for war. Nuclear war. Or then target Kim and do away with him. There is a precedent for the latter.

In 1938, Hitler’s generals approached British and American diplomats and authorities, asking their governments to declare that they would stand with France in irremediable opposition to Nazi Germany. Then, they explained they would make a coup against the Nazis, arguing that Germany was in danger. Something similar done against Kim is what should be done now.

In 1938, the British and American governments not only did not do what the German generals had asked them to do, but they warned Hitler of the plot against him. (However, Germany had been a democracy just prior, and, even under the Kaiser, was a softer sort of fascism).

Let’s learn from history; let’s not repeat history. Time for a dark and dirty vaccination. To prevent incomparably worse.

The nuclear poker of Truman on August 6, 1945, worked: Japan capitulated within 6 days. The nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were moral sacrifices. However, what Kim prepares for us all, until he dies, is worldwide nuclear blackmail. Kim is only 33. And North Korean geology is very wealthy. Is that how we can live? (Kim already threatened to nuke Los Angeles and New York).)

Kim’s threats with nukes call for the darkest side… to remedy the situation. Morality comes from sustainability (that’s shown both by etymology and logic). Is a world where a few rendered insane by cruelty, fear and rage are armed with nuclear weapons sustainable? No.

Obama, and countless pacifists in the last 71 years have said they wanted to get rid of weapons of mass destruction. However, we need first to get rid of those who want to mass destroy, and that means destroying the mentalities conducive to this sort of concentration of power.

Meanwhile, the only sane, let alone moral, thing to do is to acquire military technological superiority.  Eight years ago, Obama said that Pakistani nukes were his number one worry. Rogue Pakistani Muslim supremacy and greed supreme scientists helped North Korean nukes. As president, Obama undermined the safety of the world, because he actually helped the North Korean dictatorship, and is still actively doing so.

How? By demolishing the US high-tech innovation system by fostering tech private tech monopolies. The latest example is his latest change in the laws directing the US Patent and Trademark Office. New laws guarantee that people and corporations who gave Obama big money will be favored. So what will suffer? Real innovation. And what will make democracy sustainable? Real innovation.

Hitler happened in a worldwide mental ecological system. So does Kim, and Islamism, and global plutocracy, of course. These are all examples of the rule of demonicity (plutocracy).

Ultimately, anything which favors plutocracy here,  favors plutocracy there. Such as all the colossal, blatant advantages given to those who financed Clintons, Obama and Bushes (from the Koch brothers, to the Spy Network booking your face). The North Korean dictatorship, Putin, the Islamists, and all the powerful rotten ones around the planet feel this, know this, see this, and play it like a violin.

Those “leaders” grabbing all the levers of power are not demented, they are not crazy, they are not sick, they are opportunists. And the opportunity of power, not to say power itself, has transformed them, neurohormonally, and perhaps even epigenetically (we know this happens in fishes, so why not in humans: are we not more sophisticated than fishes?) What they call reason, sustainability calls insanity: a nuclear strike on Los Angeles, successful or attempted, would make North Korea into a radioactive desert. The “leaders”, all over, have more power than ever, are more corrupt, therefore, than ever, and have become, more than ever, monsters made to rule, by all and any ways they can access.

It is for a new moral code invented by We The People to bar this sort of access to evil. “Equality” in “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”, is not just a matter of the pursuit of happiness, but of the pursuit of survival. Of humanity as a species.

Patrice Ayme

Some Biased Historical Mumbo Jumbo Dissected

Too much of the interpretation of history is propaganda. Any one-sided version of history is propaganda, because history if full comprises all the truths, in full. Much of that propaganda is so deep that it lurks inside the emotional and linguistic semantics biased people take for granted unquestioningly (From Greek semantikos: signify or indicate by a sign).

By uttering the traditional word(s) one present as factual the time honored bias.

For example the word “colonial” is often used to describe the French League of Nations/SDN Mandate in Syria, completely misrepresenting both the history of Syria and the role France played there (it’s not of academic interest only, because, under the French, the Alawites were liberated, and now those (mostly ex-) victims make sure that what happened to them won’t happen again). Hence, that simple adjective convey semantics which are unfair to the French, the Alawites, the Syrians, History, and civilization itself, while standing in the way of a sustainable just solution in Syria. Now to answer some comments I received:

Chris Snuggs: “The French Revolution? Well, it didn’t remain a revolution for long did it? We ended up fighting yet another continental dictator. What is it with you lot? Something in the water.”

