Kristo Ivanov - weblog –
BLOG
https://www8.informatik.umu.se/~kivanov/Personal/Telia1/BLOG.html
https://archive.org/details/kivanov_informatik_BLOG
The texts are written in Swedish or English
Texterna är skrivna på
svenska eller engelska
E-mail: <kristoivanov[AT]gmail[DOT]com>
===============
===============
CONTENTS / INNEHÅLLSFÖRTECKNING
INTRODUCTION: Why and how to read this blog
ENTRIES:
S =
SWEDISH + DATUM [For website translation see <http://translate.google.com>.
E =
ENGLISH + DATE (year-month-day).
Date of last update is posted at the end of each entry.
E250101 Ethics in parking of cars
E241209 Lawyers
”raped” by the law
E241113 Thieves in our home
E241025 Breakdown of human communication?
E240714 The meaning of the attempt to assassinate Trump
E240210 Swedish coverage of the Israel-Hamas war
E230923 From a mother to her insolent son
E230801 Quran
desecration and burnings in Sweden
E221027 New view of Sweden's gang crimes, and solutions
E221013 Inflation
in Europe and the West: WHY?
E220901 Criminality and juvenile delinquency: WHY?
E220716 Life,
death, political correctness, and conflicts
E220221 The
Russia-NATO-Ukraine information crisis
E211213 Consequences of Quarantine in Greece
E210707 The case of Veganism
E210218 Conspiracy theories - and covid19
vaccines
E210202 Respectful interaction in social media?
E210121 Restaurant-party in COVID-19 pandemic
E200409 Easter and Coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic
E190210 Climate change and global warming
E190207 Donation of body materials and organs for
transplants
E181008 Swedish friendship and its ending
E180416 Terrorism: Radicalization and
Rehabilitation?
ES171025 MeToo (Hashtag): Hollywood-worldwide
sexual harassment
E170724 Environmentalism and the age gap
S170413 Samvetsfrihet och abort [Freedom of
conscience and abortion]
E151214 Refugees or economic immigrants
E151025 On the why of rare inserts in this blog
E140825 On Gender Studies and Gender Perspectives
S121112 Lågvattenmärke i svensk kultur, och i förakt
E111227 Parents, adult children, childish adults - Inverted
identities?
E111222 The meaning of "Debate" oneliners.
E111207 SCUM Society for Cutting Up Men - Watershed of disgust
E110726 Mass murder in Norway, and Christian democracy
E110628 Democracy and information technology
E110513 Wagner-faddism as symptom of cultural crisis?
E110427 Easter: and anti-intellectual anti-Christian propaganda?
S110427 Påsken: ett tillfälle för anti-intellektuell anti-kristen
propaganda?
E110313 Humility in intellectual work
S100823 Böcker och kärlek
S100822 Fjäska inte för pensionärerna? Tillbaka till "Gamla och unga"
E100524 On friendship and personal relations
E100520 Why complaints of harassment and offences?
E100518 Why religion and social issues rather than science?
S100511 Fortsatta angrepp mot katolska kyrka
S100415 Pedofili i katolska kyrkan eller i samhället?
S100409 Smaklöshet eller omoral, och "Salandersyndromet"
S100407 Fortsatt hets mot kristna
S091114 Hetsjakt på kristna
S091105 Angrepp mot kristendomen
S090914 Fler starka kvinnor (och vita svanar)
S090911 Starka kvinnor, barnfostran och barnamord
S090907 Feminism, Universitet och Varför
S090821 Aftonbladets Donald Boström
och "Israel-skandalen"
S090812 Sveriges Radios "Heliga familjen"
S090802 Andlig vänskap - Spiritual friendship
S090721 Universitetsforskning
S090720 Gamla och unga
S090719 Vänsterns högervridning
S090718 Det agnostiska manifestet
S090717 "Sommar" i Sveriges Radio
INTRODUCTION: Why and how to read this
blog
.
First of all: in order to facilitate the
understanding of the texts you may start reading my General Disclaimer.
Some of the inserts that follow below were
written in Swedish language. They can be passably translated into English by
inserting into browser’s translating field the website’s (in the following
links exemplified for Google in Safari) html-address or the text. This unconventional weblog is intended to allow me to formulate
thoughts which burden my mind and cry out for expression, while satisfying the
wish of readers to know more about them. In due time these thoughts may find
their way to be refined and ordered in my Work In Progress (forthcoming). In
the meantime I think that the references and the basic material I am working on
can help others in their parallel efforts. Psychologically I may be writing in
the spirit of "Dixi et salvavi animam meam" ["I have spoken and
saved my soul"] a quote that is attributed to Karl Marx's ending of
his critique of the Gotha program,
while its meaning is extracted from the Bible (Ezekiel 33:9). I make extensive albeit not exclusive use of Wikipedia-references because of their comprehensiveness, and easy overview in
terms of standardized layout, with full knowledge and evaluation of their
possible shortcomings, obviously including those covered by
other sources than Wikipedia itself and by me in the context of Wikipedia-democracy
or “wikicracy”. The entries are put in inverse
chronological order (year-month-days, with date of last major revision in
parenthesis at the end). All comments are welcome: all will be read and, if
necessary, answered. The reason why I do not encourage a public on-line debate
by using a standard blog-editor is explained in my entry below on "The meaning of debate", and perhaps in
my biblical reference above as well in Plato's famous "seventh letter" about the questionable value of
writing. For the rest, see my disclaimer, at the top of my research overview. The
expressed opinions are strictly personal and I do not represent any
organization or institution.
[PÅ
SVENSKA / IN SWEDISH] För att underlätta förståelse av mina texter kan man
börja med att läsa min (på engelska) General disclaimer. Följande är
avsett att i avvaktan på min egen närmare bearbetning tillkännage tankar som kräver uttryck och som kan stödja andra
i parallella ansträngningar i besläktade problem. Psykologiskt drivs jag
sannolikt att skriva i den anda som präglar uttrycket "Dixi et salvavi
animam meam" ["Har talat och räddat min själ"] som ofta hänförs
till Kal Marx i slutet av hans kritik av Gotha programmet medan dess mening
härstammar från Bibeln (Hesekiel 33:9). Inläggen införs i
datumföljd (år-månad-dag, med datum av senaste större revision i slutet inom
parentes). Alla kommentarer är välkomna och, om nödvändigt, skall besvaras.
Anledningen till att jag inte uppmuntrar en offentlig on-line debatt genom
användningen av en standard blog-editor finns förklarad i mitt inslag nedan ang
"The meaning of debate" och kanske i min
bibliska referens ovan samt i Platons berömda "sjunde brev" angående det
tvivelaktiga värdet av att skriva. Åsikterna är strängt personliga och jag
representerar ingen organisation eller institution.
================
================
E250101
Ethics in parking of cars
This episode of “parking of a car” is apparently
trivial but not so if seen as an example of the consequences of technification
of society and of human mind in terms of computerization and
motorization of societies. It can but also should
be seen from the point of view of human-computer
interaction, and is illustrated in my text on artificial
general intelligence. These phenomena that can be studied and reflected
upon as I have been trying to show in the links indicated by the underlining of
the words of this introduction. The whole issue may be summarized in claiming
that computerization leads to a gradually stricter control of human behavior
and paradoxical decreasing reliance upon an assumed decreasing personal ethics
and responsibility, to be countered by a controlling decreasing percentage of
the population: the political and technical-juridical-bureaucratic elite. It is
coupled to a decreasing democratic control, which is also paradoxically relied
upon in face of increasing secularization of society, as explained in a book
with the challenging title The myth of democracy. It is the most
in-depth analysis of what others in the “far right” have more superficially
questioned in Democracy: The God that failed, or
(in Portuguese in Brazil) Democracia, um mito.
Now, over to some details in my correspondence with the firm HOJAB administering the parking lot. If
you cannot spend time for reading the summarizing sample below, I will tell you
that a faulty signalization as
perceived by the driver (me) in an emergency situation of driving his sick wife
to an
emergency care unit, induced him to a wrong parking and consequent fine
corresponding to about 60 US$. His written appeal (copy below) is countered by
a request that he gathers detailed administrative data on his wife’s case in
documents to be requested from and picked up within the span of couple of days
at the emergency unit. The unit has poor if any such administrative support,
and is located at up to 30 km of distance from the home, requiring an estimated
total working time of at least 6 hours by the 87-years senior driver plus a
medical doctor and some other involved people, probably not soon available.
(And to be compared with additional hours in writing this present text.) This
“impossible” request implies a risk of indirectly “putting off” the citizen, or
a lack of trust and a programmatic suspicion of his only wish to evade the
payment of the fine. The fine also disregards that the driver at the
unperceived wrong parking place, had already paid the regular fare for about 3
hours at a correct parking place nearby. There is a suspicion that the profit
from fines is comparable to the one from regular parking fees. It discourages
attempt to improve the signalization at the parking lot and encourages this
type of treatment of car drivers, which is deemed to be “impossible” to
describe in writing as I exceptionally try to do here, as I also did in a few
similar cases in my mentioned text on human-computer interaction.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: kivanov
<kivanov@informatik.umu.se>
Subject:
EMERGENCY Parking - Case 20701098727349 […]
Date: 11
November 2024 at 09:37:39 CET
To: Kristo
Ivanov <kristo.ivanov@gmail.com>
Hi EUROPARK/Hojab,
regarding [Case 20701098727349] on
November 4th.
I rushed to
Nacka Akuten with my sick wife in the car.
Even though
there were a few free spaces somewhere in the square, I took the one closest to
the door next to the sidewalk
I reported the
car's license plate to EasyPark .
After 3 hours of
waiting at the emergency room while my wife was going to Södersjukhuset, I went
to the car.
Saw the parking
ticket and only then did I notice a faded sign facing oncoming pedestrians on
the sidewalk: "Lastplats".
All other places
next to the sidewalk behind my parking space, there was no sign in front.
So, a faded sign
facing the oncoming pedestrians on the sidewalk, and not facing the arriving
parked motorists.
NOT like all the
other BLUE signs with bright white letters, facing the parking lot, for example
those reserved for ambulances.
I ask that the
inspection fee be canceled and the sign made like all the others, white letters
on blue, facing the parking lots.
I also ask for
consideration that I only have time to write this now, because in the meantime
I had a lot to do after a burglary in the house. It is unusual that you only
get EIGHT days to pay, compared to 15 or 30 in other domestic matters.
I will wait,
with the payment.
Thanks in
advance,
Kristo Ivanov
[…]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HOJAB
PARKERINGSSERIVCE
169 81 Solna
[…]
In order for us
to be able to decide on your objection, you need to submit a medical
certificate issued on the doctor's office's own letterhead, signed by the
doctor/nurse in question and also stamped with the office's stamp. The
certificate needs to contain the date and time of the individual visit or the
date and time of admission/discharge. The purpose is for us to receive
documentation that proves that the case was so urgent that the parking
conditions could not be followed. Remember to cross out sensitive information
such as symptoms and illness. The medical certificate can be sent to Hojab
Parkeringsservice, 16981 Solna, or parkering@svea.com. Pending this, the case
is stopped and dormant, but only until 2024-11-27.
[…]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 22 November 2024
at 15:59:43 CET
To: parkering@svea.com
I first received today, Friday, November 22nd, by
regular mail an anonymous letter from Hojab Parking Service dated November
18th. A copy is attached below. It requests a detailed certificate by November
27th about my wife Gunnela Ivanov's emergency case to Nacka Emergency on
November 4th, when she was then sent on to Södersjukhuset.
So I only get a couple of working days after the
weekend of the 25th-26th to travel 20-25 km to Nacka Emergency and look for
some stressed nurse serving a queue of waiting patients, and "demand"
a detailed certificate to be collected the following day. It is obvious that
Hojab is not familiar with the stressed work environment in an emergency
department with few, if any, office staff.
I am sorry that Hojab does not understand the
situation of vulnerable patients and has not taken into account my remark about
shortcomings in the signage of "LOADING SPACE". I have received
reports that the treatment of fines is strict because they constitute a large
source of income from parking. However, one longs for greater humanity in the
treatment of often vulnerable fellow human beings. I ask that a copy of this
e-mail, together with one of my previous appeals, be handed over to the head of
the Hojab Parking Service.
Kind regards,
Kristo Ivanov
[250101-1530]
Return to the initial list of Contents
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E241209
Lawyers ”raped” by law?
In one of a series of weekly interviews by Swedish
public radio, on November 29 and 30, 2024 the journalist Martin Wicklin interviewed
the defense attorney Clea Sangborn (saved here).
She touchingly explained how she had decided to stop practicing because of
painful experiences after defending a young woman who had been accused and
later convicted for murder. I understood that she expressed that it was
particularly painful and unbearable to experience that in her practice she had
to interrogate the plaintiff and cause additional pain, amounting to cause harm
to the already injured relatives of the victim of a murder, while exposing
herself to the hate of those who had been passionately condemning the (initially
only supposed) murderer.
I will proceed here below in a “telegraphic” style
since the whole issue is complex and would require an extensive and detailed
deep-going treatment that in earlier issues (as it can seen earlier in this
blog, examples here, and
here) has led me to write articles of
many pages, which I cannot anymore afford.
I will affirm that Sangborn’s surprise is conditioned
by a general lack of understanding of the place of law as related to philosophy
and religion in a country that is often considered as the most secularized in
the world. To begin with most Swedes are not aware that its law historically
follows the school of positive law,
something I myself became aware of when writing a book about system development and rule of law as related to the issue of privacy, and have
considered in an earlier items of this blog (here and here). As Wikipedia itself explains: it
is distinct from natural
law, which comprises
inherent rights, conferred not by act of legislation but by "God, nature,
or reason" and more: “More specifically, positive law may be characterized
as "law actually and specifically enacted or adopted by proper authority
for the government of an organized jural society." If I
dare to simplify it all, it means that in an extremely secularized society it
is the government with its laws that decides what is right or wrong, in
relation to the laws. It leads to strange consequences, such as the need to
“posthumously” observe that the fact of something not being prohibited by law,
does not mean that it is allowed or even less recommended: it only means that
formally it is not to be punished.
I remember that somewhere in Plato’s complete works
appears the human need of expiation or atonement,
atoning, or making amends, or taking action to correct previous wrongdoing, “or
some other expression of feelings of remorse”. It is the background of the idea
of restorative justice, which it is not seen properly a “philosophy” of law
but only named “an approach to justice”. I have noticed in following the daily
broadcasted news that most of those accused for serious crimes, almost
programmatically, deny the accusations making it more difficult and prolonged
to be eventually condemned in a court or tribunal. This to the point that I
have asked myself whether (positive) law should be designed to increase or
aggravate the inflicted punishment, if and when the accused is finally declared
guilty. But such a reform would counter the spirit of this text of mine. I
cannot forget the case I heard reported many years ago in the radio: a man in
the USA in a prison for life, or waiting for many years in a “death row” had
finally experienced remorse and religious conversion when visited by the
parents of the woman he had killed, and who had told him that they wanted to
express their forgiveness.
I perceive this whole problem as being an expression
of moral decline in a secularized society that forgets the meaning of good and
evil by reducing it to the possibility, probability or advantages of escaping
(positive) law, in parallel with the death of conscience, and more so of the
relation between conscience
and truth. The oblivion of the feeling of need of expiation is
paralleled a total loss of the meaning of Christianism, or of Christ’s
sacrifice on the cross, including an oblivion of love and forgiveness, which
on the international scene is substituted by the breakdown of human
communication, military power, police, revenge and sanctions, as appearing in
the Swedish (and international) attitude to Criminality and juvenile delinquency where, as in
Sweden two children aged 13 and 15 are being investigated for murdering a buddy
14 years old. This is what can lead a lawyer or a judge, and even more a victim
of a crime, to perceive that “something is rotten in the kingdom of Denmark”,
and in pain cry “Stop
the world – I want to get off”.
The ultimate meaning of all this also explains the
tragedy of the “religious” belief in democracy and freedom guaranteed by
positive law, which is represented by the psychological inability to understand
the meaning of the title of a book on The myth of democracy, because myth is divested of
its cultural aspect and the word is “forbidden” because it is misunderstood as
meaning only “lie”, that democracy is a lie. And it is not understood that
democracy presupposes people’s good morals in “loving their neighbours” and in
not fostering only their own “interests”. Misunderstandings reach up to the
point of praising humans’ readiness to sacrifice their life as secular
“martyrs”, for a misunderstood freedom in a
misunderstood democracy, as I controversially dared to suggest in, among
others, an essay on the Russia-NATO-Ukraine
information crisis.
And this also up to the point that a Brazilian author
proposes that political corruption can and should be combated by means of a new
national constitution, to be seen as [not acknowledging it being “a
positive”-] “Higher Law based on universal legal norms, and being absolutely
and completely immune to privileges and ideologies of any kind, whatever they
may be”. Again, it is the case of believing in a secular “Higher Law based on
universal legal norms”, which I have claimed is ultimately an implicit belief
in the higher laws of logic, such as the belief in a supposedly super-human
godly artificial
intelligence, which in turn is in fact a rape of the mind. That is, this
case the of lawyers, attorneys’ minds ignoring the relation between positive
law, universal legal norms, political power of governments, philosophy and
theology, as illustrated at top level by the impotence of the International
Court of Justice, International
Criminal Court and the very same United Nations in the cases overviewed
in my papers on the Russia-Ukraine (mentioned above), and Israel-Hamas-Gaza and
followed by events in Lebanon and Syria, not to mention Sudan, and so on. That
is: crimes on an international scale while awaiting a third and last
nuclear world war, with no atonements, restorative justice, forgiveness
and such. Surviving defense attorneys or countries’ respresentatives will have
difficult times and wanting “to stop the world – and get off” instead of
defending whoever wherever in international courts of justice and international
criminal courts.
[241210-1610]
Return to the initial list of Contents
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================
A couple of weeks ago, in the middle of
the day and during the family's three-hour absence, thieves broke into our home
through a barred window, destroyed some objects and threw the contents of
drawers, shelves and cupboards on all the floors, tables and beds. They were
disappointed by the lack of gold and jewelry but they broke some mirrors and
glass, and found a cheaper finger ring and some cash we had saved to escape
somewhere and live for a few weeks "if crisis or war comes", which
the insurance company reimburses up to the equivalent of about 400 dollars.
It was kind as they didn't do much damage
unnecessarily, even though it knocked us out for a few days and left a mark on
our lives. We try to practice our Christianity and ask ourselves whether the
thieves live in poverty, whether and how they experience the feeling of harming
even elderly in the age of their parents, and how they feel inside after
supporting themselves for many years in this vulnerable way. And we perceive
that the event can be seen as a divine intervention in order to remind us the
temporality of our rooting in this world, where we soon will have to leave all
out belongings.
All this, in turn, brings to mind our
perceived increased scale of crime (see below, here and here), to the extent that
it now involves murder more often and involves children as young as 13-15 years
of age. But it is still nothing compared to what happened in the two world
wars, in ongoing wars, especially in Gaza, as well as in
Ukraine which could lead to a third world war,
and in Sudan, etcetera. Conclusion: we still live (thank God) in a paradise and
nothing is so bad that it can't get much worse.
[241130]
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E241025 Breakdown of human communication?
I am
witnessing what happens around me and see how a mother and grandmother is
expected to struggle to learn more “human-computer
interaction” in order to be able to follow the events
with children and grandchildren by mean or one-way communication from them
through their accounts on the social net. What appears to be more recent,
however, is the phenomenon that this one way communication has been cemented by
the fact that when the parent sometimes writes a mail or communication to the
child or grandchild through a social medium like WhatsAppI, happens what I myself have experienced: no answer, or
worse: no “response” at all. It is like directing oneself to a wall or a rock
in nature.
Aged
people remember the time until the eighties when there was no commonly
available Internet, as people had to correspond by phone or by letters through
the public post. It is necessary to tell the younger generations (X, Y, Z or
whatever) that one had to buy a write on paper, often with a fountain pen that
had to be periodically filled with bought ink. And then fold the paper and insert
it in an envelope that also had to be periodically bought, and then glue a
bought stamp on the envelope that had to be addressed with ink, and then taken
to a postbox somewhere in the vicinity. And them wait a week or so with the
hope of receiving an answer after a week or so.
And
what happens now? If you wish to congratulate a younger adult, a child or
grandchild on occasion of their birthday, you kan write 5 or ten lines on the
computer and send the message on the Internet.
On
one occasion I myself got the “response” stating “Thanks”. But I know of people
who have not received any response at all, despite of not having had any prior quarrel
or so. From time to time, some grandchild may just “disappear”, never anwering
mails or phone call, explaining long later than it was a matter of periodical
“depression”, or such. And I have earlier written about a son who may not drop
a single phone call to his mother for months, after having anxiously searched
her some months earlier just for asking for borrowing money, no, not borrowing
but for getting it as advance inheritage. In other words, the persons who
searched for a contact for whatever purpose, are as they were “nothing”, “walls
talking to walls”, not deserving a kindness of consideration that onece upon a
time was an obvious courtesy in society, and more so in the extended family.
Younger generations grown up in the computer age, cannot lift and call a number
on their cellular, nor press a single button on the keyboard of their computer
or cellular or Ipad, for typing a single word, and press another one for
sending it.
And
it not only a question of younger generations, but also of (their?) business
firms. If one needs something to be done, like repairing a gadget or a home, if
one succeeds to contact them and get a response that this or that can and will
be done for a certain (?) amount at a certain time, weeks of silence may ensue,
requiring a renewal of the contact, until understanding that the other party
has lost the interest in fulfilling the initial assurance. Until understanding
that the other party finds it is easier to keep silent and unavailable, than to
risk to experience embarrassment in saying a no after having said yes. In fact,
I have heard fellows who preach the inappropriateness of experiencing shame or
guilt, while forgetting the existence and meaning of such words as “shameless”
and “conscienceless”.
What
is this? My hypothesis is that it is another (milder?) expression of what I
have analyzed in a paper on Reason and Gender, regarding the breakdown of the relation
between men and women, following the related rise of feminism and #MeToo movements, and attitudes
within families. All of it related to the amount of sterile debates, enmity, polarization such as in the 2025 USA elections or NATO vs. the
world, conflicts including within the family institution and its divorces, and
wars ongoing in Ukraine-Russia, Gaza-Israel-Lebanon, Sudan, and elsewhere. In USA seen as the headquarters of western democracy,
democratic people kill not only democratically elected presidents but also try to kill candidates to
the presidency, while the phenomenon is named simply as “polarization” in a
democracy that means 51% of the population forcing their opinion on its 49%.
All this while in the European Union enveloped in NATO, its top politician is
prohibited to talk with its most
powerful neighbor Russia. All this may be attributed to the increased secularization of especially western society, understanding and speaking mostly if not
only the language of military power.
The alternative easier position that we should not choose for “understanding”
what is happening is the one of contemporary cynicism.
[241028-0950
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E240714 The meaning of the attempt to assassinate
Trump
I
start writing this item upon awakening at the news (e.g. from the Associated
Press here but also from AlJazeera here because of what I what already explained below) on the attempt to
assassinate Donald Trump, and I keep wondering about the meaning of the event,
especially of the immediate comments that followed.
It is interesting to remark that most if not all
comments seem to deal with the political impact of the event on the ongoing
campaign for the next presidency and election in November 2024 of the
candidates Joe Biden and Trump. Compare with the case of witnessing a murder
and first asking “who gains and who loses from this murder?”
A clear example was the first immediate comment by the
“USA-expert” Andreas Utterström in the Swedish public radio’s morgon news on
today July 14th, with the title Trump kommer att använda attacken till sin fördel
[trans. The US insider: Trump will use the attack to his
advantage].
Donald Trump will use
the assassination attempt on him to his advantage, says US expert Andreas
Utterström after the attack.
As sick and cynical as
it sounds, this is, politically speaking, the best thing that could have
happened to Donald Trump," says Andreas Utterström.
Good that Utterström is at least conscious that “it
sounds” cynical. It would have been even better to have the insight that “it
is” cynical, as most of what it is said today on conflict-tragedies in the
world tends to be cynical, as I
suggest in my papers on the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza,
including the references to the latest negative comments on the visit of the
new president Viktor
Orbán to Vladimir Putin, as well as on the “philosophy” for
the invasion of Gaza in the Israel-Hamas war. Wikipedia defines contemporary
cynicism in terms of a cynic having
“an attitude characterized by a general distrust of the motives of others. A cynic may have
a general lack of faith or hope in people motivated by ambition, desire, greed, gratification, materialism, goals, and opinions that a cynic perceives as vain,
unobtainable, or ultimately meaningless. […] Cynicism is often confused with pessimism or nihilism, perhaps due to their shared association with a lack
of faith in humanity.”
But I have argued in my mentioned papers that in this
sense cynicism does appear as having faith, if not in humanity, in humanity
represented by a misunderstood democracy,
a democracy that is conceived under false premises, as detailed in the
Swedish political scientist and historian Tage Lindbom’s book The Myth of Democracy.
|
Seen against this background, what it being said and
written in the news about the attempt of assassinating Trump, mainly that it
was an “attack on democracy”, should rather be seen as a sign of failure of an ailing democracy: a
democracy assumedly based on freedom of expression except for disinformation countered by
censorship and argumentation
in flawed debates. And speculations about who is gaining or losing
from the events shoud be substituted by questions on the why of violence and
how to avoid it without relying mainly on repressive law, police and
military. |
It is a democracy that is based on a struggle for
power as between today’s two main political USA parties, distrust and hate of
the counterparts such as in Ukraine and Gaza rather than on Christian charity
and acquittal or search for conciliation, mutual understanding, peace and
friendship. One main word is conciliate,
conciliation, for which Webster’s
Third New International Dictionary (1971) has the following to say:
The effort to establish harmony and
goodwill; the intervention in a dispute; to make compatible, cause to be in
accord; to win over from a state of hostility or distrust; to propitiate; to
make compatible; to bring together.
Of course, “to bring together”, e.g. the parties in
USA’s House of Representatives and Senate which could be busy in curbing the
country’s criminality, curbing demand for rather than sales of drugs, improving
education and infrastructure, and such, or be busy in leading the United
Nations in solving conflicts around the world rather than developing the “military-industrial
complex”. All this instead of reaching and bombing other
countries all over the world, starting from second world war’s atomic bombs on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, all for the purpose of guaranteeing democracy and
freedom all over the world as substitutes of Christianity, in the drive for reducing
religion to politics. Or it should be busy in trying to solve today’s
crisis of diplomacy, a crisis that may be seen exemplified by typing the word
“diplomacy” in the dedicated search-field of my homepage
at Umeå university. The general trend, however, seems to be confrontation,
secrecy, disinformation
(equivalent to censorship), distrust
(equivalent to conspiracy theories), sanctions,
weapons, threats, and revenge, which leads thoughts to a coming third world war
on the basis of a breakdown of human relationships. Especially in western
countries such breakdown can be symbolized by the breakdown of the family seen
as the “atom” of society, as illustrated in the introductory presentation of my
paper on Reason and Gender.
Nevertheless, it seems to me that it is important to
see how the event is “played down” and ethics is reduced to daily smart
politics. A sophisticated example is today’s (July 14th) text by Adam
Roberts, digital editor of “The
Economist today”, a Sunday edition of The Economist daily
newsletter. After a short summary of the event he writes:
What
flows from this? Rightly, the attack has been condemned by President Joe Biden
and, as far as I can tell, from all political quarters. As angry and polarised
as American politics has become, nobody should ever cheer politically motivated
violence, whether the victim is Mr Trump; or Nancy Pelosi’s husband (who was
attacked with a hammer by a crazed man in his home two years ago); or the
police and others who were assaulted by a mob that stormed Capitol Hill in
January 2021. […]
The
motivation of the attacker may matter little. […] In fact, the severe threat of
political violence is a reality everywhere. It was only in May that a gunman
shot and wounded the prime minister of Slovakia, Robert Fico, as he campaigned
for re-election. (Read
about that attack.) In Brazil, in 2018,
Jair Bolsonaro was stabbed in the abdomen at
a campaign rally […]
Ideally,
the ugliness of the attempt on Mr Trump’s life could produce something hopeful.
If only it would encourage politicians from all sides—including the Republican
himself—to moderate their language, to talk less about the evils of their
political rivals and to foster the return of civility to politics. The chances
of that, of course, are sadly close to zero.
In other words, with my own comments in square
brackets: “Don’t blame anybody, nobody is worse or better than anyone else. We
can hope that [only] politicians moderate their language but [it sounds cynical
that] the chances, of course are sadly close to zero”.
In the meantime, talking about conciliation and
diplomacy, the European Union’s NATO allies are daily quoted in the news as
condemning Viktor Orbán, newly appointed to the EU’s rotating presidency, for
his trip to Moscou and talks with Putin, after meeting many others including
Trump. There are also reports that politicians from other EU-countries are
exploring the possibilities of “sanctions” against Orbán, including refusal to
send top politicians to his planned coming EU conferences, and the wish to find
a way of dismissing him från the recent half-year appointment to the EU
presidency. That is, he is accused of and informally convicted for the “crime”
of diplomatically meeting and speaking
with political opponents. This reminds me of a former supposed friend who
terminated our relationship for my writing a paper on the
perceptions and motivations behind the Ukraine conflict without condemning and
insulting Putin. This is what saddens and motivates me to think about a
decadent West with gradual breakdown of human communications, and a coming
third world war.
[240717-1805]
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E240210 Swedish coverage of the Israel-Hamas war
The text of this
item of my blog increased gradually in scope and I needed to edit it as a whole
article that can be retrieved at my home
page, or at the Internet
Archive.
What is left
here below are only the first two paragraphs of the background-introduction:
Especially
during trips abroad, and as already mentioned in my article on the Russia-Ukraine
conflict, I compare Swedish news in mass media, mainly
television SVT and
radio SR,
with news accessible in hotels’ television networks, the English versions of Deutsche Welle
(DW), France
24, and AlJazeera. It
stimulated other critical thoughts, and conclusions. Earlier I also compared
them with the CNN, BBC and more seldom
available CGTN
(Chinas Global Television Network) in connection with the Ukraine war. Now in
the first two months of year 2024 I felt it embarrassing, the more so in
dialogues with our foreign contacts, that the events in the Israel-Hamas
war are comparatively silenced after the initial
terrorist attack by Hamas in Israel. This to the extent that we wondered if this
silencing is not recommended because of concern that the truth (as well as the
balancing of different opinions) may increase the harassment of Jews in Sweden.
It is the case that TV and radio stations in other Western countries including
the Al
Jazeera English reported news with text and images of the killing and
the wounding, of up to an average of 200 civilians per day, mainly in Gaza,
including the West Bank. This in Israel's self-defense after the Hamas attack
with (in mid-February 2024) about 28.000 (33.000 in April) dead Palestinian
civilians against Hamas's murder of roughly 1,300 Israelis, both figures
including children, women and elders.
By the end of
February news agencies (here, here and here),
reported that an active member of
the United States military (Aaron Bushness) had set himself on fire outside the
Israeli embassy in Washington, DC, in an apparent act of protest against
Israel’s devastating war on Gaza, estimated (as the BBC
Middle East correspondent did) to have resulted in about more
than 30.000 dead and 70.000 injured. Others
estimated on March 5, 2024 an informal death total of up to 200.000, which is
supported by the reported
application of high-tech warfare. (see here
on AI-weapons). I did see neither the suicide nor the 100-200 daily
deaths being commented in the Swedish public service news. It recalls, as I
already remarked in my essay on the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the difficulty to
respect not only Christian doctrine but even the milder Jewish classical
injunction of “An eye for an eye”.
[240420-1250]
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E230923 From a mother to her insolent son
The title of
this blog could also have been: Denying a
mother to see her great-grandchildren. More than ten years ago I had
witnessed scenes of insolent adult children and grandchildren who harassed or
were insolent with their mother and grandmother. It motivated me to write an
insert in my blog with the title Parents, adult children, childish adults
- Inverted identities?
Since then I
perceive that moral decline of society, including also an increased criminality
of youngsters down to an age of 13, which has continued, if not
even accelerated. Lately I have witnessed a few uncommon examples of sons (but
I know one case of daughter) who even hinder their parents to have contact with
the sons' own grandchildren. This understood as a "penalty" for
perceived unjust or unloving behavior of their parents, which at least in a
couple of cases I personally could verify was not true.
The latest case
of a suffering great grandmother puzzled me for my not being able to imagine (I
felt wordless) how she could respond to the insulting behavior or her own son
who he himself for months does not even drop a telephone call to his old
mother, and allows one of his own adult children to forbid her to contact with
her great grandchildren.
A distressing,
sorrowful parenthesis: as it was not enough, there is the case of a grandparent
who is not even invited to a grandchild’s wedding. And to add insult to injury,
that grandchild’s father and siblings who happen to be invited to the ceremony
do not care or dare to investigate, denounce and blame the insult. “The decline
of the West”?
After passing a
couple of nights almost sleepless, I could formulate the only text that would
not provoke a meaningless impossible argument between the two main actors of
this undignified drama. This, disregarding whether my thoughts would be
accepted or not by the great grandmother. For my own peace of mind and possible
encouragement to other unhappy people I put the English translation at the left
and the original Swedish text at the right here below:
|
From a mother to her insolent son I don't feel
unresponsive, just speechless. I am overwhelmed
that you let your feelings for me, come so far or
so low, without being
able or willing to express them to me. I could have
explained to you, things and
events that you could not understand. I myself have
learned how important it is, after
the death of my parents, not to be left
with a guilty conscience. It is only in
old age that I have been able to better understand, the tremendous
importance of the Fourth Commandment to Honour thy father and thy mother. (And this even
before the Fifth Commandment of
"Thou shalt not kill"!). Since even
among the animals it is natural that the
parents take care of their young but the young
are not expected to remember it, or even show
love, respect and gratitude. |
Från en mor till sin
oförskämda son Jag känner mig inte
svarslös, utan bara ordlös. Jag är överväldigad av att du låtit dina känslor för mig, komma så långt eller lågt, utan att kunna eller vilja uttrycka dem för mig. Jag skulle ha kunnat förklara för dig, saker och händelser som du inte kunnat förstå. Jag har själv lärt mig hur viktigt det är att efter föräldrarnas död, Inte ha något dåligt samvete kvar. Det är först vid ålderdomen som jag själv kunnat bättre
förstå, den oerhörda betydelsen av det fjärde budordet om att Visa aktning för din far
och din mor. (Och detta även före
det femte budet "Du skall inte dräpa"!) Eftersom även bland djuren förekommer det att föräldrarna naturligt tar hand om sina ungar men att dessa inte förväntas komma ihåg det, eller ens visa kärlek, respekt och tacksamhet. |
This
is also the place to mention that on other occasions I have heard a son
“lecturing” his mother on the desirability of his feeling neither shame nor
guilt, which prompted me to reflecting that he would have liked to be shameless
and conscienceless. I also heard a granddaughter responding to her grandmother
who had expressed a longing to see her, for a visit by her, accusing the
grandmother for wishing to instill in her feelings of guilt, and that she
already new very well that grandmother loved her. In still another occasion I
heard of a daughter who had fallen ill and had been taken to the hospital
reproaching her mother for telling about feeling like sharing the daughter’s
suffering. The daughter clarified that it was she herself who was now suffering,
and didn’t like to hear about her mother’s sufferings. In other words, the
daughter had never heard or understood the Christian idea of sharing others’
suffering. I also saw a younger woman who apparently “praised” her mother for
having avoided to feel guilty because of having taken care until of her
grandmother, the mothers’ mother, until death. Later I realized that her praise
might have been motivated mainly by her aversion towards feelings of guilt and
shame. Even disregarding the Bible’s sharing in suffering,
this would also show a sad lack of understanding of what “love” is, and a
disregard of psychological realities in that shared pain brings people together. In
other words, it shows an impossibility to also understand the ultimate
Christian meaning of suffering as exposed in the text of the famous apostolic
letter Salvifici Doloris by the former Pope John Paul II.
Aftermath:
Returning to my first main account above, the more I thought about this event
the more I was reminded of criticism of Christianism in the context of a
Nietzsche-inspired Master and Slave philosophy. I
thought, right or wrong, that the attitude of a great grandmother who would not
accept my formulation of a message to her son and grandson, is an attitude that
encourages others to regard Christianism as a philosophy for slaves:
A
philosophy for slaves would be the pure passive acceptance of suffering, which
may deserve the humiliating and undignified epithet of masochism, in
oblivion of the Christian message on the meaning
of suffering and of the meaning of the Commandment Honour thy father and thy mother. In fact this attitude in suffering can be seen as differing from the
attitude of martyrdom because it does not display the suffering a persecution for advocating, renouncing,
or refusing to renounce or advocate, a religious belief or other cause as
demanded by an external party.
That is, because the party would not
be a suffering "martyr" because she does not "advocate". In
our case this means that she would not
be a martyr because she would display what is a perceived as the attitude of a
"slave": she does not spell to the son and grandson the sheer content
of the Fourth Commandment or, as often seems to be the case in a secular
culture of "silence", the "slave" "heroically"
does not even disclose, display or speak out her suffering.
Or,
in her attitude, the persecuted party keeps at the level of the illuminated but
pre-Christian attitude of Plato (in his famous Seventh Letter (341d, and 344c), who reached the apex of secular wisdom in realizing and
formulating the tragedy that I already tried to illustrate in a text on Information and Debate, explaining why the mother and
great-grandmother should not mention
her suffering to her son and grandson. The explanation can be resumed in a
couple of quotations from Plato that I felt the obligation of displaying in
other texts of mine:
|
If I thought it possible
to deal adequately with the subject in a treatise or a lecture for the
general public, what finer achievement would there have been in my life than
to write a work of great benefit to mankind and to bring the nature of things
to light for all men? I do not, however, think the attempt to tell mankind of
these matters a good thing, except in the case of some few who are capable of
discovering the truth for themselves with a little guidance. In the case of
the rest to do so would excite in some an unjustified contempt in a
thoroughly offensive fashion, in others certain lofty and vain hopes, as if
they had acquired some awesome lore. […] |
|
For this reason no
serious man will ever think of writing about serious realities for the
general public so as to make them a prey to envy and perplexity. |
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E230801 Quran desecration and burnings in Sweden
What
follows is a text that I have not the time and means to elaborate as it should
from the point of view of the language of political science.
There
are reports of desecration of Quran by means of burnings since
year 2020 with a culmination
in 2023. These desecrations were permitted by the
police under the banner of freedom
of expression and demonstration in the Swedish
Constitution, disregarding the protests of Islamic countries that experience
this as an abusive insult to their main religion and national identity, or how
it happens to be expressed at different times in their politics and mass media.
The ongoing main response reported by Swedish mass media is that both
government and the parliament reiterate the fact that the on the basis of its
democratic structure the government cannot intervene in the doings of the
police and the courts' interpretations of its constitution that guarantees the
freedom of expression.
Such
response does not tell whether and why the Swedish parliament with the
democratic support of the population could not influence the relevant laws and
the constitution. I can guess that the answer and explanation is that Sweden is
the or a most secularized country in
the world and it does not mind about any religion or conception of neither God
nor gods or their believers. Nevertheless, for the religious majority in the
rest of the world, desecrations of holy books in the great religions are a sign
of danger because desecrations are perceived as declaration of rejection of
basic values that are considered as more basic than secularized local “basic
values” such as freedom of expression in presumed, misunderstood “democracies”.
(More below, with reference to author Tage Lindbom.) Consequently, religious
people do not feel respect for and trust in peoples that in democratic
elections affirm acceptance of constitutional rights of “free expression” of
contempt and rejection of religious basic values with decurrent unexpected
behavior.
Upon
the violent protests and threats of boycotts the main official reaction in
Sweden up to now has been the expression of fear of terrorist actions and fear
of economic consequences of a worsening of Sweden’s international “trademark”
and prestige in world politics, to the point that one main morning in the
country, Svenska Dagbladet (Nov 26, 2023) published an extensive overview of a worldwide worsening of Sweden’s
reputation. The more so when seen together with the loss of its neutrality in
its application for joining NATO. Not a serious consideration of changing the
law as a sign of respect for others'
feelings that are not "only feelings", as it is obvious to do in
the name of human friendship and respect as within families. Friendly respect
is not shown because of considering that in a democracy the freedom of
expression is "sacralized" by the constitution. This disregards that
democracy is or should be not mainly feelings and (freedom of)
"expression" but mainly friendly serious intellectual debate that is not simple acting, burning of books or Piss Christ (and its section "See also"). The latter went relatively unnoticed, probably because Muslims
are people who still take religion seriously. At the same time, it suggests
that Christian populations do not
take religious matters seriously. On the contrary they feel proud for not
“giving in” to threats of retaliation and terrorism. In other words, the
question of “love thy neighbor”, the summary of Christian commandments, is
translated into a question of power, as when a possible apology is replaced by
counter-threats of sanctions, or accusation of “hypocrisy” of those who condemn
the lack of respect, as I note elsewhere in the case of the Ukraine conflict. And there is also the fact that
other democracies such as Finland as some other European democracies already have laws that allow for
avoiding such desecrations, which by the way has allowed Finland to not incur,
like Sweden did, into Turkey's veto to its problematic joining the NATO.
In
several other writings of mine archived mainly in archive.org, but especially in the most recent one about the conflict
between Russia and Ukraine, I have emphasized that in the West in
general, but even more so in a most secularized country like Sweden, Democracy
with capital D has taken the place otherwise held by God himself. The freedom
of expression being one main pillar of democracy is consequently also
sacralized, whatever expression means. This has been treated in detail by the
late political scientist Tage LIndbom in his book that has been translated into
English under the title The Myth of Democracy, where
he dwells on the pre-requisites for democracy before it became a God-surrogate.
The myth of democracy also explains why intellectual debate, when not outright
impossible as suggested in my essay on Information and Debate, ends in religion(s) with its (their)
psychically necessary dogmas.
It
leads to the tragic consequence that the only intellectual debates (not
burnings or desecrations but) about the differences between religions, should
be seen as statements of ultimate supreme values, such as the primacy of power
and justice vs. alternative primacy of charity or love. But the impossibility
of debates because the lack of "love thy neighbor", a lack equivalent
to the replacement of speech by logic purified from feelings and emotions as in
artificial
general intelligence of ChatCPT, as also after brain lobotomy, means violence and war.
An
example of such a logical (or figuratively “lobotomized”) mind can be perceived
by those who understand Swedish in the position of the philosopher Per Bauhn in
the discussions in a program of the Swedish public radio Yttrandefrihet eller Hädelse? [“Freedom
of expression or blasphemy?” on 8 Sept 2023, link to the recording available
until further notice]. I have long claimed that if computers such as in AI and
ChatGPT cannot achieve intelligence, humans can culturally get accustomed to
think only or mainly logically, as slow and simple computers. I have no space
here to give an account of philosopher's contribution to the above-mentioned
program, but it could have been achieved by a ChatGPT "trained" with
appropriately chosen defective definitions, e.g. of the Swedish (freedom of)
"expression", which in English is usually an more appropriately
translated into (freedom of) "speech".
This
becomes the more clear when we consider that despite the supposed, assumed
sacralization of the democratic freedom of expression, the denial of the Holocaust and the display of the Nazi flag-symbol have been criminalized in several western democratic countries. In other words, the Holocaust
and the respect of its victims (cf. respect of "Love thy neighbor"?)
and their heirs is more sacralized than God himself, as conceived in the three
main monotheistic religions. Unless the respect for particular human lives in
not the only remnant, deformed commandment of old Judeo-Christian culture. Not
to mention "hate
crimes”, where hate contrasted to the commandment of love, is also considered more sacred than hate of God, since they
do not include hate of God and of those who adhere to religious faith. This up
to the point that a Pentecostal Christian pastor had been denounced up to the
supreme court of justice for quoting from the Bible (cf. here in English, and here a commentary by the Supreme Court of Sweden (in Swedish).
Western
secularized countries’ defective understanding of what religion and especially
Christianity is about has ultimately also caused misunderstandings of their own
welfare politics as in Sweden, increasing estimated risk for terrorist attacks.
As the Associated Press expressed it in a communication
of February 3, 2023, aggravated by Palestinian Hamas attack
of Israel on October 7 the same year:
STOCKHOLM (AP) — The Swedish government
again sought Friday to discredit claims that Swedish social service agencies
kidnap Muslim children, saying Sweden was again seeing a “systematized” and
“extensive” disinformation campaign.
“This campaign has now gained
momentum again,” said Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson.
“This is false. This is not true. Sweden
does not kidnap children. The social services do not kidnap children,”
Kristersson told a press conference. ”Neither Muslim nor other children.”
He said that social workers and other employees
are being “exposed on social media and are being threatened.”
He
said the government will post guards inside social services offices and will
earmark more funds to the Swedish Psychological Defense Agency, which was
established to counter misinformation, to help it tackle the “systematized”
campaign against Sweden.” He didn’t say how much money would be given to the
agency.
[…]
Kristersson said the
disinformation campaign over child kidnappings started in 2021. The
Psychological Defense Agency said last year that the allegations could be
traced to an Arabic-language site whose creator expressed support for the
Islamic State group.
In February 2022, the
Swedish Foreign Ministry said that “all children in Sweden are protected and
cared for equally under Swedish legislation” and that social workers need a
court order to remove children from their parents without consent.
After
the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023 and Israel’s counterattack in Gaza
and the West Bank, some Muslim and Pro-Israel demonstrations repeated the
accusation the Swedish social service agencies kidnap children of Muslim
refugees. It is seen as increasing the risk for Muslim terrorist attacks. What
is not explained is why Muslims
perceive what happens as kidnapping, as also non-Muslim families may perceive
it. This is not explained because the Swedish establishment, prefers
to classify the whole as “disinformation” (in a Wikipedia article on “Alleged
state-sponsored kidnappings of Muslims in Sweden”) without
knowing what information and “dis-“ is in the first place, in the context of quality-control
of information. The Swedish establishment is not aware
that it lives in a society applying a philosophy of law called Positive Law (discussed also here, in Swedish) in contrast with
several other countries and cultures that espouse a Subsidiarity that is related to religion and to the
concept of Natural Law. In
practice it means that in contrast to Sweden, much of the world around it
considers the family represented by man and woman, and consequently children, as the “atom or cell” of society. This was
rather clear in the Christian Catholic view as explained in Signum (April 2024) in an article on
“Kyrkan och familjen i individualismens tid” (trans. “The
church and the family in the age of individualism”).
Not the government and governmental (“kidnapping”) power that Sweden
unconsciously assumes as being the final guarantor, as historically accounted
in the ideology of State Individualism.
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E221027 - New view of Sweden's gang crimes, and
solutions
Why are gang criminals in Sweden so extremely easily
offended? is
the title of an article by author a former lawyer Jens Lapidus in
the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter (October
23, 2022) and could this in turn mean
that there are unexpected opportunities to fight crime? The subject of the
article is motivated by the welfare nation Sweden’s special position in
relation to organized crime. The article was further summarized in
the Finnish main newspaper Hufvudstadsbladet
and in a news
site, and it is now commented by me here below. It
emphasizes that serious criminals in Sweden have special characteristics
compared to other countries in Europe.
Shootings after being offended. Jens Lapidus
points out that he perceives that the shootings are often about quarrels
between individuals rather than broad conflicts. They rarely concern
settlements on overall issues of drug trafficking or territorial division.
Instead, they are about individuals who feel offended, Jens Lapidus emphasizes
in a text in Dagens Nyheter today.
Under the
heading "Why are Swedish gang criminals so easily offended?" Lapidus
tells about his experience with young criminals. “When I was active as a
lawyer, I met many clients for the first time when they were only fifteen years
old. The crimes they were charged with were relatively trivial, but a few years
later the charges had become much more serious.” During his conversation with
the young people, a revealing picture of the development appeared: in the
isolation that prevailed, conversations sometimes arose about something other
than the later trial itself. It could touch eating habits and exercise, faith
and family, film and literature.
Privatizations or integration: “They weren’t
yet -filled eighteen, but I thought of elite soldiers, guys who first break
down and then built up as new, tougher and more dangerous men.” Regarding the
question of how to counteract the growing gang violence in Sweden, Jens Lapidus
notes that in recent years a number of law-penalties have been tightened and
new measures are being introduced by the new government and the right-coalition
of political parties. Lapidus discusses that some believe that the cause of the
problems is cuts in the budget, privatizations and increased gaps, while others
emphasize high immigration and unsuccessful integration of immigrants.
“However, I believe that the most unique in the situation is how sensitive the
perpetrators of violence are, says Jens Lapidus in DN. An extreme norm of
masculinity seems to have emerged in parts of Sweden's youth groups. A lost
word, a too long look, a wrong click on social media can be perceived as an
insult that must be answered with violence says Lapidus.
Comparison with other countries. In Sweden, the
men in the gang criminals are apparently extremely much more offended than
their peers in other comparable countries. When Jens Lapidus seeks answers as
to why Sweden is affected by so many shootings, he points out that poverty,
racism or drug trade probably do not differ much between Sweden and other
countries. “It has to do with the fragile men, “protest-masculinity”. The toxic
masculinity, Hypermachismo, is the real reason why Sweden tops the lists on
shootings, emphasizes Jens Lapidus, which in the Dagens Nyheter’s text also highlights various literary sources,
research and interviews. He asks if the modernized male norms in Sweden may
have increased the gap to the gang's hypermasculine attitude. Sweden may have
been naive, not understood the seriousness of the so-called protest
masculinity.
Sweden compared
to Germany: Lapidus indicates that cultural differences linked to foreign
patriarchal thought systems do not seem to be the only cause. Large groups with
the roots in these systems are also found in other countries, for example in
Germany and France, without the ultra-high sensitivity to offenses. “But Sweden
should never be ashamed of the achievements we have achieved in the field of
gender equality, emphasizes Jens
Lapidus. There are several possible partial solutions that can have connections
precisely to the view of masculinity. “Perhaps investments in martial arts or
military service can be part of the solution: activities that award
traditionally male virtues such as strength and solidness, without being
toxic.” In the newspaper’s text he also emphasizes that much more is required
than that and that there are no simple solutions.
What
to say about this view of solutions to gang crime in general and crime in
particular? With all respect for the new insights my first observation is that
it does not relate to solutions based on ethics and moral education, especially
if focusing on preventive measures, the
more so when referring to children and youngsters becoming criminals. It is as
if it is not necessary to teach what is right and what is wrong. In this sense
the above text ignores this blog’s earlier text below
on criminality.
A
second observation is that the article extends the thought to the question of
masculinity up to the point of mentioning the possibility of investments
in martial arts or military service but does not relate to the locus of teaching
on masculinity, the role of the father in
the family. As I see it, on the
contrary, the text above is absolutely politically correct in underlining that
“But Sweden should never be ashamed of the achievements we have achieved in the
field of gender equality”. It is engraved in the democratic bible represented
by the Swedish Government’s declarations, which have received worldwide
attention. But few dare to question the breakdown of the families
and the responsibility of fatherhood where a fugitive, or divorced and rejected
father is often absent and the children grow under the shaken authority of the
mother and various father-substitutes. They testify simultaneously the
meaninglessness of masculinity and the self-sufficiency of the mother in the
nation with a declared feminist agenda, up to the point that a recent book on
the Swedish society’s feminization imputes the growing brutal gang criminality
to the surplus of young men in the immigration to the country. See Den
mjuka staten. Feminiseringen av samhället och dess konsekvenser
[The soft state. The
feminization of society and its consequences] that I also comment as sign of a
culturally decadent society in the introduction to my paper on Reason and Gender, cf. a newspaper review here.
