Gaza, and how the West was won

This is how the Americas, Australia, Africa, and parts of Asia were colonized - through violent ethnic cleansing and genocide aimed at seizing land and resources.

Then those responsible for these atrocities pretended they had evolved beyond that violence, seeking to secure their gains and maintain the status quo. They transitioned seamlessly from traditional military colonization to neo-colonization via multinational corporations.

Hollywood and western media propagated narratives about respect for universal human rights and justice, using the rhetoric of "Freedom" as a façade to counter the appeal of communism and socialism rising from the newly independent global south.

But the ongoing genocide in Gaza, coupled with unwavering Western support, exposes this hypocrisy plainly.

There are 32 billion cubic meters of natural gas and an estimated 1.1 billion barrels of oil off the coast of Gaza.

Perhaps the myth of western freedom extending to brown and marginalized people simply wasn't worth it to them again ...

new opiates

"When I’m driving, I sometimes turn on the radio and I find very often that what I’m listening to is a discussion of sports. These are telephone conversations. People call in and have long and intricate discussions, and it’s plain that quite a high degree of thought and analysis is going into that. People know a tremendous amount. They know all sorts of complicated details and enter into far-reaching discussion about whether the coach made the right decision yesterday and so on. These are ordinary people, not professionals, who are applying their intelligence and analytic skills in these areas and accumulating quite a lot of knowledge and, for all I know, understanding. On the other hand, when I hear people talk about, say, international affairs or domestic problems, it’s at a level of superficiality that’s beyond belief."

 

-- Noam Chomsky

 

 

We exhaust our cognitive resources on the trivial.

Beyond Selfishness and Altruism: Evolution, Empathy, and Systemic Sustainability

Ben Goertzel on good and evil: 

"It's a complicated and somewhat silly distinction. Human beings under evolution have been shaped by two objective functions: Individual selection and group selection. The tension between selfishness and altruism. A lot of what we view as evil is selfishness -Individual interest. A lot of what we view as good is altruism -acting in the interests of the collective. We are a mix.

But culture has a lot of flexibility in what it teaches as the default position between the two. And we have a lot of room to move to more altruism."
[end quote] 

Expanding on Ben Goertzel's delineation between good and evil through the prism of individual and group selection, there's an additional evolutionary dimension worth considering: the long-term viability of groups in relation to their external environment and other groups. This involves another kind of selection - one based on a group's ability to extend its empathic boundaries and sustain harmonious coexistence with out-groups and the environment.

This "meta-selection" isn't just about immediate survival or dominance but encompasses a group's adaptive strategies for long-term sustainability and coexistence. It's about how a group defines its circle of empathy and the consequent impact on its cooperative and competitive strategies. Groups that practice wider empathy are not just being altruistic; they're investing in a robust strategy for long-term survival. They contribute to a social and ecological equilibrium, enhancing not just their own resilience, but the resilience of a larger interconnected system. 

This perspective also casts a new light on the concepts of good and evil. Actions and policies that foster broad cooperation and empathy, even beyond immediate in-group interests, contribute to the collective good—not just of one's own group, but of the larger ecosystem of groups and the environment.

Conversely, short-sighted strategies, those prioritizing immediate in-group benefits at the severe expense of others and the environment, can be viewed as contributing to a collective evil. They may offer immediate gains but compromise the long-term resilience and sustainability of the broader system. 

It's crucial to note that in this evolutionary framework, the ultimate "victory" scenario isn't one group out-competing all others to the point of their extinction, then living in isolation, sustainably, with the non-human environment. Such a scenario would actually be detrimental to survival in the long run due to decreased systemic robustness resulting from reduced diversity. 

True optimal success in this framework is a rich tapestry of diverse groups, all practicing extended empathy, cooperating where possible, and coexisting sustainably with each other and the environment. This diversity isn't just a moral ideal; it's a strategic one, vital for the long-term resilience and adaptability of life on Earth.

(uses some help from an artificial friend)

technical stagnation under late capitalism

The relative scientific and technical stagnation under late capitalism is hardly a new observation, but one that bears repeating.
Our best minds are largely at work making shiny things we don't need or figuring out how best to sell it to us. Pure scientific research is at an all time low and research departments directed in some way by profit motive are the norm. We think we're living in a sci-fi future because that thinking sells shiny things and advertising works. But the slowing down in the rate of technical advancement has only really just begun... It takes about a generation before the fruits of raw research can be deployed as technologies, and we will only really see real downside of this approach a generation of two from now - just when we could use all the science we can get to save us from the ecological disaster also wrought by run away capitalism.

growing pains

"The tribes and clans of early man never left us, they just expanded outward like ripples in a pond, becoming more intricate." - without losing too much of their easy use of violence and coercion.

We can reshape - build networks of decentralized public power using smart tools for communication and knowledge-sharing, decision-making and organisation.