Actually, the French Revolution won the global interdiction of the slave trade, the American Civil War, crushed Anglo-Prussian institutionalized enslaving racism, and is now itself institutionalized by the United Nations Charter, (formally) accepted by all nations, even North Korea.  So the French Revolution rules the globe. 

If Russia is the way it is right now, with a pseudo, yet duly elected Czar, and a Parliament, and a state of quasi-law, it’s thanks to the French Revolution. This is why, for decades, French anthems were used as national anthems in Russia (the Marseillaise and the Internationale).

Empire Means Force: Berkeley, California, Temple of American “Liberalism” & Its Municipal Police In Full Military Gear (March 2016). Yes It has Armored Vehicles & Helicopters. What happened? No idea. Probably a threat to the established plutocratic order. Oh, the election of the US president.

One dictator? It was more like a trinity: Kaiser Wilhelm II, Hitler, Mussolini? (And I forgot Franz-Joseph of Austro-Hungary.)

Historically, Britain, under Pitt, used Prussia as a war machine against France, and did it again 1792 (against the French Revolution led by that great rebel, Louis XVI, King of France) and of course after 1812. Prussia instituted a proto-Nazi regime in 1815 (racist oppression and abuse against Jews, Poles; as the advances brought by the French revolution were rolled back).

In 1914, after encouragement by the White House (not so white and innocent after all), the Kaiser, grandson of Queen Victoria, moved swiftly his entire army by surprise against France, to subjugate the part of France which he did not occupy yet.

Imperial German occupation of Alsace and Lorraine  was not bad in all respects: the universal health care system was great, and some good investments and restauration in occupied Alsace happened. However the attack of 1914 was conceived as a world war, which fascist Germany could win, by being swift enough: it was known that Russian mobilization would be very slow, taking weeks, and Britain had “no army” (as its commander and British minister of defense put it). In other words, the Anglo-Saxon role in inciting the Kaiser and his goons to attack in 1914, although well hidden, was considerable.

A proof is that the USA then broke the Franco-British high seas embargo against Imperial Germany. (The USA, having baited Germany, switched brutally in 1917, as, by then, it seemed clear who the victors were going to be.)

Even worse, starting in 1919, the USA did its best to ensure that German fascism could try an encore against France. The French were not blind to this, and did not like it, while the government in Washington, to justify its anti-French policy, depicted France under the worst ways.

The aim of the government USA was to completely destroy the French empire, and French influence, worldwide, and replace it by the American empire and influence. We have explicit orders of Franklin D. Roosevelt to his subordinates in this matter. FDR, a plutocrat more than a bit similar to Trump, had the interest of the American empire foremost in his thoughts.

FDR did not understand how the Roman Republic went down, although it is black on white in Sallust’s work. Interestingly, I long deduced that the aggression wars of 146 BCE destroyed the Roman Republic, without knowing of Sallust’s thinking. Thus, it should be obvious to anybody familiar with Roman history. In 146 BCE, Rome deliberately attacked and destroyed Carthage (in Africa) and Corinth (in Greece).

The monster attacks were promoted by Roman plutocracy, and, in turn, amplified it enormously. The amplification was not just military and economic, but moral and psychological. The success of the destruction visited on others, and the resulting grab of immense riches in minerals and agricultural lands, told the Roman population that evil worked. The system may have been wrong, some Romans may have felt, but the system worked, observed most Romans, and it was not as if they had a choice.

In the case of the USA, the propaganda has been so profound, university professors of history may not even know the facts above, let alone give them the importance they deserve.

Hence psychological angles come to dominate the knowledge of history.

In the case of contemporary Britain, people were told for years, that all what ailed them originated with the European construction. This hid the erection of monstrous plutocratic contraptions which made England, or London and a few satellites, more exactly, the headquarters of the global elite of inequality.

So, while London and satellites became extremely rich, the 99% got ever poorer… And the more enraged they got, the more that rage was artfully diverted towards the European Union.

***

Anglo-Saxons, or Franco-Saxons?

Chris Snuggs: “As for we much maligned Anglo-Saxons, we specialise in defeating dictators…”

Kevin Berger also wonder how can I call the USA and the UK, “sister republics”. Following is an answer to both:

The very concept of “Anglo-Saxon” is a piece of propaganda.