The children
without an ambitious, protective and authoritative family are not stimulated to
fulfill their school studies. They are educated by massmedia to contempt for
obnoxious masculinity in former patriarchates, which have oppressed women and mothers
for centuries. The children do not learn to dominate the language and to
formulate and express their thoughts and feelings. The only way out is through
aggressive, affirmative public action and a visible persona or,
in the best case, to look for an archetypal father figure who, in the worst
case is found in a criminal gang leader who teaches teenage boys to murder (as
in Sweden, so young as at 15 years’ age), or in the best case will be found in
the videos and books of the psychologist, author and media personality Jordan
Peterson. It is not a by chance that he has been felt as a
role model by a great number of young men, for having expressed “forbidden
truths”.
At
least a road to some of these forbidden truths I have tried to outline in a
text on Reason and Gender. In another text on Medical safety of patients dealing with my own experiences with the
“health industry” I expose situations that could have raised violent
aggressiveness in people who have not the option to verbalize their
frustrations, which in part are also motivated by a secular culture’s
ineptitude in fostering humility, meekness, modesty. Such ineptitude is rooted
in the ignorance of the meaning of The Mote and the Beam in the eye, that I also point out as a
root of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The
more we heighten ourselves, the greater our fall is perceived to be when
insulted. It is not necessary to search so far as in the classic Imitation of Christ. It is enough to browse the likewise
classic Litany of Humility, and to compare it with what has become
“law” in modern Sweden when seen as
the most secularized country of the world. It now practices the rhetorical
rejection of the Law of Jante as a secular adaptation of the pious Protestant ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism of the USA seen as dominated by Prosperity theology.
At this point of the text it is
interesting to realize the extent of the cultural tragedy of secularization in
western countries as exemplified in what I heard long after having written most
of the present text: the approach by Amir Rostami to Swedish gang criminality. Wikipedia (translated here) introduces him as born in 1981, former Swedish police officer, author, sociologist and professor of criminology at
the Gävle
University College. He has been researching crime at Stockholm University since
2009 and at the Institute for Future Studies since
2011. On August 5 2024, in the Swedish Public Radio’s summer series of
“sommarpratare” [summer talks] he was invited to
talk for more than one hour (text
here available until Semptember 18 2024 but
saved here) about his life and thoughts. Having immigrated
with his mother from Tehran as a child he recalls Iran’s situation as one in
which many people lived under “religious oppression” as Christians are said to
have done under the Inquisition – never mind its possible
justification, related to the present secularization
of the Western world with its “democratic” censorship of “disinformation”. (Examples of today’s mild inquisition is the silencing of a politically
incorrect Viktor
Orbán who took
over the rotating presidency of EU council
in July 2024 and university professors like Glenn Diesen, both daring democratically to write about and talk (here, here, and here) to “heretical” political opponents.) Rostani later summarizes today’s
political standard explanations of criminality, based on similar thoughts in
his PhD
dissertation, as:
While the parties on the left tend
to explain crime based on structural and socio-economic explanatory models such
as unemployment and overcrowding, the parties on the right of the political
scale tend to explain crime based on cultural aspects linked to immigration and
moral values […] But what is rarely raised and needs to be raised is at least
as important. The tunnel vision, lack of analytical ability to analyze
vulnerabilities in society and lack of evaluations and decisiveness.
In
conceiving criminality in these terms he both reminds that Sweden’s degree of
secularization attracts most secularized immigrants who suffer from religious
oppression in their home countries (including LGBT-people longing for
liberalism and “democracy”), and that
they are prone to conceive moral values as
belonging to the narrative of “political right”. An example of reduction
of religion to politics, if not science. All
the while the solution seen as a function of “analytical ability, evaluations
and democratic decisiveness. In doing so he reveals lack of knowledge of the
“analytical ability” of the definitional antidote to “tunnel vision” as implied
in West Churchman’s “systems
approach” (1968) and its ultimate possibilities in The Design of Inquiring Systems, and The Systems Approach and its Enemies. All this while Rostani’s “analytical ability” celebrates triumphs,
while awating its final debacle in “artificial
general intelligence”, where ChatGPT today would be (expected to be) able to
answer in one minute even a child’s question on
“how to solve the problem of gang criminality in Sweden and the world”. A
Rostami himself quotes his own father, it can be applied to today’s secularized
cultural and political kingdom of a misunderstood and consequently overvalued
democracy, except for that the “Omnipotent” may not intervene, as Rostani exclaims that it happened when together
with his mother, his brother and he himself aged eight years were allowed to
enter Sweden with false Spanish passports:
Rostami
tells that his father used to say; "If a monarchy can fall after 2,500
years, as it did in Iran -- well, then anything can happen." Nothing having
being said about “democracy”, this tells how little is understood of the
meaning of “analytical ability” in the name of scientific research. A secular
Godless society cannot imagine that young criminals can be seen as satanically
possessed practitioners of a misunderstood theology of prosperity. As it cannot
imagine why people feel the need of drugs, possibly because of the need of
“Spirit” in lack of a Holy Ghost. And now: what to do to help young and adult
criminals? It reminds me of what the above-mentioned Churchman wrote somewhere,
namely that he saw one main valid reason of why students at schools and
universities (and even less inmates in prisons) were not taught ethics: that
the teachers themselves were not or did not feel competent, and did not dare to
discuss and teach these matters. And if some people do not feel that such
things can be taught or discussed, then they probably should also confess that
they do not believe in democracy, but possibly believe in nothing except
themselves and fatherlike gang leaders. For the rest, I would repeat several of
the arguments that were already expressed below, in the text on Criminality.
[240812-1915]
Return to the initial list of Contents
================
================
E221013 – Inflation in Europe and the
West: WHY
“What’
causing these inflation rates?” was the title of news
accessed on euronews.com on 13 oktober 2022, with a text updated on October 3
rd and starting with the following text:
Eurozone inflation is continuing to soar to record highs, with the
latest estimate from the EU's statistics body predicting annual eurozone
inflation of 10 per cent.
The September estimate sees prices for food, alcohol and tobacco, non-energy industrial
goods, and services all up on the numbers in July and August when annual
eurozone inflation was forecast at 8.9 per cent and 9.1 per cent respectively.
The September estimate from Eurostat has energy inflation at 40.8 per cent, up
over two percentage points compared with 38.6 per cent in August. […]
What’s causing these inflation rates?
Europe and much of the wider world were already being hit with soaring energy
prices - which contribute to inflation - before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in
late February. The conflict has exacerbated the energy crisis by fueling global
worries it may lead to an interruption of oil or natural gas supplies from
Russia. Moscow said in September it would not fully resume its gas
supplies to Europe until the West lifts its sanctions.
Russia has lately been the EU's top supplier of oil, natural gas, and coal,
accounting for around a quarter of its energy. […]
The prices of many commodities - crucially including food - have also been
rising ever since COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns were first introduced two years
ago, straining global supply chains, leaving crops to rot, and causing
panic-buying in supermarkets.
The war in Ukraine again dramatically worsened the outlook, as Russia and
Ukraine account for nearly a third of global wheat and barley, and two-thirds
of the world's exports of sunflower oil used for cooking. Ukraine is also the
world's fourth-biggest exporter of corn.
And The Economist (October 5th
2022) parades with other grandiose
“causes” as implied in its special report on Inflation and rising demands on governments are
changing economic policy. But what is changing what? The regular
news broadcasted in the radio and television in October 2022 just repeat that
the “cause” of all this is the increased price of food and energy. I guess that
the basic problem behind this all, and that nobody dares or wants to mention
is, yes, the war in Ukraine but also its prolongation thanks to the western
help to Ukraine with money and weapons, and most of all the western economic
sanctions against Russia and its retaliation. In the same way as Ukraine
refused to acknowledge the Russian security needs regarding Ukraine’s
membership in NATO, so Russia that is opportunely simplified and named “Putin”
as world-war Germany was named “Hitler” found that the only language possible
to use with Ukraine was the military one. Consequently, the only language that
USA and the West found possible to use with Russia, in abeyance of the military
one, was the language of economic sanctions, and increased expensive
militarization of western and Ukrainian military defenses, which are also attacking
weaponry and military manpower. The reciprocal mistrust and enmity, based on
vengeance that is known to escalate in growing reciprocal hate.
So,
all what happens is the fruit of reciprocal hate, and nobody in the inflationary West even dares mention the ultimate cause
of increased inflation and the possibility of alleviating it by negotiating a
mitigation and de-escalation of sanctions against Russia. Western
politicians believe to fulfill the wishes of their people by trying to inflict
so more pain to the Russian people even at the cost of pain for their own
people. As I write in
one section of my essay on the conflict between Russia and
Ukraine, the hate is so great that one is ready to suffer in trying to inflict
pain to others: the hate may be so strong that in the wish to inflict suffering
they may be ready to suffer themselves, or rather others in their own population,
inverting the Christian idea of “Love your neighbor as yourself” into “Allow to
inflict pain to yourself as much as you want your enemy to suffer”. Cf. the Bible,
Mark 12:31, to be completed, for all parties
starting from ourselves with Matthew
5:44 on “Love your enemies”.
But
then, it is another matter that those who suffer most will not be politicians
and military in key positions in the opposing blocks, but their people,
beginning with the Ukrainian one who could have been spared all death and
suffering. All according to my
own painfully drafted text on the issue, at
cost of risk for being victimized by the politically correct western cancel culture.
[220506-1745]
================
================
E-220901 - Criminality and juvenile delinquency: WHY?
For once I do
not wish to fill my text with (too many!) links to references. I will simply
recall the daily news about daily shootings on the streets, the gang violence
related to demand and consumption of drugs. The continuous rise of Juvenile
delinquency has lately been exemplified in Sweden by cases of
murders on the streets and in schools committed by children who are as young as
15 years of age, killing people, school teachers and other children. This has
been completed recently with new about increasing frequency of children’s
suicides. Such news have been often accompanied by comments that this is a sign
of society’s failure in educating children and protecting citizens, a failure
that in a welfare country is attributed to the effects of drugs, the politics
of the school system, the social welfare authorities who do not support
families, the customs that allow the entry of drugs, and the police that allows
its distribution. The attribution is documented by means of statistics, the
degree of drug consumption relative to price and availability, the degree of
children drop-outs or passed in school examinations, the budget and manpower in
social welfare and health care authorities, plus the numbers and percent of
successful interventions by customs and of the police.
In more recent
times, the increase of juvenile delinquency has been conceived (in the morning
newpaper Svenska Dabladet, 29
December 2023) in terms of “child soldiers” as the chosen title indicates: “Barnsoldater
har blivit del av Sverige” [Child soldiers have become part of Sweden]. In this
way it is possible to realize that western “advanced” countries have own
pressing problems and should not look down to poor and “primitive” nations in
the world, which figure in Wikipedia article like on Children in the military.
What is seldom
if not never discussed is the WHY in a country like Sweden. If the cause is
related to drug gangs, WHY do people need or demand drugs, why there are no reports of research on the reasons
of why there is an increasing demand of drugs, and why only sale but not purchase of drugs is criminalized, while
the opposite is the case with prostitution. Why people do not refrain from
joining criminal gangs, from committing crimes, why students do not respect and
obey their parents or study more, why families keep united and do not divorce,
why they are not more supportive of, and able to educate and take care of their
children who consequently down to age 13 are recruited by criminal gangs. I
repeat, why are families disrupted in the form of divorced, criminal or single
parents, often children with single mothers and absent fathers. It is an image
of disrupted families that stands in contrast with not only the Christian image
but also, for instance with the Confucian image in the I Ching's (hexagram
37, but cf. also e.g. the Quran 66:6) that today can
be cheaply overturned by reference to late feminist dogmas:
If the
father is really a father and the son a son, if the elder brother fulfills his
position, and the younger fulfills his, if the husband is really a husband and
the wife a wife, then the family is in order. When the family is in order, all
the social relationships of mankind will be in order. […]
The
family is society in the embryo; it is the native soil on which performance of
moral duty is made early through natural affection, so that within a small
circle a basis of moral practice is created, and this is later widened to
include human relationships in general.
The problem is
in turn mirrored by the fact that it is seldom if not never mentioned the need
and possibility of implementing and ethical
education, and education in ethics, of what is to be considered right and
wrong, good and bad. Earlier in the West this was taught in Christian education, as it was called
from 1919 to 1955. Later up to 1969 it was renamed in Sweden as Christian knowledge, and thereafter Religious knowledge, as it is now found with its
historical roots in the Swedish Wikipedia,
or in a limited survey for the world in the English Wikipedia also extended
further as Religious Education outside the
range of primary and secondary education. In order to appreciate the complexity
and tragic importance of religious or confessional vs. non-confessional
education, all this against the background or State Individualism of Sweden (see Are Swedes Human Beings?), those who can
read Swedish have the opportunity of study this in depth mainly in (translated
title) The religious history of the school: About the
transition from state Christianity to state religion-critical secularism, (and here, and
here).
In fact, the
situation as tragically portrayed in a radio program from the Swedish public
radio (P1, Program 1, 7 October 2023, available until further notice here with
the title När mammorna blir måltavlor,
meaning in English: When mothers become
targets. It is one main aspect of the increasing criminality in Sweden
involving youngsters and children down to 13 (soon 10-12?) years of age, who
murder criminals and a wave of hateful revenges targeting what once upon a time
was most sacred in what once upon a time was whole families: the mothers of the
involved criminals. The more so in view of the frequent absence of fathers. In a whole hour's program nothing is
mentioned about ethical or religious education, and not a single father
appears for being interviewed. Swedish newspapers in a couple of new on July
26 and 27,
2024 report about a couple of girls aged 15 and 14 who are suspected of
murdering another girl aged 14. Some week earlier I heart a psychologist being
interviewed on the Swedish public radio who was asked about the “why” of such
events. She answered: a hardening societal climate. That is: morality and
ethics have been reduced to societal climate.
Everything is being
reduced to a question of security for
the threatened persons, mostly children and mothers, and consequently to a
criticism of the "society", i.e. the shortcomings of the right-wing politics,
social welfare authorities, and of the police that consequently needs the
support of the military plus private security companies. They are supposed to
take care of (up to tens of) relatives of each involved, and of their
surveillance in their move to appointed new safer residences. There is a tragic
analogy to computer "security" being taken as a substitute of the
quality of information, as explained in other texts,( here, here, and
here) or
power being taken as a substitute of charity and love.
Faith in
"security" turns out to be in faith in "logic" allied to
faith in struggle against the "romanticism of a gangster life" (as
expressed by a public prosecutor, Lisa dos Santos,
interviewed in Swedish public radio October 7th 2023, announced as Lisa dos Santos – prosecuting children who murder
children), while it is also (unperceived) romanticism the
logic and mathematics of budgeting and implementing society´s activities in
legislation, social welfare and law enforcement. Such romanticism of logic is
the same that stands behind the uncritical faith of the last international hype
of artificial general intelligence, that Lisa dos Santos in interview also sees to be
applied to the struggle against juvenile delinquency. It is the same romantic
enchantment as the reading of logical puzzles in detective stories, as well as
the prosecutor's disgust towards "gangsters' defense attorneys",
which reveals that she does not understand that her disgust is caused by her
not being conscious of working under a law conceived in the Swedish conception
of positive law, while she
dreams of a natural law but without understanding and acknowledging its
Christian content. That means that in Sweden and in secular countries a
lawyer's client must be considered as innocent until proved to be finally
guilty after the pleading by both the prosecutor and the defense attorney. A defense attorney can never be accused
of defending a gangster, only of having
defended, after a condemnation that historically is proved to be possibly overturned,
even after a verdict in a supreme court of justice. Similarly, only the
unconscious working of a prosecutor in the secular spirit of a secular country
can lead the prosecutor as well as the country's many intellectual pundits to
be able to assign criminality to only or mainly poverty, unemployment, or
equivalently to immigration from poor countries. If this were so, such
countries would display a chaotic lawless violent criminality, which is not the
case pending the influence of a particular religion and further discussion of criminality and
"criminalization" (by Claes Lernestedt, here in
Swedish, here a
later elaboration in English) in philosophical and (more difficult and rare)
theological terms.
These are not
small matters, and they are food for thought about what is not but should be
done. Teachers and counselors (university researchers’ and so-called
intellectuals’) should be able to explain for children, in adult education, and
for prison inmates, the philosophical and religious matters: Ethics, Morality, Ethics in Religion, Ethics in the Bible, Islamic Ethics, Buddhist Ethics, Chinese Ethics or Confucianism, and Meta-ethics. The latter extremely abstract nebulous meta-ethics,
in my opinion can be seen as an ultimate symptom of the crisis of thought and
philosophy, of a decadent West that once upon a time started with mainly, if
not only, sermons on the Bible. It is a Bible that today many in the West
relinquish also with the motivation of not encroaching on other great
religions, while other religions may respect more those who confess their
respect for their own religion and what it has in common with the other great
religions, as suggested above about ethics.
There are good
arguments for practicing good ethical behavior, and for discussing differences
between the historical views of ethics in different cultures. They may center,
for instance, on good reasons, perceptions, feelings and intuitions about why
humans, for instance, should not kill, if the they cannon love or at least be
kind to each other, and what love does mean. As it stands today, there are not
only children but even adults who never have been confronted with discussions
about what good and bad (behavior) does mean, while historically western people
grew and were educated with at least a knowledge of the existence,
interpretation and application of the Ten Commandments beyond
those of socialist or secular morality and ethics of the French revolution's, Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, or
"solidarity".
Today teenagers can grow up without even having heard and discussed the
commandment “Thou
shalt not kill”. Not to mention the summary of commandments:
"Love thy neighbor as thyself" (starting in Leviticus
19:18, plus Matthew
22:39, and Mark
12:31).
The question is
complicated by the meeting of different cultures, which follows immigration of
political (and economic) refugees, and by Swedish authorities’ ignorance of the
interface between religion and ethics, between natural law, and positive law that
(for many unconsciously) is taken for granted in Sweden. Here belongs the alleged
state-sponsed kidnapping of Muslim children in Sweden,
which for some Muslims is not “alleged” because their understanding is coloured
by natural law and the principle of subsidiarity by which the state is not expected to intervene into
the “core” of the social “atomic” component of the family. Such intervention that is seen as is something that can
strengthen personal autonomy fits the
Swedish tradition of Statist individualism, while
in natural law it can be seen as violating the family’s autonomy and overarching religious principles according to
which even secularized countries allow for Civil
disobedience. That
all this is not understood in Sweden is evidenced in a very popular series of
television programs at the Swedish public television network broadcasted in
2023-2024 such as Tänk om jag har gjort något fel, Vem har sag tatt du skall erkänna, and
Dem tar våra barn [trans. into What if I have done something wrong, Who told you to confess, and They take our children]. It is in this
context very comforting that at least one cultural journalist at one main
Swedish morning papers, Svenska
Dagbladet, Anders Q. Björkman, published
on January 14, 2024 a critical editorial with the title Svenska värderingar – är de bäst I världen?
[Swedish values – are they the best in the world?]. In order to realize the
degree of misunderstanding of other cutlures by leading Swedish secularized
researchers on basic values, those who understand Swedish language can listen
to the Swedish public radio’s interview of one of them, Bi Puranen,
(archived here) in
the program
sent September 20 and 22, 2024.
My doctoral
thesis advisor, West
Churchman, wrote somewhere that he saw one good main reason why
ethics is not taught in universities: there is not research about was mentioned
above in this text, on how to train families and teachers who are able or
courageous enough to accept the requirements of the educational challenge.
Unfortunately it is perceived as easier to manipulate laws including capital
punishment and the judiciary, to increase the police force, and to build prisons.
For supporting discussions and political action for the latter it is
politically more expedient to gather and build on statistics on the what, how and when, rather the
WHY of criminality of children and adults. And it is easier to hunt sellers of
narcotics as being source of criminality that to understand the demand of these
same narcotics, and condemn the real culprits of the crimes: the buyers.
Despite the
importance give to economics there is no emphasis on the ethical meaning of the
fundamental microeconomic "law" of supply and demand.
There is seldom or ever a questioning of the WHY of demand, except
for when it is mentioned in the context of the belief that its criminalization
will curb prostitution. Why are buyers of sex criminalized but not buyers of
drugs? Is it just because the buyers are too many compared with the number of
seller and drug cartels? The possibility to criminalize the demand for drugs is seldom or never
mentioned. I suggest that it is in turn related to the incapacity or cowardice
in asking the WHY of the demand for drugs, including the demand for alcohol,
while it is believed that we know the WHY of the demand of sex, when in fact we
do not know what "sexuality" means, as I try to show in the context
of Reason and Gender. It is symptomatic that when Stina Oscarson,
presented as a theater director, author and debater, uniquely questions as I do
the criminalization of the “purchase
of sex” in an article, in an article of the Swedish
newspaper Svenska Dagbladet (December 9,
2023) she is countered by the champion of this
criminalization, Anna
Skarhed. She has been member of the Supreme Courts
of Sweden and Finland, as well as a creator of the feminist
jurist network Hilda,
aiming at increasing the number of female managers, raising some controversy.
Anna Skarhed has already been named in earlier inserts in this blog, related to
the issues of #MeToo and of the SCUM Manifest. Reading
the mentioned article by Skarhed in Svenska
Dagblade it becomes clear that she tragically understands sexuality as only
an “satisfaction of instinct” with no notion of its psychological and spiritiual
dimensions suggested in my Reason and
Gender that would reveal every “purchase” of sex as a desperate appeal to
spiritual or pastoral care.
I guess that
this is in turn related to a Decline of
the West: the incapacity to appreciate, or the denial of the spiritual
needs of humans that have been discouraged to take care of such needs in the
progressive, increased secularization of society where "culture" is
understood as only including (the freedom of expression of whatever in) art and
literature, but not anymore religion that is never mentioned in the context of
culture. It is the official denial of religion in the name of a misunderstood
and abused divinization of a bloodless "Democracy", seen as equivalent
to the freedom to ask for and (democratically) get anything that the citizens
like and desire. That is, the ignorance of Spiritus Contra Spiritum. And here some readers may get tired by too many links
and references that require much work from them, as they did from the writer.
A later insert
in this blog, New view of Sweden's gang crimes, and solutions, can be seen as a complement to
this text.
[240922-1230]
================
================
E-220716 Life,
death, political correctness, and conflicts
I wish to report
a case that in my opinion may explain the origin of estrangement between people
and the origins of the phenomenon of political correctness or opinion corridor.
It all started when I wrote a message to a married couple of neighbors, husband
and wife who returned home after having been away for some months. I ended my
message writing: “In any case: welcome to our temporary earthly paradise in
hopeful anticipation of the definitive ditto.”
The wife
responded with a message to my wife
(!) telling her that they would
appreciate to come to us but have things to do, and also have had a hard time
with (my) "joke" about life and death! Adding that “Not everyone may
be able to read those signals! Losing a beloved child is very tough !!! I'm
writing to you so Kristo does not misunderstand and think we did not have fun
with you! We're in town but coming out again with our grandchild.”
To which my wife
responded in writing to her : “What Kristo wrote was probably meant as a bit
un-Swedish and general address, not ‘accusatory’ against you in any way. He
wants so well. I understand your reaction; Kristo can be difficult to interpret
sometimes even for me. We hope you have a great week with your grandchild and
that we may see each other someday in the future!”
My reflections
are, to begin with, that in welcoming a visit from them I did not think that
they had lost a daughter afflicted by cancer, and that they did not feel well
in being reminded of references to “death”. I myself, instead, being aged 85
and knowing that most people who reach this age also die before age 90, have
been struggling for understanding the meaning of life and death. Because of
this I consider them not only legitimate but also most important questions,
incorporating them spontaneously in some daily conversations and as exemplified
above, at the beginning of this text.
But the lady
conceives the whole situation in “not everyone may be able to read those
signals. Losing a beloved child is very tough!!!”. Indirectly I understand that
knowing that she had lost a beloved child, I should have understood the
“signal” and refrained from mentioning or “joking” about death. And I mean that
this is the origin of political
correctness if it understood as refraining from saying anything that one
had to foresee that it could be perceived as painful or outright abusive. Since
such a principle must be seen as reciprocal in the interaction between two or
more people it may also be the origin of what appears as a popular Swedish
proverb for depicting unspoken interaction: “Om man ingenting, säger, har man
ingenting sagt”, meaning that if you say
nothing, you will not have said anything, that is, you cannot be held accountable for having said anything. To which I
have added that if you do not look you will not see; if you do not listen you
will not hear, and if you do not meddle you do not need to pull away [Swedish:
om man inte lägger sig I behöver man inte dra sig ur].
It may have
taken root in our culture through the impact of some related biblical proverb (Prov.
17:28), which in turn have their similar roots as
summarized in the expression “Speech
is silver, silence is golden”. But perhaps it should have been:
“Silence is gold in the mouth of a fool”. Such principle was partly applied
when the woman in question “answered” my message
to the couple by directing herself to my wife. Is this an archetypal enactment
of “Woman
to woman”? Or is it an archetypal enactment of feminism
implied by “Strong
women”? In this respect she reminded me of a case I have
personal knowledge of: the brother-in-law of a friend once complained to the wife of his friend for something the
friend had said to him regarding his worry for his health.
Perhaps it is a
modern expression of the relation of this issue to the Taboo
on the dead or the Naming taboo. I
am inclined to believe that the issue has much to do with the degree of
secularization in Sweden, often considered as the most secularized country of
the world. When there is no spirit but only body, there is neither hope nor
relief from the sorrow of death, neither our of beloved ones nor our own. And
without Christianism there is no way of understanding and applying the meaning
of the Bible’s Matthew 7:3-5 about “the beam
in your own eye”. And it is difficult to understand e.g. the observance of the Day of the Dead in Mexico. It
must also be difficult to be enlightened by books that will be outright
avoided, such as about Anthropology of Death. It is symptomatic that a Swedish ethnologist like Karl-Olov
Arnsberg who
consequently is sometimes accused for being extreme-right (by the magazine Expo grounded by far-leftist Stieg
Larsson) had to write books like Svenskhet [Swedishness] and SvenskaTabun
[Swedish Taboos]. I feel that it is very Swedish the tabooing the death of
beloved ones including oneself.
But all this is
interesting and important in a wider context, because it illustrates also an
origin of estrangement
between friends, debate and
eventual conflict or war, when one party wants to limit the counterpart’s free
expression because of perceived pain or abuse, while at the same time not
imagining, wondering and still less trying to understand the counterpart’s
situation and feelings. I mean that this is what happens in conflicts and wars,
as I try to
illustrate in the case of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and
certainly happens especially in most long, unending conflicts such as the Israeli-Palestinian one.
I expanded my
text with these apparently learned far-fetched associations and references in
order to show the immense intellectual and emotional importance of death, and
the absurdity of silencing its spontaneous well-meaning mention, just because
of living in an impoverished secular culture. Its debacle can be intuited by
substitute decadent cultural expressions of death such as Satanism and Goth subculture. Swedish readers may appreciate an extense
presentation of the latter in the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet (Nov. 26, 2023).
So, returning to
the initial episode: my wife was right in the diplomatically condescending tone
of her answer to the wife in the couple, writing: “I understand your reaction;
Kristo can be difficult to interpret sometimes even for me“. But it is easy to
forget what is implied in this: “I understand your reaction, but do you
understand mine and Kristo’s?” And: “Kristo can be difficult to understand even
for me, but I myself can be difficult to be understood even by him!”.
[221127-1630]
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================
E-220221 The Russia-NATO-Ukraine information crisis
Most
of these initial lines were initially written as an insert in my
blog on 21 February 2022 while the world press
was reporting on the so called crisis in the relation of Russia to NATO regarding Ukraine. I apologized for the volume of my text
having grown up to the point that it could not belong properly to a blog,
requiring a separate essay. It relates to my discipline of information science
in that it puts in evidence its most critical relationship of information to
social and political science, and ultimately to theology. It is now found at
the following links to which I refer the readers to one of the two following
alternative links:
https://archive.org/details/rus-ukr
https://www8.informatik.umu.se/~kivanov/Rus-Ukr.html
There
I only wish to advance some reflections that I have not noticed in the media's
reports and comments about this issue and tragic consequences for all involved
people. In doing so I do not claim any special competence in geopolitical
foreign relations and diplomacy. On the contrary I have had serious
difficulties in understanding what historically has been going on, for
instance, in the dissolution of the state of Yugoslavia, or in my parents’ native
country Bulgaria, e.g. during World War II
affecting the destiny of the whole family as refugee in Italy and Brazil, or
the historical relations between Spain and France starting with the Franco-Spanish War, not to speak of the historical
involvement of Russia and Ukraine in European events and especially in the
World War II, and so on (more on this below). I only claim competence in
discussing the meaning of information (system) about the conflict.
My
main message will be that the solution of a serious conflict is not well
understood in the examples from this case of Russia vs. Ukraine. Extreme
violence and deaths in ongoing wars as well as in suicides testify that
survival itself is not the highest value. Beyond violence and the historical
concept of “just war” what is required is an insight into a rationality that
justifies a spiritually grounded self-sacrifice by all parties in the conflict,
up to the extreme of martyrdom in the sense it has in Christianity.
[220603]
================
================
E-211213
Consequences of Quarantine in Greece
1. Zeus sells the throne to a Korean multinational.
2. Achilles will treat the heel in public health.
3. Eros and Pan inaugurate a brothel
4. Hercules suspends the 12 works for lack of payment.
5. Narcissus sells mirrors to pay off overdraft debt.
6. The Centaur pulls carts for a living, while Pegasus
was hired by Amazon to expedite deliveries.
7. The Acropolis is sold and a Universal Church of the
Kingdom of Zeus is inaugurated there.
8. Eurozone rejects Medusa as Greek negotiator:
"She's got worms on her head!"
9. Socrates opens Cicuta's Bar to earn some bucks.
10. Dionysius sells wines on the roadside from
Marathónas.
11. Hermes delivers a resume to work at the Post
Office.
12. Aphrodite accepts to pose for Playboy.
13. With no money to pay salaries, Zeus frees the
nymphs to work in the Eurozone.
14. Isle of Lesbos opens straight resort.
15. To save energy, Diogenes blows out the lantern.
16. Oracle of Delphi leaks budget numbers and causes
panic in the stock exchanges.
17. Ares is caught red-handed diverting weapons to the
Syrian guerrillas.
18. Plato's cave houses thousands of homeless people.
19. Hades
returns Euridice to Orpheus because she refuses to get vaccinated.
20. The reason for the crisis was discovered: the
economists are all speaking Greek!!!
(Original shorter version in Portuguese attributed to Gilberto Godoy - https://www.gilbertogodoy.com.br/ler-post/consequencias-da-crise-na-grecia. Item 19 contributed by Alexandre Schwager. My
translation).
PS Reading well made up "jokes" I am often
surprised in thinking of how much work and imagination are needed to compose
such a work. And who is it that has so much talent, motivation and time for
such work in the midst of daily concerns and chores. It requires a "poetic"
vein that is very rare. I guess that the suggested idea is to illustrate the
"secularization" and "materialization" of the world of the
human spirit which earlier was expressed in myths and religion.
[211213]
================
================
I know of a young man in his twenties who was already
convinced but even encouraged by his girlfriend to practice veganism and even to try to induce others into it. I am
grateful for his having stimulated me to think further about the problems of ethics,
friendship, dialog and discussion.
Veganism and vegetarianism, as well the fight
against global climate warming,
can be supported for moral reasons. I believe, however, that such allegiances
can and should be problematized, as I already did in an earlier
text about the climate issue,
where I tell about a young schoolgirl of 15 years who became world-famous in
starting to fight for the global climate warming instead of for veganism. This
is because such allegiances inadvertently subvert the priorities of the basic
values that originally direct our attention, actions and their consequences.
"Mother Nature", as Pantheism and Biocentrism encompasses the climate and the well-being of animals
and plants, all this while many humans do not understand each other, kill each
other and cannot even keep their families together. They focus their efforts on
enriching themselves through predation on natural resources, minerals, plants,
animals and humans, but starting with the
humans, from which the rest follows. Many vegans who unconsciously embrace
pantheism would barely study its summary in Wikipedia and even less understand
its relation to e.g. Christianity.
So, it is explainable that the impotence and anxiety
for what is happening all over the world, especially in young people who are
still in the process of educating themselves and still without experience of
life, invites into a basic task such as veganism, climate
movement or a political
ideology that seems "accessible" and brings peace of mind by allowing
us to feel that we can do something, and making us feel good despite everything
else: “better to do something rather than nothing”.
This may be a core of the issue: “to feel good” and to
be recognized as such. And it may the base of the inventive joke about the
question of “how to identify a vegan?” The answer being: “no need to bother
trying to identify, they always make sure you know”.
This recalls the refined meaning of a famous quotation
that else may seem too categorical: "When you stop believing in God, you start believing in anything" (cf. the link’s #53). The fact that there are
not only those who recommend veganism but also those who recommend, say, also
an “only-meat” diet, or expound ideas that “you are what you eat”, all this
against the background of a worldwide diet-industry, suggest that it may be a
spiritual issue or fixation upon the body,
as presented for instance in the book Full: Food, Jesus and the battle for
satisfaction. Vegans can also sense
the issue as Spiritual nourishment: How your
spirit impacts your eating & and eating impacts your soul, but despite the obscure reference to a soul it all
belongs rather to the class of SBNR or “Spiritual but not religious”.
In the example of veganism, this intellectual problem
is illustrated by the atheism of the famous philosopher Peter Singer, champion
of utilitarianism as applied to several
issues including the Animal Liberation. Especially in highly
secularized societies as championed by Sweden, most people who do not care for
more than 2000 years’ theological discussions will not care for trying to
understand the convolute criticisms of a utilitarianism that seems to appeal to common sense. If somebody refers to (the criticism of) the
utilitarianism of Singer he may be labeled as just being “allergic” to Singer
or “not agreeing” with utilitarianism, and just having another (“Nietzschean” relativistic) “perspective” among all possible
perspectives.
Especially today, common
sense is often understood as elementary logic that happens to be available
also to youngsters who have not yet studied neither natural nor social science,
and still less philosophy. It based on unknown definitions and premises that
also stand at the basis of the difficulties
if not impossibility of debate and
of the facile computerization or so-called
digitalization of our society, apparently requiring nothing more than “human-computer
interaction”, i.e. interaction
with senseless logic. The conclusion seems to me to be that if we don't already
have a Judeo-Christian faith that teaches
that humans but no other animals are created “in
the image of God”, it will be necessary
to at least try to discuss it in philosophical terms or in terms of philosophy
of science, which lead to theological considerations as I try in another
text. In any case the
refusal of the Catholic view of animals, paradoxically ignores its loving
regard for them as expressed in the account of the lives of many
saints, and of Saint Francis of Assisi in
particular for his great love for animals and the environment.
Not being created in the image of God, even in a
secularized country, has many important consequences such as not having a soul,
or spirit equated to mind, whatever they are or should be. The step is then
short to equating humans and animals with robots and computers as in the
so-called Turing test or “imitation game”, and further to advocate that humans respectfully
retreat in front of the super-human artificial superintelligence represented by supercomputers, which in turn are represented by science and
super-scientists. It is possible to paraphrase a sentence from an earlier text of mine about the problem of
human-computer interaction, by substituting “animal” for the word “computer”:
The degree to which humans feel (interaction with)
computers as people is the degree to which they project psychic
content because of it having been left unconscious in different degrees. If
they have not yet understood and felt what "people" and
"humans" mean, they will easily see and feel them to be equivalent to
computers and the other way round.
It is worrying to try to guess, for instance, how disabled
humans without (undefined or
misunderstood) soul, spirit or mind will be considered and treated by
superintelligence when they have “cognitive, developmental, intellectual,
mental, physical, sensory” impairments. We already know the history of eugenics (today in abortion), but may not be aware of its
intellectual sources intertwined with political ones. And we also know how we
justify putting to death (killing!) animals in order to magnanimously prevent
their eventual suffering. An alternative to eventually putting them to death is
to prevent their being born, their coming to life, to start with. This reminds
of some youngsters who today already express their unwillingness to have
children in the future in order to prevent their suffering in the foreseen
disasters of global climate warming. It will also solve the problem, if it not
solved by soy milk, of the children’s
need for milk that cannot be produced by cows that will not be born.
A paradoxical analogy to the latter can be seen in
that a success of veganism implies that many animals will never have lived,
while human evil will survive and
flourish as ever. When the animals' lives have become sacred, many vegans will
flourish without ever having read and studied the Bible or other sacred books.
Evil, economic-political greed or incomprehension, integrated as they may be
with assumedly good technology and
its economic-political-logical rationality, are paradoxically promoting the implementation of both the industrial production of animal
food and of the vegetables that will
permit veganism. It is industrial technology and modern science within the
frame of the mentioned rationality that cause the problem envisaged by
veganism. Without them the solution might have come automatically, naturally, by
means of a Malthusian check: population
control with the additional help of periodic wars and pandemics like the
Spanish Flu.
It is the industrial-technological transformation of
society starting from the western world, in connection with the growth of world
population, that allows for the dehumanization of relations between humans (cf. the alienation in Marxism) and between
humans and animals. Humans themselves become numbers by means of personal
identification numbers – PINs. This is to the point
that people do not care for the suffering of humans, and still less of alien
animals, while most of them still care for close relatives and pets. When
youngsters suddenly realize what is happening, what they have been eating and
the associate suffering it lays close at hand to become at least vegetarian and
conscientious objector.
Others choose the arduous way to behave like true Christians or, say, Buddhists
if not seduced by Marxism and such.
Vegans can rightly feel upset at the view of suffering
of cows being inseminated while women also are inseminated in sperm banks
leading to “fatherless” children, and zoophiles (cf. humans are animals) make love to (“inseminate”?)
animals, as noted in internet-media (author Chris Sweeney). Vegans are upset at
the view of cows being separated from their calf, or of pigs put to death in
gas chambers. They get upset perhaps because they cannot or do not want to
understand how in the 1940ies in one of the most cultured and technologically
sophisticated European countries, cultured intelligent people could put to
death (kill!) supposedly soulless Jews and others with their children in gas
chambers.
In general, today’s veganism cannot suffer the view of
suffering in this world, by both humans and animals. Since I experienced myself
not only suffering but also the pain of viewing the suffering of others in poor
countries, I have a further guess about why vegans and others cannot bear the
view of not even animals’ suffering. People have difficulty to bear not only
their own suffering but also others’ suffering because they cannot or do not
want to see its meaning. This is because they do not acknowledge the existence
of evil. They rather feel it as in Greek philosophy before the advent of
Christianism, as only the result of lack of knowledge, not as mainly the result
of sin. This means that they cannot
or do not want to bear the knowledge of the existence of evil, to begin with the evil within themselves. They do not
acknowledge that they themselves have sinned, will sin and make others suffer,
as I have witnessed and reported (below) about youngsters who humiliate and make their own
relatives suffer, including their own parents and grandparents.
And very few would accept the explanations offered by
the Theodicy. They mostly ignore the word itself and don’t care to
understand it as they do not care for the Catholic apostolic letter Salvifici Doloris [Redemptive
Suffering] explaining the
meaning of suffering. Ignoring theodicy can lead to a questioning of
Christianity by means of rhetorical questions like “Which Christian values do
lead people to make animals suffer in the industrial production of animal
food?”. So far and so low has the popular (mis)understanding of Christianity
reached after 2-3 generations of western children that have not been educated
in school about the concept of sin. This is so to the point
that instead of veganism they could as well have been seduced into Marxism
including Liberation Theology in order to prevent
the suffering of billions of exploited suffering workers of the world. Or into
superficial westernized Buddhism while ignoring its complexities with relation to humans vs. animals. This can be seen as an elementary phenomenon: people
do not want or dare to risk experiencing or seeing suffering. This is so to the
point of their advocating not only divorce and war, but more: abortion and
euthanasia. This makes them feel good by calling others as evil or labeling
them as sadists and those who bear
suffering as masochists, unconsciously
“honoring” the names of Marquis
de Sade, respectively Sacher-Masoch and ignoring the
interpretation of sadism and masochism such as by psychologist James Hillman in
The myth of analysis (that I refer to in a theological text).
Conclusion? I think that the above text convinces that veganism
is one additional among continuously newly arising “diagnoses” regarding
people’s dietary restrictions, such as the more recently popularized Orthorexia Nervosa. It is said that intense orthorexia nervosa suggests
that individuals likely take pride over their healthy eating habits over
others, showing “moral judgment of others based on dietary choices”, and that may be the driving force behind
their orthorexia as opposed to body image like anorexia. It may also be a food-centered manifestation of “obsessive-compulsive disorder”, which has a lot to do with control. It
may be control of a “Positive body image,
self-worth, identity and/or satisfaction excessively dependent on compliance
with self-defined "healthy" eating behavior.
My own conclusion out
of this all is that it is an unconscious transference of ethics from the theological
and religious sphere of thinking, feeling and behaving over to the manipulation
of a material reality. It is a forced attempt to materialize spirit, and I see
it as a flight from the responsibilities imposed by a religion, as much as a
misunderstood Buddhism is a flight from, say, a misunderstood Christianism with
its Ten Commandments.
As already suggested above, this is the kind of issue
that I found to be practically impossible
to discuss or debate. Instead of seeing it
as a religious or political issue it is, as in a sort of autism, reduced to attempts to convince others by means of
elementary logic, as with reference to cognitive
dissonance. This to the point
that that there are those who at advanced age confess that they prefer to keep
their friends rather than try to discuss and prove that they are right. And
this proves the importance of understanding the meaning of friendship and love
that starts with the family.
[240810-1640]
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================
E-210218 Conspiracy theories - and covid19
vaccines
This text is for people who want to understand those who are in doubt about
getting a vaccine or even suspect vaccines as well as the covid19-pandemics and
other societal disasters to be linked to worldwide conspiracies. Most reactions
(exemplified here) are
either scornful, humorous or serious but, in my view, missing a main point. See
for instance, if it is not fake, a video of a “ex-Russian
intel officer” identified as Vladimir Kvachkov, colonel of military
intelligence service – GRU - linking pandemics
to a greater conspiratorial context. More trustworthy testimonies can be found
in relation to more trustworthy institutions, as in accounts dealing with archbishop Carlo Maria Viganó.
Most of us probably judge that the above comes from "dark and dubious
satanic" sources, and that it is digitally apprehended through
"dubious" Internet-contacts. It can only be tolerated by strong
spirits who can cope with the thought of "conspiracy theories".
I personally believe that all this is an expression of a late cultural-moral
crisis that started in Western society, was preannounced by the world wars and
the Holocaust, and is undermining trust and respect between people, towards
politicians and also towards scientists. I myself witness a sort of corruption
in the scientific field, in sectors that I am aware of and have already
attempted to analyze it in an essay with emphasis on
the computer field, including prophecies about the capabilities of artificial
intelligence – AI. There I have also found that people who are particularly
gifted for logic and mathematics are especially prone to build (“conspiratorial”) logical networks
that in philosophy of science have been called Leibnizian inquiring systems. Because
of their logical complexity or use of esoteric mathematics beyond the grasp of
most people, they are perceived as extremely persuasive when related to a
successful "magical" technological science, becoming a substitute for an absent or invisible God and decay of
mutual human trust as related to authority in secularized societies where
everything is reduced to trust in the myth of secular "democracy". This is also so because logical and mathematical truths in their
relation to the reality of the empirical world sometimes cannot be proved to be
wrong, as I also explain in a late essay on Artificial Intelligence and ChatGPT. All this leads
to an ultimate sort of degeneration of the modern human psyche and absurdities
such as Post-truth politics or beliefs that a critical attitude in order to avoid
conspiracy theories is to believe that "things just happen", as
possibly deduced from such texts as on The Nature of Conspiracy Theories or An Integral Understanding of Conspiracy Theories.
So-called common people who do not belong to “elites” do not know higher
mathematics and know even less about problems of the theory or methods of
science. They are not scientists and even less knowledgeable about abstruse
mathematized scientific fields gradually fragmented in subfields, as
exemplified in the so called life sciences that are actualized by the covid19-pandemics especially when evaluating
“conspiratorial” accusations of uses of aborted fetuses for
the industrial production of vaccines intended to counter virus of doubtful,
conspiratorial laboratory-leak origins. They
probably have a sort of intuition for this dubious state of affairs where the Nietzschean
dying God has been substituted by
Science and Democracy without any regard for the importance of trust in
science, as suggested by Steven Shapin in A social history of truth. They tend to be accused as rejecting “established
scientific facts”, as it happens in controversies
about climate change, but express distrust in
the form of various degrees of interest for what others identify as conspiracy
theories that boil down the issue in apparently simple terms of power and
greed, good and evil.
This may be one background of the famous quotation attributed to
G.K.Chesterton, “The first effect of not believing in God is to believe in anything”. Ultimately, in blacklisted “conspiratorial”
contexts they even come to
distrust the modern god or idol of Democracy, which is
something that in modern times had been already suggested not by its enemies
but by intellectuals such as Tage Lindbom in his The Myth of Democracy, and
whose reasoning I did review in an earlier text on Belief and Reason.
The misunderstood criticism of democracy
leads to associating distrust for science and democracy with political
conservatism muddled with “extreme right movements”, Nazism and Fascism. They
are then put in opposition to a progressive “left” and a relatively harmless
“extreme left” that is in turn associated with oppressed political and social
minorities, underprivileged, destitute, LGBT and such. In this way a politically
cultural and theological problem is reduced to simplified political strife, as I
did illustrate in another context. Science is then perceived as display of
oppressive force by “globalist” political and financial elites that are then exemplified
by Bill Gates and George Soros under disguise of philanthropic projects. They
are also associated with the history of the Rothschild family, and tainted with
corresponding antisemitic flavor. Some of them are suspected, for instance, to make profits in the vaccine-industry, while oppressive force is
also exerted by governmental authorities’ declaring during the
covid19-pandemics the need of restrictions in the liberty of citizens with the
extreme of obligatory vaccination with unsafe if not purposedly dangerous
vaccines (example here). All this creates an opposition in terms of
e.g. a conspiratorial World Freedom Alliance and
conspiratorial theories such as The
Great Replacement. They are in turn are seen
as dangerously prone to future violence and terrorism associated with the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol, to be countered by the
establishment’s likewise conspiratorial organizations such as the Institute for Strategic Dialogue [corresponding
in Sweden to Expo]
and governmental anti-terrorist measures. And all this takes place in a
milieu of defective or impossible debate, with a defective concept of a reason, which is equated to logic
and mathematics while it is overrun by unconscious feelings and passions.
A dismemberment of the psyche or intellect corresponds to mental derangement,
which in turn may show up in the form of political incorrectness and
an increased number of mental diagnoses that at least Swedish readers can
examine in an essay by a psychiatrist with the title “Diagnosis: political incorrectness” (
in Kvartal, 17 february 2021). The subtitle is:
“Diagnoses such as autism and Asperger's syndrome are becoming more
common. At the same time, our society is becoming increasingly difficult to
navigate in some respects - some words should not be said, some questions are
considered uncomfortable to ask. There is reason to believe that the line
between dissent and mental disorders will become blurred”.
And it is not question of only autism and Asperger, but also of violence
and terrorism also based on conspiratorial conceptions.
Distrust for incomprehensible science in a doubtfully supposed democracy by
people with own various “values and valuations”, where trust could be seen a
dimension of love in the sense of Christian charity transmutes doubts into
fear. It consequently leads into paranoia, hatred and aggression
that nowadays appear initially in the venue of the family and its dissolution, disruption of friendship, and hate speech, especially in social media. An understanding of this process would
also require an understanding the roots of Nazism and Fascism beyond present
cheap ritual maledictions and beyond the frame of the Frankfurt
School. It also would require
an understanding of those people who have become more or less seriously
classified as conspiracy theorists and sometimes anti-Semites and neo-nazists.
Examples among many are Kevin MacDonald, David
Duke, and David
Icke, or in Sweden of, say, Lars
Adelskogh, Björn
Björkqvist, and Jan
Bernhoff. The whole problem is
aggravated today by the perceived incomprenhensibility of the gradual
computerization of society or, before that, of the consequent Kafkaesque perception of society’s dynamism, technically
aggravated today by an imposed daily human-computer
interaction.
There is, however, the possibility and perhaps necessity to expand the
conspiracy-question into more detail. I will consider the case I know of a
professor in the field of human sciences (Geisteswissenschaft) who (like me) had a “philosophical” leaning in his
work. One day he discovered that a Word-document had disappeared in his
computer. It was a delicate document because in his research on
socio-psychological problems he studied the reasons of what he perceived as a
strange overflow of such problems into the field of sexuality and gender. For
this purpose he has gathered a collection of links to pornographic sites taking
care, however, not to download or identify with words anything that could be
criminalized) because of the very reasons
for this overflow even into the field of law. The US Dept. of Justice, for
instance, states that “Federal law prohibits the production,
distribution, importation, reception, or possession of any image of child
pornography” where children are defined as minors or persons less than 18 years
old.
But guess the almost immediate
response, or rather reaction (see here about the difference),
of the professor to the discovery of the vanishing of the document. He
suspected that it was an intrusion by police authorities into the computer for
the purpose of further investigation, as part of the international campaign against child pornography as related to its legality, on the basis of
analysis of traffic on the Internet. Consider this as the birth of a
“conspiracy theory”, intensified by relation between complex computer networks
and possibly controversial legal subtleties.
The whole process of criminalization, has only occasionally considered as an object of
academic research (but see a Swedish doctoral dissertation by Claes Lernestedt here). Since the famous terrorist September 11 attacks has accelerated especially in the Western world,
covering also the whole political field where the denomination of terrorism is
applied to everything that menaces the government of (more or) less democratic
countries. The process of criminalization can be seen as an alternative to the
edification and preservation of morality, in a secular society in cultural
decline where religion has lost its traditional influence.
Criminalization presupposes law and
rule of law that is immune to corruption I myself have perceived that the field
of law, in a society that ignores the problems of philosophy of law as
expressed in the conflict between legal
positivism and natural
law, has been invaded to the
point of showing up as a confrontation between two former member (justices) of
the Supreme Court of Sweden. The
case is exemplified by a retired former manly justice released from jail (published by the Swedish Radio 23 March 2021: “He was under investigation for allegedly raping a female student
during the Christmas holiday last year but was released from jail on Tuesday
and had denied any wrongdoing”. His account with serious reflections on Swedish
rule of law in relation to the presumption
of innocence is found in his blog (# 307,but see details in
#304-306 all in Swedish). All this should be compared with what an (already
commented by me in an earlier blog) also retired female
justice of the Supreme Court expresses (regrettably here, in Swedish) during an
interview at the Swedish public radio (30 April 2021, at 34:00 minutes) upon a direct question about the
particular event above. It is to be considered as a psychologically conditioned
(cf. my Information and psychology, and Reason and Gender) blatant failure in understanding the rule of law as related to the
presumption of innocence. When all this happens with a (former) justice of the
Supreme Court of Sweden with its problematic heritage of legal positivism it is
easy to understand what cultural decline of social morality can mean for the
rise of conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories thrive when both morality and
law are being corrupted, and pathological narcissism is
stimulated by the impression that the ego, thanks to its supposed superior
intelligence, has perceived and disarmed a conspiratorial, complex logical
network that the majority has not even perceived.
As food for thought, see examples of news in the
Internet, which tend to be classed as conspiratorial because of being related
to the content of the recommended informative Wikipedia article on vaccine
hesitancy. The last one on the
list, however, is a most illustrative video of about 3 hours, which deals with
the USA’s “Deep
State” and depicts the most
modern picture of a decline of Western “democratic” culture.
1. http://friasidor.is/professorernas-chockerande-upptackt/ (in Swedish).
4. https://catholicism.org/catholic-perspective-on-vaccinations-with-pam-acker.html
5. https://childrenshealthdefense.org/wp-content/uploads/letter-to-liberals-ebook-20220802.pdf
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_A._McCullough
8. https://nobulart.com/covid-19-vaccine-ingredients/ (in Swedish)
9. https://thaddeuskozinski.substack.com/p/the-plandemic-the-unforgivable-sin
11. https://traditioninaction.org/HotTopics/j108_Fact.htm
14. https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-master-plan-behind-the-covid-crisis/
15. https://www.familyandlife.co.uk/science-morality-safety-of-vaccines
26. https://www.manierodelmirto.it/prodotto/ebook-mors-tua-vitae-mea/
27. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9062939/pdf/SNI-13-167.pdf (most ambitious as being published at www.nih.gov site.)