But then again, we should never underestimate the potential  for things to get very much worse instead (or first?), as the priests and warlords - now corporations and politicians - steadily turn up the manipulation and violence to keep things running in their favour.

gene and race

So there was this discussion on non-racialism at this book launch last night ...

and a member of the audience asked that typical question about the obvious genetic basis to race.

I was working up to try and answer there, but found it a bit hard to get my thoughts together in time. So below is working toward how I'd like to answer that in future. I'll correct/refine it with time, hopefully, and corrections and comments from you, the anonymous or not anonymous public, are as welcome as always.

 Attempt One:

Once our very early, singular human population separated geographically (after what appears to be a series of survival bottlenecks), they evolved separate and particular traits according to the now well understood processes of natural selection and genetic drift. 

Even while populations were largely separated, there was still sufficient movement and interaction to allow for genetic information to pass between populations. This, most importantly, would have included the successful spread of immune response adaptations and anti-parasite counter-measures vital to early population survival. [which is why all so called races have within their populations a spread of proteomic pathways for immune function that are common between races] 

As populations interacted and genetic information spread, there are a few mechanisms by which certain traits persisted within local populations, despite the relatively thorough statistical mixing of other genetic traits. The  mechanisms that ‘preserved’ local ‘race type traits’ include environment specific adaptations (like skin colour) that were continuously selected for within separated populations by survival pressure, and culture-specific sexual selection criteria - that proceeded along with cultural evolution. There are more mechanisms i think, but these two come to mind for now.

Via these mechanisms, an aggregation of certain traits (the sexual selection model accounts for why these are most often just externally visible) would accumulate within populations, while allowing the fortunate mixing of other vital genetic survival strategies without which local populations would most likely have fallen from parasite/pathogen load/stress.

This explains why, with the exception of this small percentage of ‘race type traits’, when looking at particular sequences, we often see more genetic diversity within races than between them — for example, there will be a particular immune system function that is expressed in different ways by several different protein pathways (lets call them A,B,C,D) and each race will have individuals carrying sequences for A,B,C,D. For the larger pathways, two individuals from different ‘races’ carrying the sequences necessary for A will often have more in common genetically with each other than with members of the same race carrying sequences for B, say.

[Immune function has been a big driver for evolution throughout the entire animal line, and so its not for nothing that it gets emphasised when discussing genetic variation.]

Even as our populations experienced civilisational shifts that allowed for more interaction between populations and more and more geographical displacement, patterns of mechanisms like the culture-specific sexual selection mentioned above - now intimately coupled with power, violence, etc. - still worked to keep certain traits prominent within local populations. 

Anyway, I think that's the type of traits the dude from yesterday mentioned. That small percentage of genetic traits, often highly visible, that we based the myth of race on.

 added later:

Of course, the other reason that immune system is so important when discussing us, is that in the very brief evolutionary time since we split up, nothing much else changed.

Sure some of us lightened our skins and straightened our hair, but these were almost insignificant changes when seen against our vast evolutionary history.

The most significant changes to humankind since our ‘forking’ is that the big brains that we evolved before we split led to us being super successful wherever we went - and that success was met in turn by a multitude of parasites rushing in to live off a newly found ecosystem - us.

So, most of our real evolution as humans, neglecting the very very minor surface tweaks, have been in complex immune system responses to those parasites since we became successful. That is why we are closer to members of other races that share our immune pathways than those of our race that don’t - immune system complexity makes up most of our evolution since we got here.

Are We Shifting to a New Post-Capitalist Value Regime?

RT @mbauwens (Michel Bauwens): Are We Shifting to a New Post-Capitalist Value Regime? https://t.co/l1tn1LEs0R (one of my best lectures)

"We will argue that there is consistent evidence that the structural crises of the dominant political economy is leading to responses that are prefigurative of a new value regime, of which the seed forms can be clearly discerned."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CltUp19s9lc - video lecture. 45mins. worth the watch.

... notes to follow

race and inequality links flow both ways

Racism is also emergent en-masse because it allows a population to subconsciously rationalise their privilege. So instead of just causing social injustice, racism is also a result of social injustice. The more you see racially implemented social privilege, the more you have to apply racist models to subconsciously justify that privilege - when you have it.

collaboration will out-compete competition

... especially if we document and share our work properly. Value public ownership via the general public license or CopyLeft and CopyFarLeft licenses on all our self documentation and outputs.

so called modern democracy

Part of the problem with current democracies is inherited. As all systems adapt and evolve they are often left burdened with artifacts left over from the systems they replace, long after these artifacts become unnecessary or irrelevant. Human systems are not immune. We  see this looking back through history and there is no reason to believe that we’ve somehow broken free from this effect today.

The public’s relation to our modern leaders, and the space that we create and allow for leadership, seems to me to be a good example of this. In these terms, so called modern democracies aren’t too removed from the royal courts that they evolved from.

We now have groups selected not by their birthright (so much), but by one or another system of voting, to make important decisions on behalf of the public. Yet apart from the method of selection, the new formation carries forward much from the older system.