First, way back, the Celtic world extended from Ireland to central Anatolia (yes 4,000 miles to the east). The Celts were savages in some ways, but world experts in others (they had, not just cheese, beer, and barrels, but the best ocean going ships, but the best metallurgy: the Gauls sold weapons to the Romans, from swords to helmets).

(Then demographically) smaller England was Franco-Romanized several times: first Julius Caesar landed, then the subordinates of Nero conquered it thoroughly, and a state of three million Romans, Britannia lived for centuries, until well after the legions were evacuated in 406 CE for austerity reasons.

At some point in the Sixth or Seventh Century, harassed by the Angles and the Saxons, British troops evacuated towards French Brittany. This were confusing times, as the Franks were also found in England (Queen Bathilde the victor of slavery circa 650 CE, and Alcuin, Charlemagne philosopher and Prime Minister, were from England).

In any case, a French army invaded and occupied irreversibly England in 1066-1067 CE, re-establishing Franco-Roman rule… But the “Renovated Roman Empire” of the Franks and Charlemagne had the same problem as the Roman empire, namely no stable way to anchor legally the state (this came in part from admiration for Aristotle, a fasco-monarchist).

For centuries, the part of Europe conquered by Romans and Franks was aquiver with various attempts to organize elections, Christian republics (including the Christian Republic of 400 CE, which collapsed immediately under invasions), re-establishing the Roman Senate (this was tried in the Eleventh Century). This lack of constitution explains the on-going existence of Republics (Venice, Florence, Genoa), or quasi Republics (in the Alps, or Toulouse)…

In the case of Britain, continual conflict between the ruling French, or them and Paris led to increasingly democratic ways (although violence was extensive between the War of the Roses, which was finished when Tudor got help from a French army, and the Glorious Revolution, two centuries later).

After the Glorious Invasion of William of Orange, a parliamentary plutocracy was established in the UK whose official target was France (France, under the tyrant Louis XIV had become a place of Catholic Fundamentalism, hostile to Protestants: that was the excuse; the full truth is that British-Dutch plutocracy dreamed of becoming bigger than the French one, and soon succeeded, from high leveraging and the use of slavery and the invasion of North America by unsavory, but efficient means).

In the end, the Angles had very little influence on the Celtic, Roman, and Frankish origin of Britain. The adjective “Anglo-Saxon” itself is a propaganda notion, when used as full descriptive  (at most the “Anglo-Saxons” controlled no more than half of Britain for much less than five centuries, whereas the Celto-Roman-Franco influence lasted millennia, over the full extent).

***

So Why The Differences In Mentality Between Recent France & UK/USA?

First Britain is very often much closer to France than to the USA: French municipal police, up to 2015, was not armed, and the British bobbies are not. American police is super-armed, and even looks, in “liberal” places such as Berkeley California, as an occupation army, with a willingness, and even tradition, to shoot first and ask questions later.

Gentlemen such as Chris Snuggs, who lived in France for more than a decade, could not stand living in the USA. In the USA’s richest regions, most people are immigrants (a paradox which has very rational, entangled explanations).

Secondly, Britain and the USA are islands (OK, a very big island is called a continent). France does not have this mental handicap: France has been at the crossroads, millennia before taking its present name. So France has evolved more inclusive and tolerant philosophies which were in turn impelled on her political descendants, Britain and the USA. (Straying from tolerance under Saint Louis, who threw the Jews out, and repulsed alliance with the Mongols, or under Louis XIV fasco-Catholicism, did not help.)

Thirdly, as I have explained many times, the “evil” mentality which presided over the British, and then American conquest of America proved capable to kick out the French’s softer approach. Then one had the same problem as with plutocratic Rome: nothing succeeds better than success.

Just ask Donald Trump.

Patrice Ayme’

For Our Creator, Evolution

Mammals we are,

Milk we need.

Or we won’t even be.

Thinkers we are,

Love we need.

Or we won’t even think.

Love tells us,

What to feel.

Love:

Milk for the soul.

We, bodies and souls

From a tangled web blossom.

Not just the quantum web,

Holding the universe together,

But even the web,

Of the highest values,

Holding minds together.

Values we learned to become

While other minds,

Gave us,

What we are.

No Love, No Chipmunks. No Heart. No Mind. And No Cuteness.

 

Patrice Ayme’

Art, Philosophy, Science: Joy Of Knowledge

As Ludwig Van said: “O Freunde, nicht diese Toene! Sondern lasst uns angenehmere anstimmen und freundenvollere!” (“Oh friends! Not these tunes! Instead let’s strike more pleasant and friendly sounds”)  [My translation of Beethoven’s 9th lyrics introduction.]