30. https://www.unz.com/article/fauci-and-the-great-aids-swindle/
31. https://www.unz.com/article/introduction-to-the-real-anthony-fauci/
32. https://www.unz.com/mwhitney/will-vaccine-linked-deaths-rise-sharply-this-winter/
33. https://www.unz.com/proberts/excess-deaths-from-the-vaccine-point-to-a-depopulation-agenda/
34. https://www.unz.com/proberts/the-vaccine-is-killing-more-people-than-covid/
36. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-zIGt8btng (in Italian, by a Catholic Vatican-related
archbishop)
37. https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=F8NfJRj_7tE (Fox News’ Laura Ingraham on “Post-Americans”).
38. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXbuoaXbJSU
39. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pcIbVvHI2c
40. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye8MOfxD5nU
[241206]
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================
E-210202 Respectful interaction in
social media?
Having been a member of a WhatsApp chat-group together
with old colleagues of mine (age 80+), I noticed a recurring behavior, which
requires a particular understanding of old age and its problems. They include
but transcend valuable insights such as in the best research I know as the one
directed by Laura Carstensen at the Stanford Center on Longevity dealing with changes in physical, and cognitive
vs. emotional aspects of the psyche. I noticed among the members of WhatsApp
groups a particular sensitivity to a perceived lack of respect among peers, and
it certainly makes debates or even dialogues impossible as I report in an essay
on Information and debate. It is a perceived lack of respect that recalls the historical meaning
of ressentiment (resentment). Wikipedia
refers to the use of the term by some
19th century thinkers as a sense of hostility directed toward an object (“subject”)
that one identifies as the cause of one's frustration, that is, an assignment of blame for one's frustration. I understand it
also as related to the controversial phenomenon of political correctness to
which I dedicated the review of a book that became an essay by its own. In practice it all shows up as unexpected interpretation of
something which has been said with all goodwill, perceiving it an unjust
criticism or sheer lack of respect up to "verbal violence",
where respect is a misunderstood word based on elusive
etymology. For instance, today respect such as when referring to respect for
others is often misused for covering simple indifference, as when “I respect
[read: ignore!] you, your feelings, opinions and actions so long they do not
affect or bother me”.
In more popular terms, when I first observed the phenomenon, I understood it
spontaneously as the feeling experienced by aged successful professionals such
as engineers, doctors, professors, CEOs or the like who during most of their
professional life got accustomed to increasing recognition and respect by peers
at their workplaces, not to mention the tendency of some to compete for being
the “best” one, equivalent to an alpha male. When they get older and retire
with self-perceived signs of physical bodily and mental decline, which for a
few may even announce dementia, this gets coupled to
their increased emotional maturity and sensitivity. They feel isolated, away
from their workplace and among other common people, including family
youngsters. That is, among people who do not really know “who they are”, or
rather have been, and do not show the same degree of respect and consideration
for their person, their age and especially their formerly authoritative if not
authoritarian opinions and judgments. All this in an age and society that does
not respect the elderly, as I expand elsewhere in this blog (here, here,
and here) and
Swedish readers can appreciate in newspaper essay such as "Skräcken för att åldras i Sverige" (Dagens Nyheter, 31 Jan. 2021).
Whatever "respect" should mean. Consequently they develop a selective
perception and sensitivity to whatever is said or written, which could be a
sign of contempt for inferiority or aggressiveness. They will feel to be
assaulted by a peremptory affirmation of a colleague about any matter of common
interest, but immediately afterword will not hesitate to state that an engaged
statement of another colleague is pure “bullshit”, or scold a third one for
improper language, or a fourth colleague for displaying intellectual vanity.
From having tended to identify themselves with an admired “persona” they may have to retire
towards their own misunderstood inflated ego. Ego-inflation has been studied
along the lines of analytical psychology, e.g. in the context of relation to Eastern thought. At its extreme ego-inflation recalls what has been
called narcissistic personality disorder.
Disregarding controversial psychological or psychologizing interpretations, I
find that some elders do not understand and apply the teachings to be
found in what I call an archetypal manual for retirement and after-retirement.
It is the biblical Ecclesiastes, and on occasion of my 75th birthday I selected the following verses, which may be found on the net, and may be not the only
ones to also apply to the present context:
"What has happened will happen again, and what has been done will be done
again, and there is nothing new under the sun...The men of old are not
remembered, and those who follow will not be remembered by those who follow
them..."(1:9, 11)
"So I applied my mind to understand wisdom and knowledge, madness and
folly, and I came to see that this too is chasing the wind. For in much wisdom
is much vexation, and the more a man knows, the more he has to
suffer..."(1:17)
"Yes, indeed, I got pleasure from all my labour, and for all my labour
this was my reward. Then I turned and reviewed all my handiwork, all my labour
and toil, and I saw that everything was emptiness and chasing the wind, of no
profit under the sun..."(2:10)
"What sort of man will he be who succeeds me, who inherits what others
have acquired? Who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool? Yet he will
be the master of all the fruits of my labour and skill here under the sun. This
too is emptiness." (2:18)
"One more thing I have observed here under the sun: speed does not win the
race nor strength the battle. Bread does not belong to the wise, nor wealth to
the intelligent, nor success to the skillful; time and chance govern
all..."(9:11)
"One further warning, my son: the use of books is endless, and much study
is wearisome."(12:12)
For the rest there is a proposal for basic rules of behavior for WhatsApp groups but some of them are questionable. They would
help in the above context only at the cost of limitations in the freedom of expression, at
the edge of self-censorship and imposed political correctness. The issue is so
difficult and hopeless, related to philosophy of technology: WhatsApp is part
of the whole problematic of social media with its questions
that are sometimes classified as impact on users, social impact, and criticism,
debate and controversy. It did motivate me to write a whole essay on the difficulties of debate. There is no substitute for morality in interpersonal
relations supported by Christianity and the major great world religions.
[210612-1605]
================
================
E210121 Restaurant-party in COVID-19 pandemic
I will speak about a planned restaurant party that I became aware of in the
middle of the ongoing covid-19 pandemic. It was a restaurant party by about 20
people who intended to celebrate a man's midlife birthday. I just wanted to
tell them all what earlier I had to discuss with some old Brazilian friends
about the perils of contagion, as Brazil (213 million inhabitants) had been
among the most affected countries in the world. One close Brazilian old friend
had recently returned home after 2 weeks of hospitalization due to covid-19
infection. It happened after a family reunion to celebrate Christmas with 12 adults
and 3 children, a celebration made with all available protective measures,
where no one had initially symptoms but afterword all of them had
become infected, with serious long-term consequences for my friend who died in
August 2021.
I reminded those invited to the restaurant party mentioned above that
restaurant visits are a high risk because you do not know the health of who and
how prepared the food, and served it. Usually you do not know in advance who
and how washed and handled (in a dishwasher?) the china, glasses, and the table
cutlery. Health authorities had advocated ONE METER'S DISTANCE between groups
of a maximum of 4 people at a table. Of course, one meter gives no guarantee,
if a guarantee is requested at all, not even in the aggravating circumstance of
staying INDOOR, as it must in cold winter weather.
A related problem that I had discussed with friends in Brazil is the general
worldwide tendency to counterweigh increased protection measures with increased
risk-taking, such as when using winter studded tires to increase the speed to
the point that you may even increase the overall risk (which is estimated as
probability multiplied by the severity of the consequences, which may be
death). And this is due to the fact that you feel that sometimes you deserve to
allow to indulge yourself. Poor impulse control, one might say: if you want or
have a strong desire, then it becomes a need, and "you have to
party!".
In view of the urge to party in restaurants, I thought about a few more things
that I had discussed with ditto Brazilian friends. People who know or only
suspect that they have already had covid19, or who have survived mildly an
infection, and have or hope to have antibodies, are tempted to "take a
chance" in the belief that they are to some extent somewhat protected.
This is so although it is known that asymptomatic people can be infected and be
contagious and one does not know the degree of protection given by how many and
which antibodies that are left in the body for an unknown period of time, ant
which they may have according to different tests that have different unknown
degrees of accuracy and precision.
Even before being vaccinated, many people believe that once they have received
the vaccine, they can more easily afford to take a little or more risk. They
may ignore that even asymptomatic vaccinated people can be carriers of virus,
and that different vaccines offer different, and so long unknown degrees of
protection for unknown periods of time. Not to mention the vaccines’ unknown protection
from coming recurrent mutations of the covid19-virus, also imported from
foreign countries. Their protection can even be as low as 60-70% - and in
addition sometimes depend on the distribution of the dosage of vaccine between
the first and second vaccination. All under the condition that the vaccines
were stored, including during distribution, in the right way, at the right
temperature and so on.
All the above difficulties appear to be related to misunderstanding the concept
of probability as used in estimating lower vs. higher
probability and risk of contagion and death. The only objective measure of
probability, as I understand it, is given upon the basis of the relative
frequency of outcomes of past events (cf. Prediction and Optimal Decision, chap.6).
In the case of the new covid-19 and its mutations the
only sure stable component of the events is the human individual (if one
disregards bodily variations in time). And there can be no more than one only
unique event leading to the individual's death. A pale analogy, while
acknowledging that all analogies ultimately must fail, is a broken watch as
analogy of a broken, failing human reason. It has been claimed that a broken
watch is actually right at least twice per day, per 24 hours. If the claim is
rephrased as it being "about right" (hospitalization but no death),
the claim can be "more than twice" but not more than, say, one out of
24 hours. If the individual's reason fails in estimating the probability and
risks of contagion he can also be right a number of times, in the sense of
having survived several times the risks of contagion. But it is enough to be
wrong only once.
Even in the light of all the knowledge about the above, there are many who
"judge" that risk-taking should be a strongly personal decision
because it is one's own life that counts, so as many want it to also apply to
suicide and voluntary euthanasia in case of severe fatal diseases. What is
easily overlooked is that, apart from religious aspects, the responsibility for
one's own feelings and life should also include the responsibility for the
feelings and lives of others as evidenced by rarely insightful classic films
such as "It's a Wonderful Life". One's own illness and ultimately death affects others, one's own
relatives, friends, healthcare or hospital staff who are dependent on trying to
take care of us. In the media news, desperate, physically and mentally
exhausted nurses, doctors and health authorities appear to appeal to everyone
to avoid risks and to not occupy hospital places needed for unavoidable cases
like those involving elders, especially in intensive care units.
Who cares about those who later have to take care of us? And what happens if a
younger or middle-aged family father or mother with young children falls ill or
dies? Yes, then you call siblings or grandparents asking for practical and
financial help. In this respect, the "judgement process" is also
revealed by which people beget unwanted children and want divorces or mismanage
their own finances. They feel doing so because it is their right since it
concerns "one's own life", while it was really one's own will, lust
or desire. And parents, relatives, and "society" in the form of
social assistance are supposed to withhold their opinions and just help when
asked to intervene.
Addition: Some news (January 19th, 2021) in The New York Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/19/well/live/covid-b117-variant-advice.html
And if it the following links are accessible - two relevant and good articles
(in Swedish) from the newspaper SvD - Svenska Dagbladet, from the time when I
had a free subscription:
"The super-spreader event on Gotland: Everyone did the right thing"
https://www.svd.se/spridareventet-pa-gotland-alla-gjorde-ju-ratt
or
https://esvd.svd.se/1001/Svenska-Dagbladet/362307/2020-12-21/17661851/Superspridareventet-pa-Gotland-Alla-gjorde-ju-ratt
"Therefore, not everything will be immediately good even though we can now
vaccinate"
https://www.svd.se/resultatet-av-vaccinen--svaren-kan-komma-i-host
or
https://esvd.svd.se/1001/Svenska-Dagbladet/367625/2021-01-11/18003091/Darfor-blir-allt-inte-omedelbart-bra-trots-att-vi-nu-kan-vaccinera
[210903]
================
================
E200409 Easter and Coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic
It is not the right time, now close to Easter in April 2020, to dwell into
epidemiological statistical and medical or economic matters with details of the ongoing coronavirus disease 2020 that
are available in literature and on the Internet. What appears as particularly
difficult to grasp is the political dimension as related to what should be its
base in true political science: ethics, and religion as they appear in
philosophy and daily psychology. This includes several key questions such as
Plato's reminder (in Republic, books 8 and 9, 558d ff.) of the
limits between societal necessity and luxury or necessary vs. unnecessary
appetites in government and business (cf. unemployment and immigration), and
further the questions of democracy vs. one-party state or dictatorship,
reliance on politicians vs. experts, globalism vs. nationalism, individual vs.
"medicare" state insurance, or state vs. society and tax-payers, such
as who is borrowing or printing money and who ultimately is going to pay for
extraordinary emergency financial support of citizens during a catastrophic
emergency such as pandemic. Or, finally, a new world order that will even fix
the problem of climatic global warming or paradise on earth, as suggested in a
recent Swedish brainy biblical paraphrase with the apostle Paul's "Paul-like"
title of "The first Corona-letter". A serious text relating some few of these issues to Christian
thought is Gabriele Kuby's Corona virus calls for conversion.
What seem to be fundamental is the fear of suffering and death, both one's own
and that of children, parents and closest relatives. While in past most serious
historical pandemics such as the spanish flu as one late example
among the list of deadly epidemics people still felt close to the phenomenon of death as they still
do in poor or war-torn countries, death has become a sort of taboo in modern
affluent countries where science in general and medical science in particular
has replaced concern for ethics and religion. I myself have been rebuked by a
relative who asked my wife to instruct me, immigrant and former foreigner, that
"in Sweden it is not proper to mention death". I have been
following for once some morning newspapers and remember only e few articles,
among hundreds dealing with the pandemic and considered this matter (John
Sjögren, "Min blick
på barnet har förändrats av krisen", Svenska Dagbladet, 8
April 2020), Björn Wiman, "Sjukdomen
tar inte bara våra liv, den tar vår död" (Dagens
Nyheter, 12 April 2020), and Carsten Jensen, "När sorgen
blir en folksjukdom" (Dagens Nyheter, 21 April
2020). Another article I
happened to see dared to touch upon the presence of unspeakable suffering and
death for poor people and migrant workers inside a suddenly closed down India,
Arundhati Roy, "Pandemin kan vara en portal till en ny värld" (Dagens Nyheter, 12 April 2020).
In other words, by ignoring the challenge of death we seem to keep far from the
deeper humanistic insights displayed in the philosophical criticism of utilitarism which is now directing the planning of medical assistance, as it
is illustrated in an article on Cost-effectiveness for health intervention, that
has occasionally been interpreted in Sweden in terms of trade-off of
unemployment vs. deaths, or to lead to the blunt de-prioritization of health
care of the very young and old citizens. Things have gone so far as to drive
three main senior personalities of the Swedish Medical Association to write an
extense article in one main newspaper to warn about "Oroväckande etisk glidning i coronatider" ("Alarmingly ethical drift in the
corona times", Svenska Dagbladet, 19 April 2020). And we
are even far from the insights of Albert Camus in his epochal book The Plague as well as far from Ernst Jünger's Storm of Steel where "he portrayed war as a
mystical experience that revealed the nature of existence". Or, in art,
from the candid insight of Pieter Bruegel's in The Triumph of Death.
But, how to counter the fear of death? In present Easter times it should be
close at hand to refer to the Christian message about the meaning of suffering
and death as ultimately portrayed in the Passion of Jesus and The Stations of the Cross. Unfortunately the process of secularization in the West in general,
and in Sweden in particular, prevents the sheer understanding of the meaning of
the Passion and consequently of Easter and Christianity as related to the
question of an afterlife summarized in Romans 8:11 "But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead
dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to
your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you".
For instance, the mere mentioning of Christ's suffering on Good Friday can
elicit an ill-tempered response based on the supposition that one's own
suffering is downplayed in a comparison with the suffering of Christ (!). This
goes in parallel with Easter so early as on Good Friday being applauded with
early keen tweet-like cheers of "Happy Easter" accompanied by emoji-ideograms of red-hearts ❤️ which are assumed to indicate deep love and a want of contact
with parents and relatives during the isolation in corona-times. All this while
the authors during years let pass weeks and even months without dialing a
single phone call to, or visiting their old parents except for asking for
money, as in a paraphrase to the beginning of the biblical parable of the
Prodigal Son (Luke 15:12), a phenomenon that I did already consider in an earlier blog-insert
on adult children and childish adults.
[200421]
================
================
E190210 Climate change and global warming
[This excessively long blog-item has been developed elsewhere into a
more structured text: here]
By the year 2018-2019 climate change and global warming have come to be
considered by the world's mass and social media as well as by "big
science" and in the political discourse as being the main and most urgent
problem of mankind because of apocalyptic visions about the future of
humanity.
I do not claim scientific competence in discussing whether these
judgments on "the most urgent problem of mankind" are beyond any
doubt but I wish to advance my doubts at the cost of being relegated to the
role of "climate change denier"
in the "global warming controversy" (as illustrated in particular in Sweden by individual cases of
"dissidents", exemplified in English here, here, and playfully here about Two
Cheers for Heresy on Global Warming, and in Swedish sites such
as here). I must emphasize,
however, that I see myself as competent for discussing what
"scientific" means, and that I am wholly positive and
supportive for the attempt to care for and improve environmental conditions and
sustainability, only they are not made into the absolute most urgent universal
priority among all ongoing suffering in the world. In this respect I am of
the same opinion of the well known physicist and mathematician Freeman Dyson who, as summarized
in Wikipedia, "is skeptical about the simulation models used to predict climate change, arguing that political efforts to reduce causes of climate change
distract from other global problems that should take priority."
I do oppose the "moralistic" tone with which the supposedly
established truth of global warming os presented as if it were no longer
debatable, classifying dissidents as conspiracy theorists or worse. With due
regard for the differences I sense that "climate change denial" is
being regarded in a way that recalls former suspected God's denial or atheism,
and in modern times Holocaust denial as much worse than atheism. It recalls in
my mind, once more, Chesterton's controversial quotation that "A man who won't believe in God will believe anything". (Applied here as "who won't believe in
God's Apocalypse must create his own".) And I would add that today who won't
believe in God will substitute it with "science", something that
becomes obvious when the one of the two main Swedish morning newspapers' editor
in chief (Dagens Nyheter, November 1st 2020) inveighs in an
editorial against the other newspaper for its "denial" of the climate
crisis, where denial consisted in its affirming the need and right of
questioning scientific findings established by the would be "scientific
community" seen as represented the United Nations', UN's, climate
panel IPCC. The second newspaper (Svenska
Dagbladet), despite the famous democratic freedom of the press would not
have the same (moral?) right as e.g. Wikipedia's accounting of criticism of IPCC.
In fact I believe that scientifically incompetent editors in chief, and
many other people's vociferous commitment to save-the-climate movement, is less
a commitment to godly democratic 18th century's "general will" or today's UN than
an expression of "identity politics". I did already consider this in
the section on "Censorship of talk about religion" of my article on Information and
Theology. Even people who have not contributed in any way to determine
and counter the dangers of global warming can cheaply feel proud by boasting
about their understanding and approval of the "overwhelming scientific
evidence" of an impending climatic catastrophe, and feel self-righteous
for caring about the salvation of the whole humanity, with their own
grandchildren to start with. As I write in a text on Information and Theology, "all
this happens while they claim to worry for climate change that may affect their grandchildren
but ignore present, ongoing massive suffering of neighbours or the poor all
over the world (illustrated or exemplified by shocking videos and photos)."
My scientific advisor West Churchman (1913-2004) who dedicates the whole first
chapter of his last book (Thought and Wisdom, 1982) to "Future
generations", kept repeating in his late life that about 40.000 children
in the world died every day (not equivalent to child mortality) because of starvation
and related causes. And this despite of worldwide availability of food, the problem
being its distribution. A question arises about how long will
we have to wait until additional 40.000 children die daily because of climate
change: a change that is claimed to be a worldwide priority while world
politics during more than a half a century could not agree to care of neither
starving children nor for disarmament of nuclear weapons, which could wipe out
climate and humanity in a few hours.
To begin with I wish to pay my recognition to the young schoolgirl Greta Thunberg for the final
insight that fixed my present convictions and doubts. Her influence on my
insight was accomplished after her becoming suddenly world famous at the age of
15, for her commitment to the struggle of combating global warming. It reminds
the historical similar case of another girl, noted as her spiritual precursor who at age 12 also "silenced the world" at the UN Earth
Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, long before Internet social media that could
have made her equally famous. Her name: Severn Cullis-Suzuki. Disregarding whether it
is true that Thunberg's becoming famous was promoted by her involvement in a public-relations PR scandal or not the
account is that in one of her interventions during a 15 minutes interview at the Swedish public television she acknowledged more specifically that her interest and commitment were related to
her diagnosis of Asperger-autism. As I note elsewhere, her behavior also recalls the behavior attributed
to supposed, so called indigo-children and displayed by
cases of child prodigy at the edge of both infantile omnipotence and savant syndrome. It all means complex psychic
trouble. She explained that she sees the world in a different perspective from
the "outside", in black-and-white, and has difficulties to understand
other people who get distracted by what she sees as empty talk in "social
games". So, she acknowledges that the problem is exceedingly complicated
but seen in black-and-white the solution is so simple that even a 5-years old
child can understand it. Indeed I know of adults, not the least
engineers, who seem to reason in these matters as a 5-years old child:
"We" ("They") must simply make "them"
("us") stop emitting carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. I see some
ultimate implications recalling William Akin's conceptualization of Technocracy and the American Dreamwhere engineers are also managers and politicians.
They may be able to determine behavior in their civil society but probably will
not be able to limit ongoing emissions of carbon dioxide in poor needy
countries and by armed forces in recurring wars and exercises on land, in air,
water and ice all over the world. Least of all will they be able to counter the
horrors of any war going on in the world right how, or ultimately the risk for
a nuclear holocaust.
All this while Greta Thunberg engages in climate-change advocacy, such for a
"lecture tour" from Europe to the USA in a supposedly climate-saving sailboat, a trip that despite all care, has
been criticized for being more polluting than if she had taken an airline's
round trip (see, in German, here in Die
Welt 16 August 2019, and here). It
is a premonition of what good old national and world politics and
professionally planned PR efforts will make out of scared good naive children
and good intentions: "the road to hell is paved with good intentions", which is one main tenet of the
"system" idea. A hint: "Greta Thunberg and the plot to forge a climate warrior: The teenage activist wants nothing more than to
change the world. The shadowy cabal behind her has other goals." (by
Dominic Green, The Times, October 10 2019)
In other words: discussions about who are "We", and the why
there have been evil, wars, religion, philosophy, and diplomacy in the history
of humanity, including the last two world wars, are relegated to "social
games" and to "Them". It is an attitude that emotionally
attracts the secularized general public that is tired of the of the complicacies
of world's evil, corruption and suffering and feels the need of a natural
innocence of childhood (that also may be a background for the ignored causes of
pedophilia), all in oblivion of the theological meaning of Infant Jesus and of teachings of the Lord of the Flies. At
the same time "we" show that we are morally superior, and in particular
morally superior if we are children who teach adults to be more altruistic and
to think about their children and future generations (instead of the fifth
commandment "Honor your father and your mother", Exodus 20:12). As if adults did not do that already, think about at least their
own grandchildren but must be taught by them to think about them. A
child's reproach is then "Everybody thinks only about himself but I am the
only one who thinks about me". Or "People only care about themselves;
I'm the only one who cares about myself". It is related to "Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing
himself." Compare with
the Matthew 7:5 "You hypocrite! First take the beam out of
your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your
brother's eye." Children's plea for the adults to think more about them
and their future instead of about other ongoing tragedies is then the only
egoistic plea that serendipitously, with rhetorical power, can claim to be altruistic.
This despite children not having had even the time to acknowledge the ongoing
suffering and evil inte the world, the less so when autism implies difficulty
to feel empathy.
The Berlin's bishop even experienced a Greta-inspired children's demonstration in
April 2019 as reminding Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem, while a
deaconess in the Christian Protestant Uniting Church in Sweden declares (in Swedish) the very same schoolgirl to be God's prophet. Others criticize comparisons with a modern Joan of Arc. It is also a felicitous
case of successful self-victimization and identity politics (children as a group) with its
well-researched but often ignored smart advantages (cf. the last paragraph of
my text on censorship of talk about religion). When adults allow themselves to remain or become childish it is children who teach and take the leadership
(cf. the Bible, Isaiah
3:4,12). The title of one of
the few sober reflections upon the Greta-phenomenon was as article about When children protest, adults should tell them the
truth.
My main point is that this illustrates what I did perceive also from
engineering colleagues who are very committed to the struggle against global
warming: as engineering researchers they gather scientific and mass media
information about the empirical means by which a majority of climate scientists
gather empirical data that are supposed to prove beyond any doubt the reality
of global warming. Most important for them is to refer to (the Lockean) "consensus or tacit consent" of the majority of the world's relevant authorities", that
is, one of reasons that determined the rejection of Galileo's findings. (This
despite of the rejection of such "Galileo hypothesis" in
the establishment's opposition to one main "skeptical"
environmentalist, Bjørn Lomborg). In doing this they also ignore more moderate views about the climate
change as expressed (e.g. in Swedish, on Youtube) by
authorities such as Lennart Bengtsson. and harassed scientifically
lesser authorities such as (in Sweden) Lars Bern. After that they claim
that "we" but ultimately "they", managers-politicians all
over the world should "listen to researchers" (never the other
way round except for getting research funds), and do something about
it in order to limit the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. If they
don't it is a management failure or a failure of democracy that entitles to a
sort of enlightened dictatorship by a strong and wise man or elite group, as
suggested by philosophy professor Torbjörn Tännsjö in a Swedish TV
program on global warming (Ekdal och Ekdal - Avsnitt 5: Klimat) 12 February 2019. This position of
"we-they" ignores the controversy about fact-value distinction and
assumes implicitly a positivistic view of the world inasmuch the engineers get
relieved from any responsibility for the use and consequences of application of
the technology they develop as long as they are paid by the
managers-politicians to do that, while politicians and policy-makers are free
to finance the development of whatever technology and gathering or creation of
any facts that fosters their power and political goals, starting with their own
political careers. This conundrum is well explained and developed in a
classical publication by C.W. Churchman and A.H. Schainblatt: "The researcher and the manager: A dialectic of
implementation" (Management
Science, vol. 11, No. 4, Feb. 1965, pp. B69-B87, followed by extensive
commentaries in "A dialectic of Implementation. Commentary", vol. 12, No. 2, Oct. 1965, pp. B1-B42).
But the girl mentioned above gets applauses from the emotionally moved
masses who long for and welcome the strong leadership of a rhetorically
powerful ("spiritual"?) leader, a need and hope expressed by the
masses in times of perceived extreme crisis as in Germany before the second
world war, where science, politics and people had reached consensus that the
problem was (not climate but) living space, Lebensraum. No further comparison.
See the contrast with the above mentioned famous biblical Isaiah 3:12 "As for my
people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over
them", notwithstanding its interpretational difficulties. They include the embarrassing observation that Isaiah reproaches the
adults whose faults are penalized by such inversion of roles. And the energy of
the leader-girl is powered now by both Asperger and by the trust in the power
of established science, which I elsewhere show also powered the famous Lucifer effect of the "Stanford prison experiment". They are applauses for the girl's sincere rhetorical power,
candid way of seeing reported facts, and for something that should be done by
"them", democratic (Nietzschean?) supermen, politicians, and
political systems around the world, supported by technology and economic means.
Implied: "more of the same", more international regulations with
sanctions guaranteed by supposed democratic powers, more engineering, social
engineering and technology will save us from the environmental effects of technology,
ignoring not only politics and most of the philosophy of technology, a field that often with wishful thinking announces the need for a
(impossible) "moratorium" in the development of technology. Not even
war imposes a moratorium on technology. On the contrary it has always
stimulated its endemically misdirected development.
The success of the campaign for stopping global warming has unleashed a
worldwide storm in mass media and social media, whose structure is analog to
the phenomenon of #MeToo movement (see the blog entry below) and the hypothesis I advance on the subject, as in my review of
a book by Howard S. Schwartz on political correctness. There, on #MeToo, i write the storm is a
collective hysteria" or "mass psychosis" or "witch
hunt" but must be regarded scientifically as a socio-psychological mass
phenomenon of the type addressed originally by Gustave Le Bon in The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1895) including ideas in the books on the Madness
of Crowds by Charles Mackay (1841), lately by Douglas Murray's (2019), and incorporated by Carl Jung in psychological theory, and
superficially resumed under Wikipedia's label of "Crowd psychology". Other particular
hypotheses or attacks have been launched in media, exemplified by Ross Clark
in The Spectator April 23rd 2019, Cory Morningstar (five parts or "acts")
in The Art of Annihilation Jan-March 2019, Brendan O'Neill in Spiked April 22nd 2019, and the virulent "Emotional appeals for the Social Engineering" by Russ Winter in Winter Watch, September
25, 2019. All this was violently countered in other arenas such
as The Huffington Post, April 26th 2019, indicating the infected
field of emotional tensions and political exploitation from which children like
Greta should have been protected and treated by adults who instead indulge in
alleviating their burden and responsibility by giving free rein to troubled
children's imagination. This should be so in order to counter the risk for
ultimate serious and possibly mortal mental wounds: it is dangerous for a child
to awaken och live through powerful "archetypal" roles such as Joan
of Arc. The risk appears already when (especially privileged, informed) children
get in panic about their announced calamitous future while experiencing their
ignorance, impotence and hopelessness in an apparently indifferent adult world,
to the point of wanting to sterilize themselves to spare catastrophes for their
future children (cf. interviews in the Swedish Radio's "Konflikt" 30 nov. 2019) and paradoxically blaming the earlier generations): how far is such self-sterilization from
the idea of suicide? Or when children feel downgraded when meeting accusations
of serving political conspiracies or when confronted by serious, sharp
criticism of the type that Swedish readers can read critical articles so far
away as in Russia Today(11 Dec and 17 Dec 2019)
and others analyzing democracy vs science (by Lena Andersson in Dagens
Nyheter 28 September 2019) where politics meets ethics, if yet in
deficient exclusively secular terms that are typical for Swedish intellectual
life.
The hype of the climate issue is probably in part due to that it creates
a false but cheap impression of worldwide consensus on the basis of worldwide
popular concern if not panic stimulated by various historical initiatives, some
of them illustrated by the former USA's vice-president Al Gore's widely
advertised "environmentalism". It enables politicians
to divert public attention from efforts to solve highly sensitive and divisive,
daily political issues about welfare, economics and justice. Such daily
important permanent issues of poverty and famine can continue to be treated
according to the old devise of "Divide and rule", while sacrifices
are being required from both rich and (especially) poor for the indisputable
sake of the climatic "survival of humanity". In the meantime "the truth about big oil and climate change" could be that "Even as concerns about global
warming grow, energy firms are planning to increase fossil-fuel production.
None more than ExxonMobil" (The Economist, Feb 9th 2019). It
is interesting to see that such panic for the survival of humanity could not
mobilize the world's political opinion for a nuclear weapons' disarmament of a
few "advanced" nations of our planet. This to the point that a Daniel
Ellsberg in an interview at the Swedish public television network, had to remind as in his book The Doomsday Machine (2017) that a nuclear weapon's conflagration has been and still
must be considered as an impending immediate reality and a threat - to begin
with - of deaths, destruction of the climate, and famines. This even
disregarding the dangers and environmental consequences of past and now
declassified nuclear weapon's incidents reported by James Oskins as co-author of numerous books on the subject. To the billions, including
refugees, who ask for immediate relief from poverty, wars, famine and illness,
the answer is that priorities in our world-wide debates are for money and
worldwide efforts that must be spent on climate research and
interventions for the sake of their grandchildren and whole humanity. Let it go
that Ellsberg's sense of urgency was translated into his enthusiasm for Greta
Thunberg's view of the world in "black and white" and wish for more
people having the Asperger's syndrome, instead of their restraining their greed
and having a respect for truth, justice and love of their neighbour as
predicated by major religions. In the meantime, official statistics reports
that half of Swedish marriages end in divorce.
"Our time's perhaps most crucial research project " (part 1)
was published by the Swedish public television network on 4 February 2019 under
the title Vetenskapens värld - Världen i växthuset del 1, available for display until 3 August 2019 (In
the TVDB:
"The world of science: The world in the greenhouse,
part 1",). It started
explicitly and symptomatically with the premise that the truth of global
warming would not be debated and promised to go to "the root of the
matter" about global warming, with the strongest argument of science. It
would teach about the respiration of the forests, the cold waters of Antarctic,
and the Keeling curve (graph of the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the Earth's
atmosphere based on continuous measurements started on the island
of Hawaii from 1958, up to about 100 sites around the globe the
present day). The TV program's host also promises to furnish the spectator with
an image of "how everything hands together: oceans, land, air, and
ice". In academia "how hang together" is systems theory, but people
prefer to forget about theory and focus on logically related empirical
findings.
A curiosity, (beyond a beneficial reflection upon the famous "Little ice age"): In an article on
"Greenhouse and icehouse Earth" we read: "Without the human influence on
the greenhouse gas concentration, the Earth would be heading toward a glacial period. Predicted
changes in orbital forcing suggest that in absence of human-made global warming the next glacial period would begin at least 50,000 years from now
[...] But due to the ongoing anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, the Earth
is instead heading toward a greenhouse Earth period". What is the difference
between an apocalypse within 100 or 50.000 or according to the sun's
life expectancy of "5 billion more years when all life on the surface
of the Earth will already be long gone"? Is it our grandchildren?
Or is it that "more and better of the same", science and technology,
may save the Earth and humanity? It reminds me of West Churchman's quotation
(in his Design of Inquiring Systems, p. 203) of James Hillman's rhetorical image (in
his essay on "Senex and Puer", in Eranos-Jahrbuch 1967, and 2005):
"fat science proclaiming it will save the world while it odoriferously
defecates in public". Maybe this is what all climate change is about,
and it has to do with the philosophy of technology,
which I did mention earlier and which i have considered in an earlier essay.
Returning to The world in the greenhouse, part 1 I am not going to summarize the arguments
advanced in the one-hour's program-DVD except for noting that, as usual in this
context, they deal with global direct and indirect measurements of temperatures
and carbon dioxide percentages (and averages!) on land, in waters, ice, and
air. In my own work I learned to appreciate all the pitfalls of measurement and
statistics (cf. statistical "averages") in economics by studying
Oscar Morgensten's On the Accuracy of Economic Observations (1965). More relevant for natural science is
T.N. Whitehead The Design and Use of Instruments and Accurate
Mechanism (1934). It contains
complex guidelines that one wonders whether have been considered in mass
production of climate telemetering instruments. The
computer is also an instrument, rather than a tool (cf. Bo Sundin, ed. Is the Computer a Tool?, 1980,
and there is much more to say about it.) And meteorology is not precise
and accurate physics but can, rather, be compared to economics. Not to mention
the misunderstanding and misuse of statistics when its presuppositions are not
valid, as indicated in C.W. Churchman's Prediction and Optimal Decision, (1961,
chaps. 5 and 6) on measurement and probability when there are apparent facts
but no theory. It is, by the way object of a whole chapter III om
"Probability as applied to errors" in the mentioned Whitehead's book.
Misunderstandings and misuses of probability stands also at the basis for not
understanding and for not having seriously considered chance in
the interpolations and extrapolations of levels of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere. That is, chance or randomness or "the occurrence of events in
the absence of any obvious intention or cause", which
in Prediction and Optimal Decision (pp. 143-170, 259-261) is
rightly understood as not having any correlation with any known phenomenon
and, and as such could be a humble reminder of our
(un-?)pretentious ignorance. In face of all this it is easily felt as an
extremely bold statement to claim in panic that plus/minus one or two degrees
centigrade, with unclear tolerances and relations between accuracy and precision, juggling with "averages" over time and the
whole world, not to mention the "philosophical" balance between statistical errors of type I and II, will spell doomsday or survival within, say, 100
years. Most educated laymen and most scientists may have not yet grasped the
exent of "mythological" capabilities affirmed in the name of science,
such in artificial intelligence's "technological singularity", and "neuralinks". Most educated
people have no idea about details of the accuracy or precision in fields such
as meteorology, weather and climate or extreme weather. There is no democratic
control of narrow specialized new research. Or, more generally, because of the
lack of an established overarching discipline of "climate change and
global warming" there should be a recourse to the design of inquiring systems of metrology (elaborated in chap. 9 of a later book). For now I would not be surprised if the failure of
predictions of causes of future climate changes reveals itself
as a sort of worldwide hoax imposed in the name of politicized big science
where theory is reduced to computer simulations of a network of logically
related, selected empirical findings. Alternately I can guess already now that
if the predictions do not turn to be true, it will be explained by claiming
that it is because whatever measures have been implemented had a stronger
beneficial effect than expected.
The statistics of adduced measurements is based on diverse "causal
chains" of the type that motivated the environmentally very concerned
mathematician Jan Brouwer to distrust non-systemic science, as I exposed in
parts of my essay on computers as embodied logic and mathematics. That is, the very same hype of computers that are
adduced in "computer simulations" in order to impress especially
laymen about the climate crisis, without any major mention to the problem of
validating models and simulations, which cannot be validated only against past measurements.
And they meet seldom the mentioned difficulties, considered in C.W. Churchman's
"An analysis of the concept of simulation" (in Hoggatt &
Balderston, eds. Symposium on Simulation Models, South-Western
Publishing Co., Cincinnati, Ohio, 1963, today more available in the author's
summary in The Systems Approach and its Enemies, 1979,
pp. 51-53). If it is a simulation of reality, what is the future reality after
all, when we doubt the present one? For instance, in the Dec. 28, 2007 New York
Times' article Science and Soothsaying, environmental scientist Daniel
Botkin writes "My own
experience makes me skeptical of how environmental forecasting is being
used." It is echoed by an exhaustingly detailed review of the forecasting
of global warming in a tour de force of seven articles (in
Swedish) by academically trained polymath Krister Renard, especially the fifth
one on climate models.
At this point it could be fruitful to sit down and analyze other
historically predicted "catastrophes" such as the Malthusian one or more
relevantly The Limits to Growth. A
careful reading of the latter as well as the story of the contribution by the
computer engineer and systems scientist Jay Forrester, not to mention C.W.
Churchman's The Design of Inquiring Systems, should
make the further development of this blog contribution superfluous, or then
revert the whole question to my reflections on the impossibility of serious
debates as presented in my article on information and debate. Ultimately it all
may be a question of the western attitude to death and its negation (see
here below on
donation of organs for transplants) in view of acknowledgment or ignorance of
religious apocalyptic archetypes and historical examples as of the Classic Maya Collapse. Sorry for at my
age not having the time for hoping to be able to develop these thoughts in a
book, and for entering in a hopeless debate about
it. If you want a taste
of such debates you may start to browse for instance the "pushing of dangerous myths about climate change". If you wish you can see me as inspired to
humility by the biblical verse Sirach 3:21: "Seek not what is too difficult for you, nor investigate
what is beyond your power." It may be appropriate for others too, not only
those who look for a climatic apocalypse instead of the biblical one, but also for those who look for extraterrestrial life instead
of problems of ongoing suffering in terrestrial life, which is symptomatically
ignored even in Nobel prizes in physics such as in year 2019 celebrating physical cosmology and recalling "Since ancient times, humans have speculated
whether there are worlds like our own". It is to be contrasted to Alfred Nobel's will, that the prize be given "to those who, during the preceding year,
have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind". Who cares, if
"physical cosmology" may enhance the
"science" of climate change and global warming, which is supposed to
be the greatest threat to humankind?
I like to terminate in a playfully controversial mood by imagining that
the title of this whole text could have been "The Denial of
Empiricism". Despite of an apparent overwhelming scientific consensus on
the dangers of climate change, political reality shows the primacy of psychological,
spiritual, or religious (mis)understanding among people and among peoples of
the world.
[210402]
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================
E190207 - Donation of body materials and organs for
transplants
There is in the West and especially in Sweden as reported (in Swedish) by The National Board of Health
and Welfare a perceived
increasing need for parts and especially organs from dead or dying human
bodies, as well as whole dead bodies. This is in order to satisfy the demand
for transplantations, as well as for medical surgical training with the
explicit purpose to save or improve the lives of sick or disabled survivors.
I was impressed by the popular response to one of the programs (Feb. 1st 2019) of the series Svenska Nyheter, [Swedish News], described as a Swedish
weekly comedy show broadcast on the Swedish public television. The host, a
comedian, found a way of relating witty reflections about the news of Sweden
being a country with relatively scanty offers of organs for transplantation, to
his public appeal for more donations in death or “when life can no more be
saved”. In doing so he also appealed to the reasonable idea that whoever does
not offer his own organs should not ask for donations in case of his own need
for a transplant.
Despite a certain recognition of ethical concerns, in that the supply of materials for transplants may
trample on respect for the rights to life”, there are other dimensions of
ethics that do not seem to be recognized. Some of them have religious
undertones that tend to be ignored as much as religion and theology are not
considered seriously, especially in “developed countries”.
I always felt a kind of malaise in face of a decision to register myself as a
potential donor for transplants, attributing such feeling to a sort of cowardly
egoism combined with some sort of religious feeling. This was so until I
recently heard about the analog Swedish problem of shortage of sperm donators
in face of increased demand caused by the political decision to extend the
offer of insemination also to single and lesbian women. This as if it
were a prioritized medical health program provided by state the state
authorities and private clinics that require donations. I felt that it opened
my eyes to the core of the issue.
The core of the issue is probably the absence of an unnecessary,
superfluous love, an intuition that also shocked me in an earlier discussion of the problems of immigration in general and of
asylum to refugees in particular. In
its next to last paragraph there I tried to express the idea that hospitality
would feel more natural and legitimate if it were a personal commitment to host
a refugee in one own’s home, instead of turning it to a politically determined
bureaucratic anonymous machinery at the expense of tax-supported governmental
service. That is, one additional expression of what elsewhere I depicted as the
new family-constellations in The illusion of state-individualistic ethics.
So, I felt that “donation” of organic bodily material should and would be
perceived by me to be ethical and legitimate if it were that result of
person-to-person love and commitment, far from bureaucratic
industrial-commercial anonymous machinery, which in turn implies that the human
body and ultimately the whole human being is seen as a store or warehouse of
replacement parts. And the request for replacement parts is also framed in
“commercial” terms: you can get a replacement part if you are ready to pay by
giving one.
Now, this is not the place for attempting to write a book about the essence of
love as related to caritas, or about the relation between logos and eros. Therefore I take the chance to stimulate to further
thought and insights by applying the idea of Chesterton’s fence on the why last offices, mourning and wake, examples of preparation of the body, and
Christian or Buddhist concerns for the happenings after death, should be substituted by thoughts about and medical concern for prompt
aseptic asportation of tissues and organs from the dead person. All this
followed by swift disposal of the rest of the body. Chesterton’s fence
mentioned above is resumed in “The principle that reforms should not be made
until the reasoning behind the former state of affairs is understood”. The Tibetan Book of the Dead (or Bardo
Thodol, compiled and edited by W.Y. Evans-Wentz, Oxford Univ. Press, 1980)
makes further mention (pp. 3n, 36nf., 90n, 93n, 198n, 234n, et al.) to the
relation of this work to the popular late medieval Christian Ars moriendi [The art of Dying]
and other Christian thoughts. A late expression of such Christian thoughts may
be intuited in the Vatican's Instruction of the Congregation for the Doctrine
of the Faith, “Ad resurgendum cum Christo”, regarding the burial of the deceased and the
conservation of the ashes in the case of cremation, which however does not make
any mention to the question of donation of body materials.
A best monumental analysis that settled the question in my mind was, however,
the reading and re-reading Louis-Vincent Thomas in the Anthropologie de la Mort (The Anthropology of Death, Payot, 1975) a book
of more than 500 pages that I had intuitively bought as early as in 1976 and
browsed later a couple of times in 2005 and 2011. I would like to complete this
blog-insert with proper references to this work (pp. 249f, 256, 273ff, 292,
313ff, 341ff), which probably will be accessible only to readers of French
language since I will not have the possibility to translate French into
English.
Thomas explains how the whole question can be framed (pp. 260-384) as the
Western desacralization of death if not outright desecration of the human
corpse. That means especially our attitudes to the corpse and to the grave. The
human body is no longer merged with the person and does no longer belong
totally to God, belonging in part to the "power" of the judiciary and
the medical establishment in autopsy, dissection, necropsy and pathological
examinations. The change of attitude to the corpse operates on and mirrors
psychological effects. Cf. the Catholic funeral rites as
well as the Eastern Orthodox 40th Day after death. The exposition of the corpse is seen as facilitating the mourning and
is a sign of respect for the grief of the survivors. It also counters the modern funeral industry's tendency, typical of the USA, and the risks of transforming an act of
pity into an economic operation for profit (p. 350), leading ultimately
to organ trade. Other aspects of the question that almost nobody dares to mention but
are more evident in analyses of other "less developed" countries is
the kind of fear of the return of ghosts, which encourages the mutilation of
the corpses (p. 301). In socialist countries also appears the possibility for
the person to dignify his impending death and his posthumous reputation by
emphasizing his willingness to offer his dead body for the best of the
collectivity (p. 306, 333). In this sense the process recalls the phenomenon of
"triumphant death" typical of the heroic death on the battlefield
(for the survival of survivors) by means of a decision that also may mean the
wish to manipulate the survivors beyond one own's death (p. 384). "Dead
heroes, in fact, have a higher value that living heroes" (p. 314). The
triumphant death is paradoxically matched to a psychological denial of death
implied (p.324) in the denial of rottenness obtained through antiseptic
incineration of the corpse, which may be paradoxically experienced also as a
second death, a willingness to destroy. All this is obtained at the cost of a
certain twist of feelings and suppression of mourning with consequent
depressions because of a missed liberating expression of suffering (p.
348).
Ultimately it all about donations may be a secular psalm to our fear of death
and to our faith in "power", the power of science and technology, in
a heroic journey that hopefully brings us ever closer to eternal life. This
without asking what we as survivors are supposed to do with our longer lives,
and without asking questions to the philosophy of medical-technological and
economic power, and still less to theology. As in the ongoing
anguish about climate change and global warming, we have returned to the
Nietzschean neo-god of (longer?) "Life", without asking about love,
charity and justice.
[191121]
================
================
E181008 – Swedish-Swiss friendship and its
ending
An
Indian woman who moved to Sweden wrote a text that describes how a foreigner
living in Sweden may perceive its cultural characteristics in what concerns
friendship. I got a feeling of déjà vu, relating to own experiences related to
Sweden and Switzerland, and to earlier blog-texts of mine (below) about Friendship and personal relations and (in Swedish) about Spiritual friendship.
In Parents, adult children and childish adults I wrote that "I do
not cease to get amazed by what is happening not only in the feminist struggle
between woman and man or between children's parents, but also between young and
old people, between children and parents or grandparents." A late
experience has been adult grandchildren suddenly “disappearing”, becoming
silent and unavailable for their old grandmother. All this related to the
ongoing gradual breakdown of the traditional family institution. Being so, I do
not get anymore amazed about any sudden breakdown of friendships and even ties
between close relatives, but felt it necessary to copy the Indian lady's
testimony and spread its insight that may be applicable to other "advanced"
European countries besides Sweden such as, say, Switzerland that I also have
experience of. Now, over to the Indian woman:
"Some bad things about Sweden?"
by Lakshmi Ramachandran, PhD English Literature, University of Madras
(1997):
<https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-bad-things-about-Sweden/answer/Lakshmi-Ramachandran-19?share=efb06d69&srid=u9AT3>
(Updated December 8, 2018)
I moved to Sweden from India 16 years ago and loved everything about it.
I like the cold, I don’t mind the darkness. The freedom I experienced as a
woman on the streets was mind blowing. So was the potential freedom as an
individual. If I want to, I can easily live alone, and this is important to me.
I love that the society values knowledge and this knowledge is widespread, not
just resting with intellectuals and research scholars. Rules, and laws are
mostly based on sound knowledge and research and I value that tremendously. The
people are humble and kind and that’s important considering what I am going to
say next.
There is one thing that makes me really sad about Sweden and that is, as some
people have mentioned - it’s almost impossible to make friends. This is so
strange that I needed to understand this and I reserved my judgment for close
to 15 years. A more humble kind people you cannot find. So what’s the problem?
Why does one never make friends?
It doesn’t matter for how long you have known someone. The day you cease to be
colleagues or neighbors or whatever, the ‘connection’ ends. The person who
spoke to you animatedly for 10 years on the bus everyday will greet you
politely and distantly and move on when you run into them later. No excited
hellos, no catching up, nothing. And you wonder what all those years of
acquaintance meant to them. They are not being false. It’s learned behavior.
Just like we from warmer cultures have learned to connect, to make and keep
friends, to reach out and be openly curious, they have learned this behavior.
It’s not that they don’t feel, this behavior is what they know. And it’s a
tragedy, I think. The best thing about life, thrown away just like that. Like
someone else mentioned on Quora once, there is a small window during childhood
and the college years, during which Swedes make friends that they keep. After
that this possibility kinda doesn’t exist.
Another thing that shocked me was the way people handled death. Nobody informs
you when someone you know dies. You won’t even know. It’s not considered
important information that should be communicated to people who may care. One
of our close friends, an old lady, ‘disappeared’ in this way. We presume she
died during the 6 months we had not called her. We never came to know.
Often, even if you come to know, you will be left wondering if you will be
invited to the funeral. You need closure and the funeral is important for you.
But it’s often by invitation. If someone in your neighborhood dies, people
simply go about their business. You don’t voluntarily visit the family or talk
to them. The not talking about the dead, not knowing how or why they died -
these things disturb me. How can we not leave our business and stop for death?
I can never reconcile with this one thing about Sweden.
No society is perfect. But if I had to pick one ‘imperfection’ I do not ever
want to experience, it would be this coldness, this lack of connection between
human beings. It’s just so sad.
But my question is "Why?". As much else including shortcomings
of science and research I believe that this is the result of the progressive
secularization of the Swedish society in particular, and of the West in general
as depicted in part in my research on Information and theology. In reading the Cisternian
monk Aelred of Rievaulx commented by Dennis Billy in Spiritual Friendship I felt the wish to share a couple of thoughts in the book, for the
possible advantage of others (p. 79 and 113):
Aelred draws an important distinction between true and apparent friendship,
between a bond of intimate companionship that is true and lasting and one that
is ephemeral and short-lived. [...] Rather than ending the relationship
abruptly, he advises us to unravel the friendship "stich-by-stich"
over an extended period of time. In doing so, there will be no hard feelings
between those involved and, while no longer, friends, they will be
able to relate to one another with dignity and mutual respect.
Aelred's text is included in the book's "Book Three" with the
telling title of "The Conditions and Characters Requisite for Unbroken
Friendship". For the rest, among the first best known texts about
friendship, besides Cicero's On Friendship and Christian agape or charity, we find in Aristotle's
Nichomachean Ethics (books VIII and IX) and Eudemian Ethics (e.g. Book VII,
esp. from 1236a, see also on the web). In the latter Aristotle enumerates three kinds of friendship, for
excellence or character (pursuit of good), for utility or usefulness, and for
pleasure. Since usefulness and pleasure are usually temporary, so remains only
(true) friendship motivated by what Aristotle denominates as excellence or
goodness character. It is easy to draw conclusions about the cause of the
ending of friendships, including family relationships. Such friendships are
judged to be no longer useful or pleasurable, at the same time as people in
modern "advanced" societies feel that they are self-sufficient. This
is further enabled by the presumed assistance of the nanny-state, which in Sweden has
produced state individualism and the rhetorical question
"Is the Swede a human being?", at least until the time of approaching death. And the need for
self-sufficiency in such societies is increased by the gradual breakdown of
dialogue and debate that I have portrayed elsewhere, and by the reduction of religion to politics where religion was a background for enduring
suffering as well for fostering charity and faithfulness much deeper than
solidarity.