Modern democratic representatives/leaders still have esteem, power and privilege heaped on them, as well as plenty of material benefit - similar to all that the lords and ladies of royal courts enjoyed. They still treated with what must be palpable deference, still honoured, pampered and fawned over - pretty much still treated like royalty - ripe fodder for all manner of narcissistic disorder.

Then, as I imagine in those royal courts that precede them, they are surrounded by others with similar status in spaces where maneuverings and machinations are encouraged and rewarded, and given closed doors behind which to negotiate and trade for favour and power.

And despite all this we expect them once installed to such office, to behave differently - better and more responsible than their 'ancestors'. They are installed in surroundings of virtual royalty; surrounded by the pageantry and intrigue of royal courts, and we are all still terribly surprised when they behave, sooner or later, with the same self interest and careless disregard for the public as the lords and kings of old.

infopolitics teaser

Techno-optimism and its bashing aside, there are two things that I'd like to repeat:

• We will continue to be bad at predicting the forms and shapes civilisation will take as it evolves.
• And the more information rich a civilisation becomes, the less and less tolerant it will be of the self parasitism that plagues it.

fork governance

Time to begin hacking on top of -and away from - these current primitive democracies. The governance systems in use globally carry way too many design features common to the royal courts they emerged/evolved from (strong hierarchical design, centralised opaque authority, personality based leadership, etc.).

[Distributed governance models. Decentralised technologies that might be used to underpin new forms of collective cooperation and decision-making.]

"I use the term “governance by design” to describe the process of online communities increasingly relying on technology in order to organize themselves through novel governance models (designed by the community and for the community), whose rules are embedded directly into the underlying technology of the platforms they use to operate"

http://commonstransition.org/commons-centric-law-and-governance-with-primavera-de-filippi/ (As part of a series on the 100 Women Who Are Co-Creating the P2P Society, Rachel O’Dwyer interviews Primavera De Filippi)

time to grow up

Synthetic biology and nanotech are just some of the first technologies that will make catastrophic destructive ability available to more that just the very powerful.

So the survival path for our species becomes more than just restraining the powerful from causing catastrophic destruction. It becomes eliminating the conditions that cause pathological behaviour for the rest of 'us' too.

And I think this means eliminating injustice in total - as well as the more visible pathological behaviours from the powerful.

So our best hope of surviving, once our tech begins delivering immense destructive power to ever smaller and smaller groups, will be a world that ensures a thriving and well adjusted population as a whole. One with no injustice and poverty,  the best education for all, and a global population that is productively engaged.

Luckily, I think that there is nothing in our nature or the nature of the world we live in, that rules out even such an optimistic vision. And as for how we start building toward it, like with all change in complex systems, a good idea would be robust experimentation with little constraint.

So bring on as much experimentation along the lines of truly sustainable and just societies as possible...

let's just not go there...

Friends, New Yorkers, I have some good news and then I have some bad news.

The good news is that tonight you get a chance to see a bright star turning off in realtime, and then 14 odd seconds later, turning back on as an asteroid passes in front of it - something that apparently hasn't happened for a naked-eye star in all of recorded history - and in my thinking just goes to show how short our recorded history actually is (http://www.theatlanticcities.com/arts-and-lifestyle/2014/03/tonight-star-will-disappear-over-new-york-city/8678/)

The terribly bad news is that my deranged/delusional(?) personal boycott against travel to the USA has been ratcheted up and so I can state for the record that I will not be visiting any of you in the foreseeable future, nor most likely, ever in my lifetime.

Yes, I do realise that to my friends and possibly everyone else who lives there, this is just going to be seen as just more astoundingly good luck. And besides, most of you know that I'm never ever going to break out of a lifetime of habits and priorities that keeps me happily broke, and this 'boycott' therefore, completely theoretical.

But fuck it, I'm calling it a boycott anyway, because apart from temporarily vanishing stars, tonight is also the 11th anniversary of what must surely be up there for the crime of the century - the for-profit invasion and slaughter in Iraq which began tonight in 2003. ... And surely it wouldn't be so crazy to ask those that can, to desist from holidaying there while all this madness goes on, and on, and on, and on.

@historyinpics

"Anti-Soviet warrior puts his army on the road for peace". Article from The Independent about Osama Bin Laden. 1993.

sipped from @HistoryInPics' stream -- https://twitter.com/HistoryInPics

--------------

Liked this one from today's feed too:
Fidel Castro and Malcolm X meeting in Harlem, 1960 https://twitter.com/HistoryInPics/status/432340865483542528/photo/1 

 

The Pathology of the Rich - Chris Hedges

.. Article with full transcript here

slow burning fuse (?)

got it here : https://www.facebook.com/TheSlowBurningFuse

anarchy too, must be built

property should come with a warning

WARNING: The accumulation of property, wealth, and general luxury, has been known to (frequently) cause severely negative changes in ideology.

mean world syndrome

Mean World Syndrome is a phenomenon where the violence-related content of mass media convinces viewers that the world is more dangerous than it actually is, and prompts a desire for more protection than is warranted by any actual threat.