Oh friends, not this Germanoid Greek Euro tragi-comedy! Enough of those critters so unworthy, they can’t conceive of themselves, independently of America!

Considered abstractly, and in essence, philosophy, art, science, and even engineering are extreme aspects of general cognition.

This Is Not Just Art, But Discovery. Grotte Chauvet.

[Chauvet cave is up to 32,400 years old, according to Carbon 14 studies; some of the paintings are 12 meters wide, more than 3 meters tall; the cave was discovered just 20 years ago. Picasso once said after exiting the Lascaux cave back in 1940 that “we have discovered nothing”.]

When intellectual property lawyers describe inventions, they use the term “art”. Was the art innovative?

Each of philosophy, art, science, engineering is both knowledge and method. They are tied together, and go together being the opposite poles of cognition. Science as a body of knowledge, is what is known, for sure. Philosophy, as a body of knowledge, is what ought to be true.

Science as a method is the category (Aristotle!) of all ways to ascertain what is absolutely true.

Science, as a category of established facts, enables a plane to successfully take off, more than once a second, worldwide.

Philosophy, as a method, determines not just what “ought” to be true morally, but what “ought” to be true, as an educated guess. Thus, all and any application of the scientific method, requires the philosophical method. The philosophical method is the first approach, always.

An obvious, and state-of-the-art example, is the notion of infinity, where the debate is not just still on-going, after 25 centuries. Progress is made, in the sense that logical subtleties, which lay uncovered for millennia, were recently revealed. Uncovered for the first time, just as those Chauvet lions. Looking differently at Archimedes’ axiom, 23 centuries old, Model theorists discovered something new about numbers. (Model Theory is a part of pure logic which interface strongly with mathematics; actually I just found, as per Archimedes himself, that it should be called Eudoxus Axiom.) I have proposed to go much further with a different philosophical insight in Number Theory (in still another direction Archimedes could not have imagined).

And what of art in all this? Well, it’s the third pole of cognition, where emotion finds truth, before philosophy and, a fortiori, science, ever can. More than the logos, it depicts, or resounds with, the logics of emotion.

Both art and philosophy need just one fact, one intuition, to make a world. Science finds, painstakingly and patiently, what this world is really made of. Just as patiently and painstakingly, mathematics imagine, what this world is really made of. And then philosophy and art lash back further far out.

Cognition is one, approaches to it, and possibilities, are many. There are many possible worlds in our future minds than we can imagine, and they will blossom, as long we take joy in doing what we do best: “Plus Oultre” (“Plus Ultra”)!

Patrice Ayme’

Moods Rules, Countries Follow

MOODS AS HEGEMONS

Countries are ruled by people, or individuals, who are ruled by philosophies, which are ruled by moods. Some of these moods are superior, others, non-sustainable.

Hegemony Works Only If Its Values Are Right:

In the present Greek crisis, the Greek government just changed its mind again, and decided to roughly accept what it had refused the week before. France was happy, and wanted to jump on the occasion of making a new accord, and forget about the referendum (the subject of which is not clear).

However the German automatons and their Dutch robot, Mr. D, who has been appointed Eurogroup “president”  (I guess if Obama and Hollande can be “president”, anybody can! It’s the reign of machines,) mechanically announced that: ‘vee vill not negotiate’ (in an excellent, albeit unwitting, imitation of the Terminator). Heil, meinen Fuerers! It’s funny that the German leaders still don’t get, after all the horrors of the mass atrocities which their numerous, abominably monstrous predecessors, have visited on humanity, that being robotic is adverse to civilization.

The Mood Which Ought To Rule Civilization: Athena Guarding Austrian Parliament

“Germany is essentially the hegemon in Europe, but it does not like being seen as running the show,” said Charles Grant, director of the Center for European Reform, a research group in London. Is it “Germany”, the hegemon of Europe, or the USA, or more exactly, the NSA? As Merkel and her goons spy on France, who is the hegemon?

“Essentially”? Was Sparta “essentially” the hegemon of Greece? That was, essentially, an hallucination:

***

Failed Hegemon: Sparta. Our Ontological Hegemon, Athens:

“Hegemon” is an old Greek concept which, interpreted as it was at the time, caused catastrophic failure of Ancient Greece. “Hegemon” comes from hegeisthai “to lead”. By 500 BCE, the “hegemon” of Greece, after a showdown with Argos, which Sparta won, was viewed to be Sparta. Especially by the Spartans.