What if often forgotten in the devastating sorrow and suffering by those
who are abandoned or feel the indignity of being betrayed in a supposed
friendship. Especially as exemplified by divorce in the sublime archetype of
friendship in marriage, with the father or mother of the own children. As a
matter of fact, I know the case of a husband whose first wife had divorced and
"abandoned" him. Later on, he himself "divorced-abandoned":
suddenly and with no explanation broke the relationship with a couple of old
friends who then in turn felt bewildered for how he himself may have behaved
with his former wife. Such people may therefore develop an intense love for
animals, e.g. dogs, perhaps mainly because of dogs' relatively inexpensive
and very limited simple needs (no expectations or exigences) coupled
to their consequent submissive "unconditional love" for
their almighty provider and protector. Dogs who do not meet expectations
can easily be returned to or left in a doghouse or on the street, and cats can
be abandoned in the forest: animal versions of human divorce. Or, about wives
and husbands, as in Matthew 19:7-8: They said to Him, “Why
then did Moses command to give her a certificate of divorce and send her
away?” He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses
permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been
this way". [My italics.]
Nevertheless, the main question is the ultimate “WHY?”, why people
suddenly and even silently must “divorce” from partners (formerly called
spouses and consorts) and then, of course, even more often from friends. My
writing a more recent blog insert on
veganism (above) made me realize
that ultimately it may be because they cannot bear suffering, the suffering in feeling outraged by their friends as
caused by the friends’ shortcomings, but also in perceiving their own
shortcomings such as in turn hurting their friends or not being able to
forgive, where all shortcomings include sins. I have seen and have reported (below) this happening also between children, grandchildren and their parents
or relatives. I experienced this also happening among researchers as when a
friendship is disrupted by a colleague who is a sophisticated scholar and
enthusiast of Habermas’ “theory of communicative action” with its associated problems that I consider elsewhere. That means: a celebrated theory of communication
does not even prevent or solve a basic breakdown of communication between two
scholars. Sometimes the phenomenon involving well known people ultimately gets
commented even in articles in the press, as exemplified in Sweden (in
Swedish) with the case of a famous playwright and author. All this recalls that
it is a cultural phenomenon characterized by the decline of understanding, love
and charity.
I think that in terms of analytical psychology the answer to “why?” is
apparently simple: love and friendship imply “projection” of unknown opinions, convictions, desires and
fantasies upon the initially unknown object, a person whose external qualities
awaken them. After a closer and longer relationship the object reveals itself
as being a real subject who does not
meet or even rejects some or all the imaginary expectations. This requires
endurance, withstanding suffering: a
painful forced withdrawal of projections renders them conscious in the
projector. He becomes aware of previously hidden or even disagreeable and
dangerous traits in both himself and the other. Divorces that often are
attributed to the members of the couple having developed in different
directions are in fact caused by their not having developed at all. People do
not have courage and endurance to acknowledge their sins, the less so if there
is no forgiveness and atonement. They go instead in search of new partners and
new friends who seem initially disposed to satisfy their old desires and
fantasies. That is, unless old partners and friends choose to efface
themselves, to the detriment of all, developing codependency as a substitute for friendship.
[210719]
================
================
E180416 - Terrorism: radicalization and
rehabilitation?
Periodically arises in Sweden as in other European countries a
discussion of how to avoid radicalization or facilitaterehabilitation of mainly youngsters who plan to leave for, or return to the
country after, fighting for Islam in the Middle East in organizations such
as IS or Daesh, or al-Qaeda. In
this context our Western European world as represented by the European Commission mentions "respecting fundamental rights, promoting
integration and cultural dialogue and fighting discrimination", and UNESCO puts forward some
secularly "sacred" keywords such as "human rights and the rule
of law, with dialogue across all boundary lines" or "intellectual and
moral solidarity of humanity, human rights and human dignity".
In short my message will be that the main or only way to prevent so
called radicalization and to rehabilitate extremism as seen by the Western
world would be to revive Christianity. This implies to compare and counter
Islam with Christianity, including a Christian analysis of contentious parts of
the QURAN compared with problematic parts of the DEUTERONOMY or fifth book of
the Torah or Old Testament. In this I also mean that the influence of Islam is
conditioned by the progressive weakening of Christian faith and increasing
secularization of the Western world. This appeals to those individuals who are
longing for a valid religious faith in the middle of a perceived decadent
Westerns culture that attempts to divinize badly understood Democracy and Human
Rights.
In an earlier essay about the problems of "debate" I wrote the following about dangers in Western
understanding or misunderstanding of the influence of Islam, expecting that
youngsters will relinquish interest for Islamisc organizations in the name of
supposed Westerns values of, as they were on one occasion recently resumed as
"Reason, Democracy, Human Rights and Women's Rights", as if women's
rights in the light of feminism needed a special emphasis among human rights,
as also mentioned in UNESCO's "gender equality and empowering
women".
This has deep implications for the ongoing debate about the relation between
the Islamic and the Western world with its ignored Christian background, an
issue that has been buried by the kind of politically a-theoretical debate
based on logic acrobatics with a plethora of the latest ad-hoc trendy political
terms (cf. extremism, fundamentalism), such as in Sam Harris & Maajid
Nawaz, Islam and the Future of Intolerance (2015). Their in my view neo-religion, in the
eloquent words of Nawaz, hides under the ambition of, based on secularism
and liberalism, i.e. scientific rationality, human rights and
gender equality, facilitate "a genuine grass root movement to
popularize alternative narratives that can compete with Islamist ones".
(My italics, pp. 64, 122.) It seems that self-appointed representatives of
dialog about Islam in the secularized Western world (in the book published by
Harvard University Press), completely lacking self-criticism, berate others'
religious convictions by recommending their own narrative religion or religious
narrative with its "more of the same": a new islamic or cosmopolitan
version of the good old Religion of Humanity. This
is probably perceived by the many others as further undermining the presumed
morality of the West itself as it appears to them daily in its mass media,
Internet, and international television networks.
My point is that there may be a deep misunderstanding of the whole issue if it
is the case that human beings have an inborn sort of "religious
instinct" in Carl Jung's sense that there is an inborn need of faith and an image of gods or
ultimately God, as suggested by the discipline of Theology and by religions,
and a majority of humans in the whole world, especially in the non-Western
world, also evidenced in humanistic studies such as in Jungian thought.
Terrorism in the ultimately the result of a misunderstanding of both
Christianity and Islam decurring from a religious ignorance that in turn
facilitates a demonization of the opposition. Religion can be only countered
or, better, met by (better) religion. If the West were true to its Christian
heritage in thought, behavior and action, its international interventions would
not be perceived as attacks, invasions or bombings of foreign countries around
the world in cruzades that claim to act in self-defense and to
only defend the secular gods of democracy and human rights. It would deserve
the kind of respect that may inhibit terrorism, as already suggested in an
earlier text of mine (in Swedish: Terrorism, Justice and Love).
[180718]
================
================
ES171025 #MeToo
(Hashtag): Hollywood-worldwide sexual harassment
As widely advertised, a case of
so called sexual harassment in Hollywood in October 2017 did raise a worldwide
wave of attention in massmedia connected to the hashtag Me Too. A neglected question
is, as often is the case, "why?". Which is the fundamental reason for
this supposed upsurge of indignation, which I already have considered earlier (below)? And
this, after all supposed advances of liberal reason, understanding, and
advertisement of equality in our secularized, and sexualized society. Why all
this sudden explosion of, and vociferous condemnation of abuses, paedophilia,
murders, etc. in affluent, modern, enlightened Westerns societies? And,
rationally speaking, one must ask oneself whether these "vociferous"
charges or allegations, in mass media, are "actually true", what that
means. Sociologically speaking about numbers and statistics, it is not enough
that they are "many". It all depends upon definitions, causes,
sampling, percentages and tested evidence, such as in science and in law
courts, instead of lamenting that accusers are not believed despite of
supposedly speaking "truth". And, despite all accusations and
refutations, we should not forget that the a juridical basis of Western law is
that all people are to be considered innocent until proof of the contrary in a
tribunal. If not, abuses may turn out to be
products of the "abuse industry" that I already addressed in an earlier blog entry, and to which there are many references on the net (example here). One of the most recent products of the abuse
industry's attempts to enforce by criminalization a secular
improvement of people's ethical behavior is exemplified by the juridical
redefinition of "rape" as related to "consent", and of what
"violence" means in such context. This is further exemplified by
cases such as of Julian Assange (broadly considered in my essay on WikiLeaks and Information Systems), and of Jean-Claude Arnault.
I wish to advance the hypothesis that it all is motivated by the breadown of
basic values and traditions while most people sense the results of having lived
in the hollow illusion of Western, and especially Swedish superiority of illuminati, boasting for its advances in reason, democratic
equality between the sexes, and freedom from supposed, particularly religious,
prejudices. It hurts having to confess the persistent (human) animality of
instincts, which continue to be misunderstood despite 100 years of depth psychology, today ignorantly
ignored and supposed to be substituted by trendy cognitive behavior therapy-CBT, to which nobody dares to refer in the context of
#MeToo. They are instincts that are supposed to be only men's, despite the
"liberation" of women's sexuality, sanctioned nowadays by the Swedish
"state feminism", historically rooted in Swedish love-ideology and state-individualistic ethics. It also hurts to realize that decent human behavior
does not follow from politics and fear of the police, but
rather as earlier from the ethics, Christian and of other great world
religions; and that supposedly modern "reason" does not eradicate
instincts, as little as wars, milennary evil and human conflict, supposedly
creating paradise on earth. The instincts were and are naively believed to be
under the control of lofty cognitive reason in expectation of progress towards
final paradise on earth, which happens to be already inhabited by angelical
women.
And, forget about Christian teachings like "The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her
husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body
but yields it to his wife" (1 Cor. 7:4)
. First of all because people no longer care about sex being related to
marriage, even while there are wive's claims of having been raped by their men,
even when lying naked in the matrimonial bed. And, second, because sex is first
of all for one own's "magic" gratification or lust, for taking rather
than giving. The Christian exhortation, instead, may be seen as an attempt to
prevent the use of sex as a blackmail or (reciprocal) extorsion in commercial
power negotiations that guarantee that "consent" is not given before
one gets at least as much as one gives. Forget about love, a word that one does
not even dare to use in this context, when lust is its substitute. How far and
low Western psychological “science” and morality has reached in the treatment
of these matters is exemplified in the field of so called evolutionary psychology by the book When Men
Behave Badly: The Hidden Roots of Sexual Deception, Harassment, and Assault
(it should be enough with a review here).
Many, but neither all nor even a majority of women are supposed to remain
virtual passive victims of evil, as when the Swedish law on sex-purchase (Sexköpslagen) criminalized only
purchase but not sale of sexual services. Women are then supposed to accept or
reject advances as in a new proposed law on obligatory "sexual
consent", pending their own taste and perceived need to exploit sex in
order to obtain personal advantages including lust. Among personal advantages
there may be also a welcomed "feminist" feeling of enhancement of
woman's value in the aesthetics of dressing and make-up, i.e. power of
attraction contrasted to the weakness and lack of self-control in despicable
dependent unattractive men. Nowadays this is also corrupted and perceived in
terms of economic theory as value in terms or the relation between demand and
supply, where high demand as implied by claims of being harassed means high
self-esteem. The other way round, there is en enhanced feeling of degradation
when partner-candidates do not dare to pay the expensive price for a decent but
insecure traditional courtship.
Regarding the relation and interaction between the sexes (or were they
genders?) there were stereotyped traditions of roles and behaviors that
regulated the approach between them. In my childhood in Catholic Italy, for
example, I myself, as many young men, was educated to symbolize archetypal
femininity with the figure of Mary, "mother of God" and as such,
archetypal mother of humanity. It is an archetype very far from the modern
secularized, potentially abortive "Terrible Mother". I was raised with
the sort of proverb that "One does not beat a woman, not even with a
flower". In Sweden, considered to be the Western most secular state, this
reference is, or course ridiculous as, for instance, to acknowledge discussions
about the meaning of the much discussed dogma the Assumption of Mary. It can be seen as a Catholic, cultural, public
enhancement of the value of femininity that may explain why feminism later
developed in the Protestant world. It will be also ridiculous to refer, for
instance, to the Russian and French theologian Paul Evdokimov's work Woman and the Salvation of the World, which
also expounds Christian ideas constituting the dignity of woman. To take a similar recent work, please consider
Christian-Noël Bouwé's chapter (in French) on L'union conjugale et le sens du sacré - La sacralité du
mariage das la théologie de Louis Bouyer, (Cerf Patrimoines, 2017). English
translation of the title: "Marriage and the Meaning of the Sacred - The
Sacrality of Marriage in Louis Bouyer's
Theology". There is a Swedish commented translation by Göran
Fäldt.: Vishetens källa - Mariamysteriet i äktenskapets mysterium - Studier
i äktenskapets sakramentalitet i Louis Bouyers teologi (Katolska Utskottet för Äktenskap och Familj, Skrifterie nr. 12, ISBN 978-91-639-5931-8) together
with a catholic analysis of the related question of genus Är dagens genusteorier olycksbådande? [pdf-format - Are the current gender theories
dangerous?]. This portrays the official catholic view of the problem as exposed
(May 2004) in Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and in
the World, which includes a whole
section om "The importance of feminine values in the life of
society". All this to be contrasted to the decadent trends of feminist
theology as exemplified in an article in the Swedish Church's journal Spira (nr.
1, 2019, p. 22, in Swedish) with the symptomatic title "Metoo är en väldig Jesuslike grej" [Metoo is a great Jesus-like stuff]. An
understanding of a historical and anthropological "sensed of the
sacred" related to violence, intercourse and the civilizing mission of
woman arises also in non-religious works such as Eric J. Leed's The Mind of the Traveler (pp. 85 ff., 111 ff.). The same author wrote a
more secular analysis of Violence, Death and Masculinity, which
in an exemplary way exposes the historically-culturally grounded but tragically
ignored complexity of the relation between the sexes.
In his book The Myth of Analysis James Hillman calls (p. 148, 153) the feminist movement:
[A] personalized and profaned cry of the soul. The psyche had lost touch
with eros, just as eros, having been excluded from psychology, was simplified
and debased into pornography and sentimentality. Thus psychology discovered
"masochism"; and psychology found masochism in the psyche,
characterizing its femininity as masochistic. The "discovery" of
masochism tells us that at that time the psyche craved to submit in some form,
in any form, to eros - eros at any price - in order to disengage itself from
the imperious materialist inflation of the nineteenth century's insistence that
the psyche belongs only to the mind [...]
Psyche = mind, and mind = head, could be pushed one step further: head = ego,
in the modern sense of the controlling ordering organ.
I would have inserted in the equations above also "head = brain",
connecting all this to modern biologistic “brain mythology”, imagining that a
CBT-training of the ego in the human brain could solve the #Me Too, in analogy
to how lobotomy was supposed to solve psychological problems in the
historically famous but today downplayed lobotomy scandal. In this
perspective the #MeToo movement implicitly denounces the women who earlier
submitted to disgruntled, desperately lonely men's sadistic harassments as
being victims of their own masochism. It does not allow women's psyche to at
least react to society's gradually increasing materialism and to submit to
eros. Eros is substituted by Phobos, fear and hate of men. The psyche is then
supposed to keep belonging only to the mind, and this is consistent with the
expectation and failed requirement that instincts and feelings be dominated by
"imperious materialism", by the mind's = brain's ego-inflated
supposed "reason" or "will".
The wholesale atheist secular denial of all these views and arguments make it
ridiculous, in public debate, to refer to one woman, historically main
intellectual exponent of Swedish women's movement, Ellen Key, today ignored or
accused by modern feminists for being anti-feminist because of being (having
been labeled) "difference feminist". In the 1914, fourth edition, of
her Woman's Psychology and Woman's Logic she predicts (p.
121-122 of Logos edition 1981, cf. orig. year 1896's text on the Internet) that if one sets for
the development of women the goal of equaling men's striving for material and
"spiritual" values, as they were called at the time, then the
reproductive instinct [sexual instinct], when love does not ennoble it, will
appear to them as brutality. It is the loss of the sense of
sacrality of the intimate relation to the other person. And this brutality will
be experienced as the sexual harassment of #MeToo at the workplace, leading
insightful critics such as the Canadian psychology professor Jordan Peterson
(whom I considered in another context of "debate") to search for "rules" of coexistence and
cooperation between men and women at the workplace. He did so apparently without perceiving that the so called rules may
have been the neglected, rejected traditions, and roles associated
with being man and woman, or assuming, or hoping that "new
traditions" can be "invented".
This perceived brutality, also implicit in widely advertised and diffused
Western pornography, will also lie behind a progressive breakdown of the
relation between the sexes. It will visibly affect the Western world requiring
more extreme pornography and, paradoxically, drugs to boost sexual potency that
in turn foster more brutal sexuality. Also paradoxically such development also
may follow the discussed pattern in Japan, of an unholy alliance of high
technology plus religious shintoism - with "decreasing sexual activity" or "celibacy syndrome" as when a young
man in The Guardian (20 Oct 2013) expresses that "emotional entanglements are too
complicated". The phenomenon of masochism mentioned above, or more
generally BDSM will
then thrive together with the paradoxes of "victimization", which include
"victim playing". This is death of love - combined with lack of intellectual
understanding of sexual perversions as suffering caused by great spiritual
distress, as elaborated by Hillman (above).
I will add: this brutality will not be experienced as such when erotic advances
happen to be welcomed for confirming the woman's self-esteem and for sheer
personal pleasure according to erotic choices by the own Ego, the same Ego that
is required and expected to be harnessed in others. Paradoxically such a
development, particularly in Western culture, will be experienced but
misunderstood by more intellectual modern women as the phenomenon of increasing
sexual impotence or (now) erectile dysfunction of modern men. An example is given by Ann
Heberlein that Wikipedia introduces as a Swedish
academic and author who writes extensively on theology and ethics, after
defending a dissertation on in practical philosophy about guilt, shame, moral
responsibility, abuses and forgiveness. Her experience in her position as a
divorced single woman is clearly exposed in a touching newspaper article (Svenska
Dagbladet, April 9, 2022 with
an original title “Impotence among men is now a common disease” editorially
published as “Lying there in a bed with throbbing disappointment". It
describes her disappointment in a sexual encounter with a man. She arrives close
to a less shallow if not deeper understanding when writing, near to a
conclusion:
"I cannot help but think about whether the concealment of man's
sexual problems is an expression of some kind of misandry, a contempt for man,
but also an expression of a lack of understanding of the place of sexuality in
human life."
What lies behind it all is also the banal idea of the supposed
importance of consent: promiscuity, brutality, perversion or whatever are no
longer negative or forbidden if it is ME who looks for and welcomes them.
Consensual will and "democratic" consent that in
scientific method corresponds to naive empiricism has become "sacred"
when it is regarded to be a substitute for God. But "my willl is more
sacred than yours, our will is more sacred than others, majority's will rules all"?
This runs counter to the biblical Matthew 5:41 as expressed by the English idiomatic expression "to go the extra mile". (Portuguese
readers can see a commentary). It reminds that "It is the defense of the Ego and its rights that
leads us to take on the role of God and to ward off supposed or actual
errors", observing that Jesus illustrated this in terms of our person, our
property, or our work. As Christians we must renounce to our own defense and
sensitivity."
Men will appear as brutal, clothed in thoughtless directedness, when
traditional roles in courting, and now "dating", rituals have been
removed for supposedly "sincere and direct" sexual initiatives. In
the extreme brutality of raping behavior men will express in a paradoxically,
provocatively sexualized decadent society their desperate need and culturally
conditioned helplessness in getting in contact with their inner femininity that
would require a civilized projection upon, and elaboration with a responsive
woman. Apparent options will then be violence, feminization or homosexuality.
Correspondingly, women, groomed as the men in a society without the father will expect and counter brutality with their own
masculine brutality expressed at its extreme in The SCUM
Manifesto (see below, esp. reference to Anna Skarhed) leading ultimately to
lesbian or radical, or other shades of feminism affecting the juridical system
that in Sweden in heavily influenced by the school of positive
law. Melodramatic tales of
sexual harassments (such as exemplified by the Swedish Radio's documentary
"Ingen ger väl sig på en handikappad?" on 17 April 2018) will then tend to be awkward
accounts of neurotic fantasies of Freudian "primal scene". Or they will be
symptoms of what analytic psychology identifies as possession of women by
their Animus, and
ultimately by the Demeter-Kore complex, conditioned by jealous attachment to mother, in
competition with and because of the nowadays often absent father. It all will
amount to a collective rabid anger and violence. In summary it is a matter of
decadent culture when traditional cultural values have been rejected, or
"Traditions are solutions to forgotten problems.
Remove the tradition and the problem returns."
My spontanously suggested hypothesis is that
the MeToo movement is what has been popularly described as
"collective hysteria" or "mass psychosis" or "witch
hunt" but must be regarded scientifically as a socio-psychological mass
phenomenon of the type addressed originally by Gustave Le Bon in The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, incorporated later by Carl Jung in psychological
theory, and reappearing lately in popular but sophisticated contexts such
as The madness of crowds - Gender, race and identity. In its prolongation it can be regarded as related to
what I did write (see below) on The SCUM Manifesto with
its hate of men, (later countered by the hate of women in the Incel movement). Its spirit is still alive today, long
after my writing the first version of the present text, as shown in some
reactions to the nomination in July 2018 of judge Brett Kavanaugh to become
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States: Christine Fair, an American political
scientist and professor at D.C.:s Georgetown University, was quoted (accessed October
7th, 2018) to have tweeted, referring to Republican members of
the Senate Judiciary Committee, that they were "entitled white men
justifying a serial rapists' arrogated entitlement" and that they
"deserve miserable deaths while feminists laugh as they take
their last gasps." She made additional comments expressing support for
post-mortem castration and corpse desecration of the senators. This
professorial pronounciation was given wide publicity in mass media all over the
world ( ex. hereand here).
Going further along these lines, the phenomenon implicating "men" in
general beyond individuals and implicating genetical characteristics, recalls
the collective madness of the persecutions by the French revolutionaries and,
more controversially, by Nazis of Jews where all Jews were incriminated for
what the few did who were accused of antisocial behavior. I see the misery of
the "spirit of SCUM" applied to the whole of Western society on
occasion of the #MeToo campaign in mass media. I happen to be reading Thomas
Merton's The Seven Storey Mountain, and I
also happened to think about SCUM on page 271 where Merton tells his thoughts
and feelings face the first news at the time of the beginning of the second
world war:
"And the world faced not only destruction, but destruction with the
greatest possible defilement: defilement of that which is most perfect in man,
his reason, and his will, his immortal soul. - All this was obscure to most
people, and made itself felt only in a mixture of disgust and hopelessness and
dread. They did not realize that the world had now become a picture of what the
majority of its individuals had made of their own souls."
There are a few tenuous signs that some aspects of the problem are indirectly
perceived by many women, as suggested in a program by Nathalie Rothschild at
the Swedish Radio "Efter #metoo: möt kvinnorna som kritiserar feminismen" [After #MeToo: meet the women who criticize
feminism]. This is exemplified with Joanna Williams with her book Women vs. Feminism: Why We All Need Liberating from
the Gender Wars, Ella Whelan with her
book What Women Want: Fun, Freedom and an End to Feminism, and Cathy Young with her book Ceasefire! Why Woman and Men Must Join Forces to
Achieve True Equality. The most ingenuous
analysis of the #MeToo complications that I have found and recommend is
Ian Buruma's bewildering article "Editing in an age of outrage", in Financial Times, March
29th 2019. (Included in the lists at the end of this article. The text may be
better found in a browser through the search-string <ian buruma
financial>.)
POSTSCRIPT
Long after I wrote de text above I happened to read in the Swedish
morning newspaper Svenska Dagbladet (April
24, 2022) a chronicle by the professor of
Economics Johanna Möllerström, whose title and
introduction say everything about its thoughtful content: IT IS NOT A DUTY TO
FEEL HARASSED (my trans.):
In total, I have received three emails from the American university
where I graduated, where they ask me to think very, very carefully about
whether I do not feel in any event offended or harassed. When the first email
came, I shook my head in surprise but then forgot about it. By email number
two, I began to realize that the first might not have been an isolated mistake,
as I first thought. And now that a third email has appeared, I am forced to
state that the, largely unhealthy, grip that "metoo” has taken over the
American university world has also reached me.
REFERENCES - LITERATURE
Enough: and now some references for those who want to deepen the understanding
of the problem, starting with texts including those I have already written, in
English (one in French), and touching upon the problem, followed by texts in
Swedish for those who can read in that language:
"Traditions are solutions to forgotten problems.
Remove the tradition and the problem returns."
["Traditioner är lösningar på bortglömda problem.
Undanröj traditionen och problemet återkommer."]
<https://twitter.com/Arch_Revival_/status/893248552243265537>. Cf. "Chesterton's fence": <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_fence>.
Eric J. Leed Violence, Death and Masculinity (Vietnam Generation, Vol.1, No.3, 1989)
<https://digitalcommons.lasalle.edu/vietnamgeneration/vol1/iss3/15/>
The Unsettling Truth Behind the #MeToo Movement
http://www.christianitytoday.com/women/2017/october/unsettling-truth-behind-metoo-movement-harvey-weinstein.html
Harvey Sweinstein and Hollywood's Hos
<http://www.unz.com/imercer/harvey-sweinstein-and-hollywoods-hos/>
Why Complaints of Harassment and offences
<http://web.telia.com/~u46508757/BLOG.htm#A19>
Parents, adult children, childish adults
<http://web.telia.com/~u46508757/BLOG.htm#A32>
SCUM Society for Cutting Up Men
<http://web.telia.com/~u46508757/BLOG.htm - A30>
<https://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/kulturdebatt/dags-att-prata-om-det/>
On critical theory and political correctness
<http://www8.informatik.umu.se/~kivanov/ZimbardoLuciferReview.htm>
<http://www8.informatik.umu.se/~kivanov/SAISchwartzReview101224.htm>
Gender Relations, Violence and Conflict Transformation
<http://www.berghof-foundation.org/fileadmin/redaktion/Publications/Handbook/Articles/harders_handbook.pdf>
"Rules" for coexistence between men and women at the workplace?
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5ahmzySUB8&feature=youtu.be>
These Are The Dire Consequences Of The #MeToo Movement
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BpKyEAM3ag>
After a year of #MeToo, American opinion has shifted against victims
<https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/10/15/after-a-year-of-metoo-american-opinion-has-shifted-against-victims>
(In French) Nous défendons une liberté d'importuner, indispensable à la
liberté sexuelle
by Catherine Millet, Ingrid Caven et Catherine Deneuve, Le Monde, 9
Jan 2018
<http://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2018/01/09/nous-defendons-une-liberte-d-importuner-indispensable-a-la-liberte-sexuelle_5239134_3232.html#oUVQk3CD5rW5U4xi.99>
RECOMMENDED: Ian Buruma's bewildering article "Editing in an age of
outrage", in Financial Times, March 29th 2019. (Text is
better found in browser <ian buruma financial>.)
<https://www.ft.com/content/7d47be7e-4efb-11e9-b401-8d9ef1626294>
(Swedish translation "Det ska
fan vara publicist när Twitterstormen viner" in Dagens
Nyheter, April 14th 2019.)
----
And now over to Swedish language, starting with what I consider the best
summarizing analysis of the problem, by the historian Yvonne Maria Werner:
I metoo är kvinnan enbart ett offer [In metoo woman is in only a
victim]
Published in Svenska Dagbladet, 31 december 2017:
<https://www.svd.se/historiker-i-metoo-ar-kvinnan-enbart-ett-offer>
Kvinnopsykologi och kvinnlig logik [Woman's psychology and woman's
logic]
(av Ellen Key, fjärde upplaga 1914)
Från <http://runeberg.org/kemissbruk/0121.html>:
Men sätter man medvetet uppnåendet av männens högsta andliga höjd som det
slutliga målet för kvinnans utveckling, anser man att hon först då blivit helt
människa från att ha varit "moderhona" då skall det otvivelaktigt
visa sig, att liksom kvinnans intelligens försvagades genom att icke nog
brukas, måste av samma skäl hennes rent kvinnliga känslor småningom försvagas.
[…] Är väl en gång – av hela kvinnokönet – uppnåendet av mannens högsta andliga
höjd satt som mål för kvinnokönets utvecklingsarbete, då skola, efter några
århundraden, känslorna ha blivit omdanade I samklang därmed. Utbildning, arbetsvanor,
arbetsval, ärvtlighet, urval, allt skall då samverka till att män och kvinnor
spänna lla krafter för att frambringa materiella och andliga värden. Kvinnorna
få allt mindre tid och håg för utvecklingen av de erotiska och sympatiska
känslorna. Släktuppehållelsedriften skall – då kärleken icke adlar den – för
dem med full rätt te sig som brutalitet. [läs: trakasserier, våldtäkter
och misshandel] […] Begreppet hem komme att få allt ringare
innehållsrikedom; det offentliga livet, klubbar [läs:
"rörelsen"] och samkväm skulle allt mer fylla den lediga
tiden samt upptaga tankar och känslor.
Men vad
månne den tidens opponenter skola säga?
De skola säga, att…ju mindre kärleken betyder, ju mer de andligt utvecklade
därför se ned på äktenskapet, dess mer har intelligens-nivån sjunkit…Det skola
säga att sedan "det krämarkatiga vägandet av kön" upphört, ha de
andliga värden, man fått att väga, blivit allt lättare…
Ett
tillstånd, sådant det nyss målade, är lika möjligt, som familjelivets urartning
under romerska kejsartiden eller som naturens undertryckande genom
medeltidsaskesen…
Jag fruktar
viss icke släktets utdöende genom kvinnoemancipationen. Jag påstår att av dem,
vilka ställa kvinnans uppnående av mannens andliga höjd som kvinnoutvecklingens
mål, kräver logiken det medgivandet: att utdöendet borde bli den slutliga
följden, ifall de verkligen nådde sitt mål.
Men de nå
det icke, ty kvinnan är lyckligtvis en oändligt mycket djupare, rikare,
härligare och – förfärligare varelse än kvinnosakskvinnan [läs:
radikalfeministen].
Ivar Arpi: När alla kvinnor år offer
<https://www.svd.se/metoo-gor-alla-kvinnor-till-offer>
Jan Guillou: Häxornas försvarare [The witches' defender]
<https://www.bokus.com/cgi-bin/product_search.cgi?ac_used=no&search_word=h%E4xornas+f%F6rsvarare+%3A+ett+historiskt+reportage>
<https://www.svd.se/guillou-pa-korstag-mot-haxjakterna>
Johan Hakelius: "Me too, Staffan!"
<https://www.fokus.se/2017/11/me-too-staffan/>
Bo Rothstein: Ryggradslöshet bland forskare efter metoo
<https://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/bo-rothstein-pa-dn-debatt-ryggradsloshet-bland-forskare-efter-metoo/>
<https://www.dn.se/debatt/felaktig-tolkning-av-metoo-riskerar-att-skada-tilliten/>
SVT1 [Swedish TV Channel 1] (30 mai 2018, kan ses till 26 nov 2018)
Uppdrag Granskning och Fredrik Virtanen
Fredrik Virtanen var varken dömd eller åtalad för något av de brott han
anklagades för. Ändå hängdes han ut med namn och bild i etablerade medier och
förlorade sitt jobb. Men vad händer med historien när man går till botten med
uppgifterna som publicerats? I ett extrainsatt Uppdrag granskning granskas ett
av de mest uppmärksammade fallen under metoo-hösten 2017.
<https://www.svtplay.se/video/18177558/uppdrag-granskning/uppdrag-granskning-metoo-och-fredrik-virtanen-metoo-och-fredrik-virtanen?cmpid=del:em:05-30-2018:uppdrag-granskning:pla:lp-app>
SVT1 Juridiken och etiken i mediernas #MeToo ( 2 Juni till 29 Nov 2018)
<https://www.svtplay.se/video/18211374/fonster-mot-medievarlden/fonster-mot-medievarlden-juridiken-och-etiken-sa-hanterade-medierna-metoo>
Björn Finér: #MeToo är för viktigt för att urarta till Lynchmobb (30 Mai
2018)
<http://tvdags.se/artikel/metoo-ar-for-viktigt-for-att-urarta-till-lynchmobb-kvallens-uppdrag-granskning-ar-ren-public-service>
Aron Flam & David Eberhard:
Dekonstruktiv kritik av #MeToo
Video <https://www.patreon.com/posts/17104475> eller
<https://novom.ru/en/watch/eUJ_7Kep6jU>
Text: <http://bit.ly/EberhardVsMeToo>
"Medierna": Ett år efter #MeToo.
Vad hände inne på de granskade redaktionerna? Vad hände med
journalistiken? [What happened to the
reviewed media editors? What happened to journalism?] (Sveriges
Radio, 20 Oktober 2018)
<https://sverigesradio.se/avsnitt/1185662> or
download (35 min): <https://sverigesradio.se/topsy/ljudfil/srse/6681059.mp3>
R. Poirier Martinsson: "Varför hatas och hotas inte jag?" (Metro,
31 Oktober 2018).
<https://www.metro.se/artikel/roland-poirer-martinsson-varför-hatas-och-hotas-inte-jag>
Lena Andersson: Lagen skall inte uppfostra oss till att allt sexuellt obehag
är våldtäkt (Dagens Nyheter 22 Dec 2018.
<https://www.dn.se/ledare/lena-andersson-lagen-ska-inte-uppfostra-oss-till-att-allt-sexuellt-obehag-ar-valdtakt/>
Lena Andersson: "En kör av röster, en Julberättelse". (Sveriges
Radio P1, 24 Dec 2018)
<https://sverigesradio.se/sida/avsnitt/1215073> and
in mp3 (1) mp3 (2) mp3 (3)
Marianne Stidsen: "Tidningen som bryter mot sin egen värdegrund".
(Kvartal, 23 juni 2019).
<https://kvartal.se/artiklar/tidningen-som-bryter-mot-sin-egen-vardegrund/>
Om Stidsens bok Den nordiske MeToo-revolution 2018 – og dens
omkostninger. (U Press, 2019).
(REKOMMENDERAT)
Ian Buruma: "Det ska fan vara publicist när Twitterstormen viner" (Dagens
Nyheter, 14 Apr 2019, översättning från engelska originalet, se ovan)
<https://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/kulturdebatt/ian-buruma-det-ska-fan-vara-publicist-nar-twitterstormen-viner/>
Marianne Stidsen: "Den
nordiske MeToo-revolution 2018" (in Danish,, 2019)
<https://www.adlibris.com/se/bok/den-nordiske-metoo-revolution-2018-9788793060951>
Lena Andersson: "Man kan inte göra män rättslösa för att hantera
kvinnans sexuella utsatthet" (Dagens Nyheter, 14 Mar 2020)
<https://www.dn.se/ledare/lena-andersson-man-kan-inte-gora-man-rattslosa-for-att-hantera-kvinnans-sexuella-utsatthet/>
Johanna Möllerström: “It is not a duty to feel harassed” (Svenska Dagblade, 24 March 2022).
<https://esvd.svd.se/shared/article/det-ar-inte-en-plikt-att-kanna-sig-krankt/Tiao0c4G>
[220504-1345
================
================
E170724 Environmentalism and the age gap
This is a text that was sent to me from colleagues in Brazil. I
translated it from the Portuguese and include it here because it portrays and
denounces a perceived cultural decline that expresses itself in a supposed
clash of values between the oldest generation and the younger ones. I do not
know whether the text in Portuguese was an original. It is related to two
earlier blog items of mine (below) written in Swedish, one about "Gamla och unga" [Elders and
youngsters] and the other about "Fjäska inte för pensionärerna" [Do not butter up senior citizens], as well as to one item
summarizing the whole matter, written in English with the title "Parents, adult children, childish adults - Inverted identities?". Their content ultimately suggests
a meditation over the Bible's eschathological content in chapter Mark
13 and Matthew 10:21, such as "Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his
child. Children will rebel against their parents and have them put to
death."
---------
In the supermarket queue, the cashier says to an old lady:
"You should bring your own shopping bags, since plastic bags are not
environmentally friendly.
The lady apologized and said, "There was no green wave in my time. The
clerk replied, "That is exactly our problem today, ma'am. Your generation
did not care enough about our environment.
"You're right," said the lady. Our generation did not care adequately
about the environment. At that time, bottles of milk, bottles of soda and beer
were returned to the store. The store sent them back to the factory, where they
were washed and sterilized before each reuse, and they, the beverage makers,
used the bottles, a few other times. We did not really care about the
environment in our time. We went up the stairs because there were no escalators
in the stores and offices. We walked to the store, instead of using our car,
every time we needed to go two blocks from home. We did not worry about the
environment. Even baby diapers were washed because there were no disposable
diapers. The drying was done by ourselves, not in these machines electric
dryers. Solar and wind energy really dried our clothes. The younger children
wore the clothes that had been their older brothers', not new clothes. But it's
true: there was no concern for the environment in those days. At that time we
had only one TV or radio at home, not one TV in each room. And the TV had a
14-inch screen, not a stadium-sized screen which later will be discarded, as I
do not know how. In the kitchen, we had to beat everything with our hands
because there were no electric mixers, they do everything for us. When we sent
something fragile in the mail, we used old paper as protection, not plastic
bubble or plastic pellets that last five centuries to begin to degrade. In
those days no gasoline engine was used to mow the lawn, a lawn mower was used
that required muscles. The exercise was extraordinary, and you did not have to
go to a gym and use treadmills that also work on electricity. But you're right:
there was no concern for the environment at that time. We drank straight from
the fountain when we were thirsty instead of using plastic cups and pet bottles
that now flood the oceans. We reloaded our pens in ink countless times rather
than buying another. We sharpened the razors, instead of throwing away
disposable devices, when the blade missed the cut. Actually, we had a green
wave at that time. At that time people would take the trolley car or buses and
the boys would ride their bikes or walk to school, instead of using their
parents as a 24 hour taxi service. There was only one outlet in each room, not
a wall outlet on each wall to power a dozen appliances. And we did not need GPS
to receive signals from satellites in space to find the nearest pizzeria. So it
is not incredible that the current generation speaks so much in "environment",
but does not want to give up anything and does not think of living a little
like in my time!
Now that you have read this outburst, send it to your friends who are over 50
years old, and to the young people who have everything in their hands and only
know how to criticize their elders !!!
A free class taught by an elderly woman considered outdated.
[170726]
================
================
S170413 Samvetsfrihet och abort
Med anledning av den debatt som fördes i RingP1,
bl.a. torsdagen den 13 april (<http://sverigesradio.se/sida/avsnitt/875697?programid=1120>) och
gällande en barnmorska som anför behovet av en klausul om
"samvetsfrihet" för att slippa utföra aborter:
Låt oss t.v. bortse här från den viktigaste frågan om "varför så många
aborter", eller fosterutdrivningar (eller -mord) i Sverige, drygt 30.000
årligen. Låt också bortse från den principiella frågan om abort skall betraktas
som medicinsk vård när havandeskapet inte handlar om fara för moderns liv. Jag
hänvisar till inslaget av den som ringde och jämförde barnmorskans attityd med
vapenvägran. Jag vill dock overföra jämförelsen till en tänkt vapenvägran i
Tyskland under andra världskriget. Enligt då gällande lagar stiftade under den
tidens demokratiskt av tyska folket vald regering ingick i en soldatuppgift att
utföra order. I dem ingick att medverka i militära operationer som ledde till
mord av bl.a. eugeniskt valda folkgrupper, vissa handikappade, romer och judar.
Efter kriget i Nürnbergrättegångarna åtalades och dömdes skyldiga för brott mot
krigslagarna, mord eller dålig behandling av krigsfångar, brott mot
mänskigheten med mera. Det gällde oavsett om handlingen var frivillig eller
ofrivillig och "oavsett om det var eller inte var ett brott mot det lands
lag där brottet begicks. Ingen skulle bli fri från straff även om han handlat
på order, även om detta skulle dock kunna anses som en förmildrande
omständighet." Precis som den svenska rättvisan skulle betrakta en
medborgare som utomlands utför t.ex. avrättningar av civila enligt lokala
sharialagar.
I analysen av barnmorskans fall gäller det alltså inte att sätta patientens
rätt mot barnmorskans rätt. Det gäller i stället att sätta patientens rätt mot
fostrets eller barnets rätt. Ytterst gäller det den svenska juridiska
rättsposivistiska ideologin ställd mot naturrätten, d.v.s. uppfattningen av det
existerar absoluta rättsprinciper nedlaggda i människans natur, antingen av
gudomligt ursprung eller med icke-religiösa förklaringar.
Ett historisk exempel gällande icke abort utan kränkning av äganderätt är när
Europadomstolen år 1984 avkunnade dom i målet Sporrong och Lönnroth vs Sverige
och tvingade den svenska staten att förändra lagstiftningen - den s.k. Lex Norrmalm
- för att den skulle överenstämma med europakonventionens krav.
AVSLUTNINGSVIS: För att påvisa vart den ytliga logiken - ofta använd vid
sekulära debatter om abort - leder till när man utgår från okända eller
oförstådda premisser skall jag förelägga följande referens och sammanfattning
av logikern Steven D. Hales uppsats angående "Abortion and Fathers' Rights"
(sammanfattning) i Robert Almeder & James Humber (eds.), Biomedical
Ethics Reviews: Reproduction, Technology, and Rights. pp. 101-119 (1996).
Jämför gärna med min Some roots
of the Swedish socio-ethical model. och
tredje stycket i mitt blogginlägg här nedan angående Refugees
or Economic Immigrants.
"Fathers do not have an absolute
obligation to provide for the welfare of their children. If mothers have the
right to opt out of future duties towards their children by deciding to have an
abortion instead, fathers too should be considered to have the right to avoid
similar future duties. I also argue that fathers should be granted a mechanism
by which they can exercise such a right. The discussion is initially motivated
by showing an apparent inconsistency among three widely accepted principles
regarding a woman's right to an abortion, equality, and parental obligations. I
argue that by allowing fathers (with certain restrictions) to refuse to support
their forthcoming progeny, the inconsistency among the three principles is
resolved. I also argue that this is the best resolution, and provide three
other independent arguments in favor of a paternal right of refusal."
---
Referenser
(1) <https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellinor_Grimmark>
angående sjuksköterskan och barnmorskan Ellinor Grimmark.
(2) <https://www.svd.se/trots-domen--barnmorskan-har-mojligheter-kvar>
i Svenska Dagladet den 13 april 2017, på tal om
"moral" och "hälsa": Om det är nödvändigt att inskränka
samvetsfriheten "i ett demokratiskt samhälle med hänsyn till den allmänna
säkerheten eller till skydd för allmän ordning, hälsa eller moral eller till
skydd för andra personers fri- och rättigheter" är det inte diskriminering
att göra så.
(3) <https://www.svd.se/religion-pa-arbetsplatsen-skapar-friktion>
i Svenska Dagbladet den 13 april 2017, på tal om
"åsikt" mot "samvete" i moralfrågor: I Europakonventionen
finns det skyddsregler bl.a. för religionsfrihet och samvetsfrihet (art. 9) och
yttrandefrihet, vilket inkluderar åsiktsfrihet (art. 10). Därutöver finns det
skydd mot diskriminering (art. 14) samt en rätt till effektiva rättsmedel – det
ska finnas tillgång till juridiska verktyg som kan användas för att bevaka sina
rättigheter (art. 13).
[170821]
================
================
E151214 Refugees or Economic Immigrants
In the secularized West in general and Sweden in particular many people
believe to have basically implemented - mostly by means of technological
and social-democratic economic means - a solution to human evil, suffering and tragedies (what
was the meaning of tragedy,
or karma,
after all?) This West or Sweden is then set in contrast to a less affluent,
decadent or lless rational surrounding world. One persists in believing that
one has found or at least defined paradise on earth. Thus one cannot see or
acknowledge the existence since time immemorial of inevitable suffering, or
accept that we live in an unfair if not evil world. One wants to believe that
all evil and suffering either can be denied (refugees are not welcome) or can
be relieved not only as in the officially neglected Christian spirit like the poor widow, the good samaritan, do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, the camel and the needle, will always have the poor among you, I was a stranger and you invited me in, "If
someone demands your coat, offer your shirt also" [Luke 6:29-30!]. All this while ignoring contrasting biblical
interpretations and ignoring the
complexity of the Bible's references to immigration in lists that symptomatically miss the
dangerously controversial Deuteronomy chap. 7. Not to mention theological studies on “Evaluating the morality of immigration”, and finally a famous apostolic letter of John Paul II on the meaning
of suffering, under the Latin label of Salvifici Doloris. An antidote to willful or feelgood ignorance of human drama and
tragedy, which should be obligatory study by (im)migration experts is the
established anthropological and historical knowledge about the nature of man
and societies in the context of hospitality and "otherness of
strangers" in worldwide travel, exile, conquest and exploration as
masterly analyzed by e.g. Eric L. Leed's The Mind of the Traveler (pp. 101 ff.) Or then the risk is to want to
believe that most, if not all, evil and suffering can also be prevented and
repaired with money, social engineering, information, educational advertising
or publicly proclaimed one's own good intentions in the workshop of paradise
represented by loving motherly Sweden or, rather, Swedish state ("all
refugees are welcome").
That is, Sweden with the richness allowed by its war neutrality, could thrive
in the immediate postwar's profitable industrial production sold to destroyed
European countries. Since then it has kept basking, and marketing
internationally the self-image of an affluent and generous humanitarian
superpower. Much about this has already been said in The illusion of state-individualistic ethics supplemented later by the documentary firm The Swedish theory of love, as well as in books about
political correctness (examples book 1 and book 2).
Swedish newspapers did at last dare to display the problem as "The price of Sweden's moral hubris is too high" (Göteborgs-Posten, 29 Dec. 2015). Even atheists
and socialists have their way of relinquishing political correctness (PC,
controversially called by some also tyranny of goodness or opinion corridor) and at last confessing
the "moral challenge" of the Swedish refugee problem in terms of Bertolt Brecht's play The Good Person of Szechwan (Dagens
Nyheter, 27 Dec. 2015). Very late (about Dec. 2015-Jan. 2016) the Swedish Radio
(public service) challenged political correctness in order to allow a series of
programs (in Swedish) about the migration and refugee problem: "The Pioneering Country",
and about the situation in the small city of Norberg, hosting refugees (part 1 Jan. 4th, part 2 Jan 5th, both in the time segment 10-41 minutes). At last even a main newspaper
dared to speak simple truth, i.e. openly about the refugee problem as related to political correctness (Dagens
Nyheter 11 January 2016.) Eventually an ethnologist and a journalist tried to
summarize the whole process in a book (In Swedish) on Swedish immigration politics and its consequences, published in March 2016.
During year 2014 charitable Sweden reports 36,000 induced abortions in the country, while commiserating the destiny of victims of
child trafficking and controversial reports on unaccompanied refugee children, defined as up to 18 years' age. Dramatically, the latter's number in 2015 happens to be about
the same as the number of domestic abortions. Not to mention that about 50%
of all marriages end in divorces (not counting separations of unmarried couples), where former
husbands or wives leave partially "orphaned" children and become
uncommiserated childless "refugees" in their own country. Charitable
Sweden wants to welcome many refugee children while not being able to welcome
about the same number of their own aborted children. Families that are not
able or wanting to take daily care its own members, own children or own elders
because of heavy individual work responsibilities still hope or even claim to
be able to take care of an increasing number of refugees. They are obviouly
supposed to be taken care of by state or "public machine", anonymous
welfare volunteers and public employees who, however, are not to be paid by
means of increasing a high tax levy that is generally perceived as already too
high. This is the basis for the insightful affirmation that "Socialism is
perverted Christianity". Socialism borrows from Christianity the symbolic
power of attraction of charity and "love thy neighbour" but perverts
its sense, ignoring self-sacrifice, i.e. sacrifice of self, and moral justice.
Moreover, especially politicians and the cultural elite try to do all the above
at the expense of others in society. A possible if not sure dismantling of the
welfare insurance scheme is not likely to affect politicians and those who are
part of or above the middle class. It will affect mainly those who are really
poor old or sick, who have paid taxes all their working lives in the belief
that they bought themselves a promised minimum insurance which eventually came
to be used to protect even numerous non-insured. Some of these aspects were
later covered in media, e.g. by Ann Haberlein's Det brutna samhällskontraktet [The broken social contract].
If more needs to said: in order to understand the proper limits of personal involvement
we might ponder on the difference between what we perceive as our own preparedness
and disposition for sacrifice for rescuing or lodging and
feeding in our home, in order of priority: (1) our child, (2) our husband or
wife (or "partner" as nowadays), (3) our parents, (4) our relatives
or friends, (5) our compatriots, connationals or co-citizens, (6) strangers, or
(7) our or others' persecutors or enemies if any. And this at different degrees
of risk for our own lives or obligations to intervene, e.g. in the name of
European or United Nations' solidarity. If we do not think ourselves and others
being able to do such sacrifices, and cannot afford to take personally care of
at least our own old parents, to what extent, then, do we want, are tempted to,
or dare to publicly display sanctity in "playing God" particularly if
done at the expense of others, while paradoxically ignoring our own Imitation of Christ ? Ultimately, the problem is not to be meant to be
solved at the expense of others or state government, but of ourselves,
requiring us to become alike Christian saints as preached in Kempis' Imitation
of Christ or in the Bible's Matthew
5:40: "And if any man
will sue you at the law, and take away your coat, let him have your cloak
also."
Let me finish with a quotation taken out the review of a book about "political
correctness" I wrote time ago:
"The very same transposition of psychoanalytical Oedipal terms into
cultural Christian and political terms is achieved by the Swedish political
scientist Tage Lindbom who stood at the interface between Christianity and Islam, in his
book The Myth of Democracy (1996, orig. 1991, p. 26f.) He reminds that expulsion from
Paradise [cf. the Oedipal Mother] means entry into the profane world [of the
Oedipal Father] with all of its forms of limitation, contradiction, and
conflict. But the paradisiacal, primordial state of peace, serenity, and freedom
from conflict lives on in man as a "memory", and therefore modern man
dreams of a lost Paradise, even in socialistic and communistic speculations.
Fairy tales and dreams can give what harsh, profane reality cannot provide. In
contrast, traditional man is conscious of the conditions that inexorably govern
creation. He knows that this brutal reality is a consequence of this expulsion
from Paradise and that this is his destiny. He knows that a dream is a dream,
that the world is what it is, and that man is what he is, that is, potentially
a saint, potentially a villain. Traditional man knows that he cannot dream
himself away from his earthly existence. Secularized man, on the contrary, has
lost this elementary wisdom. When he enters a world of tales and make-believe,
the cherished daydream has a different content: almighty human power will
realize terrestrial perfection. He lacks a consciousness of the divine Father's
presence in the world and senses an emptiness and meaningslessness that
stimulates him to give himself up to endless narcissistic imaginings and
speculations, which replace reality.
[210525]
======
E151025 On the why of rare inserts in this blog
Today's date is 25 October 2015 and I definitely realize the decreasing
number of inserts per unit of time in my blog. Possibly the same will be
happening with my production of scientific articles. This is consistent with I
write in the explanation above in the introduction: Why and how to read this blog that is nearly the same as the position statement for my research after year 2002, as well as elsewhere in my reflections on occasion of my 75th birthday, and about the meaning of debates if one considers
each item of a blog as a contribution to ongoing debate or exchange of
opinions. As a matter of fact, each further contribution of mine to either blog
or research can be seen as a paradox in face of what I have written about the
meaning and meaninglessness of debates. Ultimately one must say that this
paradox is being solved by my decreasing activity of writing and, in general,
discussing, the more so with advancing age beyond my present age of 78.
A justifying example: recently there has been in Sweden the well
known Trollhättan school attack and I realized that there was much to be said about it that is not
being said. I soon noticed, however, that I hade already expressed most of what
I think should be said on another analog occasion concerning the case of the
mass murder in Norway by Anders Breivik. And so it has been
going, I increasingly notice that new occasions to comment on daily events tend
to be repetitions of earlier questions that have already been commented.
"So there is nothing new under the sun", states the Ecclesiastes, something which in the
right interpretation appears gradually more and more clear with advancing age.
Other examples could be the problems related to above, seen as "An attack and identity crisis in Sweden" (The New Yorker, 23 October 2015) for
which I would repead a similar kind of analysis I applied earlier to e.g. political correctness , to debates on feminism, and to the "illusion of state-individualistic ethics." My conclusion is that there are good reasons
for, if not already closing down this blog, at least to expect rare
contributions to it especially if I will not submit myself as earlier to the
provocations perceived when listening to mass media debates.
[151215]
======
E140825 On Gender Studies and Gender
Perspectives
After the latest continuous exposition to LGBT news and exhortations in massmedia I felt that I
should send the following e-mail with a hint to students and former colleagues
at my university:
"There seems to be considerable interest in gender issues, to the
degree that the state - regardless of the diversity of theories and approaches
in all the various sciences except in official trends in gender studies -
allows itself to demand that universities must build a gender perspective in
research and teaching. Therefore - in full knowledge of Anglo-Saxon cultural
domination in academia and society - I suggest that those who happen to
understand French read or listen to the following rendering of a 2011
conference (in French) on Man-Woman: Felicitous Difference or Gender War?"
One main suggestion seems to be that the difference between the sexes is a sort
of archetypal or primal motivation for acceptance and respect for differences
between humans. It appears to me to be inversely related to the phenomenon of
political correctness, and the grouping of similarities, as in the case of
homosexuality.
======
S121112 Lågvattenmärke i svensk kultur, och i förakt [Low-water
mark in Swedish culture, and scornful contempt]
Jag tar mig friheten att informera om nedanstående fenomen i Sveriges ledande
dagstidning eftersom jag förmodar att det är bra att känna till hur djupt
folkkulturen eller debattklimatet sjunkit i landet - för att därmed dra
slutsatser om vad man skall försöka förstå och göra. Det handlar om förakt för
religion och det som flera miljarder människor över hela världen tagit och tar
på största allvar och med stort engagemang. Med andra ord handlar det om
respekt för våra medmänniskor. Men det handlar även om förståelse och kultur.
Eftersom jag av besläktade anledningar håller på att läsa om delar av Carl
Jung's samlade verk som jag först studerat för 30-35 år sedan så råkade jag
nyss observera följande stycke: "It is after all only a tiny fraction of
humanity, living mainly on that thickly populated peninsula of Asia, which juts
out into the Atlantic Ocean, and calling themselves "cultured" who,
because they lack all contact with nature, have hit upon the idea that religion
is a peculiar kind of mental disturbance of undiscoverable purport. Viewed from a safe distance, say from central Africa
or Tibet, it would certainly look as if this fraction had projected its own
unconscious mental derangements upon nations possessed of healthy
instincts." (Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, Collected Works,
vol. 7, p. 204f.)
Senaste angreppet på religion i allmänhet och kristendom i synnerhet levereras
i Dagens Nyheter den 9 november 2012 (paradoxalt nog i sektionen
"Kultur"), under den dunkla rubriken "Hårdrockare
tycks inte väcka lika mycket sympati som anarkofeminister". Det
förtjänar inte att refereras eller kommenteras utan bara att beskådas. Det är
också intressant då det ett talande exempel: genom dess användning av begreppet
feminism i allmänhet och anarkofeminism i synnerhet kan man också få djupare
insikter i dessa fenomen.
Författaren som av någon anledning erbjudits en hedersplats för sin krönika på
just kulturdelens andra sida presenteras i svenska
Wikipedia.
Läs gärna artikeln. Slutsatser? Kanske kan något uppslag erhållas från hemsidor
som försöker följa upp och påtala föraktuttryck och förföljelser enligt
<http://www.europe4christ.net/index.php?id=147>
<http://www2.trincoll.edu/~dcruzuri/anti-catholic/catholic.html>
<http://www.akegreen.org/>
Vidare: exempel (nedan, på den här sidan) på hur jag själv försökt reagera, som
ev idégivare till andra:
<BLOG.htm#A16> och på
tal om "debatter"
<BLOG.htm#A31>.
[140123]
======
E111227 Parents, adult children, childish adults
- Inverted identities?
I do not cease to get amazed by what is happening not only in the
feminist struggle between woman and man or between children's parents, but also
between young and old people, between children and parents or grandparents.
Since I myself do not have own children my image of those relations would be
stuck in my memories of how it was and supposed to be in countries where I grew
up, some 60-70 years ago. As it stands today I keep updated on the basis of
what I see and hear around me, and from friends or neighbours or from mass
media. In particular I have been hearing from older acquaintances I have known
for decades, whom I have followed ever since, and who in part inspired me to
write by reflections (in Swedish) "Old and young people", (in English) "On friendship and personal relations", and (again in Swedish) "Do not grovel for pensioners".
Beyond the sociologisms of "generation gap" I think about
youngsters in poor countries all over the world who risk their lives to
emigrate or flee as refugees to rich countries to find work and live in locally
miserable conditions in order to save and send money home to their parents.
Mid-aged sons or daughters in one of the most affluent countries of the West,
where the state offers generous generalized welfare, repeatedly ask for favors,
loans, or gifts from their parents and relatives. They even request such
support urgently, "today or tomorrow", since despite of decently paid
employments they have not spared any buffert for unforeseen circumstances of
life. Some of them cannot borrow from banks but perhaps only from friends,
since apparently they are not deemed to be creditworthy or cannot afford to be
bound to pay interest rates, and still less to pay amortizations. At last, as
life emergencies accumulate as if in the middle of a third world war, they
repeatedly ask or hope even for long-run loans or, rather, advance
inheritance - equivalent to interest-and amortization-free loans. I
know of cases where "children" in their fifties repeatedly ask for
advance inheritance from parents who may live on small pensions and barely can
guarantee to be able in the long run to provide for themselves, or ultimately
from needy parents who feel obliged to take bank loans on behalf of their needy
adult children.
These grownup and would-be needy children ignore that if the parents in
turn ever got any inheritance they would need it themselves in order to
guarantee their own elderly care since obviously they cannot rely on their
children who in turn claim to rely on the parents. This is obvious also from
the fact that grown up, adult or middle-aged children tend to call on their
parents or grandparents mainly when they need some money or other help, else
letting weeks or even months pass without ever asking how they are doing and
still less whether they need something. (But they may eventually make it to
come to mourn at their funeral.) And if and when their parents ever can
afford to give any help, it is not sure that this will be acknowledged and that
they will get any substantial thanks or more frequent calls from their needy
children.
In order to offset their possible feeling of guilt or shame these grown up "children" may even recur to strategies
of self-victimization or self-image of victimization, or victim mentality (masterly presented in the
Swedish book Is the Swede a Human Being?, p.
379, cf. my book review). They condemn "guilt and shame" as having been
imposed upon them, without realizing that their absence creates and
characterizes impudent and conscienceless people. Or, more
expressively in Swedish: people who are "oförskämda och samvetslösa".
If they happen to have some serious sickness they insinuate that if they do not
get advance inheritance they may even die earlier than their old parents in the
eighties. This they do despite of sometimes having at their disposal a trendy
downtown apartment, a car, summer cottage, and own children all loaded with
trendy electronic gadgets. Not to mention that the parents' occasional
complaints can be rebuked as being moralizing self-pity, attempts to arouse
feelings of guilt and shame, sheer bullying, or, in the best case, the complaints
are met with reproachful silence. In the worst case, grown-up children or
grandchildren can "punish" parents or granparents by refusing to meet
or even speak to them, or witholding opportunities to their meeting
grandchildren. And parents may not insist, and still less rebuke, but rather
arrive to the extreme of apologizing, for fear of definitely losing their
children's and consequently grandchildren's hoped-for contact and affection.
This recalls what Richard Stivers writes in his book Technology as Magic: The Triumph of the
Irrational (1999, p. 58f.):
"[P]arents sentimentalize their children and live vicariously
through them to the point of turning them into consumable personalities. In the
absence of cultural authority, parents increasingly use psychological
techniques of childrearing to manipulate children into conformity. [Cf.
cognitive behavior therapy for e.g. ADHD syndrome.]
Both through technological objects and technical processes parents create
dependent children. At one time the end of love was to create free and
independent children. Most parents, however, do not recognize the change of the
meaning of love from ethical to sentimental and manipulative. And yet
with an appreciation and critical knowledge of past meanings of love, parents
can make a heroic effort to live out some earlier meaning of love, but they do
so at the risk of isolation." [My italics.]
I have myself witnessed the elderly's silent suffering after they and their
beloved hade been undeservedly insulted by their supposedly mature grandchildren,
with their own parents' connivance: this is a variant of phenomena I felt the
obligation to report (in Swedish) in an earlier blog entry of year 2009 (below.) As
somebody expressed it: "While grandma is sad for not hearing from her
beloved mature granddaughter, the latter is too busy for that but prides
herself for the proof that she is so loved, and therefore lovely. At the same
time she deplores her grandmother's nagging and her sadness as being self-pity
and as attempts to awaken feelings of guilt in her. Conclusion: it is valuable
to be loved despite of being too busy to love people whose good graces are not
useful. Is there some advice or consolation to be offered to the old man who
for unknown reasons has been insulted by a 25 years old grandchild with the
epithet "motherfucker" (in Swedish "skitstövel")? Yes,
there is: "If you have an injury done you, you do your adversary too much
honor to take notice of it, and an excessive fear of dishonor itself is
dishonorable" (Steven Shapin in A Social History of Truth, pp.
108, 148f., 167f.) To get offended in such circumstances is to give illegimate
weight and encouragement to an offender who should have been educated earlier
in childhood, or ultimately brought to justice. The question is serious enough
since it also addresses the problem of duelling in the history of Western culture as that
of honor killing, both related to their modern forms of bullying and abuse in
our supposedly "enlightened" present culture, and amid the decline of
civility.
To top it off, as I have noted in my earlier blog entries referenced above, the
young rebuke their elders for being stingy and unwilling to help, and blame the
them for having a leisurely retirement at the youngsters' expenses, who in turn feel harrassed and offended .
To add insult to injury many youngsters enviously resent that many elders are
"richer" than they are. It is necessary for a clinical psychologist
like Jordan Peterson in his debates (see video at about 1:54 from start) to remind these youngsters that age increases the probabily of being
richer by savings, and that many elders would like to be able to purchase youth
and health is they could. In practice, it seems that when parents and
grandparents stopped to rebuke their children and grandchildren in the name of
a new "children's liberation",
they also opened the door for the children's insolent rebuke and incrimination
of parents and grandparents: "The Sibling Society"? Indeed it would be consistent with my own research on the "death of the Father", whereby young adults have come to consider that parenthood and
the whole society is supposed to supply unconditional motherly care. And
probably, from cultural viewpoint, all this goes on unconsciously in the shadow
of the archetype of the "Great Mother" conceived
psychologically by e.g. James Hillman, and poetically by Robert Bly in the humanistic tradition of Carl Jung. Since the main of
my life has been dedicated to university education and research it natural for
me to think also about the master-apprentice relationship and to events typical of university environments as analog to those between parents and children,
and wonder what all this does imply for the ongoing present and for the
future.
The "Great Mother" mentioned above together with the "death of
the Father", also means the youngsters' revolt against , and lack of
respect for, authority as traditionally represented by father and age. Thus,
for instance, a young man in the military (!) may allow himself to gratuitously
insult his innocent old grandmother and her dearest on the basis of personal
frustrations, unexplained reasons, and hateful insinuations about some close
relative: that is, guilt by association, analog to soldiers' gratuitous
violence against unarmed innocent children and civilians in war situations in
enemy territory. Or then they wander around in family meetings and private
gossip in order to judge and later apply to elders, unsuspecting relatives
mischievous epithetes such as "assholes" (in Swedish
"skilstövel", cf. "verbal abuse" and "violent language".) Compare with the
outmoded "respect for elders". Another grown-up middleaged son or granddaughter, who in
childhood never got a reprimand from the "absent father" and rather
expect motherly complacency for all self-centered needs or wishes, nourish
lasting resentment against anybody who rebukes them or does not satisfy their wishes
or expectations. It is indeed a good ground for narcissistic personality disorders with frequent references to the "lust
principle" and their right to do what they please as a legitimate sign of
adulthood and guide for their lives. Personal sacrifice and suffering is then
perceived as self-willed melodramatic martyrdom. Authority is replaced by the
matriarchal "wolf pack" mob dictatorship that characterizes much
ongoing political correctness: emotional threats and blackmailing, scornful behavior, slander
with insinuations, punishing silences, bullying, cowardice, vendettas. And all
this within the circle of relatives, with many self-declared pacifists talking
about world peace while unable to keep peace in their own extended families. If
any reader feels struck in reading these lines, that is bad enough. Others have
testified that they perceive such descriptions as "sheer therapy" in
view of their personal life experiences. Swedish readers have the opportunity
to experience such archetypal behaviors as described in Felicia Feldt's
autobiographical "reality novel" Felicia försvann (Felicia disappeared). For reviews of the book see links on
the publisher's web page.
Yes, "the sibling society" or, then, at the end (again) the
apocalyptic and already tested society in Stalinist-Maoist cultural-revolutionary times:
And I will make boys their princes,
and infants shall rule over them.
And the people will oppress one another,
every one his fellow
and every one his neighbor;
the youth will be insolent to the elder,
and the despised to the honorable.
"And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the
child:
and the children shall rise up against their parents,
and cause them to be put to death."
Exaggeration? Yes, I am mainly gathering my images from a series of sources as
mentioned at the beginning above. It could have been called a reality-novel.
One thing which can be said in defense of the actors of this behavior is that
it is the result of faulty education in the West despite the Christian
heritage. First of all fault by the parents: children look at what parents
themselves do rather than to what they say. After all what has has been said
above, I need to confirm ritually that, of course, youngsters are not bad and
elders good. I know many loving and lovely youngsters and realize that what
appears as evil may be named shortcomings. And all humans including elders and
myself have sinned against parents and have something good and something evil
inside themselves. They should confess it without blaming "situational
influences" for the evil while praising themselve for the good, as in some
late psychologizing ethics. Evil is ultimately our personal responsibility or
outright sin, even if forbearance is called for when one takes into
account the situational influence of the cultural-ethical decay of the family
and society. It is a decay that with perverse rhetoric is acclaimed by the the
type of postmodern aesthetical ethicsacknowledged
by Michael Maffesoli. It is indeed a postmodernity that is tragically impervious to both
criticism such as by David Evans, Stephen Hicks, or Christopher Norris, and to the learned and complex but ambiguous and indecisive, if not
outright obscuring, overview by Zygmunt Bauman.
To acknowledge all this may indeed be a legitimate rhetorical requirement but I
was talking about typified general trends and changes in feelings and attitudes,
as in all kinds of apocalyptic and prophetic messages in the Bible. It is
significant that the Bible's Ten Commandments include "Honour thy father and thy mother" and not the other way round, related to the
instinct-supported care of the offspring. After all, it is merciful to prevent
children from having to regret what cannot be undone when the parents will be
dead, not to mention these parents' prior lonesome suffering while lying on
their deathbed in niggardly financed, low-tax elderly care. Better to love them
in life than to only cry beside their deathbed or to mourn them publicly at
their funeral. A Swedish author expressed it touchingly in another way: it is a
pity for parents when their children do not grow and mature fast enough in time
for being able to express their gratitude before their death.
Indeed, the World Values Study is referred to in the book Is the Sweden a Human? (p.
73 f.) stating that as regards the expectation that children are to love and
honor their parents, and the percentage of people who consider themselves
religious, Sweden is in the bottom layer. If it is too late for supposedly
outdated Christian education, perhaps a minimum of respect can be evinced by a
common reading, by old and young, of a resignedly and quietly
humorous book like Jane Miller's Crazy Age: Thoughts on Being Old. Those who read French and insist in serious and
committed intellectual work are recommended instead to study Louis-Vincent Thomas' Anthropologie
de la Mort [Anthropology of Death, Payot 1976], especially the
masterly chapter IV on elders and death, with emphasis on section Ab (p.
363ff.) on old people in the Western world who "helplessly watch the
demolition of values for which they sometimes have sacrificed a lot". A
reinstatement of respect for old age that is still typical for many world
cultures may be obtained by a study of classics such as Cicero's Treatises on Friendship and Old Age, or by a study of research such as at the Life-Span Development Laboratory of Stanford university.
-------
Some months after having written most of the text above I happened to read a
valuable journalistic overview of the phenomenon including curling parenthood, in
the The New York Times, the series that included (14 July
2012) "Guilty parents, ungrateful kids, easy solution", in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet (10
July 2012) "Sluta behandla era ungar som kungar" by Alf B. Svensson in Aftonbladet ,
(10 July 2012), "För evigt ung" by Pernilla Ström
in Dagens Nyheter ( 23 January 2010), "En ny generation vill glida genom livet" by Jenny Strömstedt in Expressen (19
February 2014), but most comprehensively in "När egot tar examen", by Ana Udovic
in Dagens Nyheter (6 May 2012). The latter relies explicitly
in part upon work (in Swedish) on narcissism and related issues (the
socio-psychological counterparts of common-language egoism) by Bo Sigrell and Lena Teurnell, Mats Alvesson, Magnus Lindwall. And all that recalls Det infantila samhället [The infantile society] by Carl Hamilton, promptly and symptomatically
mocked by a feminist icon. A book (also in Swedish) coupling these questions to Swedish culture
or "national character" is the above mentioned Henrik Berggren and
Lars Trägårdh's Är svensken människa? Gemenskap
och oberoende i det moderna Sverige [Is the Swede a human
being? Community and
independence in modern Sweden], also reviewed by myself, and commented by Tomas Brytting in Swedish Radio's "Tankar för dagen" on the National Day 6 June 2012 (text here).
Those who cannot read Swedish may appreciate some of the English literature
that is the main recurrent reference in the article, by dr. Jean M. Twenge, the author of Generation Me, who also co-authored
with W. Keith Campbell the laterThe Narcissism Epidemic. I recommend
strongly this overview, disregarding my dissent about the suggested roots of
the phenomenon that elsewhere I
did conceive in different terms of ethics and social psychology. All this
having been said I also confirm my knowledge and conscious dismissal of the
humorous anedoctal historical accounts of complaints, since Socrates, against
earlier young generations, an example being (in Swedish), Dick Harrison's Historiens sju "värsta" generationer[History's seven "worst" generations].
Harrison misses content and meaning, especially the historical meaning of
secularization (cf. Jacques Le Goff), being an illustration of the rhetorical postmodern relativization of
values and cultural issues.
[181203]
======
E111222 The meaning of "Debate"
oneliners. Or publications and peer-reviews
[INITIAL NOTE: Starting April 2014 revised versions of the text above
were published as versions of my research paper with the title Information
as Debate.]
On occasion of my retirement I intended to complete my research that had
been neglected because of managerial duties, and to summarize my experiences
and reflections in one or several publications. The more I studied and
reflected, the more I got convinced that the main problem was not the lack of
debates, books, publications, experiences, reflections, but rather the lack of
wish, will, courage, that is "lack of time" , to
select readings, to read, to think, or to understand in depth and to act upon
knowledge that is still valid and already available. But it is obvious that
debates about an issue have an intrinsic value, at least initially, as an
expression of human respect or friendship, as a test of one own's arguments and
as a way of understanding others' mind or psyche. This is partly analog to the
situation of a physician who must have a contact with ill people and illness in
order to get a chance to understand and cure it, or to assist with palliative
care.
If one conceives writing as the building up of a relationship between the
writer-author and the reader, I perceive the problem as being the difficulty of
creating in the Western culture's latest trends a genuine I and Thou relationship
in the sense of Martin Buber's "dialogue and existence." The final disaster seems to be represented by
the oneliners or fewliners of the Facebook's or Twitter's blog or microblog
phenomena. The contrast to Buber's I and Thou is then
illustrated by the changeover to I and all of you, since I
cannot afford the time to write to each of you individually. You all are the
mass of my massmedia. Facebook and Twitter, as examples of the latest
debate techniques represent networked fragmentation opposed to the systems
concept, and are some of the latest additional onslaughts of technology with hypothetical advantages and paradoxical cumulative waste of
the time it would have been required to form a personal committed oldfashioned
letter. This is accompanied by other psychosocial phenomena that historically
were grasped by the Danish social critic Søren Kierkegaard, and summarized by
Prof. Richard Stivers in the book on Technology and Magic: The Triumph of the Irrational (1999, pp. 122-124): "Whith the decline of
inwardness and passion, one's relationship to the other becomes concurrently
that of aesthetic possibility and ethical indifference." There are also
descriptions and more popular analyses in a few research reports and essays
such as (in Swedish) Lasse Granestrand's "Resa i den twittrande klassens
universum" (Trip in the twittering class' universe, Dagens Nyheter, 7 october 2012.) See also
some more superficial criticism as by Annina Rabe (in Svenska Dagbladet, 11 September 2012.) On occasion of my 70th and 75th birthdays, when
the issue of available time and the meaning of it all becomes
increasingly acute, I tried to summarize this insight in my virtual research summaries.
Publications and peer-reviews, which are considered to be the criteria for
academic success, can also be perceived as examples of present sterile debates,
i.e. debates with editors and colleagues in tenliners if not oneliners, often
with view on career advancement as related to academic alliances with currently
influential peers who are editors in influential journals and their
subcultures, or to intrigues or to the selling of books, journals and ideas. Conversely,
everything that may be understood as criticism of the closest peers must be
selectively silenced in order not to endanger the esprit de corps or
collective identity of the alliance. It is not necessary to go so far as to
politics in order to, justly or unjustly, perceive this phenomenon of cronyism also typically appearing as suspicion in university departments. The basic idea for such a successful career is to prioritize the
avoidance of creation of enemies, and the promotion of vulgar versions of Machiavellianism, with disregard of
Aristotelian ideas of true courage. I
myself could easily recognize early among graduate students those who would
make such a rapid career, behaving with exquisite meekness, far from appearing
as simple smartalecks, to the point that they claimed that their responding to
hard arguments with silence was motivated by "respect". In this
context students can be perceived by older professors as children or
grandchildren are perceived by parents in the dialectics I described elsewhere
under the label of Parents, adult children, childish adults - Inverted identities? A much more important and nowadays dominating
phenomenon related to cronyism is, of course, the controversial and extremely
complex political correctness that I considered elsewhere in the context of my review of a book on organizational self-destruction, by organizational psychologist
Howard Schwartz. Alternative expressions of political correctness appear in the
phenomena of bias and suppression in the supposedly scientific process of peer review. The important thing here is to note how such phenomena undermine not
only dialog but also debate including politics. They become display of fears,
struggles of power and of self-affirmation.
All this undermines communication and dialog from an ethical point of view but
still presupposes a "semantic understanding" of what others say or
write. Richard Stivers in the earlier mentioned book on Technology and
Magic(pp. 44-78) advances the insight that the semantics itself is in
question because of an ongoing decline of language in the technological
society, its substitution by images, visualization, aesthetics, and
aestheticism, and the consequent decline of capacity of thought and
understanding that accompanies language. Stivers, on the basis of Email,
predicts Tweet-Facebook language when describing how talk shows on television
and radio "reduce dialog to the level os street talk - emotional
outbursts, simple assertions, and elliptic sentences". All this while mass
culture "is based on the creed that everything can and must be made
effortless and immediately understandable." Despite all this there are
research trends that in the spirit of an unconscious "Heidegerrian"
aestheticism claim that it opens the way for a deeper and intuitive or
unconscious kind of understanding. Words that express this dream are the
following, abstracted from a PhD dissertation on human-experiential design: "tangible
interaction, unconsciously executed through the computer itself will restore
the primacy of action and re-integrate the mind and the body. There should be
no conscious effort in the behaviors, because experience has already made
possible the series of right actions, but unconsciously, in that it uses the
memory that our bodies know, erasing the awareness of people as users but not
as humans, and the need of willpower to act. To be pleasant and invigorating,
life should be free of the need to always be conscious of the environment in
which we exist."
Stivers continues adducing a study conducted at the University of Texas
that found that less than half of the sample of adults could understand a
plainly written paragraph. Others found that students increasingly think in
"nonsequential and visual ways." This recalls my own late experiences
that in a e-mail containing more than one question about a subject, or more
than a subject, the answer if it comes at all, may often respond to only one
question of one subject, as if the rest of the original text had not been read
at all. Summarizing various research Stivers observes further that where once
visual images were subject to language, now language is becoming subordinate to
visual images. The meaning of life becomes exclusively aesthetic and now
resides in cultural experimentation as in technologically conditioned
consumption, lifestyle, and entertainment. Now we have
"communication" rather than speech, writing, literature, art; we have
"relationship" or "network" of "networked
friends" rather than friends and lovers. People think less and less in
sentences and allow themselves to be led more and more by words or at best, as
I wrote, by twittered, facebooked, e-mailed oneliners. Stivers refers
particularly to the phenomenon of "plastic words" that were defined
by Uwe Poerksen as words that aspire to be scientific or technical burt end up
being amorphous, having as chief purpose to "provide security and perform
exorcisms". I myself noted that supposedly scientific words are no longer
defined. "Method", "model", "theory",
"information", "communication", "interaction",
"system", or "design" have no longer contended definitions
because of their being definitely "plasticized", and lately have been
supplanted by other still less defined such as "conceptual framework"
and, most recently "methodical and conceptual toolbox", never mind
the meaning of concept, or the difference between tool and instrument. Or, for
that matter, in the context of technology's benefits, between growth and
development.
Among those who are constrained to adopt old and new plastic words we find
graduate students who are obliged to get socialized into the sub-cultures of
their sub-specialties; forget about dialog and debate within specialties. In
the manuscript of a dissertation dealing with informatic digital capability,
ICT co-evolution and business strategies I found, for instance, the following
terms, which put off even specialists since they suggest the need for an
initiation and socialization into the particular sub-field of study: conceptual
framework, theoretical framework, functional view, design & enactment,
ICT-assets & knowledge on design, conceptual tools, conceptual models,
design capital, functionality, performance, complex-unstable-dynamic
environments, strategic options portfolio, strategic foresight vs. systemic
insight, functional resources, organizational-operational-dynamic capability,
co-evolutionary perspective, and ambidexterity. The latter being the ability to
both exploit current opportunities through efficient operations and to adapt to
future exogenenous (sic) change through exploration. And there are references
to philosophical foundations of the work in terms of perspectives on causality,
ontology, epistemology, and critical realism.
Smartalecks and cronyists also know how to borrow into their publications terms
used by their influential disciplinary patrons. And in the context of
interaction never mind about the more subtle forms of human interaction that
tend to be submerged into hateful commentaries, harassment, and competition of
popularity in terms of "friends' likes" on the net. Compassion,
ethical love, trust and patience are concepts that have disappeared from
general cultural discourse, as terms like honour, virtue, temperance, modesty,
and chastity. Stivers summarizes these tendencies by noting that "there is
no effective way of raising ethical questions", and this is also my own
summary as background of my position regarding "debate".
------
When approaching 75 and with an increasing feeling of urgency because of
consciousness of finding myself in the "vestibule of death" I did
reread the Swedish political scientist Tage Lindbom's The Myth of Democracy where he finds a way of exposing the phenomenon of
"debate", which dispenses of any further explanations and recalls
that the deepest truths have already been revealed in the many great books. In
a cursory review of the history of ideas about democracy he writes tthe
following three paragraphs that I would have risked to waste my time by trying
to express myself, namely:
"A seductive notion is that truth is to be found like a 'vein of
gold'; and the hope of finding this 'vein' of truth gave impetus to feverish
philosophical search" (p. 30). And gave impetus to scientific development,
I may add.
"[Jean-Jacques Rousseau] tries to find and explain different ways
in which this ascension can be accomplished [wherein human choices are elevated
from the merely private to the general level, where the Popular Will is to be realized].
By deliberation, he says, it may be possible to bring a multitude of different
opinions into concert. The more thoroughly we discuss a question, the more our
differences can be reduced. By this means we can come nearer to what we want to
achieve, namely unanimity, and unanimity expresses the Popular Will" (p.
35f). (These ideas foreshadow, by the way, a Hegelian dialectic of the kind
that I myself applied in my dissertation on quality-control of information. With the great difference, however, that I did not assume that one
would come nearer to unanimity, and for that very same reason I called for an
accounting of a measure of the degree of disagreement.)
"Truth is an endless number of fragments in which true and false
are mingled. But the golden grains of truth can be sifted out; and this is
accomplished by the unending, reiterated exchange of opinions. The lifeblood of
liberalism, therefore, is debate and discussion. Every restraint, every limit
on opinion must be denied." (p.41). "Continual searching and
researching, gathering raw data, empirical trials, analysis through logical and
discursive processes of thinking, always in a cadre of continuous debate: these
are the operative demands of the liberal search for truth - truth which, it is
believed, is like grains of gold, washed and sifted in a free selective
process, the false dross being separated from the noble metal of truth. ...A
world of freedom in which truth will win out over the lie ...The true will
become better and better, ever more 'true'" (p. 43).
------
It should be obvious why
this is not so, when everybody tends to start his logic from different and
often unconscious basic assumptions, compared with earlier times' more general,
collective Christian assumptions in the Western world, not to mention the
forgotten method of uncovering basic assumptions by means of a Platonic
dialectic that requires much more than the typical blog-oneliners.
Compare also the philosophy of information systems as advanced in West
Churchman's The Design of Inquiring Systems, countering the naive idea
of data and information as "fragments". I witness what happens today's
with the so called social media not to mention computer games and blogs,
phenomena that academia is desperately trying to intellectualize by selling
basic courses on, for instance, "Blog's theory and practice". Or,
yes, I know, by following good advices, more simple than Plato's dialectics,
like the following one: "Conversation is a game with some hard rules: say
only what you mean; say it as accurately as you can; listen to and respect what
the other says, however different or other; be willing to correct or defend
your opinions if challenged by the conversation partner; be willing to argue if
necessary, to confront if demanded, to endure necessary conflict, to change
your mind if the evidence suggests it." Quoted from David Tracy, Plurality
and Ambiguity: Hermeneutics, Religion, Hope. (Harper & Row, 1987, p.
19, referenced in Anthony Flood's web page).
Occasionally it pops ut in political debates that leaders of political parties
do not themselves believe in sheer debate based on sheer freedom of expression.
As the leader of the Swedish Center party Annie Lööf expressed it in a
debate article on a controversial issue (including "polygamy") in the
newspaper Dagens Nyheter on 11 January 2013: "A point is reached when a kind of
stop line must be drawn in the debate to avoid confusion to be created".
Also occasionally it will be found that some insightful journalist like Niklas
Wahllöf (TV column in Dagens
Nyheter 29 November 2012) uncovers the empty dramaturgy of many
pseudo-debates and interviews at the supposedly "public service"
Swedish television. It also happens that this strange atmosphere of empty,
sterile excentric debates is noted in unpretentious musings and deeper probes
in very symptomatic newspaper essays as for instance, in the titles'
translation from Swedish, "The air in the debate is stale and confined", (Dagens Nyheter, 17 September 2013),
"All talk och no one says anything", (Metro, 26 September 2013), "After threats and lampoons I take now leave from the
gender debate" (Swedish
Television Debate Page, 8 November 2013), or "When verbal vomit drowns public discourse" (Svenska Dagbladet, 26 January
2014), and in "The debate about the debate is hereby declared dead" (Svenska Dagbladet, 29 January 2014.) It
is obvious that many citizens sense the emptiness and poverty of the debates
despite of not being able to grasp the core and the why of the phenomenon as
related to controversial "political correctness".
I have come to realize that in many ongoing debates about crises or problems
"Democracy" is named as the theoretical basis of debate and as a
general solution in a way that recalls the old universal appeal to God and
religion. So, it can be in the case of trying to explain the mass murder
tragedy of Anders Breivik in Norway, or islamic terrorism, or the wave of economic crises in the USA, or in Europe as analyzed by
Roger Cohen in The Age of Outrage. What becomes
apparent is that the solution is supposed to be "more of the same"
whatever that same could be, if only it is called Democracy. It seems never to occur
the possibility if not the need of the analyzers self-criticism. With that I
mean the hypothesis that "something is rotten in the state of Denmark" but in our case not Denmark but perhaps in the
practice of democracy in the Western world, where Democracy has become an idol
that has replaced the supposedly old-fashioned God. As Cohen writes "Egos
expanded...Money outpaced politics. Rage surged... The only people who walked
away unscathed from the great financial binge that preceded this mess were its
main architects and greatest beneficiaries: bankers, financiers and hedge-fund
honchos". Nevertheless there is no real analysis, no real questioning of
the sources of ethics or of why democracy went wrong and may be going towards a
short or long term disaster. I suppose that democracy went and goes wrong
because it has been equated to the implementation of a truth determined by a
supposed majority in the supposedly free market of opinions, never mind wise
arguments. And this is gradually being represented by the Internet or by more
communication and pluralism despite the likewise gradual realization that
notwithstanding freedom of speech there must be rules of communication, and a
motivation to avoid seeking narrow consensus based on restricted social
"debate groups" that foster oversimplification in face of
complexity.
Nevertheless more than 150 years ago Alexis de Tocqueville, to whom I have repeatedly referred to in my writings,in an insightful
analysis of democracy in the USA offered an analysis that is surprisingly
modern and deserves attention. The more so during times of financial crises and
upheavals such as in Europe after year 2010. One very focused and clear
analysis of financial crisis as example of the failure of debate or rather of
dialogue in the democratic system is offered in an editorial of 27 January 2013
(in Swedish Det verkliga hotet, The real threat) by the
economy columnist Andreas Cervenka of the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet.
After Tocqueville we also have Carl Schmitt whose controversial
work exposes the connection between the misunderstandings about debate and the
perils of dictatorship if not totalitarianism. In the context of political theology he is referred to as follows: "Schmitt criticized the
institutional practices of liberal politics, arguing that they are justified by
a faith in rational discussion and openness that is at odds with actual
parliamentary party politics, in which outcomes are hammered out in
smoke-filled rooms by party leaders. Schmitt also posits an essential division
between the liberal doctrine of separation of powers and what he holds to be
the nature of democracy itself, the identity of the rulers and the ruled.
Although many critics of Schmitt today, such as Stephen Holmes in his The
Anatomy of Anti-Liberalism, take exception to his fundamentally
authoritarian outlook, the idea of incompatibility between liberalism and
democracy is one reason for the continued interest in his political
philosophy." (ref. The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy.)
"The genie is let out of the bottle", and language is no longer
effective for meaningful communication, leading to overconfident illusions
about the power of unbridled debate or "art" à la Muhammad drawings controversy, or "artful" caricatures of dialog such
as Kränkta vita män (Swedish for "Outraged white men", possibly and
paradoxically inspired by the book title Stupid white men) a degrading Facebook group that presumedly righteous feminists
scornfully urge critics of feminism to join and is ritually praised by other
feminist journalists (like Catia Hultquist in Dagens Nyheter 17 December 2012) who use the rhetorical trick of
equating antifeminism with racial
discrimination or worse. Occasional deep but paradoxical insights about
"debates" versus political correctness appear very seldom in daily
newspapers, but are exemplified by Johan Hilton in Dagens Nyheter (17 September 2013.) The self-avowed lesbian feminist Kristina Hultman earlier in the
same Dagens Nyheter (9 October 2012) equates antifeminists with "terrorists like
Anders Behring Breivik, aggrieved white men, religious patriarchs and fascist
movements." Never mind about guilt by association. I
can only despair about the empty hopes and wasting of time in one-liners by
millions of Internet users who unconsciously maintain an unfounded faith in a
sort of intellectual social Darwinism. My latest distressing experience besides
a short free subscription to a major Swedish newspaper and its section on a
symptomatic "culture & entertainment" (cf. "edutainment"!) has been to
witness some of the discussions about the theater staging in Sweden of the
unfortunate "feminist" S.C.U.M. manifesto. It is no longer justified to put hope into democratic debate when, for
instance, Swedish newspaper columnists write articles (Dagens Nyheter, 25 August 2012) that are equivalent to one-liners and reject
democratic votes (the hollow new god of Democracy) in the name of libertarian
cultural radicalism. The voting human being seems to be considered as an
object, such as a sort of biotechnological automobile platform with sexual organs
as styling accessories, and his supposedly wrong voting behavior is said to be
due to pseudo-Marxist false consciousness. Opposing intellectual
currents are demeaned in a few lines, resembling Twitter's 140 characters, as
"romantic enlightenment" and are swept away in the name of the latest
trends in "gender theory". Conclusion? I feel strengthened in my earlier research-reflections expressed on occasion of my 70th birthday. It is no longer a
question of writing or reading but, rather, of Evangelization or Apocalypticism.
All this is the reason of why, objectionably, I write as I write, with an intentional profusion of references and without much hope for
dialog with people who expect one-liners, or "executive summaries" of
about half page that they hope will enable them to avoid painful studies of
something they really do not know why they should care about. This style of writing
becomes gradually more urgent as life is perceived to get short and the most
important task becomes to leave a heritage of the type "take it or leave
it" to those who happen to want to study further.
[REMINDER: Starting April 2014 revised versions of the text above have been
published as versions of my research paper with the title Information as Debate.]
[210530]
======
E111207 SCUM Society for Cutting Up Men - Watershed
of disgust
In my late research I have focused on the rationale behind evil, hateful or
indifferent non-ethical thoughts and behavior that I have been experiencing in
my professional life. Because of this I noted that in November 2011 a
theater in Stockholm staged
a play consisting of a recital of the so called S.C.U.M. manifesto where
the initials stand for Society for Cutting Up Men as conceived by its author
Valerie Solanas in 1967. It is a diatribe against men and masculinity,
literally advocating scorn, contempt, hatred and murder of
men, reminding the possibly hidden analogous message in Thelma & Louise. Symptomatically it has been the object of much
positive attention in feminist circles all over the world. On occasion of its
staging in the Stockholm theater it raised a violent debate about its ethical
implications. Among those feminists who approved its staging, there were those
representing a major feminist organization like ROKS who clearly and literally endorsed it, while others, when in their mildest mood, wished to see it not as an
incitement to murder but rather as a satire akin to Jonathan Swifts A Modest Proposal,
missing the point that the "proposal's" victims were its actual
heroes. Those who disapproved the uncritical revival of the text authored by
the mentally disturbed Solanas accused it for being a propaganda for hate, akin
to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion that, however, did not go so far as to advocate
murder, while nobody today is prone to read it as a satire. Based on my reading
of psychoanalysis and depth psychology I joined soon the critics of SCUM
but realized gradually that it is the literary expression of both the roots of
feminism as well as of the essence of so called hate speech that has been well exemplified in Swedish feminist debate. In the attempt to prevent hate crime as related to political correctness I
did analyze the issue in my review of a book by organizational psychologist Howard Schwartz, which deals with
the evasive and controversial phenomenon of "political
correctness".
In Wikipedia's rendering of SCUM there is a reference to "See
also" Separatist feminism, Misandry and The Turner Diaries including a section on "crimes associated with the book". For the rest, please compare with some
criticism of the case Andrea Dworkin. Not to mention symptomatic fringe aberrations like the "Temple
of Diana". The staging of
the SCUM-manifest is rather an exploitation of a tragic destiny for political
purposes. Not many of us would appreciate to see or hear , after an eventual
return to sanity, what we have being doing or saying during the most unhappy
days of our life. We would find that it is a breach of our privacy and personal
integrity, to expose whatever we happened to act out when we were not in
control of ourselves and felt sheer desperation. And instead of being helped
and loved, to see somebody recording everything and broadcasting it through a
loudspeaker on the streets, or on a theater stage, attributing to us particular
philosophical or political standspoints that suit others' interests.
Regarding the neglected coupling of SCUM hate-thinking to terrorism, it
is interesting that in discussing SCUM and Anders Behring Breivik nobody
seems to suspect that many "terrror" events can be the result of
desperation at the perception of deep crisis and danger in the development
trends of our Western Civilization, as most obvious in the neglected story of
the life of the Islamic theorist Sayyid Qutb. And it is appalling
that mass media do not seem to be able or interested in a deeper analysis of
ongoing parallel events. For instance, the newspaper Dagens Nyheter(DN)
in its campaign of supportive reviews of the rehearsals and theater performance
of the SCUM-manifesto (on 21 October, 18 November, and 30 November 2011 with renewal on 20-23 July 2012) considers it to be valuable art, encouraging feminists who want to
expose schoolchildren to it. A few days later another critic in the same DN in
an evaluation of a new controversial Swedish film ("Play")
dealing with ethnic social integration ( 5 December 2011, "Play" missar de andras perspektiv) objects that the film does not give to its public
the possibility of taking in the "others' " (in our case
non-feminist) perspective, which, after all is said to be a criterion for good art.
And, concerning art, "Art becomes aesthetic autism...there are no canons,
no aesthetic standards or legitimate attitudes. Every rule, every norm, every
model, all well-rooted criteria are denied". (Tage Lindbom in The Myth of Democracy, p. 120). And such a perverted art, which claims the privileges of
democratic freedom of expression, is closely related not only to unbridled
liberalism but also to socialist doctrine, having the strong source of power in
social and political hatred: "Terms like reconciliation,
forgiveness, or trust do not exist in the Marxist lexicon nor in the world of
Marxism [that radical feminism paradoxically often ignores in its simplified
biased versions]. The dialectical struggle is an affair of life or death. It is
merciless, and the result of the struggle involves the annihilation of the
losing party." (Idem, p. 110.)
I felt that this late experience of mine regarding the staging of the SCUM-manifesto,
despite of some stubborn (soon labeled by feminists as
"anti-feminist") resistance on the net such as in Swedish blogs
of Axess, Genusnytt, Newsmill and PelleBilling, triggered my resigned perception of personal disgust at this my
"watershed of disgust" while I came to feel the meaning of catholic and islamist resistance
to main trends in the Western mind, and the meaning of Apocalypticism. My disgust and feeling
of outrage, also expressed by many others as evidenced in the blogs linked
above, increased at the sight of the ineffective, nonchalant judicial treatment
of formal complaints filed at the Equality Ombudsman (Diskrimineringsombudsmannen,
DO, case 2011/1891), the Parliamentary Ombudsmen (Riksdagens Ombudsmen, JO, case 1065-2012), and the Chancellor of Justice (Justitiekanslern
JK case 7826-11-30) whose common response characteristics appear to be arrogant
unaccountability. And this in face of SCUM's startling incitement to collective
murder with startling sociopsychological similarities with the case of Anders
Behring Breivik, and the Holocaust: collective persecution and
exhortation to murder on the base of politicization of religious or
ethnic-biological characteristics. It has been pointed out that the present
(year 2011) head of the office of the Chancellor of Justice and earlier member
of the Supreme Court of Sweden, Anna Skarhed, is she herself a member of Hilda. It is a rather
secretive network for female jurists, named after a valkyrie (of "battle") of Norse mythology. [The
very same Skarhed was later on May 1st, 2021, ten years after the rest of this
text was originally written, interviewed (in Swedish) at the Swedish Radio, expressing views about her involvement in Hilda
(28:30 minutes), and expressing (34:00 minutes) especially doubtful,
feministically tainted interpretation of the principle of rule of law with respect to the fundamental right of presumption of innocence, in the
context of #MeToo that I treat above in its own context].
Not to mention e.g. an involved legal officer of the Equality Ombudsman,
Anna Fritshammar, noted at Facebook as being member of feminist-related
networks. A simple comparison with the apparent sophistication with which
the Supreme Court of Sweden handled the case of the Christian pastor Åke Green who had been
accused and condemned for having criticized homosexuality in a church sermon is
very informative. It indicates the level of judicial incompetence and
displicency displayed by those who like the Equality Ombudsman and the
Chancellor of Justice legalize the theater staging of the SCUM-manifest and its
aftermaths under the cover of freedom of expression. Except for extremely
scandalous cases where majoritarian public opinion exerts political pressure,
displicency reigns. Increasing suspicions of corruption of the Swedish
legal system have been advanced in the context of the Quick affair and its overview by
the investigative journalist Maciej Zaremba in Dagens
Nyheter 10 September 2012 (in Swedish: "The judges abdicated from their responsibility".) See also the same day's editorial "Fatal malpractice" as well the overview on 30 September 2012 and 10 October 2012 about shortcomings of the rule of law in the Swedish judicial
system as it regards the state's bullying of private citizens. And the
admonitory scandal of former police chief and front man of state feminism Göran Lindberg, former official
"adviser on gender equality and sexual harassment", who turned out to
be a serial rapist, is conveniently ignored or exploited for turning a
recruited young prostitute into innocent victim (the " Nora case",
documentary by the Swedish Radio on 21 January 2013.)
These cases indicate that the allowance for public complaints is mainly a
virtual escape valve for the discontent of minorities or silent majorities. Their voices are
heard but systematically ignored. In order to understand the illusions offered
by such judicial organs it would be necessary to penetrate and apply the kind
of analysis made by Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America (chapters 6-8 in volume/book 1, esp. "Judicial Power in the United States".) The next best analysis, in Swedish,
explaining the historical process of corruption the Swedish judicial system
with respect to human rights is offered by Henrik Berggren and Lars Trägårdh in
their epochal book Är Svensken Människa?[Is the Swede a Human Being?], best except for its philosophical-ethical
anti-climax in the inconsequential chapter 13 about "The Swedish
Love".
------
AFTERWORD
After having written the above I was contacted on 31 July 2012 by a young
journalist from the Swedish northern city of Umeå's regional newspaper Västerbottens Folkblad (VF) who inquired about the complaints filed at
the three Swedish authorities referenced above. The reason was that the
theater company with the SCUM-Manifesto would soon stage it in Umeå. I directed her to my text and links
in this section where I openly account for my opinions and sources. I also
asked her whether she was a feminist in order to know whether I was to expect
an impartial account of my opinions without incurring into the phenomenon that
I describe in my earlier references in this text to articles in Dagens
Nyheter (DN) and elsewhere here on this page in the item (in Swedish)
on Radio Sweden's serial named "the holy family", a "crusade" against traditional
family values, that had nothing to do with the Holy Family. She answered "No
comments". So, I could not ascertain whether she had the same identity as
the person with the same name that Google listed from the apparently
lesbian-feminist site "mamaqueerest.com". Such are the
present conditions of the freedom vs. objectivity of the press and mass media.
Subsequently the regional newspaper Västerbottens Kuriren (VK)
published on August 10th 2012 an interview with me (in Swedish) "Scum borde jämföras med Breiviks manifest" referring to this blog item of mine, and
including a comparison between the SCUM's and Brevik's manifestos that I
commented in the blog item below on the mass murder tragedy in Norway. The net version of the
article displayed also a series of readers' comments that in part confirm my thoughts about "one-liners" in the blog
item above. The very same day
(August 10th) the cultural editor of the newspaper wrote in the newspaper and
in her blog an article (in Swedish) about "Konsten att skilja på verk och verklighet" [The art of distinguishing between a work of
art and reality], the significantly funny thing being that in Swedish both work
and reality build upon the very same lexeme "verk", like "work
and workability". She writes that art must be allowed to do things that
manifest hatred, clarifying "mind you, carry a manifestation OF hate, not
FOR." In a free society the freedom of art includes the acceptance that
artistic creations are artistic depictions, not journalism, not facts, but just
works. And she adds that all opinions about a work of art such as the staging
of the SCUM-manifesto require that it be seen first. - Well I saw it, but I
remember some feminist reviewer of the film Autumn Sonata by Ingmar Bergman portraying the
relation between mother and daughter condemned it on the basis that Bergman
never had been neither mother nor daughter. Forgetting that in his family life
he had had both mother and sister, that is, forgetting the cognitive and moral
value of all fiction literature. And the requirement guarantees that all
scandalous works of art will be commercial successes besides the fact that
"all publicity is good publicity" because it works like
advertising. It is also interesting to note that the initiative to bring
the SCUM-play to the city of Umeå was taken by its Theater Association whose producer Meta
Tunell assures on the net version of the VK article that the SCUM performance displays a
"strong artistic quality" and can "generate an interesting
discussion." Paradoxically, such provocative generation of
"interesting discussion" is rejected by aggressive or dogmatic feminism
when it comes to allow the Swedish Television to launch a series of programs
investigating modern feminism. Censorship is then openly advocated by a
columnist in the main Swedish Newspaper Dagens Nyheter (30 Dec 2013) because, as during the rise of nazism, a
provocative criticism of feminism and a raising of suspicion and doubts about
it in mass media may encourage oppression of social groups (women as seen by
feminists, but symptomatically not of men.) The Umeå Theater Association, with
financial support from among others The Swedish Arts Council, has
a long and stable ideological tradition having been also a co-producer of, for
instance, the Umeå Queer Festival so early as in April 2003. For the rest, the above defense of
freedom of art (but not of freedom of expression or of the press?) implies that
the above mentioned Christian pastor Åke Green would have been
outright considered innocent if he only had perceived and presented his sermon
and the Bible itself as a work of rhetorical art. It is startling that the
abuse of the notion of artistic freedom to the disadvantage of freedom of
expression is noticed so seldom, as paradoxically exemplified by the renowned
case of the gratuitously outrageous video Innocence of Muslims.There
are rare exceptions such as in some of the debates about the scandalous Lars Vilks' affairs, e.g. by
Susanna Birgersson in Dagens Nyheter 10 September 2012 (in
Swedish "Etiketten förändrar ingenting".)
In the meantime the feministic campaigns and the escalation of gender-hate
continues in the middle of suggestions of abolishing the institution of
marriage through the glorification of LGBTQ relations, as done in the Swedish major
newspaper Svenska Dagbladet about "the army of lovers" (11 March 2014), echoing the SCUM-like Queer Nations Manifest, and through the legal implementation of polygamy. Also in Svenska Dagbladet a
positive uncritical review published 27 January 2013 as När underkastelsen blir till glödande vrede [When subjugation becomes fierce anger] praises
the play "Lyckliga slut" (Happy endings) at the Uppsala city theater. International and national cases of rape reported by mass media
are dramatized in the play involving ten women. No questions asked but men are
confirmed to be "animals" and, among others, shit-tough feminists (in
the cultural language of the reviewer, in Swedish: "skittuffa
feminister") tell about their experiences of being raped and
battered. No questions asked about possible "whys" of such events and
society's development beyond the supposed criminal animality of men and the
naive innocence of women. When reality does not support such weird hypotheses
"reality novel films" are created incorporating "poetic
license" to depict a loved and respected father as crap, such as in a
Swedish film, Monica Z. about the jazz singer Monica Zetterlund as reported
by Tom Alandh in Dagens Nyheter, 17 September 2013. The
free staging of the imaginary father was confirmed the following day to
have been a symbolic indictment of "patriarchate". At the extreme of
this question is to be found the example of the "Stureplan case" surveyed by the Swedish television on 16 January 2013 concerning
a woman's alleged rape by two men with whom she had got home with and having
had earlier sexual relations with (sic - see my other blog insert on "Why complaints of harassement and offences?")
And if that was not enough, there are books which because of some reason tend
to be ignored in the dominating mass media climate, like the one which is
introduced as follows: "While national crime rates have recently fallen,
crimes committed by women have risen 200 percent, yet we continue to transform
female violence into victimhood by citing PMS, battered wife syndrome, and
postpartum depression as sources of women's actions. (When She Was Bad: Violent Women and the Myth of Innocence, by Patricia Pearson.)