It was a question of honor, as far as Ancient Greeks were concerned. Then, honor was more important than life. Yet, when the Persian fascists landed at Marathon, in Attica, Athenian territory, the Spartans did not show up (they were busy with a “festival”, they lamely pretended).

However, thanks to her open society, direct democracy, better demographics, silver mines, higher philosophy and vast influence overseas, let alone her military aggressivity, by 450 BCE, Athens was the real hegemon of Greece. Athens had carried the war against Persia to Egypt, in an effort to free the oldest civilization from Iranian occupation.

Athens had direct democracy. Instead we have an NSAcracy. NSAcracy: the power of NSA. We have freedom, increasingly, albeit, without expression. When people who are not even USA citizens reveal USA war crimes, the full might of the government of the USA come after them (see the case of Assange, among others). Conversely, those who ordered war crimes are the object of no inquiry.

In truth, Sparta was a dying civilization. Yes, civilization. Sparta was so far out, in so many ways, it deserves the label “civilization”. Like all those who drown, Sparta’s actikons were erratic (allying itself with Persia against Athens, was the lowest of the low).

Make no mistake: in some ways, Sparta was more advanced than any other society, worldwide. For example for the status of women: girls, or women exercising in the nude with the boys, or men, was the norm. Athens, and other cities denigrated Sparta for giving so much power to women.

In other ways, Sparta was more than despicable: the Spartan, coming from the mainland to the north, invaded the Peloponnese, and enslaved the natives, the “Helots” reducing them to a very weird condition, both entrusting them, and treating them worse than even slaves were treated in the USA (Helot hunts, search and kill, were organized once a year for young Spartans to refine their skills).

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Chose Which Moods Rule, Carefully, Lest You Destroy, And Be Destroyed:

Athens could deploy more than 15,000 hoplites in the field, about 50% more than Sparta at its peak. Athens also had a war fleet of 300 triremes (Sparta had none).

According to Thucydides, the rise of Athens made Sparta livid, and was the cause of the war.

In my opinion, although this opinion is correct, I would add to it the important dimension that Sparta, this racist, exclusive society, was fading quickly.

Sparta constituted a vast coalition, and attacked Athens.

The war lasted 30 years, and devastated Greece. Sparta won only thanks to the enormous support of the giant fascist Persian empire (which Athens had defeated at Marathon). Persia financing allowed Sparta to build a giant fleet, with which it defeated Athens.

Now, where is Sparta? Athens is a metropolis, and many of her ideals rule the planet. Emperor Julian, when already the potential one and only heir to the imperial throne, asked to drop everything, and went to become a student in Athens, 800 years (!) after Sparta’s attack on Athens (by then Sparta had ceased to exist, from its rabidly exclusionary mentality).

Like Sparta, Germany is not really the hegemon. Fading error would be more like it.

Demographics projection show that both the United Kingdom and France will pass Germany relatively soon. Those two countries have more young people than Germany (and more ideas).

Although Germany is not Sparta anymore (see Nazism), it is still, arguably more Sparta, and France more like Athens (the role Francia, then France, played arguably since 356 CE, when the Parisii elected Julian, the anti-Christian Caesar, Augustus.

Germany has been behaving strangely. Merkel apparently was spying on France for the NSA.

Thus the question: where does the cooperation between the Germans and the NSA stop? Is Germany trying, deliberately to sabotage the Euro? The Euro was a French idea, and the French government is, at this point alarmed by German behavior. Who is Merkel working for? The NSA, in more ways than one?

https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2015/07/01/imf-nsa-trojan-horse/

Some say that the Greeks have twice the income and retirement, of say, the Slovaks. However, to halve suddenly Greek wealth and income would, and does lead to tragedies: for example Greeks have to pay 25% of their medical drugs, from their own pocket. If they have no pocket, no drugs, death.

Not to say that Greece is beyond any suspicion. Putting the Greek retirement age much later seems crucial. Early retirement age in Greece is…58. Whereas it’s 65 in Germany.

Now, of course, there are systems of mood. The mood in Europe has been that employment is not a human right, but a chore to be limited as much as possible. And that Greek plutocrats do not pay tax, is just a particular case of this general phenomenon, throughout the West. Factory, castle and artwork owners in the very egalitarian French Republic do not pay significant taxes.