Let me terminate by referring to the link to the best critical English summary
of all these trends I know, mathematician Tanja Bergkvist's "Gender madness" . Some believe that the only and ultimate way of reacting to such
trends is satire that
also might include extreme examples of murderous feminism and songs with texts of
hate appearing in YouTube. I also may quote, for a contrast with humanity, from
an interview with Philip Roth in New York Times (and Svenska Dagbladet) on March 2nd, 2014:
"As I see it, my focus has never been on masculine power rampant and
triumphant but rather on the antithesis: masculine power impaired. I have
hardly been singing a paean to male superiority but rather representing manhood
stumbling, constricted, humbled, devastated and brought down. I am not a
utopian moralist. My intention is to present my fictional men not as they
should be but vexed as men are. The drama issues from the assailability of
vital, tenacious men with their share of peculiarities who are neither mired in
weakness nor made of stone and who, almost inevitably, are bowed by blurred
moral vision, real and imaginary culpability, conflicting allegiances, urgent
desires, uncontrollable longings, unworkable love, the culprit passion, the
erotic trance, rage, self-division, betrayal, drastic loss, vestiges of
innocence, fits of bitterness, lunatic entanglements, consequential
misjudgment, understanding overwhelmed, protracted pain, false accusation,
unremitting strife, illness, exhaustion, estrangement, derangement, aging,
dying and, repeatedly, inescapable harm, the rude touch of the terrible
surprise — unshrinking men stunned by the life one is defenseless against,
including especially history: the unforeseen that is constantly recurring as
the current moment."
A SECOND AFTERWORD
The spirit in SCUM does not belong only to the pathology of Valerie
Solanas and the period of the sixties and seventies. It continues alive
permeating radical feminist thought, long after my writing the first version of
the present text, as shown in the famous #MeToo campaigns and in
some reactions to the nomination in July 2018 of judge Brett Kavanaugh to
become Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United
States: Christine Fair, an American political scientist and professor at D.C.:s Georgetown University, was quoted (accessed October 7th, 2018) to have tweeted, referring to
Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, that they were
"entitled white men justifying a serial rapists' arrogated
entitlement" and that they "deserve miserable deaths
while feminists laugh as they take their last gasps." She made
additional comments expressing support for post-mortem castration and
corpse desecration of the senators. This professorial pronunciation was
given wide publicity in mass media all over the world ( ex. here and here). My
position is that feminism is a tragically dysfunctional symptom of society
caused by devaluation of the values that were associated with
"femininity" (rather than women) in Western culture. This has
proceeded in parallel with the development of "masculine" technology
with its social effects, and devaluation of Christianity and its feminine
values embodied in the figure of Mary, mother of God, enhanced by the dogma of
the Assumption. Reaction to his process started with primarily affecting the feminity
of women and raising in them an aggressive masculinity, which has in turn
provoked a touchy feminine counterreaction in men, all expressed in hate and
its abuses. More on this mainly in my essays on information and psychology and political correctness.
I had to wait until October 2017 in order to see the misery of the
"spirit of SCUM" applied to the whole of Western society on occasion
of the "Me Too" campaign in mass media, which motivated a new blog insert (above). And the hate inbued in the spirit of SCUM could prognosticate the
birth of a counter-hate as it appeared later in men's INCEL movement of
"involuntary celibacy". At the time I happended to be reading Thomas
Merton's The Seven Storey Mountain, and I
also happened to think about SCUM on page 271 where Merton tells his thoughts
and feelings face the first news at the time of the beginning of the second
world war:
"And the world faced not only destruction, but destruction with the
greatest possible defilement: defilement of that which is most perfect in man,
his reason, and his will, his immortal soul. - All this was obscure to most
people, and made itself felt only in a mixture of disgust and hopelessness and
dread. They did not realize that the world had now become a picture of what the
majority of its individuals had made of their own souls."
[210502]
==========
E110726 Mass murder in Norway, and Christian
democracy
The excessively massive
text that follows, written between 2011 and 2015 deals mainly with the attitude
to, as well as the causes and meaning of the 2011
Norway attacks. My conclusion is that
the public attitude to the whole event is flawed. This was confirmed on
occasion of its 10th anniversary on 22 July 2021 by the Norwegian prime
minister in 2011 Jens Stoltenberg's comments in a
television documentary named after the site of the event, (Utøya, never forget, never be quiet, in Swedish, sent 22 July 2021, on the net until 22
July 2023). In my view these comments reveal a blatant public incomprehension
of the intellectual basis of the whole problem. This does not question that the
event was an expression of evil leading to murder and tragedy. It questions
that it was so because of infringing the western world's supposed basic values
of Democracy and Freedom of expression. In my whole work as summarized in my text on
Information and theology, but not repeating it here, I claim that democracy
and its associated supposedly ground values cannot replace God. They are (often
abused) conquests made through religion, in particular Christianism. Those who
publicly swear allegiance to democracy and freedom of expression, the more so
if in the name of a political party, are not to be considered saints or
apostles of love for humanity, not even if they happen to be murdered. And the
murderer is not a devil as the archetype of Hitler, even if he must be brought
to justice and atonement. The problem is how to meet evil, but not only in
others, also in ourselves. This is what Stoltenberg, mentioned above, now secretary general of NATO
opportunely calls for "not being naïve", not understanding that
Christian attitude to evil is much more than not being naïve. This lack of
understanding that also characterizes the general attitude to the mass murder
in Norway, however, is not surprising if we consider what Wikipedia reports
among details of Stoltenberg's own personal life, which I find as indicating
his belonging to a sort of politically correct SBNR-church - Spiritual but not religious:
Although being portrayed as a staunch atheist for most of his adult life, and
declining membership in the formerly official Church of Norway, Stoltenberg
has stated that he does not consider himself an atheist. He explained:
"Although I am not a member of any denomination, I do believe that there
is something greater than man. Some call it God, others call it something else.
For me, it's about understanding that we humans are small in relation to nature,
in relation to the powers that are bigger and stronger than man can ever
comprehend. I find that in a church."
Now over to my main old text on the issue. On 25 July 2011 in an interview at
the Swedish radio a journalist wanted that the Swedish prime minister should
have swiftly commented with better rhetoric the tragedy of mass murder in
Norway caused by the by now herostratically famous Anders
Behring Breivik. I believe that what the
journalist wanted was a more emotional or aggressive expression and
condemnation of the "extreme right" in general and the Sweden-democrats party in particular, in its resemblance to Norway's Progressive
party with which the
perpetrator Anders Breivik sympathized. Interestingly, the Christian-Catholic
point of view about not judging people in themselves but merely their actions
and motivations (a human is more than his actions) should come to the fore
along with, in the context, embarrassing "understanding" of the human
being, along with a redeeming, if not forgiving attitude. Mass media's and the
political establishment's bullying of Sweden
Democrats or the Norwegian
Progressive party, which
seems to attract such problematic or politically
incorrect people, just annoys and
aggravates the aggressive behavior of ditto people, recalling Hannah
Arendt's message on power and violence. Imagine if the U.S. had been able to think about this after the 11
September's events, at least in the official Christian mass held in a
Washington church after the event. Even the officiating priest did not
dare to say anything about "understanding" the criminals, and
reconciliation if not forgiveness like suggesting a withdrawal of American
troops from Muslim countries, or the launching of a sort of regional analog to
the Marshall Plan, which obviously were
and are considered politically impossible but would have had a baffling effect.
As expressed in a letter to the editor of Dagens Nyheter (9 October 2012) Muslims need indeed help rather than satire that
denigrates their religiously grounded only hope for a better life. Christian
caritas as a supplement to justice or outright retaliation in the treatment of
hate is obviously considered to be impossible. Hate is supposed to be met and
remediated only by hateful retaliation despite 2000 years of Christianity and
lip service to Christianity's moral superiority over Islam's supposed violent
hatefulness.
Moreover, it may interest you to note that, to my knowledge no one in Sweden
has so far been able or willing to spare a thought for the Catholic point of
view, the fundamental institution of FAMILY, the family situation as a context
of the criminal's background. Below I reproduce a few quotes that I gathered in
my ongoing research on similar issues (and which I put in the context of what I
previously wrote on political correctness and how good people are supposed to turn evil. And here follow the quotes,
From the English Wikipedia
"Anders Behring Breivik"
accessed 25 July 25 2011:
The English Wikipedia reports (July 25 2011) That his father Jens currently
lives in France as a pensions and had no contact with his son after 1995. His
mother, Wenche (née Behring) was a nurse, and is said to be a feminist. He has
two half-brothers and two half-sisters, from the previous marriage of his
parents. His parents divorced when he was one year old and his mother together
with him and his half-sister moved from London back to Oslo.
From The Telegraph, 25 July 2011
"Norway killer: Anders Behring Breivik was a 'mummy's boy'":
The absent father is a theme that Anders returned to repeatedly in his rambling
1.500 page manifesto. His diary
reveals an [odd conflict with] his mother – at once fond of her and furious at
the liberal upbringing she gave him. He wrote: "I do not approve of the
super-liberal, matriarchal upbringing as it completely lacked discipline and
has contributed to feminize me to a certain degree."
From CBS News - World Watch, 25
July 2011
"Breivik's father: I wish my son killed himself":
The father of Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian who confessed to last
Friday's twin terror attacks, said he was ashamed and disgusted by his son's
acts and wished he had committed suicide. Jens
David Breivik, a former diplomat who lives in retirement in the south of
France, said he first learned of his son's attacks from media websites." I
couldn't believe my eyes. It was totally paralyzing and I couldn't really
understand it," he said. Breivik's
parents divorced in 1980, and his father lived in London while he and his
mother lived in Oslo. In an interview with the Swedish tabloid Expressen, Breivik said he and his son have had virtually no
contact with one another since 1995 (when Anders was 16), except for a
"bland" phone call about 10 years ago. "I don't feel like his
father," said Breivik from his secluded home in southern France.
From the Swedish television SVT1, 22
December 2011, 10:00 p.m.
"Brennpunkt: Far till en massmördare" available on the Internet until further notice:
Title to be translated in English as "Focal Point: The father of a mass
murderer",
Norwegian documentary by NRK's ?? Brennpunkt-editors. The terror suspect Anders
Breivik Behring has in interrogations refused to talk about his childhood. For
the first time now tells Breivik father and stepfather about the mass
murderer's family and upbringing. Starring: Jens Breivik and Tore Tollefsen.
From the Swedish television SVT2, 19
April 2012, 08:00 p.m.
"Den
norske terroristen", translated title
of the original
"Norway's massacre", BBC documentary
by Edward Watts:
Documentary shown on BBC HD and BBC2 on 15-16 April 2012 on occasion of the
ongoing trial of Anders Breivik in Oslo's district court. The documentary dealt
with the question of Breivik's motives for his crime, whether his was sane or
insane, and whether he should be allowed to have his own statements of motives
broadcasted or not. Among others interviewed there was forensic psychiatrist Randi
Rosenqvist but none
of them even mentioned Breivik's
family situation during his upbringing, the absence of his father with
whom he did not speak the last 15 years, his views about his mother and the
other way round, etc.
One has to go to Wikipedia in order to be informed that Breivik reproached his
mother for being, in his opinion, a "moderate" feminist (whatever
that means, if he really expressed it so - no reference is given to the
source). He wrote about his upbringing: "I do not approve of the
super-liberal, matriarchal upbringing as it completely lacked discipline and
has contributed to feminizing me to a certain degree". It is extremely
interesting to note the example of another young man involved in serial
shooter who also is reported to
have had a similarly complicated upbringing (only for Swedish readers, in
a Swedish Newspaper.)
Yes, the FAMILY, and parents' responsibility for it and for their children,
contrasted to the death of committed love, divorces, feminism and promiscuity:
the very same family that, together with the Christian "Holy Family",
is repeatedly and programmatically scorned in various programs at the
"public service" Swedish Radio, as already indicated below. Repeated attacks are made as in the
"cultural" program "OBS-Kulturkvarten" in time for
Christmas 2011 (23 December 1.45 and 8.45 pm) with text by a prominent "feminist
sex entertainer" in the role of
amateur-apprentice theologian. Another writer-columnist in the role of
amateur-apprentice theologian-philosopher-of-science whom I already noted many years ago was invited on 28 October 2011 by the public service Swedish Radio to
give a one-and-half hour sermon on science and atheism that also contributes to the deconstruction of the
traditional values of the loving family, as do other "artistic"
sermons as indicated above in my entry on the
SCUM-manifesto. And most of the press,
especially the Swedish one, contributes systematically to the silencing of the
consequences of the ongoing deconstruction of the family. Like in the
Breivik-case it ignores or hushes the fact that many family-tragedies are
correlated with if not caused by absent or absented parents, almost always
fathers. One example among many is the case of a young murderer whose
symptomatic upbringing is hushed, like Breivik's, in a report by Dagens Nyheter (25
April 2012). If that is not enough this very same dimension of the problem has
also been hushed even after public opinion forced the Swedish government to
investigate and report the scandalous history of related child abuse and
neglect in institutions and foster homes (Vanvård
i Social Barnavård, SOU 2011:61 with
English summary). It is also symptomatic that the bibliography in the report -
I could not believe my eyes - neglected all reference to domestic and
international scientific research on the matter, as well as to books that
contributed to public opinion behind the report and to debates (cf. one more, on political intrusion
into the family, among many examples in Google on "omhändertagande av
barn") around the Swedish act on the care of young people (Lag
om Vård av Unga, ULV, act 1990:52). On
17 May 2012 the Swedish state television reported (film Stulen Barndom, i.e. Stolen Childhood)
on the tragic life of one man who embodied and fostered the build-up of public
opinion on the issue, ending his life with a suicide, exactly the same that was
reported (see above, CBS News 25 July 2011) that Breivik's absent father wished
his son had done. It should be obvious that some reflections are needed on the
importance of the family for the formation of youth, even if not circumscribed
to the views of Catholicism.
The ongoing deconstruction or destruction of the family in the name of
alternative "family constellations" can also hamper the integration
of immigrants and the mutual understanding of different cultures, which stands
at the center of the Breivik tragedy. This is especially so when religions are
involved, such as Islam, where the secularization process and the destruction
of the family have not progressed as much as in formerly Christian West. For
instance, contrary to the case of the Muhammad drawings controversy or Muhammad cartoons controversy, Jesus Christ is often the object of frivolous contempt and scorn, and
one late example among innumerable many like the Swedish Ecce
Homo exhibition is James
Frey's The
Final Testament of the Holy Bible with the goal of "creating a new
mythology" on a Christian model. For instance, the Swedish state
television channel SVT1 sent on 16 May 2012 in the investigative journalistic
series Uppdrag Granskning a program that with hidden cameras and controversially
edited recordings purports to reveal what values do Muslim leaders spread in
Swedish mosques and what advice imams give to self-declared oppressed women who
simulate a confession of would-be intimate family conflicts about sexual rights
vs. duties, polygamy and wife-beating. And all this is broadcasted against the
highlighted background of state subsidies to religious communities presupposing
their role of "maintaining and strengthening the society's basic values".
This is recalled to mean, among other things, that the communities must work
for "equality between men and women, and against discrimination, violence,
and brutality". In pursuing this the tv-program embodies all ongoing
confusions about the relation between public vs. private, religious vs.
secular, ethical vs. theological, civil society vs. government and the
principle of subsidiarity. In law this relates further to the phenomenon of criminalization (calls for police) that in Sweden has been the object
of a penetrating PhD dissertation by
Claes Lernestedt. The issue would take us too far here, but I have tried to
address it elsewhere, (as in another item of
this blog about the Society
for Cutting Up Men, S.C.U.M. already
mentioned above) when analyzing the related hypocrisy in political correctness
that the tv-program so well exemplifies. It assumes that religious institutions
should contribute to the reduction of ethics to law enforcement, recommending
solution of family conflicts by recourse to the police, ignoring even the
teachings of restorative
justice. It exacerbates mutual
mistrust and hate that may end in violence and terror of
Breivik-type. In all this most Westerners today condemn Islamic polygamy but don't
care about the "why" of monogamy and its Christian
sources. At the same time
practical polygamy is probably most often practiced tacitly among Westerners in
the form of serial monogamy, adultery and the extremes of polyamory without raising public outrage. And nobody cares about
the significant parallels between Islam, Judaism and Christianity with the
often misunderstood Christian teachings (Ephesians 5:24 and 1 Peter 3:1-6) with regard to wives'
obedience to their husbands that takes into account the difficulties of an
institution having two equal CEOs, as well as teachings (1 Corinthians 7:2-5) with regard to rights
and duties in sexual intercourse that could alleviate wife-beating or mutual
beatings by preventing destructive emotional blackmailing and retaliation (cf. Romans 12:20, Proverbs 25:21-22.)
It is difficult to talk about WHY Anders Breivik did what he did because of
what he felt. Difficult - and so what? Difficult as trying to understand
world-wide terrorism - and so what? It is symptomatic that nobody up to now
seems to have been able to submit Breivik's Manifesto (also in pdf-version) or not even the shorter and simpler video 2083 - A European Declaration of Independence to a serious rational analysis in the sense of
extracting from it some rationale that explains his legitimization of his own
views on societal decay, akin to the views held by Islamic terrorists or, say,
by the Una-bomber Ted
Kaczynski. This importance of the
family - all important in the Christian and especially Catholic perspective -
is to be contrasted to the fact that in many Western secularized countries one
prefers to talk about community, government, police, far right (less the
Stalinist-Maoist-influenced left or far left), feminism (it was
"men's" fault - see the Swedish text in a major newspaper on the
fatidic 25 July "How-should-we-identify-the-lonely-dangerous-men"), and legislation. And the whole society, in
the present secularized and postmodern frame of mind, sees the social and
ethical problem in the perspective of a legal positivism as expressed by lawyers and prosecutors, with no idea of restorative
justice. And the legislation of
our time has neither time nor motivation for one-hundredth of the depth of
thought as Alexis
de Tocqueville's 150 years ago. Yes,
the tragedy is probably the result of the ongoing tragic divinization and
misunderstanding of democracy as well as of the concomitant destruction of the
family as basic unit of society, and in particular of a democratic society
according to the principle of subsidiarity.
As a test of whether it is a question of misunderstanding of democracy in a
time when religious
freedom for minorities tends to
be interpreted as the secularized majority's right to question the freedom of religion, I analyzed an article (in
Swedish: "Därför ler Anders Behring Breivik") in the newspaper Dagens
Nyheter published on 20 April 2012. This was under the stressful days at the
beginning of the trial of Breivik. The article written by science
journalist and historian Henrik
Arnstad, in strange similarity to another one written some days later (25
April, by art critic Ingela Lind) purports to explain why Breivik appears
sometimes cool or even smiling during the trial as he also was during the
perpetration of his crimes. The explanation given is that he is a modern
fascist, and he sees "politically correct" socialists, liberals,
and feminists as the German fascists regarded Jews: in this perspective the
actions and attitudes of Breivik are understandable and logical. He does not
need to be understood (so long as he does not unite with too many like-minded):
it is not a question of psychological insanity but, rather, a matter of
political ideology (so long as it does not unite too many like-minded).
This author's attitude also seems to be the one that justifies the limitations
imposed on the freedom of expression in broadcasting Breivik's repugnant
defense during the trial, while, paradoxically, no limitations are ever imposed
on "ideological artistic" expressions such as, say, in popular satanic
rock music. In this way the author
of the article explains away everything by gathering together socialists,
liberals, feminists, Jews, and the term political correctness itself, and
himself, as
symbolizing the victims of fascism and Nazism. That is, a sort of inverse
"guilt by association", a redemption or "honor by association". In reality it can
be simply the author's application of the socio-psychological principle
of winning the argument by means self-victimization or victim mentality, especially in the case
of mentioning Jews related to the Holocaust as the author does. Or it was the
author's unconscious impersonation of Jesus' persona as way of distancing himself from the evil that
Breivik's example makes us suspect may dwell also in ourselves, as I indicated elsewhere. I ponder that it was in the name of the sanctified liberalism
of the French revolution and sanctified socialism of applied marxism that
innumerable innocents were sacrificed with the same logic of Breivik, as
today's feminist enthusiasts of theS.C.U.M.
Manifesto are allowed to advertise
with impunity the murder of men while priests are not allowed to preach against
homosexuality. Not to mention the cool and democratic collateral murder of civilians in the ongoing war against terrorism, or
the Lancet Surveys of Iraq War Casualties. All with the same basic logic of sacrificing
innocents for a supposedly higher long term ideal that in Iraq's case was not
even legalized by the United Nations, but is excused by reference to the
example of war against Nazism, if not Vietnam's communism. And yet there are
many who in their superficial analysis (without real whys) of Breivik refuse to
relate his mass murder (so long
as he does not unite too many like-minded) to
nations' "democratically" (as for USA's Iraq invasion) organized
governmental murder that is called war.
The author of the article, journalist and historian, even concludes his article
imagining in his interpretation that Breivik could well have experienced the
crime as "mission accomplished". The
journalist-historian does not perceive the embarrassing fact that the banner
became famous as it was proclaimed by president George W. Bush as marking the
end of major combat operations after the Iraq invasion in May 2003. It is,
finally, symptomatic that the author does not know, or acknowledge that political correctness also
has a main connotation in Stalinist "socialist" orthodoxy,
revealing itself in socio-psychological studies that i have reviewed elsewhere as
having much to do with the Western decadence of the family institution in
its Christian conception. Swedish readers can refer further to my earlier blog
item about the "family", and another one with its links as examples of decay
of family relationships.
And the family has much to do with politics, not only because the family has long been conceived as the basic unit of civil
society prior to the liberal atomization into discrete individuals. When humans
cannot experience a loving consideration within their family they will look for
it within the closest social environment, tribes, gangs, political
parties, or the historical nation, leading to desperate nationalism. , the "flag", the godly "royal
family" or "democracy", or "general
will" of the
"people". When all of them fail or are not sufficient because of the
unavoidable dilution of the interpersonal, intimate emotional ties, the next
step is socialistic or capitalistic internationalism and multiculturalism as related nowadays to the dream of cosmopolitan computerized globalization. One cannot rescue one's
own family but wants to rescue the world. But what ultimately and desperately
is being sought is likely to be the kind of love that in the Christian
tradition is comprehensively called charity. The obscure etymology of the word religion suggests that it aimed at binding or relating humans
among themselves and to God, revealing them as brothers because of their common
godly filiation.
if such thoughts appear quite weird to us, citizens of societies living in a
secularized culture, it may be due to having ignored or forgotten that
the "political approach" to the management of human affairs is
"making polis (or community)." "One of the essential conditions
for making polis is the creation of an image of sharing and the breakdown of
the ego-desire drive." (Words of this last paragraph up to here are from West
Churchman's The Systems Approach and Its Enemies, 1979,
p. 24, cf. p. 74). The secular attempt to make polis without a religious
tradition that supports ethics does not only undermine human tolerance to
different religions and fosters "phobias" (as illustrated by C.S.
Lewis in Mere Christianity,
(chap.6 or II.1) but also blurs political analysis into a hodgepodge of bombastic
political constructions. This is clearly illustrated in the inconsequential analyses
that the Breivik-events prompted political intellectuals to make, as Steve
Sailer about Breivik's Brain. Swedish readers may
read Paul
Gottfried about of the meaning of cultural Marxism adduced
by Breivik, and Roland
Poirier Martinsson about
the standard political left-right scale's attempts to appropriate Breivik's overall rhetoric. Others like Lars Adaktusson relate
terrorist attacks to "madness and extremism" and talk about
"motives and driving forces", a conceptual morass that I addressed in my review of Philip Zimbardo's
acclaimed book on The Lucifer Effect: How Good People Turn
Evil. The
Breivik tragedy has turned into a grab-and-scramble party of using the tragedy
for own political purposes. And this without ever questioning whether there may
be anything fundamentally wrong in society's "democratic" political
ethics that raises terror-feelings in mentally vulnerable, or spiritually
sensitive people like, say, the classical Islamist Sayyid
Qutb's who are then declared
criminal or insane as the politically incorrect dissidents in former Stalinist
Soviet Union.
No surprise, then, that forensic
psychiatry with its obscure relation
to sociology of law, politics, ethics, theology and religious feelings has had
troubles in defining Breivik's mental status. And we ourselves (as Tocqueville,
mentioned above) should have troubles in defining the dangers and cultural
status of secularized Western democracies. This became clear upon the
announcement of the court's announcement of the verdict on Breivik on 24
August 2012, widely publicized in the world press, not the least in the USA. The riddle is
illustrated by newspapers' editorials (such as in Dagens Nyheter 25 August 2012) that attempt to summarize the verdict as the resolution
of a conflict between the first pair of expert psychiatrists consulted by the
court (Torgeir Husby and Synne Sørheim) diagnosing Breivik as paranoid
schizophrenic and the second pair of
psychiatrists summoned later (Angar Aspaas and Terje Tørrissen) countering the
first diagnosis with their own of Breivik having been and being fully accountable and therefore entitled to prison instead of
institutional patient psychiatric care. That is, after the first diagnosis had
been published prosecutors and public outrage led the court to summon the
second pair of psychiatrists. The latter's diagnosis was then endorsed by the
court verdict and pacified the outrage. A consequence, however, was the
subsequent mass-media's smearing of the first psychiatrists and of the stamping
of the outcome as a failure of the discipline of forensic psychiatry. It came
to be claimed as being unscientific because experts disagreed among themselves.
As if it were up to the court to determine what is scientific truth in the
context of paradigmatic
strifes in normal science,
including pure mathematics. And as if it the choice
of the second pair of psychiatrists summoned by the court could not have been
"commissioned results". Not to mention that in my own experience and
as common knowledge in scientific communities the choice of experts determines
the outcome of evaluations such as in determining the allowance of research
grants. The awkward thing is that in the first diagnosis Breivik's behavior
would have been seen as motivated by delusional misconceptions while in the endorsed
second diagnosis it is seen as motivated by political engagement or
involvement. That is, again, as if political involvement cannot be caused by
delusional misconceptions. In this way the court's verdict uncovers all the
basic philosophical and ethical problems associated with the determination
of evil and responsibility that I have addressed elsewhere in my review of a well known but
problematic book on "how good people turn evil".
Theologians and philosophers like
Heidegger try to create a theology
without God as I myself considered elsewhere, and it is not strange
that politicians and political intellectuals also try the same in the pursuit
of the "breakdown of the ego-desire drive." Everybody seems to
mention and appeal to anything except Christian teachings that are
systematically ignored except for being smeared in associations to the "Christian
right". After writing most of this present text
I had to wait until May 2nd, 2015, in order to see the first essay in the press
that addressed the core of the Breivik-question in terms similar to those I
introduced here: Emerich
Roth's article in the Swedish
newspaper Svenska Dagbladet (in Swedish, 2 May 2015) with
the suggestive title "Bara kärlek kan rädda oss från hat" [Only love can rescue us from hate]. Nevertheless, it is symptomatic that
the author attempts to base his appeal for universal love upon secular grounds
with the result that the educational functions of the family are supposed to be
taken over by the school system and its staff [read: "society" and
government] including men who would function as "role models" of
fathers for children who cannot anymore rely on their dysfunctional families. This naively hopeful or, rather, hopeless reliance upon gender-equalization and government recalls two reviews of
mine dealing with political correctness, and
with state individualism. The naivety of Roth's conception is
sealed by his one only intellectual reference to, and quotation: by the Swedish author Hjalmar
Söderberg: "One wants to be loved, in lack
thereof admired, in lack thereof feared, in lack thereof loathed and despised.
One wants to instill some sort of emotion in people. The soul trembles before
emptiness and desires contact at any price." (From Doctor
Glas, 1905.) That is the way in which the complex message of love
vs. justice in the Torah, the Bible or the Koran was substituted by reference to the
common sense of Hjalmar Söderberg, in the supposition of being able to avoid
the issue of religion.
We are reminded that process of dismantling Christianity started long ago and
today not even philosophers themselves are prone to study, for instance, J.-G.
Fichte's atheism
dispute (in French La Querelle de l'Athéisme, the case described in French Wikipedia) at the time when
society and its legal system still cared about it all. Poor C. S. Lewis turns in his grave or
cries in heaven for apparently have written in vain his Christian apologetics
as in Mere Christianity. And so what? Many believe that Christ himself
died on the cross "in vain", while Christians and others are busy
elaborating complex conspiracy theories (cf. part 1 and part 2) about the main agent of
the event.
[210729]
==========
E110628 Democracy and information
technology
I feel totally estranged from the new order and I am horrified at how
easily many of my contemporaries accommodate themselves to an intellectually
blind attitude to information technology and its social setting. I would like
to write to friends about my moral and intellectual isolation and how my mind
no longer has a country. If a had a genuinely appropriated mother-language I
would have spent my time after retirement the year 2002 in writing some sort of
memories or book.
In the affluent and democratic Western world as represented today by the
USA or my home country Sweden the majority has staked out a formidable fence
around thought that some like to call by the controversial and often
misunderstood term political correctness. Inside those limits a writer is free
but woe betide him if he dares to stray beyond them. Not that he need fear
an auto-da-fé or ritual of public
penance of condemned heretics, but he is the victim of all kinds of
unpleasantness and everyday persecutions. An institutional career is closed to
him, a political one if he is a politician, scientific in he is a researcher
who depends upon research funds that nowadays are controlled by the politics of
science. Before publishing his views, he thought he had supporters; it seems he
has lost them once he has declared himself publicly; for his detractors speak
loudly and those who think as he does, but without his courage, keep silent and
slink away. He gives in and finally bends beneath the effort of each passing
day, withdrawing into silence as if he felt ashamed at having spoken the truth.
The example of Daniel Ellsberg who released to the
press the Pentagon papers, is an exception in
this last mentioned aspect, since he suffered this process but did not give
in.
It is not because I am an opponent of democracy that I want to be
sincere about it. Men do not receive the truth from their enemies and their
friends scarcely offer it to them; that is why I utter it.
My writing is written under the pressure of a kind of religious terror
exercised upon my soul by the sight of the irresistible
democratic-technological revolution and unfurling of equality in social
conditions which has progressed over so many centuries, surmounting all
obstacles, and which is still advancing today amid the ruins it has caused.
I realize that, despite my precautions, nothing is easier than to
criticize the whole of my work should anyone think of doing so. Those who wish
to take a close look at it will discover a dominant thought which binds
together, so to speak, the various contributions. But the range of the topics
which I had to deal with is very wide and anyone attempting to single our one
thought to challenge the body of thoughts, to quote one idea wrenched from the
main body of ideas, will manage to do so with ease. I should, therefore, like
people to do me the favor of reading my work in the same spirit that has guided
my efforts .
------------------------------------
All this (the text above) is my sort of paraphrase of some sentences written by
Alexis de Tocqueville himself and by Isaac Kramnick in his introduction to
Gerald E. Bevan's excellent translation of Tocqueville's book Democracy in America (1835-1840, p. xv, 298, 15, 25). I did feel very touched by this
author's work and its import for understanding the limitations of research in a
democracy, especially in the relation between theory and practice, action and
thought, politics and science (pp. 352, 529, 533, 624, 709, 732, 735) but also
regarding digital social media, political correctness, participatory design,
privacy, the role of law, and more. The title of chapter 10 in the second
volume (p. 529) spells it out for those who are aware of the USA-dominance in
the ideology of universities and information technology: WHY AMERICANS ARE MORE ATTRACTED TO PRACTICAL RATHER
THAN THEORETICAL ASPECTS OF THE SCIENCES. And the subsequent chapter on Of The Spirit In Which The
Americans Cultivate The Arts furthermore suggests, as Christopher
Norris in recent times does in What's Wrong with Postmodernism(1990), why some "Marxist" (and non-Marxist)
information scientists after the debacle of the Soviet Union and of political
faith have diverted their interest from sociopolitical systemic issues and
focused on DESIGN. I am convinced that many others would
benefit from Tocqueville's book. Here I just wished to reproduce some words
which, without further comparisons, can be held as a mirror of our ambitions
when words are no longer sufficient and most of them are likely to be
misunderstood.
[181227]
==========
E110513 Wagner-faddism as symptom of cultural
crisis?
Every year a certain kind of opera lovers make the pilgrimage to Bayreuth's
Wagner Festival. Richard Wagner is hailed as a musical phenomenon while the cult of Wagner has
internationally been identified as a business-industry to the point of a "Wagnerian
crisis of imagination". Wagner
initiatives are also taken in Sweden. Richard Wagner's entire operatic
cycle The Ring of the Nibelung, 16
hour musical drama was to attract both local and long distance Wagnerians to
the various cultural events to the city of Karlstad in April 2011. These events
and the general interest for Wagner was assiduously covered in the cultural
sections of main Swedish press, in numerous articles and reviews, exemplified
as follows (texts in Swedish):
(1) About Der Ring des Nibelungen in Värmlandsoperan in the city of Karlstad (16 February 2011)
(2) A dance event based on Wagner's opera (16 February 2011)
(3) The first modern middle-class man is found in Wagner (17 April 2011)
(4) ”The Rhein Gold” at Värmlandsoperan, Karlstad (20 April 2011)
(5) On Walkyrie (23
April 2011)
(6) "Siegfried" at Värmlandsoperan, Karlstad (24 April 2011)
(7) ”Walkyrie” at Värmlandsoperan (26 April 2011)
(8) ”Ragnarök” at Värmlandsoperan, Karlstad (26 April 2011)
(9) Summary of "The Ring" at Värmlandsoperan (27 April 2011)
(10) On Walkyrie at Staatsoper-Schillerteatern, Berlin (29 April 2011)
I have read them all but I could not notice any explanation of why the artwork
or the performances did deserve such an attention or, for that matter, what
they were about unless that is taken for granted in that the articles are
directed only to already knowledgeable and convinced faddist-fans who, in turn,
cannot explain their faddism. I know about very cultured and philosophically
sophisticated people who every year travel several times to Germany in order to
assist performances of Wagner's operas. In my attempt to understand their
unexplained passion for Wagner I reached back towards what I myself have
experienced, read, and thought about myths. I am particularly engaged in trying
to understand why the very same kind of people who take so much care for
Wagner's musical stories would never exert similar efforts to appreciate
Hebrew-Christian "myths" as they have been staged in innumerable
artistic and musical settings in our Western culture during hundreds of years.
So, what is this Wagner-faddism all about? The most sophisticated
interpretations, for instance of the Walkyrie at Berlin Staatsoper (referenced above) talk about the scenography of Guy Cassiers and his team from the
"innovation house of scenic art in Antwerp" that co-produced with the
La Scala opera in Milan. It states that it was about "the longing and the
search for motherhood. It is the search for a combined body-physicality and a
true sense of reality that has been made impossible in a world designed by
power's and perverted fatherhood's pipe dreams." And, further: "A
world that on every step commits violence against love, and runs forward in the
performance's ingenious game with lights and projections - a visual dialogue
with the main theme in the music." What are we to do of this verbosity? It
does not tell what is all about, but it happens to support the repeatedly indicted politically correct feminism in its ongoing struggle against patriarchy.
Half of the section "Kultursöndag" (Culture Sunday) in the newspaper
Dagens Nyheter 17 April 2011 DN is dedicated to Wagner, including journalist
Eric Schüldt's article "Varför älskar man Wagner" (Why people love
Wagner). It is not available on the net but a closely related article was soon
published (19 April 2011) on the (because of some reason) his intensely monitored Wagner-faddism written by the same author, a broadly advertised
Wagner-faddist. Somehow these article seem to never get to the point on what
all is about, but one thing that becomes clear that in the performance of
"Das Rheingold", Eric had found in the story "a gay to identify
with", and that at the first break of "Lohengrin", he looked
around in the audience and he met the eyes of a guy with whom he fell in love
with, and with whom "he lives still today." A Wagnerian friend of
mine commented upon this gay phenomenon as follows: "Concerning gayness
and Wagner it is true that one sees relatively many gay men in Berlin during
Wagner-festivals. If somebody only knew why..." And I replied:
"Anybody who knew why would also have understood in depth some of the
meanings of Wagnerian thought and music."
The very same day, 17 April, Dagens Nyheter, the self-avowed lesbian,
"gender professor" Tiina Rosenberg, a Swedish LGBT-icon who earlier as representative for the political party
"Feministic Initiative" FI had proposed the introduction of polygamy in Swedish law, was invited to explain who or what Wagner, after all is. She states as
expressed in the article's heading: " Wagner is like a Finnish sauna
bath". So much for the cultural level of main newspapers (and gender
professors.)
I am not going to solve the riddle here but in order to help myself and others
in further studies I reach back towards Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist
and influential thinker associated with analytical psychology, and whose
collected works I happened to study some thirty years ago. In Collected Works vol. 10 "Civilization in Transition" he touches upon Wagner in
two essays, on "Wotan" and on "After the Catastrophe". In
the latter he writes (pp. 213-214): " While Nietzsche was prophetically
responding to the schism of the Christian world with the art of thinking, his
brother in spirit, Richard Wagner, was doing the same think with the art of
music. Germanic prehistory comes surging up, thunderous and stupefying, to fill
the gaping breach in the Church. Wagner salved his conscience with Parsifal,
for which Nietzsche could never forgive him, but the Castle of the Grail
vanished into an unknown land. The message was not heard and the omen went
unheeded. Only the orgiastic frenzy caught on and spread like an epidemic. Wotan
the storm-god had conquered. Ernst Jünger sensed this very clearly: in his book
On the Marble Cliffs a wild huntsman comes into the land, bringing with him a
wave of possession greater than anything known even in the Middle Ages. Nowhere
did the European spirit speak more plainly than it did Germany, and nowhere was
it more tragically misunderstood."
I believe there is much more to be found in Carl Jung's conceptions or even in
encyclopedic summaries of Wagner's work, such as when Wikipedia remarks
that both the Idylls and the Ring Cycle (and the general European craze for
Nordic-Icelandic myth) were what Oswald Spengler in The Decline of the West
(vol. 2, pp. 310-311) characterized as "second religiousness", a
sentimental "toying with myths that no one really believes [any more], a
tasting of cults that it is hoped might fill an inner void...It starts with
Rationalism's fading out in helplessness... and finally the whole world of the
primitive religion...returns to the foreground..."
Or, as expressed by the Swedish political scientist Tage Lindbom in his book The Myth of Democracy (1996, p. 118) regarding clear warning signs in Western culture in
the early nineteenth century: "Ambiguous, outré romanticism
makes inroads into the human psyche, the music of Richard Wagner, for example,
manifests a morbidity in its peristatic, tropistic upheavels. Culturalism, the
idolization of cultural pursuits, had promised to bring the human spirit to a
higher level, mobilizing 'the eternal' in man's breast; but now we begin to see
suggestions that this spiritual journey is in fact going in the opposite
direction." An understanding of the appeal of German culture is also
fostered by Wolf Lepenies in his The Seduction of Culture in German history, where, however, the problem if not only to have
placed culture above politics, but also above religion making it a religion.
The latest most serious and failed attempt to revive the second religiousness
may have been The German Faith Movementthat
temporarily lured even Carl Jung himself . No comments. But Wagner
faddists pretend nothing. Well-intentioned approaches by Western intellectuals
try to relate Wagner's work to Schopenhauer's problematic philosophy, as Bryan
Magee does in Wagner and Philosophy,(2001) or they indirectly relate it to Parsifal arguing that it is
a mythological symbol that foreshadows the birth of modern man, whatever
modernity should mean, as Sonia Setzer suggests in her anthroposophically oriented book (2008, in Portuguese) on the very subject of Parsifal.
In the meantime the cultural editor of a major newspaper like the Swedish Dagens
Nyheter on 2 September 2012 allows himself to go on writing about the
relation between Wagnerian music and Nazism with haphazard rambling reasoning
in an article (heading translated into English) Can one listen to Wagner without getting the urge to
invade Poland? Its opportunely
obscure title and conclusion is that Wagner's music is about "embracing
the tension between manipulating and giving in to manipulation", and that
"it puts the perhaps most important questions about man's inner
tension". I perceive that as an example of bankruptcy in ethics as related
to aesthetics. The very same cultural editor writes a later article on 30
December 2012 with the title Spänningen mellan operahistoriens två giganter känns
inpå bara huden [The tension
between opera history's two giants is felt on the bare skin.] The article inconclusively
concludes advocating that "only by uniting Wagner's irresistible awareness
of fatality with Verdi's luminous faith in the individual human voice, we can
fully understand the world, aware that tragedy can always become a comedy, and
vice versa." This time I perceive still more clearly the bankruptcy of not
only ethics reduced to comedy and tragedy, but also of culture, at least
Swedish culture.
And this could be an introduction to the study of what Plato has to say
about music, to begin with the Laws (II, 654d), Republic (424b-c)
and Timaeus (47b-d).
Suggestions for further reading besides Plato, disregarding whether they
support my analysis:
Wagnerism in European Culture and Politics (1984)
<http://www.amazon.com/Wagnerism-European-Culture-Politics-David/dp/0801492
831> as found in the link
<http://ies.berkeley.edu/people/seniorfellows/dlarge.html>
The Richard Wagner Cult
<http://users.belgacom.net/wagnerlibrary/other/nordau.htm>
Aspects of Wagner (1988)
<http://www.amazon.com/Aspects-Wagner-Bryan-Magee/dp/0192840126/ref=pd_rhf_dp_s_cp_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=1SCQ7V57ZWDNVYBSD6X4>
The Tristan Chord: Wagner and Philosophy (2002)
<http://www.amazon.com/The-Tristan-Chord-Wagner-Philosophy/dp/080507189X/ref=pd_rhf_dp_s_cp_4?ie=UTF8&refRID=1SCQ7V57ZWDNVYBSD6X4>.
[211119]
================
110427 Easter - a time for anti-intellectual
anti-Christian propaganda
I keep trying to understand "the death of the intellect" and
consequently the explaining away of ethics as the phenomenon manifests itself
in research and in the supposedly intellectual argument, this time exemplified
in the cultural pages of newspapers. A Swedish cultural journalist who is also
a literary critic, Jonas Tente wrote on Easter, 23 April 2011, an article in
the newspaper Dagens Nyheter with the title "Do not underestimate a good story" [text in Swedish]. The article was in turn,
commented and praised the following day by the newspaper's cultural section
chief Björn Wiman in an article titled "Easter passion drama shows the power of the new
journalism" [text also in
Swedish]. Thus, it is not the new journalism that shows the power of Easter's
passion drama, but the other way round. Both articles were designed to highlight
the importance of stories or narratives, or as Wiman quotes, "We Tell
Ourselves Stories in Order to Live." Tente himself begins his article,
with a declaration of faith, that he is, yes, a believer, but a believer not in
God or the Bible, not a believer that Jesus is our savior because he had
himself tortured and executed in order to redeem our sins. He writes "But
I believe in the power of fiction to capture our ever-wandering minds and make
us the thinking beings, we flatter ourselves to be but too rarely are. "
The paradox is that he, together with Wiman, flatters himself to be that
thinking being, without accounting for how the stories made him such. Not a
word was said thus, whether the thinking beings who during a few thousand years
have contributed to built up our modern culture, and felt themselves saved by
the Jewish-Christian stories, in fact, were not really thinking since they
really believed in God and the Bible. It had been appropriate to mention, for
instance, something about the long-standing and ongoing discussions on rhetoric's relation to reason , or of Mythos to Logos,not to mention the classical questions of religion against reason. But
Tente's article inadvertently also is a defense of the Christian religion: he
believes in "power of fiction" but has nothing to say about fiction,
or for that matter, about wherefrom comes that mysterious power, or that faith
of his, not to mention love. But, in compensation he is the more accurate in
declaring what he does not believe and in that way he seems unconsciously and
at his best be an atheistic mystic ,
by analogy to the classical mysticism in the Christian "negative theology". It
is worthwhile to once again witness the atheist desperation in the paradoxical
empty declaration: I believe in fiction's power to grasp our
ever-wandering minds and make us the thinking beings we flatter ourselves to be
but too rarely are. It is remarkable that somebody should want to emphasize
something about the "fiction" while rejecting God for being
only fiction, and that before he really spells out what is truth and what
does it mean to be genuine "thinking beings". But it is clear that
modern and postmodern philosophy and psychology have already explained away
these issues: some time ago I heard a scientist relate to relevant resurrected
trends and refer to "moral imagination" as the ultimate source of a legitimate and rational creativity.
================
110427 - Påsken
- ett tillfälle för anti-intellektuell anti-kristen propaganda
Jag fortsätter att försöka förstå "intellektets död" och därmed också
etikens bortförklaring så som den visar sig i forskningen och i den förment
intellektuella argumentationen, denna gång exemplifierad i tidningarnas
kultursidor. I Sverige finns det en kulturjournalist tillika
litteraturkritiker, Jonas Tente som i påsken den 23 april 2011 skrev en artikel
i Dagens Nyheter "Underskatta
inte en bra historia" som i sin tur kommenterade och prisades
dagens efter av tidningens kulturchef Björn Wiman i "Påskens
passionsdrama visar den nya journalistikens kraft." Alltså
är det är inte den nya journalistiken som visar Påskens passionsdramas kraft
eftersom båda artiklarna avser lyfta fram berättelserna eller
"narrativernas" betydelse, eller som Wiman citerar "We tell
ourselves stories in order to live". Tente själv inleder sin artikel men
en trosförklaring, att han är visst troende dock troende inte på Gud eller
Bibelns ord, inte troende på att Jesus är vår frälsare för att han lät sig
torteras och avrättas för att förlösa våra synder, utan som han skriver
"Men jag tror på fiktionens kraft att fånga upp våra ständigt irrande
medvetanden och göra oss till de tänkande varelser vi smickrar oss om att vara
men alltför sällan är". Paradoxen är att han, liksom Wiman, samtidigt
smickrar sig för att vara just de där tänkande varelsen utan att redovisa på
vilket sätt vilka berättelser gjort honom till sådan. Inte ett ord blev därmed
sagt om huruvida de tänkande varelserna som under några tusen år byggt upp vår
dagens kultur och kännt sig frälsta av den judiska-kristna berättelserna i
själva verket inte varit riktigt tänkande eftersom de trott på Gud och Bibelns
ord. De hade till exempel varit på sin plats att nämna något om de sedan
gammalt pågående diskussionerna om retorikens relation till förnuftet,
eller Mythos
relations till Logos för att inte tala om den klassiska religion mot förnuft. Hela
Tentes artikel är egentligen också eller helst ett försvar för den kristna
religionen. Han tror på "Fiktionens Kraft" men har inget att säga om
Fiktionen eller för den delen den mystiska Kraften eller Tron, för att inte
nämna den bortglömda Kärleken: vad de är för något eller var de kommer ifrån.
Men han är desto noggrannare med att deklarera vad han inte tror på och på det
viset tycks han omedvetet och i bästa fall bli en ateistisk mystiker, analogt
till den klassiska mysticismen i den kristna "negativa teologin". Det
är värt att än en gång bevittna den ateistiska desperationen i den paradoxalt
tomma deklarationen: Men jag tror på fiktionens kraft att fånga upp
våra ständigt irrande medvetanden och göra oss till de tänkande varelser vi
smickrar oss om att vara men alltför sällan är. Märkligt att man vill
understryka "fiktionen" samtidigt som man misstror Gud för att vara
fiktion och innan man riktigt vet vad verklighet och verkligt "tänkande
varelser" är eller skall vara för något. Men det är klart att moderna och
postmoderna filosofin och psykologin redan har bortförklarat dessa frågor: för
en tid sedan hörde jag en forskare knyta an till aktuella återuppståndna
trender och hänvisa till "moralisk
imagination" som den yttersta källan till en legitim och förnuftig
kreativitet.
================
110313 Humility in intellectual work
After a longer interruption in blogging due to an overload of thoughts,
instead of going this Sunday to church I focused on prayer. In particular a
prayer which has direct relevance for the feeling of inadequateness in my
intellectual work: the feeling of impotence in face of overpowering
ongoing events. I do not mean only the catastrophes of earthquakes and nuclear
reactor blasts in Japan but in general the moral development or perceived
spiritual decline of social life. For the purpose of self-examination I
recalled the following prayer. The item which appeared most relevant
seemed to be "the fear of being wronged", in the sense of not being
listened to, perhaps because of being I myself wrong! Or because of believing
to have the merit to be accorded attention and approval, while this implies the
unfortunate wronging of others, my "neighbours". In any case, here comes
the prayer, attributed to cardinal Rafael Merry del Val.
Jesus! meek and humble of heart, hear me.
From the desire of being esteemed, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being loved, . . .
From the desire of being extolled, . . .
From the desire of being honored, . . .
From the desire of being praised, . . .
From the desire of being preferred to others, . . .
From the desire of being consulted, . . .
From the desire of being approved, . . .
From the fear of being humiliated, . . .
From the fear of being despised, . . .
From the fear of suffering rebukes, . . .
From the fear of being calumniated, . . .
From the fear of being forgotten, . . .
From the fear of being ridiculed, . . .
From the fear of being wronged, . . .
From the fear of being suspected, . . .
That others may be loved more than I, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it
That others may be esteemed more than I, . . .
That in the opinion of the world others may increase and I may decrease, . . .
That others may be chosen and I set aside, . . .
That others may be praised and I unnoticed, . . .
That others may be preferred to me in everything, . . .
That others become holier than I, provided that I may become as holy as I should,
. . .
(From <http://the-pious-spinster.blogspot.com/2009/02/cardinal-merry-del-val-and-his-litany.html>)
This litany is particularly interesting for understanding the
secularization of thought in Nordic countries, if not especially Sweden: it
appears to me as standing in direct opposition to the consequently perverse
interpretation of the Law of Jante.
[220223]
================
Jag måste dela med mina läsare den dikten som jag
tipsades om av min hustru, och som hittills hjälpt mig och kan hjälpa andra att
sätta rättmätiga band på den tänkta intellektuella verksamheten. Det gäller
dikten Böcker och
kärlek. Av Carl David
af Wirsén (1876)
När stum du
sitter vid ditt arbetsbord
Och glömmer för en bok den vida jord,
Och hon, som blef ditt allt, sig smyger då
Att sina armar om sin älskling slå,
Så säg ej buttert: lemna mig i fred!
Nej, lemna boken du, och gör så med!
Ty gråa luntor har du alla dar,
Men ej du vet, hur länge hon är qvar,
Och mången man, som sitter ensam nu,
Så gerna ville störas just som du.
Låt kärlek måla permeboken full
Med miniatyrer, skinande i gull!
Då skall, du arme, om ditt hem blir tomt,
Den gamla boken stråla helgonfromt,
Och just på sidan, der du stördes då,
Ett englahufvud vinkande skall stå.
================
100822 Fjäska
inte för pensionärerna? Tillbaka "Gamla
och unga"
Det är ofta min, om än återhållsam, kontakt med
massmedia som illegitimt “tvingar” mig att skriva så här. Sist Dagens Nyheters
insändare den 100821 om “Dags att sluta fjäska”. Författaren ondgör sig över
att partierna inför höstens val lovar sänka pensionärernas skatter. “Många av
dagens pensionärer bor gratis i fina villor som de för länge sedan betalt alla
lån på”…Detta tack vare att när de var unga drev igenom ett för dem förmånligt
pensionssystem varvid deras barn och barnbarn tvingas nu betala både sin egen
och de gamlas pension…Det lilla summa pengar de betalade in till
pensionssystemet användes till dåtidens fåtaliga och små pensioner…” Författaren
avslutar med att uppmana dagens egoistiska pensionärer att sluta suga ut sina
barn och barnbarn. Ibland ser man dock en och annan gammal pensionär som t.ex.
PRO:s Kurt Söderberg i Mitt i Värmdö den 11 mars 2014 som
förundras över "hur förhållandet mellan generationerna har förändrats de
senaste åren": hans generation mitt i ett hårt arbetsliv såg inte de äldre
som belastning eller hinder för vars och en välstånd och konsumtionsutrymme.
Men "helt plötsligt känns det som att vi som nått pensionsåldern mer och
mer är ett hinder för den yngre generationens livskvalitet".
Och mönstret upprepar sig där politiker bidrar till att hetsa upp
generationerna mot varandra och härskar genom att söndra då de på det viset
behöver inte stå till svars för dina felaktiga bedömningar och beslut. Till
exempel, Joen Dahlberg i Svenska Dagbladet kritiskt refererar den 11 februari
2013 att "politikerna
vill ha generationsstrid". Ordföranden Aron Modig i ett
ungdomsförbund, Kristdemokraternas (KD) till råga på allt, hävdar att
"pensionärerna vill sko sig på bekostnad av kommande generationer och
borde skämmas." Två andra politiker, KD-ledaren Göran Hägglund och Gunnar
Axén, moderat ordförande i riksdagens socialförsäkringsutskott, lär ha
"applåderat ungdomspolitikern och uppmanat till fortsatt kamp mot de
giriga pensionärerna." Inget massmedialt intresse här för fattiga
pensionärer så som i den hetsiga tidigare debatten om "barnfattigdom",
inte.
Det är symptomatiskt för dagens andliga klimat att detta är hur vissa ungdomar
ser på och känner för sina föräldrar. Om inte hat åtminstone avund i stället
för kärlek. Det spelar ingen roll hur många procent är dessa “många”
pensionärer som har det bra. De spelar ingen roll att många barn accepterar
dessa föräldrars ekonomiska stöd och förväntar sig ärva föräldrarnas förmodade
förmögenheten efter det att dessa gamla genom sina ständigt höjda skatter
finansierat deras daghem, skola, hälsovård och samhällets infrastruktur som
barnen numera tar för givna. Inte heller spelar det någon roll de 258 (i
mars 2010 upp till 679) miljarder kronor som år 1999-2001 regeringen med stöd
av alla partier överförde från pensionsfonderna till statskassan och till det
samhällsbygge som alla disponerar över idag. Det finns en del
annat skrivet om det för de som vill ha analys och fakta. Om
detta inte anses spelar någon roll så får det tillskrivas den bristfälliga
förståelsen för mänskliga rättigheter så som de bl.a. representeras av
begreppet personlig
egendom.
Och – om man skall generalisera som författaren gjorde - allt detta i stället
för att barn glädjer sig över att de gamla under den korta tiden de har kvar i
livet kan lindra ålderdomens ensamhet och krämpor genom att unna sig den
levnadsstandard som de eventuellt kunnat spara sig till genom återhållsam
konsumtion. Och i stället för att glädja sig över att de inte som i den övriga
världen behöver personligen bidra till de gamlas uppehälle och vård, tack vare
en utbyggd om än bristfällig äldreomsorg som i varje fall tycks befria dem från
skyldigheten att höra sig av och bry sig om dem.
[ 140312 ]
================
100524 On friendship and personal relations
Some renewed experiences prompt me to return to the question of "spiritual friendship" about which I wrote (in Swedish) on 090802, the past August 2nd.
With increasing age I am appalled by the amount of aggressiveness, vengeance,
and even outright hate pouring out and into human relationships. And then I try
to forget sheer indifference in wanton estrangement between dwellers who
believe they will never need the needy neighbour's help, or between former
friends who deny to the other the opportunity of justify or try to explain
misunderstandings. I see that, even between relatives in occasionally
"extended families", even on occasion of birthday celebrations and
parties, it happens, for instance, that the one person A will not participate
because person B is invited to be present, and person C will not even talk to
person D because of earlier litigation, and person E will reproach the warden for
not having invited a friend F, and person G will oppose that a former partner H
was also invited because if offends the new participating partner I, etc., etc.
In the middle of all this emotional confusion it will be even forgotten what
the party or gathering was all about, for instance to salute a common
acquaintance or relative who could have been seen as an occasion for mutual
forgiveness and conciliation.
I remember having met such situations in certain workplaces. Some person may
have fornicated (the classical word for infidelity in marriage), and litigated
with husband or wife, leading to a divorce, perhaps after several decades'
marriage, or, not better, soon after begetting the first children, which in
turn taxes the later relationship with their children, if any. And there are
wives who have renounced having children in regard to their husbands'
unwillingness to have any. A fornicating, say, father, who inflicts to his wife
or his children's mother and the children themselves the most grave humiliation
and suffering of a divorce may also dare to humiliate the very same children by
requiring their "respect" not only for himself but also for his new
lover with whom he may even entertain a folie à deux. In due time the
litigation and distancing from the partner leads to litigations and
estrangement from the children who, as they reach adulthood, will retaliate by
not allowing the child's grandfather or grandmother to see the grandchildren.
Whenever that litigation is (temporarily?) resolved, the inborn aggressiveness
will be projected into, say, a sister or brother-in- law, with the unconscious
purpose to disrupt their relation, and so on. Whatever they say may be
interpreted as an insinuation of malevolent criticism. In the meantime similar
processes will go on in the working place with projections of family relations
into work colleagues and managers, leading to situations like those described
in the pioneer work of Otto Kernberg, Internal World and External Reality (1981, part 3). I myself described concretely
such processes in an essay titled humanistic computing science, in its section dedicated to "Cooperative work: examples of
problems". This sort of personality or personality disorder may eventually
disrupt the network or a whole extended family or destroy a whole family or
network of relatives, or a workplace, and was described to me by an insightful
family victim as a need to hate: a hardly achieved conciliation
will displace the focus to the next hate-object.
In my own experience it is extremely difficult if not impossible to cope with
such personalities and most common recommendations to whoever is hurt is to
move out of the organization, far from the disordered personality. It is harder
to move "out of the family", to cut the relationship to a father,
mother, brother or child, but those who have religious faith can at least
resort to prayer. The personnel departments of businesses and institutions
prefer to play "blind" to this kind of problems which in their
simplest form may appear as bullying or mobbing. They have been professionally classified, more
specifically as borderline personality disorder, or pathological narcissism,
displaying as its most visible symptom a verbally abusive behavior.
All this is a sort or opposite to friendship and on a political plane attempts
will be made to claim that it is neither aggression nor (just) retaliation but,
rather, a call for justice. In the Christian tradition, however, it
will be, as I already wrote once (below, 100511, in Swedish), a neglect of the
integration between justice and caritas, sometimes conceived by
others in terms of love-power-justice. My favorite psychologist and humanist, Carl Jung, writes (in his
Collected Works 7, §78) that logically, the opposite of love is hate,
and of Eros, Phobos (fear); but psychologically it is the will to power.
Bad news for those who seek mainly justice through power, such as in brands of
feminism, and, in particular, power in aggression such as bullying in families
and in networks of relatives, but also in the politics of the Middle East and
wars. But ultimately I like to recall how God is fictionally quoted as saying
in the classic Imitation of Christ (the forty-second
chapter of book 3): "Without Me friendship has no strength and cannot
endure. Love which I do not bind is neither true nor pure".
================
100520 Why complaints of harassment and
offences?
So many people have been complaining about being harassed or offended to
the point that there seems to emerge a sort of "abuse-industry". There have been several authors
describing, if not explaining in depth, the phenomenon. I already mentioned (below),
Howard Schwartz, Maciej Zaremba, or David Eberhard. In part it is to be
attributed to the decreasing regard for others' feelings and values, or
inability to tolerate and discuss individual differences that
are perceived as threat to one's "group" identity. (For an
interesting essay on tolerance, in Swedish, please see Vägar mot en sund toleranstillämpning). I would like, however, to test other, completing
explanations. For instance, the role of the WILL in behaviour and feelings. It
is a concept and a magnitude that seems to have disappeared from psychological,
not to mention ethical, discourse. Human will had been long considered to be a
directing force to be guided by reason and morals in the attainment of higher
values. But it appears to me that nowadays people distrust the existence of
higher values beyond lofty and vague democracy and human rights. The will is
put at the service of pleasure. If something gives pleasure then the will is
put at the service of the task of obtaining such pleasure.
If this is so then we have an explanation of several phenomena. For instance,
several mass media which give advice in matters of personal relations insist in
the importance of not only doing things you like but also not doing things that
you don't like since it is inconceivable that they should be done if they do
not give pleasure. Correspondingly, there is no blame in doing things you like,
under the presupposition that it does not hurt others, supposedly equivalent to
the fact that you do not perceive that it hurts or may hurt others in the short
and long run. An example from a counseling TV-program some years ago was a
counselor getting the question of whether it was OK to have sexual relations
with dogs and she answered that it was not OK since you cannot ask a dog
whether it really likes and wants to be involved in that. And so it goes with other
things as with sex where, by the way, lustfulness and exciting attraction to
whatever queer object is blessed by confounding it with biblical and romantic
"love".
From this follows that harassment will be perceived whenever something happens
that the supposed victim does not like. For instance, whatever sexual action
that formerly was considered abject or objectionable is now considered OK if
done under mutual consent. What it considered now as unacceptable (a word which
has become curiously very common in use today) is not that it is in some
abstract conception to be evil or unmoral but, rather, that it is done against
your, the "victim's" will. And since the will is at the service of
pleasure, any action risks to be a harassment if it does not contribute to
pleasure. And this has not necessarily much to do with ethics, or right and
wrong. The problem gets complicated by the fact that it is more difficult to
understand and accept the case that what gives pleasure to one person perhaps
give pleasure to the other person, and, furthermore in the short run but not in
the long run. That would be the case, for instance, of supposed rape which
becomes rape after the victim realizes that what initially appeared as exciting
turned out to be disgusting, or the relationship turned out to be a bad
business because it gives no more pleasure. A supposed, foreseen pleasure
turned out to be a plague. An intercourse must then absurdly be preceded by a
written, signed, contract of agreement and of payment of claims for damages.
Harassment is then turned into money. Swedish readers may appreciate a
commentary by Lillemor Östlin on this pseudo-rape phenomenon that also recalls
the case of Julian Assange, on the Swedish site of the magazine Paragraf 19 July 2012.)
And something similar goes on with the problem of obesity. If life has no other
meaning besides obtaining pleasure, then the human will should be put at this
service, of obtaining sex and food. It will be extremely inconceivable to put
the will at the service of some other abstract value, if not, say,
"health". But health for what? There will be a trade-off between
shorter life with more pleasures and a longer but boring, tedious life. And health
is subjectively not so easily measurable and predictable as pleasure. So, what
goes for sex, food, and health goes for lots of things in society. There are
many pleasures and displeasures and many people will feel offended because they
have been thwarted in their will and their purposes disregarding their ethical
legitimacy...?
I would have to wait until 29 April 2011 in order to complete the text above
with a reference to the most interesting paradoxical paper that became famous
in Swedish mass media and illustrates the phenomenon address in this section.
It is Johanna Koljonen's article in the newspaper Dagens Nyheter 18 December
2010, with the title "Dags att prata om det" [It's time to talk about it], leading to a whole mass media
Internet-industry under the label of "Prata om det" [also as English version]. It shows in the most unintentionally pedagogical way what happens
when disoriented sexuality with ego-will put at the service of instincts comes
in conflict with other entities of the psyche, natural human feelings of love
and commitment, and with conscience, resulting in disoriented anonymous
resentment combined with vague complaints of abuse.
[120831]
================
100518 Why religion and social
issues rather than science?
Some readers, especially university students or research colleagues
sometimes ask why I have been focusing upon religious and mass media issues. I
myself felt rather annoyed when my scientific advisor, professor West Churchman, in his late years kept
repeating that 40.000 children all over the world die of starvation every day,
instead of continuing to focus on scientific problems of information and
inquiry. Why is this so? And why don't I write comprehensive longer texts which
summarize my thoughts and point the better way or at least my way? Because with
increasing age I feel that I have no time for tilting at windmills, in
the popular and superficial meaning of the expression. Perhaps this very blog
also is a tilting at windmills....I will try to illustrate the reason for my
frustration with this issue of so called science.
A university-based young researcher in a recent discussion about ethics and
aesthetics of research expressed the claim that a researcher "tries to
change, improve, develop, or at any rate to intervene in the context which
he/she studies. I replied that in order to put things right in such a matter of
ethics and aesthetics it could be enough to state that a researcher first of
all tries to improve: why should one else try to change, develop or intervene
in the "context", whatever that means? After some days of
reflection upon my question he concluded that there is a difference between
change and improvement, where "change" can aim to the search of
knowledge, without necessarily improving anything in relation to the
"client". In contrast, he said, the word "improve" implies
a receiver, that is for "whom" it is an "improvement".
Therefore, if one uses the word "improve" one must also answer the
question "for whom", and consequently it becomes also an important
ethical question to deal with.
Now, what are we going to make out of this? To me it is obvious that this young
researcher in the distinction between facts and values, between data and their
use, or between administration and politics, is rediscovering the main tenets
of good old positivism, in particular logical positivism which has been
thoroughly discussed in research during the fifties through the seventies,
before use and misuse of phenomenology, postmodernism, post-phenomenology,
design, non-modernism, qualitative research, and all the rest which started
growing strong in the eighties took the place of positivism. Something analog
is happening in the last years' enthusiasm for CBT, Cognitive Behavioral
therapy and other hundred therapies, in neglect of all past discussions about
behaviorism and psychology born out of philosophy.
Am I supposed, after some 40 years of work and fights in business, industry and
academia, to start all over again discussing these issues, despite the blatant
lack of interest in my social environment to read, study and apply, partly
because everybody is busy in trying to fill in RFPs (request for proposals) in
order to apply for research funds that will allow them to survive the pressures
of industrialized and commercialized universities? No. And I tried to explain
my state of spirit in such an atmosphere, in a Research Summary on occasion of the 70th Birthday.
Furthermore, in a documentation for a series of international seminars on Dialectical systems design and beyond to which I referred in a branch of my homepage
on research I mused upon several quotations from doctoral dissertations in my
own discipline, in order to express my concern and distress upon what was going
to become ad-hoc variants of post-phenomenology, qualitative research,
ethnographic research, etc. For instance, consider the following quotations in
a slightly edited form, from a dissertation on information systems and
organization : (1)An interpretive study relies heavily on the researchers
own presuppositions and skills. Because of this, any other researcher
would end up with very different results, including
prescriptions. (2) Multipurpose networks reward self-interest while
simultaneously they promote collaboration...I argue that it is central to
develop actor-networks that allow for different interests to co-exist.
(3) Because this thesis uses only one case study, the results in this
study cannot be easily generalized to other settings. Since IS
are context dependent, we should expect different results in other
organizational contexts. A case study such as this is rather difficult
to generalize to a wider theoretical domain. (4) The project is described
as successful and shows how the research sponsor succeeded in
securing information to its decision makers more rapidly/timely and better
structured.
Once again, what are we to make of this? Every researcher arrives to different
conclusions, and perhaps then every reader of this research also does so. The
researcher does not care about the legitimacy of interests since he will allow
different interests to co-exist ("democratically? another version of good
old positivism?). Results cannot be generalized and do not need to contribute
to theory. And the research sponsor is to be asked to declare whether the
research he spent money for was successful, possibly because it fits the
sponsor's interests.
And, finally, one further, third example with slightly edited quotations taken
out of a more recent dissertation on online communities, also in my own
discipline.
(1) To throw light (illuminate) on the questions which
stand at the basis of my work. (2) It has not been my objective to
include a representative sample (of members of the online community).
(3) Initially in my work there was no formulated hypothesis or
theoretical approach. The introductory analysis showed, however,
patterns and themes in the empirical material. The theoretical
framework was therefore not established at the beginning of my work.
(4) And there are no conclusions but, rather, some concluding
reflections like the non-controversial and already known: (4a)
software design affects social interaction, (4b) Meaning and patterns of use
are never fixed but, rather, constantly changing, (4c) Online community members
are co-creators of the software environment. And, the thesis makes a contribution
to the discourse concerning new forms of online communities.
What about that? What do you make of this science? The stated purpose and
conclusions give the impression of being to illuminate and contribute to the
discourse, whatever illumination and discourse mean beyond the agglomeration of
scientific texts with similar title. The introductory analysis, whatever
a-theoretical "analysis" may mean, was done on empirical material
which was gathered or sampled with no criteria and are not representative
(whatever that empirical and representative mean, outside hypotheses, theory,
and old-fashioned statistics). And the conclusions are not conclusion but,
rather, reflections, whatever reflections mean in science or in a discourse
with no hypotheses. But, of course, such a stuff may be curious, interesting
and stimulating, as an essay can be. But why not call it an essay? Anyway, all this, for bad and for good, may explain
why I have not been focusing on such science, and why I wrote my own
"reflections" in research summary on occasion of my 70th birthday already referred to above. But I may find a way
to return to the matter.
================
100511 Fortsatta angrepp mot katolska
kyrkan
Visst är det kanske inte fråga om fortsatta
angrepp utan bara om fortsatt fokus på katolska kyrkan, även om det betingas av
samhällets allmänna sexualisering. När man nu konstaterar att präster
också är syndare så tenderar vår avkristnade kultur som glömt eller aldrig lärt
vad synd, botgörelse, försoning och förlåtelse är får något att tänka främst i
termer av offentlig icke förpliktigande massmedial ursäkt och upprättelse i
form av ekonomiskt skadestånd som exemplifierat under Ekots
lördagsintervju med biskop Anders Arborelius den 8 maj 2010 (t.v.
nedladdningsbar från Sveriges Radio). Under en halv timmes intervju ville den ivrige
intervjuaren att den katolske biskopen skulle löpa gatlopp, krypa till korset
och helst erkänna alla sina och andras synder och försummelser, samt lova
pengar i skadestånd vad beträffar rapporterade och påstådda övergrepp inklusive
preskriberade brott begångna av katolska präster i Sverige sedan 50 år tillbaka
i tiden. Vad är det som driver offer och de som frestas att hela tiden försöka
bli betraktade som offer och att ständigt förvänta sig och begära
(åter)upprättelser och helst eviga skadestånd, eventuellt omdöpta till
försoningsgåvor? Det finns nämligen synder som är så pass svåra, även svårare
än pedofili, och som endast kan föreställas bli förlåtna av "en Gud".
Där behöver förment judisk rättvisa integreras med
kristen caritas.
Det fortsatta mediadrevet erbjuder också självvalda bland allmänheten att åter
ropa ut sin indignation, avståndstagande och fördömande förbannelse som
samtidigt obevekligen och offentligen intygar om deras egen högre stående
moral: ingen There but
for the grace of God go I där, minsann, allra minst då synden och
bikten är avskaffade i vårt sekulariserade samhälle. Det kan också vara
ytterligare ett uttryck för missuppfattningen att tystnad är lika med mörkläggning
av sanningen som i sin tur missuppfattas som bestående av informationsatomer,
bortsett från kontext, förtroende och omgivningens referensram. I sin extrema
form illustreras problemet av den kända kravet på svar på den
järnjournalistiska frågan "När slutade du begå brott?" Sanningen är
dock "systemisk" och inte atomisk eller molekylär eller cellulär, i
den mening att (förenklat) om man säger A så måste man också säga B och C, för
att lyssnaren eller läsaren inte skall själv koppla A med X och Z.
De som känner varken filosofins eller litteraturens historia är t.ex. inte
medvetna att liknande offentliga angrepp med anklagelser mot kyrkan och dess
präster daterar sedan hundratals år tillbaka, särskilt sedan upplysningens
1700-tal och har samma egenskaper som själva kyrkans beryktade häxprocesser:
dessa angrepp exemplifieras i "perversionernas klassiker" författade
av t.ex. Marquis de
Sade och Octave Mirbeau vars bakomliggande
filosofi dessvärre har en del gemensamt med dagens sekulariserat kulturklimat.
Känslan av "nyhet" grundad i historisk okunnighet kanske bidrar till
att dagstidningarna fortsätter med "nyheter" om angrepp på kyrkan.
Till exempel, jag råkade få tag i Dagens Nyheter den 9 maj 2010 och där fanns
det en ledarkolumn, Björntjänster, angående en "Jesus" i
TV-situationskomedin South Park som
tittar på pornografi, en Buddha som tar kokain, och en Mohammed utklädd i
björndräkt. I samma tidning fanns också en notis om Övergreppsmisstänkt
biskop får sparken, låt vara att övergreppet gällde en örfil mot en
minderårig. Men sexualiseringen blomstrar i andra indignationsartiklar om
att Rättsväsendet ser genom fingrarna med sexköpsbrott och
(den 8 maj) om att Våldtäktsmän måste straffas. Som om det inte
räckte innehöll samma ledande svensk dagstidning den 7 maj en pigg artikel om
den s.k. Lady Gagaoch om hennes video där Gaga i en scen står naken
framför två lesbiska fångvaktare som diskuterar huruvida hon har penis. Som om
det ännu inte räckte så fanns det samma dag, den 7 maj, en förstående recension
av filmen Camino betitlad Ondskan bor hos Opus Dei,
en i vanlig ordning "uppgörelse med katolicismen". Allt mildras dock
av något av annat sexuellt i DN den 8 maj som dock inte riktigt passar med det
övriga: Dotter dömd för falsk angivelse(av fadern för påstådda
sexuella övergrepp). Inte av undra om en störd 17-årig "flicka"
hittar på sexuella fantasier efter att ha läst sådana här dagstidningar i några
år. Snart kommer några att hitta bara ännu mera skumt om katolska kyrkan som
knappast gjort eller gör något annat och som tillsvidare kommer - i detta
kulturland - att förknippas främst med pedofili. Förresten, var det något
annat, gott, inklusive god fostran av ungdom och välgörenhet, som kyrkan gjort
under, säg, de senaste 1000 åren i världen? Hur var det med procenten och med
politikernas och statsanställdas typiska uttalanden om att "men vi kan bli
ännu bättre"?
Hur som helst: De som vill stödja den katolska kyrkan, särskilt inför det
pågående mediadrevet, kan skriva under Uppropet för katolska kyrkan i pingsttiden 2010. Sen är
det en annan sak att dito mediadrev håller på att expandera i takt med sin egen
logik, vilken bl.a. innefattar även föreställningen att det är inte alls fråga
om ett mediadrev av icke ifrågasatta medier utan om en kris som endast kan lösas
efter det att kyrkan tvingats till underkastelse och botgöring efter världsvida
demokratiska lekmannapåtryckningar. I spåret av allt detta är det många
liberalkatoliker som vädrar morgonluft för att framtvinga en mera omdanande
"modern" reform av kyrkan och katolicismen, en neo-reformation som
leder till en katolsk neo-protestantism eller utveckling som redan delvis
bidragit till av historikern Yvonne
Maria Werner analyserade problem med celibat och homosexualitet brand präster. Till
exempel den nyutkomna numret 3/2010 av den katolska tidskjriften Signum tycks all text
relaterad till pedofilin utom Anders PiltzSanningen
befriar
–Tankar i
pedofilskandalernas tid, andas en aggressiv revolterande ton mot både
kyrkan och påven. Däremot finns det knappast något angående den djupare
innebörden av pedofilins skador, angående det psykiska "varför" det
inträffade, dess betydelse i relation till sexualitetens inklusive
homosexualitetens perversion i samhället och dess politik vars inflytande på
kyrkan ger sig till känna på detta vis - stick i stäv mot katolska kyrkans alla
läror: se åter Yvonne
Maria Werners artikel. Och nu talas det alltmer om ett ökat antal
våldshandlingar mot kvinnor inklusive ett antal uppmärksammade mord, till den
graden att man i massmedia efterlyser "haverikommissioner" för varje
begången framtida dito våldshandling. Som om man hade råd att främja moralen
med polis och övervakning. Än så länge har man dock inte anklagat katolska
kyrkan för denna utveckling - utan bara "männen" - dock, åter igen
utan att den djupare frågan om "Varför", där inte bara kyrkan utan i
sekulära termer även Howard Schwartz hade något att säga i samband med the roots
of political correctness som jag berörde nedan i inläggen den 7 och
11 september 2009.
================
100415 Pedofili i katolska kyrkan eller i samhället?
Även om jag själv inte är katolik utan döpt
grekisk-ortodox och gift med en konverterad katolik vill jag förelägga några
tankar som nyanserar mediadrevet om skandalerna av pedofili
inom katolska kyrkan. Dessa tankar skall ses i ljuset av tidigare
inlägg i den utländska litteraturen som Philip Jenkins Pedophiles
and Priests (1996, recension här) och den
katolske påvens herdebrev i ärendet den 19 mars 2010: Pastoral
letter of the holy father pope Benedict XVI to the catholics of Ireland.
1) Är denna serie av tragiska skandaler ett problem som är specifikt eller
större inom katolska kyrkan än i samhället i övrigt inklusive i offentliga
sektorn? Beror det på den katolska läran eller kyrkans organisation? Skulle
allt varit bättre om kyrkan inte befattade sig med barn och ungdom eller
förlitade sig på den demokratiska statsapparatens förmodade högre moral? Är det
inte så att ju mer man gör eller försöker desto flera fel kan man begå, och hur
mycket gott gör kyrkan som ignoreras? För att svara på allt detta skulle det
behövas ett minimum av statistik, t.ex. om procenten av förövare bland katolska
präster i förhållande till dito procent i befolkningen, med statistisk
korrigering med hänsyn till kön och ålder (miljöer med barn), och omfattning av
kontakt med barn (jämfört med t.ex. lärare, idrottslärare, förskollärare,
fritidsledare, personal på ungdomshem) och jämfört med inom icke katolska
religiösa, statliga och privata institutioner som familjehem, ungdomsanstalter
och dylikt. Till exempel behövde jag vänta till den 28 april 2011 för att
uppdatera den här föreliggande texten med referens till den omtalade
boken av Patrik Sjöberg, svensk
friidrottare och höjdhoppare som beskriver händelser inom idrottsvärlden. Detta
samtidigt som dito Sjöberg gör sig till "kränkningsoffer" enligt det
tvivelaktiga mönstret om "negativ uppbygglighet" som jag påtalat
i mitt
tidigare inlägg om "den heliga familjen", ett
mönster som i de
aktuella redovisade detaljerna bortser från att de kan vara konsekvenser
av en politiskt korrekt skilsmässa, familjeupplösning och beteendet som från
15-års åldern kan betecknas som prostitution eller lån av den egna kroppen i
utbyte mot världslig framgång. Det är alltså inte bara fråga om naiv statistik
typ "hur många offer handlar det egentligen om?" som förmodas bli
åtgärdade med att "skapa rutiner" så att sådant inte skall kunna
hända, där rutiner och översyner förmodas lösa problem under överinseende av
ett antal "vuxna, goda och mogna människor", typ sådana som numera
skriver insändare till tidningar och som tidigare skulle varit lika oantastliga
som t.ex. en Göran
Lindberg eller en Johan af Donner.
Om denna analys åsidosätts med referens till att att en förment moraliserande
kyrka måste tillfredsställa högre moraliska krav än anklagarna så kan detta
vara ett uttryck för skadeglädjen typ "Och du då?" och fungera som
ett maskerad kampanj för att rättfärdiga förslappningen av anklagarens egen
moral: "Hur mycket jag själv än syndar så är jag ändå inte sämre än dessa
skenheliga" . Samtidigt kan de i och för sig berättigade reaktionerna mot
skandalerna i kyrkan vara en återuppväckning av 1500-talets luterska hatet mot
katolicismen, eller mot protestantismens allians med statsmakten, vilket då är
konsekvent med att man gärna talar om islamofobi men inte om katolicismfobi
eller mera allmänt kristusfobi.
2) Beaktande av samhällets och statens eget ansvar: deras bejakande av gradvis
ökande sexualisering, särskilt efter andra världskriget och sedan slutet av
1960-talet: lagstiftningen som t.ex. godkänner eller uppmuntrar grov pornografi
i massmedia, sexuellt utmanande kommersiell reklam, legitimering av barns
sexuella utlevelser från 15-års åldern, samt legitimering om inte främjande av
homosexuell, bisexuell, transsexuell, och så kallad queer livsföring. D.v.s.
alla områden den tidigare kriminaliseringen liksom klädkoder inklusive
uniformering i skolan fungerade som en hjälpande spärr mot sexuella frestelser.
Sist kan man tänka på det i pressen nyss nämnda förslag (med efterdyningar) att avkriminalisera
incest mellan vuxna syskon, som sannolikt kommer att utvidgas senare till
mellan föräldrar och barn, samt kompletteras (som Feministiskt
Initiativs och Centerpartiets
Ungdomsförbund företrädare antydde) till äktenskap bland
flera än två partners, etc.
Man kan t.ex. undra om samarbetet mellan dåvarande statsminister Olof Palme
och hans egen utnämnde justitieminister Lennart Geijers som skrev i direktiven
till den framlagda sexualbrottsutredning
SOU 1976:9: "Fördomar och tabuföreställningar har länge
hämmat en naturlig och öppen syn på sexuallivet och dess yttringar. En radikal
förändring i synsättet har emellertid inträtt på senare tid." Den
föreslog att avkriminalisera incest, upphäva åldersgränsen för sexuell umgänge,
acceptera blottare, mildra straffen för sexuella övergrepp och våldtäkt, samt
att pedofili med egna och andras barn helst inte skulle åtalas. Utredningen
välkomnades av dåvarande Pedofila arbetsgruppen (PAG) inom RFSL. Där var katolska kyrkan sannerligen varken
inblandad eller tillfrågad! Lika lite som tillfrågad som när det gäller
produktionen och sändningen av TV-programmet "Fittcrew"
i SVT2 den 25 april som sprider bilder av barn inblandade i ett
mönster av oregerligt och hämningslöst vuxet sexliv. För att inte tala om
tendenserna till barns sensualisering och sexualisering som beskrivs i
dagstidningar som t.ex. i Svenska Dagbladet den 27 och 28 jan
2014 ("Leksaker
inget för 9-åringar" och "De
förlorar fyra år av barndomen"). Detta leder i sin tur till frågan om vad
som inträffade och motverkade den föreslagna utvecklingen. Vad är som mitt i
den oregerliga sexualiseringen av samhället och vardagslivet ledde till en
"sanktifiering" av barnets sexualitet, av offermentaliteten (till
den graden av man sammanblandar kraft och
våld i ett tavtologiskt hävdande att "de är de maktlösa
som drabbas och det är förövaren som har makten"), och av synen på och
definitionen av våld. Detta till den graden att våldtäkt kan numera ske utan
våld och utan vittnen, bara anmälare låter trovärdig, vilket leder till absurda
krav på "samtyckes lag" (ref. "Samtyckeslag
löser inte mycket" i Svenska Dagbladet 28
jan 2014). Det är alltså frågan om den kulturella synen på "barn" (se
längre ner) som fram till 1600-talet tillät fruktsamma giftermål mellan vuxna
män och flickor ner i 14 års åldern, i situationer som sedan 1960-talet vi valt
att betrakta som våldtäkt.
3) Samhällets bristande intresse i att förstå berörda förövares innersta
psykiska och sociala motivation i att begå dessa handlingar: ett råare
samhällsklimat inkl. förhållande mellan könen som t.ex. leder till ett
omedvetet paradoxalt sökande av den barnalika oskuldsfullhet. Samhällets
pågående nedvärdering av djuppsykologin till förmån för billigare och ytligare
KBT försvårar förståelsen och terapierna.
Referenser:
* Jung, Carl G. The Psychology of the child archetype. Coll.
Works, vol. 9 part 1. Princeton Univ. Press, 1969.
* Hillman, James. Abandoning the child. Eranos, 40, 1971,
pp. 357-407.
* Hillman, James. Senex and Puer: An aspect of the historical and
psychological present. Spring 2005, Spring Publications (Putnam,
CT), 2005.
Samtidigt talas det mycket om celibat och homosexualitet men
ohistoriskt bortser man från varför de förekommer och varför det första skall
anses vara farligt negativt trots rika exempel på
även sekulära rättfärdigande, medan den andra skall bejakas oavsett
komplikationerna som avslöjats i 100 års psykoanalytisk teoriutveckling.
Dessutom bortser man från hela problematiken om relationen mellan erotism och
lärande eller fostran som ofta sammanblandas med
maktrelationer, så som den uppenbaras i klassiska historiska verk.
4) Faran med "mediadrev" som när en
massiv publicitet kring en mordmassaker på ett universitet eller på en skola
kan leda till flera sådana eller till "samhällshysteri" så kan en
eller flera "skandaler" inom katolska kyrkan som rapporteras i världspressen
leda till än flera sådana verkliga och inbillade. Detta har med själva
svårfångade tabu-begreppet att göra. Jämför också med svenska skandaler för
några år sedan som i debatten kring påståenden om rituella mord av barn,
jämförda med gamla tiders anklagelser i häxprocesser. Där fanns det tydliga
samband med grenar av feministrörelser. Det finns
svårförklarade men korrekta eller berättigade anledningar till att inte ge stor
publicitet till sådana händelser eftersom det inte behöver blir bättre för
varken offret eller förövaren. Förutsatt att närmast berörda handlar på ett
strängare sätt mot förövarna, vilket inte garanteras av en sexuellt frisläppt
demokratiskt samhälle där Demokrati och Statsförvaltning (eller i vårt
sammanhang t.ex. Bris och socialdepartementet) helt enkelt intagit eller
sammansmält med Guds och Kyrkans tidigare plats i kulturen under överinseende
av Massmedia och Debatt som tredje eller fjärde statsmakten.
Massmedia och Debatt är nämligen de nya gudarna som tillbeds även av vissa
liberalkatoliker som bara efterlyser öppenhet och insyn i ett transparent
system med oberoende kontroll och tillsynsfunktion och som tror att offrens
trauma är resultatet av en tystnadens kultur. Och tillit skapas inte av (tillit
till!) kontroll-öorganer utan av kunskap om delade grundvärden och om vad annat
och kanske övervägande gott någon gjort vid sidan om sina brister och misstag.
När var det som massmedia sist sammanfattade allt gott som kyrkan i 2000 år
gjort och gör vid sida om sina mänskliga brister och som kan förtjäna största
tilliten?
5) Vidare: Tillkommer tankarna i påvens herdebrev i ärendet den 19 mars
2010: Pastoral
letter of the holy father pope Benedict XVI to the catholics of
Ireland. Bortsett från dess mångfacetterade behandling av problemet så är det
värt att notera dess förmåga eller oförmåga att hjälpa oss hantera den sorten
systematiska fortsatta angrepp mot katolska kyrkan som delvis sammanfattas och
exemplifierades den 21 mars 2010 inslag om pedofilerna och kyrkan i
radions P1 "God
morgon världen" och som vid sidan om den tidigare nämnda
TV-programmet "Fittcrew" i
SVT2 den 25 april kan tillsvidare avlyssnas genom Sveriges Radions hemsida. Det
gäller det förnyade "liberal-demokratiska" angreppet, inte minst av
den återkommande och självdeklarerade kristna som gärna uttrycker sin förfäran
över katolska kyrkan med hjälp av sådana schabloner som referenser till
"manlig maktstruktur" och "herrklubb", och celibatet som
uttryck för en "krampaktig syn på kön och sexualitet", ett celibat
som de anser borde vara frivilligt som om valet av prästyrket under gällande
förutsättningar inte vore det. Som om det var celibat som låg bakom de otaliga
sexuella förbrytelser i samhället och bakom dåvarande
justitieminister Lennart Geijers ovan nämnda framlagda utredning om
samhällelig sexuell frigörelse.
6) Som Salesian
Bulletin uttrycker
det i marsnumret 2010 (sid 6): präster är inte helgon utan syndiga människor
som alla andra, även om historiskt kyrkans lära traderar en moralisk måttstock.
Celibatet behöver stöd och uppmuntran i form av respekt från samhällets sida,
precis som äktenskapet behöver det och inte heller får det nuförtiden. Tvärtom,
båda ifrågasätts, förlöjligas och föraktas, och det är inte lätt att vara
vegetarian i en köttrestaurant eller för en ungdom att vara avhållsam i ett
pornografiskt näste. Inför allt våldsammare vardagliga frestelser kan präster bryta
sina löften så som under hela världshistorien har de brutits av kejsare och
drottningar, adel och ministrar, domare och advokater, psykiatriker,
professorer, entreprenörer, affärsmän, makar och alla de andra som svurit inför
Gud, folket eller sitt eget samvete. Präster har mottagit orderns sakrament,
andra äktenskapets eller något av de övriga fem sakramenten, och inget
sakrament immuniserar mot synden. Inför allt detta är det ett särskilt problem
att inte erkänna synden realitet och möjligheten att konfrontera den på annat
sätt än genom den politiska korrektheten som förutsätter att anklagaren,
åklagaren, eller statsmakten är sexualmoraliskt oantastliga.
7) Man kan alltså förvånas av det omskakade förtroendet för katolska kyrkan, en
tvåtusen års gammal och beprövad organisation förväntas bli återställt genom
ett oantastligt förtroende för den statliga demokratiska kontrollen av stater
som under loppet av några tiotal år omskakas av otaliga skandaler. Även om
låter långsökt och det kanske inte hör hit leds tankarna till att när allt
kommer omkring har katolska präster inte åkt världen runt för att handla med
stulna transplantationsorgan eller för "av misstag" döda civila
inklusive de avgudade barnen i frihetens och demokratins namn så som den fria
världens militärmakt gjort i väldokumenterade videovittnesmål. Och trots
att många förvånar sig att kyrkan själv fått utreda kyrkans misstänkta
övergrepp enligt kanonisk
lag är det inte lika många som förvånas över att polisen
får utreda polisens lika misstänkta övergrepp eller att staten mörklägger brott
inklusive statsmord i
namnet av rikets säkerhet, även bortsett från extrema internationella skandaler
som Grisbuktens
invasion eller det misstänkta mordet på odömda Hamas-ledaren Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. Och allt
detta har tydligt samband med "kränkningssyndromet" som inom ramen av
den politiska korrektheten på sistone spritts i samhället och som i sekulariserade
termer uppmärksammats (om än inte i djupet förklarats) här i Sverige av David
Eberhard samt Maciej
Zaremba och i USA av Howard
Schwartz. I mitt eget senare arbete föredrar jag själv att försöka
bearbeta dessa frågor ur en mera etisk-teologisk utgångspunkt.
Vad ville jag säga? Finns det någon "executive summary" för
tankelata? Det är något ruttet i all denna hycklande upprördhet kring
pedofilskandalerna samtidigt som man godkänner eller bejakar
gränsöverskridandet i samtliga övriga sexuella utsvävningar och ignorerar de
sammanhängande drivande krafterna i denna utveckling eller moraliska
avveckling.
Och det är först den 25 maj 2011 som jag fick
anledning att återkomma till den här texten med ett symptomatiskt och relevant
kompletterande brev som cirkulerat på sistone bland katoliker och på
nätet: Letter of
a simple catholic priest (by P. Martín Lasarte SDB. Also here, and in
orig. Spanish ). Men jag
kanske borde hänvisat i första hand till George Bernanos Prästmans dagbok [orig.
Journal d'un Curé de Campagne, 1936]. När det gäller filosofisk analys av
pedofiliproblemet i katolska kyrkan känner jag till endast referensen till Mark
Dooley, Crisis in
the Irish Catholic Church, under inflytandet av Roger Scruton's Sexual
Desire.
Ytterligare information kan erhållas från följande länkar:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/16/AR2010041602026.html
http://shoebat.com/2014/05/06/sexual-abuse-protestant-churches-catholic/
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/forgotten-study-abuse-in-school-100-times-worse-than-by-priests
http://www.catholiceducation.org/en/controversy/common-misconceptions/9-myths-about-priestly-pedophilia.html
Långt efter det att ovanstående skrevs fick jag
kännedom om följande inlägg av forna påven Benedictus XVI:
motsvarande den engelska versionen
[200806]
================
100409 Smaklöshet eller omoral,
och "Salandersyndromet"
Vill du få en ögonblickskänsla för hur lågt vår
samhällskultur och dess exponering i massmedia har sjunkit? Titta då på
följande inslag så länge de är tillgängliga på nätet och försök förstå varför
somliga blivit äcklade av att läsa tidningar eller ta del av nyheter i
massmedia, eller då i sina protester riskerar börja uppfattas som
rättshaverister. På köpet kan du från den andra referensen här ner också
bättre ana kopplingen till varför Lisbeth Salander gjort författaren Stieg
Larsson så berömd: jämför då gärna med mitt tidigare inlägg här nedan den 14
september 2009.
1) SSU:s (Sveriges socialdemokratiska ungdomsförbunds)
TV-reklam: "Visst blir man förvånad". En videosnutt där valpropaganda
fokuseras på ungdomsarbetslöshet med en antydan om en ung mans "one-night
stand". Han vaknar i säng med en äldre kvinna som associeras till en
bakgrund av löständer in ett glas vatten och en använd kondom på
nattduksbordet.
Videosnutten
på YouTube eller
Videosnutten
på Aftonbladets hemsida
2) Filmen "Kick-Ass" med "Hit-Girl" där filmens innehåll
sammanfattas med att den stora attraktionen gäller en 13-årig flicka Chloë som
skjuter, mördar och svär.
Recension
i Svenska Dagbladet eller
================
100407 Fortsatt hets mot kristna
Det blir alltmer uppenbart för mig att upphovet
till att behöva skriva i det här mediet utlöses av "utanförskap"
inför det som jag själv råkar läsa, höra eller se i medier. Samtidigt
aktualiseras min tvivel om det är meningsfullt med att skriva eller över huvud
taget avreagera mig och som jag redan
tidigare uppehållit mig systematiskt vid. Plötsligt kände jag igen
något av allt detta när jag råkade läsa Nabila Abdul Fattah i tidningen Metro
den 7 april: "Jag ska
inte förklara min religion mer": att ju mer hon försöker förklara sig och
sina ställningstaganden desto mera känner hon att hon gräver sig djupare och
djupare ner i sin egen grop. När det inte är en fråga om mental sjukdom är det
nog den desto mera sannolika frågan om en kulturkris där språket inte längre
räcker för kommunikation när det inte längre finns en tillräcklig gemensam
"värdegrund". I Nabilas fall gällde det Islam men liksom i mitt förra
inslag den 14 november gällde det för mig kristendom och katolicism och
de olika mångfacetterade
"kampanjerna" mot
dem, så som det sammanfattas i min korrespondens med Sveriges Radios redaktion
för programserien "Människor och Tro" (MOT) - som följer i lätt
redigerad form:
From: Kristo Ivanov
To: mot@sr.se
cc: soren.wibeck@sr.se, tithi.hahn@sr.se
Subject: Förra fredagens och lördagens MOT den
19-20 mars
Date-Sent: torsdag 25 mar 2010 19.45.01
+0100
Hej! Jag vore tacksam om den ansvariga redaktören och ansvariga utgivare kunde
förklara hur ni ser på opartiskheten av inslaget om anti-semitism i förra
veckans MOT om
antisemitism.
Det är nämligen så att inslaget börjar med att helt enkelt slå fast att
antisemitismen har ökat i samhället utan att referera till några källor då man
vet att saken i dess olika tolkningar är trots allt kontroversiell. Sören
Wibeck samtalar sen endast med de amerikanska professorerna Marvin Perry och
Frederick M. Schweitzer" (två internationellt inte särskilt framträdande
historiker) som har med uppenbart judiska om inte israeliska förutsättningar
forskat kring historisk och nutida antisemitism, där staten Israel står i fokus
som i deras gemensamma bok Antisemitic Myths.
Den svåra fråga huruvida (hur många?) judiska
familjer valt att flytta bara på grund av ökande antisemitism eller även av
andra orsaker och på grund av obehaget av att de råkar "ställas till
svars" för statens Israels agerande berörs inte alls. Hur orättvist detta
"ställande till svars" än är det tillräckligt komplicerat - som
fallet med Ilmar Reepalo visar. För att kunna analysera denna fråga skulle man
t.ex. behöva nämna behovet av att veta hur stor procent bland de religiösa
eller kulturella judarna som bor i Malmö eller Sverige (eller för den delen i
västerlandet) moraliskt och/eller ekonomiskt stödjer Israel. Man skulle behöva
även garantera att judiska organisationer (låt säga nu - i Malmö och Sverige)
inte organiserar insamlingar till förmån med Israeliska organisationer med
svårutredda eventuella kopplingar till den israeliska statsapparaten. Detta i
komplett analogi med muslimer som stött påstådda muslimska välgörenhetsorganisationer
men t.o.m. anklagats för terrorism p.g.a. dessa organisationer skulle haft
kopplingar till terrororganisationer.
Dessutom fortsätter inslaget i MOT-programmet med
att bara föra fram författarnas oemotsagda hävdande att den uppfattade ökade
oviljan mot judar i Sverige förstärkts av propagandan i muslimska stater. Så
att hela programmet blev ett angrepp mot allt som inkluderar oviljan mot staten
Israel och de missförstånd som uppkommer från det, samt blev ett angrepp mot
"muslimska stater", om jag nu minns de exakta orden. Men det är klart
att det allvarligaste i inslaget tycks vara dess början då det slås fast att
"anti-semitismen" ökar och man tar för givet den snäva uppdelningen
mellan Israel och judarna, samtidigt som man hävdar att oviljan mot Israel
sammanblandas med ovilja mot judar samt likställer det hela med den
anti-semitism som uppenbara parter i målet, Marvin Perry och Frederick M.
Schweitzer skyller på ohörda svenska medborgares påstådda anti-semitism enligt
deras egen definition av begreppet. Jag tror att allt detta är särskilt
olyckligt därför att det bidrar till att skapa ett "utanförskap" för
svenska muslimer som serveras ett så partiskt inslag.
Tack för kommentar och ev. förslag till ett
uppvägande inslag som återställer opartiskheten.
Med vänlig hälsning
Kristo Ivanov
From: Sören Wibeck <soren.wibeck@sr.se>
To: Kristo Ivanov
Subject: Sv: Förra fredagens och lördagens MOT
den 19-20 mars
Date-Sent: fredag 26 mar 2010 09.28.41
+0100
Bäste Kristo Ivanov!
Tack för ditt mejl angående inslaget om
antisemitism i förra veckans Människor och tro.
Inslaget handlade inte om antisemitismen i Malmö
utan var ett försök till fördjupning av nutida antisemitism överhuvudtaget.
Programledaren påpekade i påannonsen att vi tidigare hade behandlat den debatt
som följt av att judar har flyttat och de av Ilmar Reepalu gjorda uttalanden.
Och det sades inte att antisemitismen har ökat utan att den har "bitit sig
fast i vår upplysta tid". I inslaget gjordes en klar åtskillnad mellan berättigad
kritik av Israels politik och kritik av antisemitisk karaktär.
Marvin Perry och Frederick M. Schweitzer är två
personer som så långt jag förstår har penetrerat historisk och nutida
antisemitism på ett hedervärt sätt. Deras bok Antisemitic Myths uppfyller god
akademisk standard. Att de inte skulle vara internationellt särskilt
framträdande spelar naturligtvis ingen roll. Frågan är vad de har att säga. Om
kriteriet internationellt framträdande skulle gälla för alla radions
intervjupersoner skulle inte många klara provet.
Visst innehöll inslaget en del obehagliga fakta,
men så är ju också antisemitismen en obehaglig företeelse. I våra programregler
ingår att hävda alla människors lika värde, vilket vi gör med stor frimodighet.
Men om du finner att inslaget var osakligt eller opartiskt kan du anmäla det
till Granskningsnämnden för avgörande.
De bästa hälsningar
Sören Wibeck, reporter
From: Kristo Ivanov
To: mot@sr.se
cc: soren.wibeck@sr.se, tithi.hahn@sr.se
Subject: Förra fredagens och lördagens MOT den
19-20 mars
Date-Sent: torsdag 26 mar 2010 8:13 +0100
Bäste Sören Wibeck (och redaktionskollegerna) på Sveriges Radio redaktion för
programmet "MÄNNISKOR OCH TRO" - MOT. Apropå "Antisemitism
i vår tid" som t.v. också avlyssnas på
radions hemsida.
Tack för snabb och engagerad respons, trots att
du inte tycks vilja erkänna det minsta värdet i min kritik. Jag uppfattar att
du bara "skakar av" dig dito kritik med hänvisning till
Granskningsnämnden, i trygg förvissning i att det knappast är någon lyssnare
som på betald arbetstid kan syssla med sådan svårtydd polemik som MOT dragit
igång just på betald arbetstid. Detta att du skakar av dig kritiken och avvisar
den i sin helhet motiverar att jag upptar tid och utrymme för följande
detaljer.
Min huvudsak var inte hur internationellt
framträdande Perry och Schweitzer skulle vara (men testa gärna på Google!) utan
att deras åsikter stod OEMOTSAGDA SOM OM DE VORE SÅ FRAMTRÄDANDE, till den
graden att de antingen aldrig skulle varit oemotsagda eller omöjligtvis kan bli
det. Det är uppenbart att de två utvalda forskarna är partiska i den mening att
de företräder bara en sida i den internationella debatten. Kanske är det t.o.m.
judiska sionister och i så fall är det allvarligt att MOT-redaktionen inte
bedriver känslig källkritik. Och vem som helst som sysslat med forskning vet
att - särskilt i samhällsvetenskaper dock i nästan alla vetenskaper och t.o.m.
i matematik - finns det motsatta synpunkter och legitima akademiska
strider.
Mera i detalj, vad menar du med att det inte
sades att "antisemitismen har ökat utan att den har "bitit sig fast i
vår upplysta tid"? I programmet början klargörs faktiskt att
"antisemitism får fäste i NYA sammanhang och i ny tappning"! Och du
påstår att man inte sagt att den har ökat: visst var det en
"nyhet" att några (procent?) Malmöjudar behövt flytta ut p.g.a. (då
ökat) antisemitism. Det är ju ingen nyhet att antisemitism inte minskat.
Och för övrigt, vad menas i förment
vetenskapligt språk att "bitit sig fast"? Här följer vidare ett urval
av vad som sagts som ovedersäglig sanning och som jag försökt anteckna under
avlyssningen:
1) "I den muslimska världen stöds
antisemitism aktivt av regering, media och intellektuella". Alltså i hela
dito värld, av alla medier och alla intellektuella.
2) "Personer med rötter i mellanöstern är en
del av det här tankegodset". Alltså icke namngivna muslimer, inte minst i
Sverige. Alltså måste allmänheten vara på sin vakt när den träffar
"personer med rötter i mellanöstern", vad nu rötter skall vara för
något - kanske upp till tredje generationen. Däremot får ingen
skugga falla på personer med rötter i judendomen, o i synnerhet Israel statens
makthavare.
3) "Den arabiska-israeliska konflikten har
"retat upp" många intellektuella, och den europeiska vänsterns och
höger alltid varit antisemitisk. Anti-israelisk hållning alltid varit Ok bland
intellektuella". Låt oss bortse från att uttrycket "reta upp" är
en retorisk förminskning av starka och kanske berättigade känslor och
värderingar. Men alltså: hela europeiska vänster och högern, och det
intellektuella etablissemanget. Vilka är då kvar, centerns icke-intellektuella,
arbetarna? - Kan man fråga sig.
4) "Ingen anklagelse är för absurd för den
arabiska pressen". Alltså "ingen" och för hela den
"arabiska pressen". Den västerländska och i synnerhet den israeliska
pressen är alltså däremot alltid och helt OK i sammanhanget.
5) "Staten Israel är alltså hotet mot den
muslimska antisemitismen". Anmärkningsvärd vändning, med den dubbla
negationen som avslöjar den märkliga vinklingen. Hotet mot Statens Israel och
dess bosättningspolitik, däremot, är inget hot mot det lidande palestinska
folket.
6) Antisemitismens rötter går tillbaka till det
[förkättrade kristna och katolska] Nya Testamentet och kyrkofäderna dock [som
tur är] även längre tillbaka i tiden. Dock utan att tala om vad var det detta
"längre tillbaka i tiden". Det som i så fall naturligtvis också är
belagt är att i det judiska Gamla Testamentet-Torah, i Moseböckerna finns det
rötter till rasism (Guds utvalda folk) och förintelse (av folk som står i vägen
till det förlovade landet).