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Athens Failed Because Valuable Moods Are Not Enough, Luck Is Necessary:

The best examples of bad luck piling up high caused the catastrophic, but temporary, defeat of France and Britain in May 1940. Athens had even worse luck.

In retrospect, Athens ought to have bent over backwards, and humiliate itself, to wait out Sparta’s quick degeneracy (the number of Spartan hoplites was going down fast).

However, this wisdom was not obvious at the time. Athens lost of the Peloponnese war greatly because of bad luck (not just because of hubris, lack of wisdom, irritating Alcibiades, and bad admirals).  A “plague” killed a full third of Athenian military age men, weakening considerably the City-State. But Athenian civilization survived. Although in reduced form, in the most important dimension. To this day.

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The Concept Of Hegemon Evolved According To Moods:

The Roman Republic had, essentially, a defensive concept of hegemony. When it became a plutocracy, it switched from defending the law to violating its spirit.

The Roman Republican spirit was symbolized by SPQR, the Senate, and The People of Rome. Namely wisdom of the Ancients, and democracy.

Then the mood changed to celebritism, being ruled, making rulers into gods, kleptocracy, plutocracy, and, finally, Catholicism and terror.

The Franks were not obsessed by the desire to establish hegemony. Officially kings (and queens) of the Franks were elected, and egalitarian inheritance laws made the legacy of power of an oligarchy uncertain, and, or, feeble. This mood penetrated the entire Frankish empire. So, when the “Renovated” Roman Empire was proclaimed at the Winter Solstice of 800, nobody tried to force the Republic of Venice to be part of the empire (although the Franks could have used Venice’s fleet).

Thus, counter-intuitively, the Frankish empire devolved politically afterwards, for centuries. Meanwhile, as we will see a new PHILOSOPHICAL hegemony was growing.

The first serious attempt at political hegemony was thanks to the Spanish-Roman empire Charles Quint (from Bourgogne) was (twice) elected and selected to lead. Then the war Isabella and Ferdinand had launched with France, blossomed in a monster that complicated the on-going hostility between France and her English erstwhile colony.

By 1600 CE, France was in the middle of an all-out war with Spain that would result in the independance of the Netherlands, and the independence of german states and Austria. By then the glories of hegemony were sung on all rooftops, as the concept, at least to the French, appeared to be a guarantor of security.

Unfortunately, in the next round, financially leveraged (ironically, thanks to the Dutch invasion of England) plutocracy defeated systematically France in two world wars (1756-1763 and 1792-1815). France won the middle war, which created the USA.

Meanwhile English plutocratic conspiring blew Prussia (and hence its evil mindset) out of all proportions. It looked as a good deal, for a long time. Prussia beat France twice in a row (1814-1815 and 1870-71), weakening the old European hegemon, France, considerably.

At Waterloo, the modest British force of 25,000 soldiers won, thanks to the much more numerous Prussian armies (which with other Germans brought the total to 118,000). That allowed to establish a worldwide British empire which lasted a century.

However, Britannia, France’s daughter, found itself confronted to a Prussian-German hegemon with a terribly evil mindset, which went berserk in 1914, after plotting its madness carefully.

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So How Did Western Civilization Come To Be? Became An Hegemon?

The answer is simple: Europe became a philosophical hegemon, through tremendous mental diversity. As political hegemony weakened, philosophical hegemony grew. How does philosophy lead? Naturally, philosophy leads the more, the more it embraces reality, that is, the more multidimensional it gets. This is the big difference with China, which was pretty mono-philosophical.

Chinese philosophy rested mostly on Confucius (with a sprinkling of Lao Tze and Mencius). Its diversity fed European philosophical hegemony. And it’s not finished. Indeed, we are not even respecting Athens’ full inheritance. Be it only in politics. High time for Athena to trample underfoot the robots of high finance and their miserable conspiracies (one of them to admit the Drachma at twice its rate for conversion into Euro, and another conspiracy being to propose a “bailout” that was truly a bail-out of greedy banksters, and a killer of the socio-economy).

The diversity of philosophical moods presiding over human destinies has made Europe rich and powerful. By forcing Greece in a Wall Street straightjacket, a vast conspiracy of the mediocre wants to impoverish and weaken the cradle of civilization. In a mood of gathering plutocracy, it makes sense. The sense of going down the abyss of self-destruction of all civilization, starting with the annihilation of imagination.

Patrice Ayme’