7) "Den muslimska världens antisemitism, [i
sammanhanget opportunt exemplifierad med Iran] vill eliminera Israel och
judarna. Muslimska antisemitismen har lånat mycket från den europeiska
antisemitismen, kristen, nationalistisk och nazistisk. Lik nazismen beskrivs
judarna som kriminella och pekar sen mot en utopisk framtid då Israel skall
raderas och judarna elimineras." På det sättet lyckas texten retoriskt
sammanbinda elimineringen av judarna=Israel. Samtidigt insinuerar man per den
klassiska "guilt by association" en sort likställighet mellan
kristendom nationalism och nazism.
8) "Förlusterna i de arabiska-israeliska
krigen har förargat och väckt ilskan i dem muslimska världen". Så att det
är inte eventuellt upplevda orättvisor och ockupationer som orsakar ilskan (jfr
"retat upp" ovan) utan det är att man blivit förargad för att ha
förlorat krigen.
9) "Klassisk islam kunde inte acceptera den
nya staten Israel. Det som är muslimskt måste förbli muslimskt för alltid.
Israel har blivit en modern framgångsrik stat med demokratiska värden, och för
en del arabiska konservativa regimen har det blivit ett hot - de vill inte att
värderingarna sprids till det egna landet". På det sättet har man retoriskt
viftat bort Israel med demokrati, och attityd mot Israel = mot demokrati. Och,
förresten, vart tog då särskiljandet mellan judarna och Israel vägen?
10) "Numera är det Israel som står i fokus
för antisemitismen". Var finns ett bättre exempel på den retoriska
likställningen mellan judendom och Israel, samtidigt som man hävdar att
kritikerna inte skall sammanblanda judar med Israel?
SAMMANFATTNINGSVIS: MOT-PROGRAMMET HAR
(FÖRMODLIGEN OAVSIKTLIGT) BIDRAGIT TILL UPPFATTNINGEN ATT KRITIK MOT ISRAEL
TENDERAR SAMMANFALLA MED ANTISEMITISM. MOT-LYSSNARNA I ALLMÄNHET OCH MUSLIMER
SAMT ISRAELKRITIKER HAR NU RÄTT ATT AVVAKTA ETT NYTT MOT-PROGRAM DÄR
MOT-REDAKTIONEN ÅTERSTÄLLER OPARTISKHETEN GENOM ATT TA UPP MOTPARTERNAS
HISTORISK-VETENSKAPLIGA LITTERATUR.
Med vänlig hälsning,
Kristo Ivanov
From: Sören Wibeck <soren.wibeck@sr.se>
To: Kristo Ivanov
Subject: Sv: Antisemitism? Förra fredagens och lördagens MOT den 19-20
mars
Date-Sent: måndag, måndag 29 mar 2010 08.48.39
+0200
Bäste Kristo Ivanov!
Tack för ännu ett mejl. Du tar upp så många
detaljer att jag omöjligen har tid att besvara dem. Jag har i princip inget att
tillägga från mitt första svar till dig. Jag kan bara återigen påpeka att vi
gjorde en klar distinktion mellan berättigad Israelkritik och antisemitism.
Men, som sagt, det finns ett forum dit lyssnare kan vända sig om han eller hon
finner att ett inslag inte uppfyller kravet på opartiskhet, och det är
Granskningsnämnden.
De bästa hälsningar
Sören Wibeck, reporter
From: Kristo Ivanov
To: soren.wibeck@sr.se
cc: mot@sr.se, tithi.hahn@sr.se
Subject: Anti-semitism ? MOT den 19-20 mars
Date-Sent: måndag, måndag 29 mar 2010 09.19.01
+0200
Tack själv igen, Sören Wibeck. Som jag försökte
förklara, det viktiga i det här läget är inte att du "besvarar"
utan att du försöker ta åt Dig något av det jag försöker uttrycka, och om
nödvändigt läser om min text så som jag gör med Din. Jag accepterar att du
omöjligen har tid att besvara men inte att du inte har tid att tänka över då
det ingår i själv MOT-programmets filosofi och ditt eget livslångt engagemang
för kristendomen som också råkar på ett subtilt sätt smutskastas när man
konsekvent upprepar att den förmodade ökande eller befästande antisemitismen
har sina "rötter" i kristendomen, medan man också misstänkliggör
araber och muslimer.
Mvh, Kristo Ivanov
================
Hetsjakten på kristna (se
inlägget med mitt än så länge obesvarade e-brev här nedan den 5 november)
fortsätter: i "Kvartssamtalet" den
6 november (i radions program "Människor och Tro") i P1
presenteras åter tonsättaren Thomas Jennefelt, som i sitt
nya verk" Dixit Dominus - In the name of God" tar avstamp i påven
Urban den andres tal i Clermont 1095 som blev startskott för korstågen. För
säkerhets skull upprepas här kritiken mot påve och kristna. Den nyskrivna
musiken väcker frågor kring hur korstågens tankar lever kvar i vår tid och om
västvärldens förhållande till islam 900 år senare. "Vad är
antisemitism?" (temat för Kulturradions "Nya vägen" i P1
den 11 november) presenteras som ett försök att "nå fram till
debattens hjärta med hjälp av den till synes enkla frågan: vad är egentligen
antisemitism? Vilka uttryck tar den sig i det svenska samhället idag? Vilka är
dess rötter? I studion: författaren Ola Larsmo, och forskaren Henrik
Bachner". De inbjudna (än en gång, som det är vanligt i radion - se mitt
inlägg den 12 augusti om "Heliga familjen") är rörande överens i sin
kritik av kristendomen och väl skyddade från att i studion bli motsagda av
någon med avvikande åsikter, allra minst någon katolsk biskop eller företrädare
för Kyrkan. Lyssnaren blir åter påmind om att antisemitismens och den allmänna
rasismens inklusive den s.k. islamofobins rötter finns i kristendomens Nya
Testamentet och Paulus fördömandet av Kristi mördarna. Därmed inget sagt eller
ens antytt om att det är i Gamla Testamentet och särskilt i Torah (se
referenserna i mitt förra inlägg den 5 november) som finns rötter om
föreställningen av ett "utvalt folk" med rätt att t.o.m. utföra
folkmord för att invadera och befolka det förlovade landet.
================
091105 Angrepp mot kristendomen
Efter ett uppehåll p.g.a. utlandsresa och
avsaknad av retelser i form av tidningar så råkade jag se i Svenska Dagbladet
(som en gång i tiden räknades som en "konservativ" tidning)
ytterligare ett angrepp mot kristenhet och kristendom. Det utgår
från en referens till tonsättaren Thomas Jennefelt och
citat ur Bibelns gamla testamentet. Jag föll än en gång för frestelsen att
"slåss med väderkvarnar". Sådant slag lär inte vara töntigt och
meningslöst - lika litet som mitt intresse för teologi in min forskning var det
- om man ansluter sig till mera avancerade tolkningar av vad Cervantes menade med
den bilden och beaktar religionens återkomst i "Det
postsekulära tillståndet". Det resulterade i följande e-brev till
författaren av tidningsinlägget som förhoppningsvis är självförklarande och
inte kräver mina ytterligare kommentarer förutom att jag i brådskan inte
klargjorde att de aktuella citatet som är taget ur Psaltaren 110 har sina
direkta - om möjligt än värre - motsvarigheter i i Torah eller femte
Moseboken (2:34, 3:6, 13:16, 20:13-22), bortsett från Jesaja (kap. 9, 10, 13,
34). Här följer mitt e-brev:
Date: 2009-11-04 17.58 +0100
From: Kristo Ivanov
To: jenny.leonardz@svd.se
Subject: Förtal av kristenhet? Dagens Svd
"Musik mot religiöst våld"
Copies to: thomas.jennefelt@telia.com
Tack för tankeväckande artikel i dagens SvD
(<http://www.svd.se/kulturnoje/nyheter/artikel_3749073.svd>).
Jag vill dock göra Dig uppmärksam på att du
obemärkt bidrar till en
märklig pågående svartmålning av kristenheten och
kristendomen. Jag
tänker på följande utdrag ur artikeln:
-----
> Men när Thomas Jennefelt närläste texten
framträdde hat och våld:
> ”Sätt dig på min högra sida, till dess jag
har lagt dina fiender dig
> till en fotapall ... överallt skola döda
ligga; han skall sönderkrossa
> huvuden vida omkring på jorden.”
>
> Tankarna kring kristenhetens våld, då och
nu, förde honom till påven
> Urban II:s tal i Clermont i Frankrike år
1095, startskottet för de
> kristna korstågen.
-----
Både Du och Thomas J. måste förstå att det är särskilt olyckligt
vinklat att citera ett mycket kontroversiellt
svårtolkat stycke (lika med
andra besläktade stycken) från den delen av
"Gamla Testamentet" som i
först hand motsvarar den judiska Torah - för att
strax därefter
fortsätta med "kristenhetens våld" och
"påven".
Och detta trots att när det passar så håller man sig till standard
uttrycket "den judiska-kristna
kulturen". Varför väljer du då att just
efter citatet strax övergå till
"kristenheten"?
Om detta inte räcker för att förstå vad jag menar ställer jag frågan
till både Dig och Thomas J: hur skulle det låta
om efter citatet du hade
övergått till att hävda att dito citat leder
tankarna till den
judiska-kristna kulturen och judarna i
"staten Israel" vad beträffar deras
våld mot palestinierna i Mellanöstern".
Sådana övergrepp begås dock
inte mot judar och knappast heller mot muslimer.
De är kristna som alltid
anses snällt finna sig i vad som helst.
Jag upprepar att sådana formuleringar är mycket olyckliga just på grund
av att de sällar sig till aktuella förföljelse-
och förtalstrender som
oberoende av vad man tycker om dem motiverat
sådana initiativ som
<http://www.christianophobia.eu/>. Om
det intresserar så har jag själv
haft anledning att fördjupa mig i besläktade
frågor i t.ex.
<http://web.telia.com/~u46508757/KMcaritas.html>
och
<http://web.telia.com/~u46508757/DNJewChrist.html>.
SAMMANFATTNINGSVIS tycker jag att din olyckliga skrivning motiverar ett
särskilt extra inslag i SvD där Du ställer saken
tillrätta.
Med vänlig hälsning,
Kristo Ivanov
================
090914 Fler starka kvinnor (och vita svanar)
Efter att jag kände mig omskakad av studien av
"politiska korrekthetens rötter" som jag beskrev i mitt inlägg den 7
september (nedan) tycker jag mig se överallt och dagligen tecken på päträngande
starka kvinnor som uppbådar bilden av allmakt. Jag är visserligen medveten att
ur vetenskaplig synpunkt måste detta tolkas kritiskt vad beträffar dess
bevisvärde. Det är ju analogt till den vetenskapliga empirismens anförande av
"vita svanar": för varje ytterligare vit svan man ser invaggas man i
tron att alla svanar är vita - utom om man råkar besöka områden i världen där
det finns svarta svanar, om de nu skall också kallas för svanar, vilket är en
del av problemet. Det lärde jag mig först på 70-talet i min handledare West
Churchmans bok om The Design of Inquiring Systems (s 108-111).
Faktum kvarstår att nu har massmedia vänt sitt intresse mot Stieg Larssons
boktrilogi och särskilt dess första filmatisering i form av Män som
hatar kvinnor (det ser ut som en tanke att då tänker man inte på
kvinnor som hatar män) och dess skådespelerska Noomi Rapace som spelar rollen
som romanernas Lisbeth Salander. Till exempel skriver redaktören för DN söndag
i Dagens Nyheter den 13 september att Det hjälper att föreställa sig
seniga, envisa, buttra, coola Lisbeth Salander för att få lite kraft. Kan hon
så kan också jag...en kvinnlig deckarfigur som vi alla [verkligen?] omedvetet
hade längtat efter. Inte ett våp, inte en alkoholiserad medelålders kvinna,
inte en frustrerad småbarnsmamma med äktenskapsproblem. Utan något helt annat.
Lisbeth Salander.
På samma sida uttalar sig också tre på måfå valda representanter för
allmänheten om deras upplevelse av Lisbeth Salander: Hon är världens
bästa människa, min största idol...en egensinnig, modig tjej som också är rädd.
Jag gillar mest hur bra hon är på att hämnas...en ung, tuff och kaxig
tjej. Och längre fram i tidningen i tidningen uppehåller man sig vid
skådespelerskan Noomi Rapace och i vanlig massmedial stil utser henne till ny
ikon och berättar om hennes historia och familj dock inte ett ord om
fadern. Då hon var sju år flyttade hon till Island med sin mamma och sin
isländske styvpappa. Det är fascinerande att så många kvinnor har barn som inte
bara klarar sig så bra utan sin pappa utan att dessa barn har mammor som kan
t.o.m. fixa nya pappor åt dem. Inte att undra att kvinnor väcker så mycket
beundran, seniga, coola, modiga, unga, tuffa, kaxiga, d.v.s. som vädjar till
"urmoderlig allmakt", som är bra på att hämnas. Förresten, vilket var
det kristna budskapet beträffande hämnd? Vad var det som var lämpligt för vår
barnfostran och våra äktenskap? (rev
090919)
================
090911 Starka kvinnor, barnfostran och barnamord
Den 10 september 2009 publicerade Dagens Nyheter
artikeln "Det som blir kvar är allas förlust" som i nätupplagan
rubricerades "Mordet i
Stureby: Allt gick fel i deras isolerade värld". Det
gäller fallet där en pojkes flickvän (båda i 16-års åldern) lär ha hetsat honom
att mörda en "rival", en 15 årig flicka. Jag baxnar då jag känner
igen nästan ordagrant i journalisten Ulrika Bys ordval i beskrivningen av och
reflektionerna kring rättegången den problematik som jag uppmärksammade i mitt
eget inslag här nedan den 7 september.
Hör bara, några utdrag: rädslan för att
bli övergiven, jagsvaga pojken med starkt behov av bekräftelse hamnar i
underläge, hon är medveten manipulativ och vill behålla såväl makten som
kontrollen, hon förblir hans allt, hon både älskar och hatar den uppmärksamhet
hon får och han inbillar sig å sin sida att han inte kan leva utan henne, för
det ska han få hennes villkorslösa kärlek, det är inte svårt att tycka synd om
dem...
I tidningens vidhängande artikel av Fredrik Öjemar "Ungdomarna fälls för
Sturebymordet" refereras det att pojkens advokat Claes Borgström (är det
inte han som tidigare varit jämställdhetsombudsman och alltid uppträtt som
starkt feministiskt medveten?) beskrev förhållandet mellan flickan och pojken
som en "olycklig konstellation". Symptomatiskt nog är det ingen som
frågar om barnens egna familjekonstellationer i vilka de växte upp. Så långt
vågar jag dock inte tro att det stämmer, att dessa konstellationer i någon
mening skulle varit faderlösa konstellationer. Och jag har inga illusioner att
den politiskt korrekta pressen skulle undersöka saken. Men mitt intresse och
tilltro i Howard Schwartzs bok (nedan) har dock bara ökat. Det är alltför
mycket som stämmer, både fakta- och formuleringsmässigt. Det är nog en
samhällstragedi som pågår i skuggan av familjeupplösningen.
Och, på tal om starka kvinnor och politisk strävan efter positiv särbehandling
av förmodad saligförklarad svaghet: fredagen den 11 september skriver DN:s Anna
Bodin i "Tabu
missbruka sex" om en kvinna som beklagar sig över att hennes
äktenskap sattes på prov av att hennes make använde datorn till porr-surfing,
nät-sex och att boka prostituerade: hon förstår inte varför det är tillåtet att
sälja sex, när det är förbjudet att köpa. Om det är tillåtet att sälja
sex måste det finnas en laglig accepterad kund. Hur ser han ut? Hennes
uppfattning var att det finns många fritidshoror som drygar ut kassan, och att
de gör stor skada. Alla är inte offer som "Lilja 4-ever". I samma
datum skriver Hanna Kjöller en ledare "Kropp och
själ är ett" om boken Skapar
vården ohälsa? om "kultursjukdomar" som i hög
grad tycks drabba kvinnor: Men varför drabbas kvinnorna? Kvinnor lever
längre än mannen [men skall inte betala högre avgifter för
pensionsförsäkringar]... kvinnokroppen är starkare än mannens och att
det kan finnas evolutionära förklaringar till detta. Kulturen i kultursjukdomarna innefattar nämligen
kvinnornas förmenta frigörelse. (rev 090915)
================
090907 Feminism, Universitet och Varför
För att stödja studier av relationsproblem och
problem på arbetsplatsen vill jag med det snaraste delge ett lästips som betytt
mycket för min egen förståelse av tidigare erfarenheter och aktuella problem
inom universitetets "postmodernism", kulturen, massmedia och samhällets
vardag. Det är ett samhällskritiskt arbete av en amerikansk
organisationsspecialist som länge studerat "politisk korrekthet". Det
är en omskakande analys av bl.a. det stora och tragiska problemet som
universitetets postmodernism inklusive "the design turn" och feminismen
representerar i västerländska samhället med grund i (bortsett från franska
revolutionen o.s.v.) efterkrigstidens USA. Det handlar om faderskapets
symboliska värde som representant för omgivningens och rättvisans hårda krav,
ställda mot den förment allsmäktiga och villkorslöst omslutande moderliga,
curling-kärlek. Det är en analys som också tillåter en mera medveten utformning
av en meningsfull strategi för hur denna utveckling eller avveckling skall
bemötas, bejakas vad beträffar förståelsen av dess grunder och kritiseras vad
beträffar tragiken i dess konsekvenser. Mitt eget projekt är att översätta
författarens psykoanalytiska referensram dels till mera allmänna humanistiska
termer enligt den analytiska psykologins anima-animus begreppen,
men ytterst till icke -konservativa vetenskapliga och teologiska termer. Jag
själv ser sedan länge feminismen i dess vanliga massmediala former som ett
tragiskt och kontraproduktivt politiskt uttryck för legitima etiska problem och
söker en lösning i det kristna budskapet som hos Franz von Baader och i
moderna tider i verk som Stephen B. Clarks Man and
Woman in Christ (1980). Den aktuella boken är Howard Schwartz,(2003). The Revolt of the Primitive: An Inquiry into the roots
of political correctness.Publisher:
Transaction Publishers. Boken vars mest representativa titelord är Den
Politiska Korrekthetens Rötterpresenteras dels i recensioner i amerikanska
källor (se den sista länken här ovan) och dels genom själva författaren Howard
Schwartz. På nätet finns det prov på innehållet i form av enstaka
uppsats. I Sverige kan boken erhållas i postlådan på några dagar
från Internetbokhandel som AdLibris. (Rev090914)
================
090821 Aftonbladets Donald Boström och
"Israel-skandalen"
Den 17 augusti publicerade Aftonbladet en artikel
av frilansjournalisten Donald
Boström betitlad ”Våra söner
plundras på sina organ”. Den angavs handla om ett geografiskt område
där unga palestinska män kastar sten och glasflaskor mot israeliska soldater på
norra Västbanken och där Bilal Achmed Ghanan skulle ha sprättats upp på
sjukhus: ”Våra söner används som organreserv”, menar palestinierna. Palestinier
anger att Bilal Achmed Ghanan, 19, sköts och fördes bort av israeliska
soldater. Kroppen lämnades tillbaka ihop-sydd från mage till hals. Palestinier
anklagar alltså Israels armé för att stjäla kroppsdelar från sina offer.
Artikelförfattaren Donald Boström skriver vidare om den
internationella transplantationsskandalen – och hur han själv blev
vittne till övergrepp på en 19-årig pojke. Donald Boström belägger det faktum
att - och varför och hur - palestinier misstänker Israel. Att avkräva andra
bevis är att ignorera att fakta "kostar". Bara Israel har den
politiska och ekonomiska makten för att utreda sanningshalten i dessa
anklagelser. Eller för att förhindra en utredning genom motanklagelser om
anti-semitism.
Artikelns publicering följdes av inblandning från den svenska ambassadören i
Israel, med mera som sammanfattas under sektionen "Läs mer" invid
artikeln "Ambassadör
ångrar sig inte: Elisabet Borsiin Bonnier i Tel Aviv ger inte upp trots växande
kritik" publicerat i Svenska Dagbladet den 21 augusti. Så sent
som samma datum - den 21 augusti f.m. hade svenska ambassaden i Israel på sin hemsida ingen
referens till det som dominerat nyheterna i Sverige dessa senaste dagar,
däremot en notis om att "H&M öppnar tre nya butiker i Israel". I
avvaktan på en israelisk och opartisk utredning av anklagelserna vill jag för
min del bara hänvisa de som hyser blind tilltro till Israels försäkringar till
att noga studera omständigheterna kring den beryktade USA-skandalen kring Jonathan Pollard som
anklagades och dömdes år 1987 till livstidsfängelse för spioneri för Israels
räkning, och särskilt den israeliska regeringens senare agerande i målet. Eller
då kan man hänvisa till den av FN stödd "Goldstone
rapport" av krigsbrott som Hamas och inte minst staten Israel
gjorde sig skyldiga till under kriget i Gaza årsskiftet 2008-2009 och som
sist kommenteras
i tidskriften Arena efter det att jag hade skrivit ovanstående
text.
(rev 091016)
================
090812 Sveriges Radios "Heliga familjen"
[För ett komplement till det inslag som följer var god se här ovan, slutstycken
av "Mass
murder tragedy in Norway, and Christian democracy"]
Den 9 augusti skickade jag följande e-brev till redaktionen för Sveriges Radios
programserie i sommar "Heliga familjen". Den 12 augusti fick jag
svaret (längre ned) som jag bedömde helt otillfredsställande och som föranledde
mig att utan några större illusioner göra en formell anmälan till Granskningsnämnden för Radio och TV. Det enda
jag håller med om med programredaktionen är att idag används utsagan "jag
känner mig kränkt" alltför lättvindigt men detta problem tror jag mig
redan ha förstått och löst genom att tillgodogöra mig innehållet i den i
korrespondensen nämna boken Stjernfelt, F., & Thomsen, S. U.
(2007). Kritik av
den negativa uppbyggligheten[Critique of the negative edification].
Stockholm: Ruin Förlag. Att området (av någon mycket intressant anledning) är
mycket infekterat påvisas av debatten kring journalisten Maciej Zarembas serie om
"kränkning" i Dagens Nyheter i början av år 2008.
Sammanfattningsvis inser jag dock att jag inte kan fortsätta att ödsla tid på
sådana här punktinsatser i allt som förefaller tokigt i samhällsutvecklingen.
Det sker endast när känslorna tar över och jag kan inte låta bli. Slutsatsen
måste i varje fall bli att lämna alltfler enskilda frågor åt sidan för att
kunna samla krafter i en systematisk samlad insats i form av en bok eller
Internet-motsvarighet. Om det nu är någon mening med det (mot bakgrund av
t.ex. Predikaren och Kristi
Efterföljelse!)
Date: 2009-08-09 12.27 +0200
From: Kristo Ivanov
To: heligafamiljen@sr.se
Subject: Sverige Radios "Heliga
familjen"
Till Sveriges Radios
Redaktionen för sommarens serie "Heliga
familjen"
I serie "Heliga familjen" hörde jag
senast inslaget Den alternativa familjen Fredag 07 augusti 2009 kl.
10:03.
Programmet presenteras annars som följande som
sin hemsida <http://www.sr.se/sida/default.aspx?ProgramID=3140>:
> Heliga Familjen belyser idag några alternativ till den traditionella
> heterosexuella kärnfamiljsnormen. Vi träffar
Hanne Gorton Lindblad, 18,
> som växt upp med homosexuella föräldrar. Vi
hör även Tove, som valt
> att inseminera sig för att kunna få barn
utan att ha en partner.
> Och så äter vi middag med socialministern
Göran Hägglund, känd för
> att ifrågasätta alla andra familjeformer än
den heterosexuella
> kärnfamiljen.
Jag vill fråga följande och är tacksam för ett ordentligt engagerat svar: Anser
redaktionens själv och i synnerhet den ansvarige utgivaren att programmet
uppfyller kraven på opartiskhet och kanske även objektivitet? Som bekant:
Opartiskhet (NE): krav som anses gälla i princip all nyhetsförmedling, särskilt
inom s.k. public-service medier. Opartiskhet ingår i kravet på objektivitet och
kan specificeras som balans i nyhetsurvalet samt neutralitet i innehåll och framställning.
Min bedömning är att t.ex. det senaste programmet INTE uppfyller dessa krav:
visserligen intervjuade man Göran Hägglund som uppenbarligen inte delade
intervjuarens (eller var två intervjuare) åsikter. Intervjuarna tycktes ibland
inte kunna låta honom prata ledigt utan ansatte honom ibland med ledande frågor
men längre inslag av egna åsikter. Men det är inte huvudsaken. Ett viktigt
inslag var en serie tillfrågade experter (bl.a. pedagoger) som samtliga
ifrågasatte Göra Hägglunds åsikter.
Det kan man skylla på att redaktionen inte funnit några som helst experter som
delade hans åsikter. Men är det verkligen så, då jag själv känner till flera
experter inklusive debattörer sådana som delar Hägglunds åsikter. Har
redaktionen ansträngt sig för att finna sådana? Var det opartiskt att ställa
TIO likadana åsikter mot EN skiljaktig dito? För övrigt anser redaktionen att
t.ex. teologi som historiskt förankrat universitetsämne också har sina
experter? Är det långsökt att t.ex. tillfråga den katolske biskopen Anders
Arborelius eller en massmedial och intellektuell expertpräst som Anders Piltz i
Lund som ibland anlitas i andra program som t.ex. filosofiska rummet? Eller att
överhuvudtaget tillfråga någon som helhjärtat råkar stödja Göran Hägglunds
ställningstaganden med grund i vetenskapliga, psykologiska, sociologiska eller
filosofiska rationella argument? Och var det meningen med programseriens rubrik
att på en gång bara förlöjliga och vifta bort själva kristna begreppet
"Heliga familjen" som inte ens bli föremål för presentation och
diskussion i något enda program i serien?
ß Som sagt, jag är tacksam för ett seriöst engagerat svar eftersom den här
serien har upplevts som problematisk för att inte säga kränkande av många
lyssnare som också vill gärna anmäla den till Granskningsnämnden för Radio och
TV. Jag är medveten att detta har paradoxalt bidragit till dess popularitet och
att detta i sig inte anses problematiskt, utan tvärtom. Särskilt om man inte
tillgodogjort sig den sortens kritik mot "provokation" och
"gränsöverskridande" som förs fram av t.ex. Stjernfelt och Thomsen i
"Kritik av den negativa uppbyggligheten".
Med vänlig hälsning, Kristo Ivanov
---
SVARET den 12 augusti
Date: 2009-08-12 11.32 +0200
From: Heliga Familjen SR P1 <heligafamiljen@sr.se>
To: Kristo Ivanov
Subject: Sv: Sverige Radios "Heliga
familjen"
Copies to: Externa SR Nya Medier
<externa@sr.se>
Hej Kristo!
Vi ringde både till experter som vi visste skulle
ifrågasätta Hägglunds åsikter och till företrädare för stora erkända
organisationer som arbetar för barns rättigheter, för att höra deras tankar om
Hägglunds åsikter. Vårt uppdrag är att låta politiker och andra
samhällsdebattörer och experter föra fram sina åsikter och teorier i radio,
inte att leta upp exakt lika många företrädare för varje åsikt.
Vårt namn anspelar på tanken att familjelivet skulle vara något som inte får
diskuteras i offentligheten, inte får ifrågasättas eller granskas som den
samhällsinstitution det faktiskt är. Denna granskning anser vi är nödvändig i
ett demokratiskt samhälle, precis som vi journalister ska granska
myndigheterna, medierna, religionerna, politiken och alla andra tunga
samhällsinstitutioner, oavsett om det får någon att känna sig kränkt eller
ej.
ß vänligen
Johanna Langhorst, Heliga Familjen
================
090802 Andlig vänskap - Spiritual friendship
Efter det att ha sett hur långvariga vänskap
(eller vad det nu var) kan dö ut läser jag med eftertanke om en kurs som
annonseras i Katolskt
Forum - en skrift från Sankta Eugenias katolska församling
avseende verksamheten hösten 2009:
Vad skiljer andlig vänskap från "vanlig vänskap"? Aelred of Rievaulx,
inspirerad av Ciceros text
"Om vänskap",
inledde en självutforskande inre resa och producerade en av de mest
tankeväckande avhandlingar om fenomenet helig vänskap i all kristen litteratur.
I hans fotspår återkommer temat i skrifter av Francis de Sales och
hans andliga vän Jane de Chantal. Vad har
hänt med meningen och värdet av vänskap 400 år senare? Vad kännetecknar äkta
och falska vänner? Vad är passionens roll i vänskap? Var finns Gud i relationen
idag? Resan in i Gud, även om den är djupt personlig, är inte privat. Denna
kurs handlar om vägen till en kärleksfull relation som vi odlar för att få
hjälp att fördjupa vår relation till Gud.
Det slår mig att på senare tider har jag ofta
återkommit till vad jag minns efter att ha läst hos Aristoteles om de
tre sorters vänskap: för nytta, nöje och riktig vänskap där några vill gärna
tolka den sistnämnda som att bejaka allt som den behövande vännen behagar betrakta
som sitt eget bästa. Eller läst i Kristi
Efterföljelse, om att en riktigt vänskap endast kan upprätthållas med en
överordnad gemensam tro som hjälper att förlåta, tåla och fördraga. Och
relationer mellan släktingar i allmänhet och mellan makar och deras barn i
synnerhet borde utgöra de mest värdefulla exemplen av mänsklig vänskap. Den
vänskap som idag systematiskt ifrågasätts i den med hjälp av radio- och TV
avgifter finansierade "pedagogiskt underhållande" serie i Sveriges
Radio om den oheliga
familjen, producerad av människor som inte tycks ha hunnit uppehålla
sig vid innebörden av den Heliga
familjen.
Resultat? Jag frångick mitt sedan många år avgivet "nyårslöfte" att
inte köpa flera böcker innan jag läst färdigt de många goda böckerna som redan
ligger i högar och står på bokhyllorna - och innan jag slängt eller lämnat på
sjukhusets bibliotek de som jag aldrig kommer att läsa. Snart kommer de som
eventuellt blir de nya vännernas beställda böcker: Aelred of
Rievaulx, Cicero, Francis de
Sales och Jane de Chantal. Michel de
Montaignes bok får också vara med, även om han inte hör
till favoritförfattarna.
(rev 090815)
================
Ibland blir jag tillfrågad hur jag upplever de
senare årens forskning i allmänhet och inom mitt område i synnerhet. Jag har
svårt att uttrycka vad jag upplever men jag måste bekänna att följande ingav
mig en känsla av starkt och trist igenkännande. Det är ett igenkännande av
utvecklingen sedan 1980-talet då samma forskare som var passionerade för
marxistiskt och maoistiskt inflytande i forskningen övergick till ett
svårfångat intresse för design, i en process som jag försökt analysera i mitt
arbete.
Nyligen råkade jag läsa om Leszek Kolakowkis bok "Samtal med
djävulen" (se nedan). I sin inledning till boken (sid. 9) påminner Lars Gyllensten om Søren Kierkegaards framställning
av en motsättning mellan två slags författare eller människor överhuvudtaget:
"premissförfattare" och autentiska författare. Med premissförfattare
menade han författare som plockar upp vad som är i sväng, idéer, tankar, läror,
talesätt, program, filosofier, etcetera, och kokar ihop en soppa därpå, ränner
runt och prånglar ut sin sörja men aldrig drar några slutsatser av vad de
fångar upp, aldrig förpliktigar sig till något ställningstagande eller val,
aldrig sätter sig i några lägen som innebär ett ansvar för vad de säger eller
skriver, alltid är redo att ta till sig vad helst som kan bjuda sig i nästa
stund och till nytta inför nästa publik. De kommer aldrig någon vart annat än
in i samtidens popularitet.
Och på vägen återuppfinner man i bästa fall hjulet. Kanske på grund av att man
drivit universiteten in i obarmhärtig våg av försök till självfinansierande
kommersialisering upplever jag att "premissforskning" gradvis lett
till det beskrivna beteendet i alltfler forskningsområden. Ibland misstänker
jag att grävande journalistik där journalister kan t.o.m. riskera sitt eget liv
i sökande efter den svåra sanningen är dagens förvaltare av traditionen av äkta
forskning. I massmedia exemplifieras denna forskning i vissa program av Bosse
Lindquist från Sveriges Radios dokumentärredaktionen.
================
I förra veckan talade jag med en äldre kvinna som
sommarlängtar efter sina vuxna barn och barnbarn. Barnen hör inte av sig på
veckor och ibland månader. Barnbarnen likaså i takt med att de når tonåren och
vuxenåldern. Yngsta barnbarnen kan visst vilja hälsa på men de hänger med de
stressade föräldrarnas digra fritidsschema. TV-tittande, internetsurfande och
dataspel också kräver sina timmar.
Kvinnan själv verkade vara osentimentalt medveten om att hon måste föregå med
gott exempel och bjuda på sig själv. Man skall inte vänta på att det är de
andra som först skall höra av sig utan måste själv ta initiativ, ringa, skriva
eller så. Obesvarade påringningar eller telefonmeddelanden som hamnar i stumma
röstbrevlådor. Hon mailar eller skriver kort. Ibland har hon till och med
postat någon liten födelsedagspresent och inte ens fått höra om den kommit
fram. Det är inte så att det råder osämja. När det händer så händer det och
alla träffas och allt är frid och fröjd. Men barnen liksom föräldrarna kanske
tycker det finns mycket annat roligt eller till och med nödvändigt att göra.
När det gäller mormor så har de ännu mindre ork att hälsa på henne eftersom de ofta
"har nog med sig själva". Det gör dock bara ont när barn eller
barnbarn plötsligt hör av sig just när de behöver något. Mest pengar, lån eller
presenter. Som några tusen på bankkontot senast i morgon. "Är du snäll,
mormor och bidrar med en slant? Farmor har redan skickat pengar...."
Jag själv sitter och tänker. Ja...stackars barnen som mitt i livet kämpar med
det beryktade livspusslet...De upplever att de har det så svårt och att de
gamla föräldrarna haft och har det så mycket bättre...Det går ingen nöd på de
gamla. Inte än så länge. Och massmedia öser på och hjälper att friskriva
politikerna från ansvar genom att skapa konflikt mellan unga och gamla, som
vissa feminister redan gjort och gör mellan kvinnor och män. Alltså,
"söndra och härska" i stället för uppriktig men plågsamt riskabel
politisk analys som kräver självkritik. Ungdomen intalas att den ensidigt
utnyttjas för att betala de gamlas dryga pensioner. Gamla har aldrig haft det
så bra medan unga aldrig haft (och skall ha?) det så dåligt? Dessa
föreställningar är i så fall priset på historielösheten och kärlekslösheten.
Annars står det i professor Thomas Lindhs senaste och bästa vetenskapliga
översikten över problemet för regeringens räkning - "Sverige i en åldrande värld":
"I och för sig är en åldrande befolkning en mycket bra sak. Det innebär en
avsevärd höjning av mänsklig välfärd att få leva längre med bra hälsa. Det är
något att fira snarare än att beklaga. Varför har det då larmats om kris och
katastrof? Ja, för det första säljer dåliga nyheter alltid bättre än goda...För
det är verkligen inte givet hur anpassningen till en åldrande befolkning sker
utan det handlar till stor del om vad vi och våra politiker gör."
Eller inte gör för att sedan söndra och härska genom skylla på
det oälskade tärande köttberget. I fattiga länder är det inte sällan de vuxna
barnen som utvandrar för att hitta arbete och skicka hem pengar för att
försörja de gamla föräldrarna. Här i det rika landet är det inte sällan tvärtom
föräldrarna som skall hjälpa de vuxna barnen. Två föräldrar kan försörja fyra
barn men fyra vuxna barn kan knappast försörja sig själva. Vi skyller på
arbetsmarknaden. Jag tror att dessa barn och barnbarn knappast har kommit på
att föräldrarna snart är döda och att de själva håller på att bli gamla
föräldrar. Jag hoppas att de, självgoda, inte bara dyker upp på den gamla
kvinnans begravning med rödgråtna ögon när hennes stund är kommen. En gång i
tiden försökte man tidigt lära barnen "älska din nästa så som dig
själv". Och "hedra din far och din mor". Medan de lever. Utan
att tänka på ömsesidig nytta eller nöje.
Lång tid efter att detta (ovan) skrevs läser jag annonseringen av ett program i
SVT2 den 27 februari 2011, kl. 20.00 "Dokument inifrån:
Generation utanför. Dokumentär. Många av dagens ungdomar kan känna sig blåsta
på den trygghet som den äldre generationen skaffat sig på
arbetsmarknaden." Observera: skaffat SIG? Om det är rentav så att det är
de ännu äldre och redan döda generationerna av far- och morföräldrar, eller
farfars- och mormorsföräldrar som genom egna uppoffringar, hårt arbete
inklusive fackligt dito försökt skaffa ett bättre liv till sina efterkommande,
varför denna formulering? Att de "skaffat SIG" som antyder att numera
gamla föräldrar varit själviska genom att bara tänka på sig själva och
"blåst" sina egna barn, vid sidan om alla de övriga förmåner dessa
unga redan avnjutit under sin tillväxt och fortfarande avnjuter i det moderna
samhället? Varför dessa försök att ställa generationer, barn och föräldrar mot
varandra, på samma sätt som kvinnor och män alltid skall ställas mot varandra i
jämställdhetens tecken, samtidigt som seriöst politiskt arbete och engagemang ligger
så lågt i kurs? Är dessa konstgjorda konstruerade motsättningar ett sätt att
härska genom att söndra eller ett sätt att ignorera verkliga svårigheter genom
att skylla ifrån och skylla på medan en stor andel av TV-program handlar om
s.k. lek och underhållning?
[110227]
================
090719 Vänsterns högervridning
Kajsa Ekis Ekman (KEE) har i en tidningsartikel i
DN den 11 juli 2009 ("Vänsterns
arena går åt höger") visat hur vänsterskribenter med hemvist i
tidskrifterna Arena och Bang har kidnappat debattämnen genom att utge sig för
att ha blivit nedtystade, marginaliserade eller förtryckta. På så viss har
debatterna handlat om debatternas förmenta förutsättningar vid diskussionen av
t.ex. feminism, islamism, pedofili, tortyr eller sex inklusive sexuella
perversioner. Debatterna har blivit meta-debatter där påstådd marginalisering
ger nya vänsterintellektuella en värdefull negativistisk positionering och
tolkningsföreträde i de "egna" tidskrifterna. Och det som förenar det
vänsterintellektuella med det liberala fältet är just överenskommelsen om vilka
positioner ("för" eller "mot") är goda eller onda, där man
själv naturligtvis företräder det goda. Författaren KEE tycks beklaga att en
sådan debattstrategi kommer att alienera folk och kasta dem i armarna på den
Allians som erbjuder enkla och billiga lösningar på politiska problem.
Jag saknar dock en enda enkel påminnelse om det i sammanhanget högst relevanta
historiska fenomenet "politisk korrekthet"
(PK). Begreppet politiskt korrekt föddes nämligen i Sovjetunionen under
utrensningarna på 1920-talet, då det användes för att klassificera vilka
medborgarbeteenden som var korrekta eller inkorrekta utifrån den officiella
partilinjen. Är det måhända så att KEE känner sig paradoxalt generad av PK:s
besvärande anknytning till den sovjetiska historien? Vänsterns högervridning
skulle i så fall vara ett resultat av en inneboende förutsättning i självaste
vänsterideologin - en "enantiondromia" av
det slag som Leszek Kolakowski så
målande beskrivit i sina studier av marxismen. När en överdriven kraft drar åt
ena hållet så befinner den sig plötsligt åt motsatta hållet. Som att man bombar
sönder Irak och irakier till frihet och demokrati.
Och så är det också märkligt att KEE visserligen
nämner danskarna Frederik Stjernfeldt och Søren Ulrik Thomsen dock inte deras i
sammanhanget intressanta bok (Kritik av den Negativa Uppbyggligheten). Den
utgör en perfekt teoretisk bas för att förklara det av KEE
beskrivna och fördömda fenomen som hon annars lämnar helt oförklarat. Boken tar
nämligen upp syndabockens betydelse i sin koppling till offermentaliteten i
olika former. Medan syndabockar (nazismens judar, feminismens män,
främlingshatarnas utlänningar) avleder social aggressivitet så är det i den
kristna kulturen Guds egen son som är den ultimata syndabocken. Han motverkar
människors frestelse att själva spela Kristusrollen och att i stället för att
förlåta hellre avkräva hämnd eller gränslös gottgörelse under täckmantel av
förment "rättvisa".
Mot denna bakgrund är vänsterns liksom feminismens, liberalismens eller
(tabubelagda!) förintelseindustrinsofferpositionering
ett följdriktigt resultat av förkastelsen av kristendomen. I den mån kristna
själva frestas att inta en offerposition i stället för äkta martyrskap så kan
de har dukat under för en ondskans frestelse, eller som Kolakowski uttrycker
det (i Samtal med
Djävulen, sid. 102-103):
"Demonen åstundar det onda och önskar därför
fortsätta sitt förstörelsearbete, han vill inte ha någon förändring av sin
placering i världens ordning eller oordning, eller snarare sin placering i som
en negering av ordningen inne i ordningen. Därmed accepterar han att vara vad
han är. Samtidigt, just därför att han är vad han är, är han en förnekelse av
samma ordning, som anvisar honom en plats som sin negativa beståndsdel. Genom
att leva av att negera ordningen lever han just av denna ordning, som han
förnekar, och som för sin del är medbestämd till sin existens av den negativa
kraften demonens närvaro...[E]ftersom således själva hungern efter förstörelse
är vad som skapar demonen kräver tillfredsställandet av denna hunger närvaro av
en ordning att förstöra..."
================
090718 Det agnostiska manifestet
Agnostikern Stefan Einhorn (agnostiker = "som inte
vet") är en författare som skriver om allt möjligt, ofta under titeln
"Professor", senast om "Det
agnostiska manifestet" i DN den 14 juli 2009. Einhorn har under
många år ansett befinna sig med den ena foten i det "vetenskapliga
paradigmet" och den andra i ett osäkert gungfly av andlighet och öppen
tro. Öppenhet är ett ofta återkommande ord i hans text men han tycks inte vara
lika öppen angående vetenskapen som han bygger sin auktoritet på. Det finns
nämligen inget vetenskapligt paradigm utan endast paradigmer som innebär att
vetenskap också är ett gungfly trots hans oproblematiska referens till det
"rationella förnuftet" och "sunda förnuftet".
Det är alltså balanserande med sina fötter på varsitt gungfly som professorn
till slut vill etablera en för västerlandet "relativt trygg mark" för
att kunna få säga: "Jag vet verkligen inte". ("Verkligen"?)
Eller då var det för att etablera "en grund för dialog" som av någon
anledning alltid uppfattas som lovande och bra utan hänsyn till dess klassiska
förutsättningar: vänskap och god vilja. Frågan är hur professorn klarar av det
utan att positionera sig bland tusenåriga försök som kallas filosofins historia
då det är bara de gamla vulgärpositivisterna som hittills ansett att
"vi" kan göra det med grund i vad de kallat sunda förnuftet, d.v.s.
det som säger att jorden är platt. Jo, Einhorn konstaterar att "vi
gemensamt" kan fördöma allt som är "oacceptabelt", i synnerhet
oacceptabla övergrepp mot mänskligheten, och "avarter av mänskligt beteende".
Vi ska alltså inte acceptera det som är oacceptabelt.
Vidare, trots att Einhorn skriver ena gången att dessa avarter av mänskligt
beteende begåtts av "företrädare för såväl religioner som ideologier vilka
tar avstånd från Gud", så tappar han längre fram ideologierna och hävdar
att det bara är "skillnader i trosuppfattning mellan olika religioner som
är anledning till dessa avarter". Har han måhända tappat ideologierna
eftersom själva den förment ödmjuka agnosticismen är en ideologi? Dess
självförklarande ödmjukhet inför de "ännu så länge" olösta
livsfrågorna hindrar den dock inte från att skaffa sig ensamrätt på (till
skillnad från de stora religionerna?) det "grundläggande dogmat" av
"strävan efter godhet mot medmänniskan". Det är också det agnostiska
manifestets förmenta ödmjukhet som paradoxalt förespråkar en "öppenhet för
den teoretiska möjligheten att även de stora livsfrågorna i en mer eller mindre
avlägsen framtid kan öppna sig för en objektiv [läs: vetenskaplig]
analys".
Mycket öppenhet, ödmjukhet och strävan, alltså, i den nya ideologin. Den
profetiske professorn förkunnar slutligen att "vi ska sträva mot att lösa
våra åsiktsskillnader i samförstånd och aldrig glömma detta gemensamma
ansvar". Vem är det som anbefaller att vi ska - och varför
hörsammar många inte budet - och vad ska "vi" göra
åt det? Det pådyvlade dogmatiska ansvaret (vad är ansvar mot samvete och makt?)
är att "vi har alla, oberoende av tro, ett gemensamt ansvar för att vår
värld och de varelser som bebor den skall leva sitt liv i trygghet, fred, och i
strävan efter kunskap, visdom, välmående och lycka." Svårt att motstå
frestelsen att ropa Halleluja. Ja, vi SKA sträva...
Jag häpnar inför tanken att ingen annan Gud, filosof, politiker eller profet
framgångsrikt tidigare hunnit med dessa tankar och anbefallningar. Jag går
tillbaka till den agnostiska trosbekännelsen "Jag vet verkligen
inte!" Åter igen: "verkligen"? Ifall den pragmatiska kunskapen
som ska förena de trovissa och de sekulära är pragmatisk just på grund av att
kunskap ska leda till handling, vilken är då handlingen som föds ur "Jag
vet inte"?
Den handlingen kan just vara att författa en tidningsartikel om agnosticismen
där agnostikern till och med kan tänka sig tillåta utövandet av en religion OM
han (eller "vi"?) bedömer att det inte är skadligt för utövaren eller
annan part ("dom")...
Varför är det många som slutar läsa dagstidningar? Beror det bara på Internet?
Så kallad debatt eller dialog reduceras alltmer till en trist och steril
energislukare. Det blir en match mellan agnostiker som passar bra för de som
tycker att det är vägen som är målet. När allt kommer omkring är det trots allt
mera trösterikt att utan större teologiska anspråk läsa (DN 12 juli) Inger
Edelfeldts "Är det
konstigt att man längtar?" Min poäng: i stället för att trots all
förment ödmjukhet lansera en ny religion eller ideologi är det bättre att
erkänna att man tvingas välja mellan de som redan finns till hands.
================
090717 "Sommar" i Sveriges Radio
Den 16 juli kunde jag inte låta bli att uttrycka
min tacksamhet för en kritisk artikel som Peter Bryngelsson skrev i Dagens
Nyheter - Kultur dagen innan angående Sveriges Radios programserien
"sommar". Den följdes av ytterligare en senare artikel i samma
tidning som refererade svaret från radions programansvarige och som väckte
några avslutande tankar. Här nedan följer mina inlägg.
From: Kristo Ivanov
To: "Peter Bryngelsson c/o"
<kulturdebatten@dn.se>
cc: sommar@sr.se, ingvar.storm@sr.se
bcc: Peter.Bryngelsson@mhm.lu.se
Subject: Sommarpratare i radio P1
Date-Sent: torsdag 16 jul 2009 11.19.21
+0200
Tack, bäste Peter Bryngelsson, för ditt inlägg
"Jag, jag,
jag. Årets sommarpratare..." i DN-Kultur den 15 juli
<http://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/debatt-essä/jag-jag-jag-1.912066>.
Till skillnad från många program under de gångna
somrarna som ofta skakade om och rörde till tårar och som många sparat som kära
och dyrbara inspelningar så har de sista två åren markerat en dyster utveckling
eller avveckling. Med enstaka undantag märks det i både jag-centreringen,
egenreklamen, och det ackompanjerande musikvalet - en kultur som inte tycks
känna till annat än amerikansk populärkultur, företrädesvis av det slaget som
förmodas vädja till ungdom som förmodas få att lyssna på radio om de får lyssna
till företrädesvis ny-kändisar som pratar mest om sig själva utan tankeväckande
anknytning till något mera allmänmänskligt. Sannerligen deprimerande.
Men din artikel var en ljuspunkt mitt i mörkret i det att den påminner om att
det fortfarande finns en "opinion" - om än allt mindre lyssnande,
dock i gengäld mer tänkande och kännande. Tack! Med vänlig hälsning,
Kristo Ivanov
From: Kristo Ivanov
To: Peter Bryngelsson
<kulturdebatten@dn.se>
cc: sommar@sr.se, bibi.rodoo@sr.se, "ingvar.
storm"@sr.se, erik.laquist@dn.se
Subject: Sommarpratare i radio P1 (fwd)
Date-Sent: fredag 17 jul 2009 21.47.21
+0200
Läser med stor förvåning svarsresultatet i dagens
DN av "3 frågor
till Bibi Rödöö" <http://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/sommar-ar-jag-fixerat-till-sin-natur-1.912969>.
Sveriges Radio företrädare Bibi Rödöö tycker att Sommar är ett program som till
sin natur är jag-fixerat. Precis som om de som lyssnat och reflekterat över
denna programserie i tiotals år inte uppmärksammat det. Däremot har de kanske
förstått skillnaden mellan att vara privat och personlig: innebörden av icke
trivial allmänmänsklighet - sådant som överskrider vanliga kliniska
beskrivningar av förlossningar, sorger och framgångar. Icke trivial medmänsklighet
som inte är beskäftiga uppmaningar till lyssnarna att vara lika kloka och
snälla som talaren.
Det vore mycket förtjänstfullt om DN ville följa upp den här följetongen
eftersom Bibi Rödöös svar förefaller mig vara ytterligare ett exempel på den här
märkliga tendensen att förvandla radioprogram till såpor: senaste idag med
coachen Elizabeth Gummesson som mitt bland uteslutande skrikiga amerikanska
schlagers berättar vad viktigt det är att älska medmänniskor som hon gör, och
gör reklam för sin debutbok och den kommande boken som ska göra henne till
författare. Såvitt jag förstår så bekräftar Bibi Rödöö "jag-jag-jag"
tendensen i programmen i och med att i vanlig ordning inte lyssna och avfärda
all kritik. Om kritikern - tänkte hon - att "han inte har hört" eller
"Då har han lyssnat jättedåligt". När det gäller reklamen och
marknadsföringen var det ingen agent som sålde till Sveriges Radio utan det var
"redaktionen" själv som ville sälja.
Att "många läsare" delar kritikerns åsikt spelar tydligen ingen roll,
eftersom radions opartiskhet tolkas som att varje kritiker kan ställas mot en
eller flera anonyma beundrare av programmen. Den ene tycker si och den andre
tycker så och radion/redaktionen tycker att det tycks olika. Som när kunder
reklamerar en nyss köpt vara i affären: "Det är ingen som klagar förut -
eller förresten det är många som inte alls klagat och ni har inte förstått
varans handhavandesätt". Med andra ord: Bibi Rödöö uppenbarar att
lyssnarnas åsikter inte tas på allvar eftersom hon säger att
"jag-jag-jag" eller "vi-vi-vi" har gjort rätt men
kritikerna inte hört - inte lyssnat - inte förstått. Jag måste dock önska
hennes bästa: att Sveriges Radion kan öka andelen - om inte antalet - unga
lyssnare som inte vet något bättre eftersom de kan inte minnas och jämföra med
hur det har varit och hur det kunde vara. Äldre lyssnare och insändarskrivare
är ändå snart döda.
Med vänlig hälsning,
Kristo Ivanov
================