[Fis] Book Presentation. The "protest industry"

Fri May 6 00:30:39 CEST 2022

good points, pedro.  my answer to the problem of a civilization destroying itself is this:

WHY SAVE WESTERN CIVILIZATION?

By

Howard Bloom

 The war in the Ukraine isa battle between western civilization and the civilizational system of VladimirPutin.  It is a battle between democracyand dictatorship.

 This raises aquestion:  why fight to save WesternCivilization?

 Every belief system thatappeals to our idealism claims that it will lift the poor and theoppressed.  But Western Civilization—theWestern System—has lifted the poor and oppressed more than any other system inhistory.

 Judge for yourself:

 ·       If you’d been born in 1850, your expected lifespanwould have been 37.5 years.  If you’dbeen born in the West in 2000, your expected lifespan would have been 78.5years.  Chinese Emperors were willing tospend almost all of their wealth to achieve an extra four years of life.  But Western Civilization has added another40.  Western civilization has more thandoubled the human lifespan.  No othercivilization in the history of the world—not the Chinese, Egyptian, Muslim,Russian, or Roman—has ever pulled this off.

·       If you’d been the poorest paid worker in London in2012, a personal assistant, you would have earned what an entire tenement fullof the poorest paid workers in London were paid in 1850.  You would have earned what seven Irishdockworkers made.

·       If you gave a bunch of average Western kids today a StanfordBinet IQ test from 1916, today’s kids would register as near geniuses.  They’d register an average IQ of roughly135.  That’s an IQ Jump of 35 points.

·       Since 1650, Western Civilization has upped the levelof peace by a factor of ten.  If you wereborn in an indigenous culture, one of those tribes that “lives in peace withits fellow man and in harmony with nature,” your odds of dying a violent death at the hands of a fellow human being wouldhave been ten times what they are in the West today.  Yes, thanks to Western civilization there isten times more peace in the world today.

·       If you were born in 2000, your height would have beenfour inches higher than if you’d been born in 1850.

·       The Western System has lifted close  to a billion people out of poverty in a meretwenty years.[ii]

 If our great, greatgrandparents could give us an extra 40 years of life, we owe an extra 40 moreto our great, great grandchildren.  Ifour great, great grandparents could septuple the incomes of the poorest workersamong us, surely we owe another septupling to our great great grandkids.  If our great, great grandparents could up theaverage IQ by 35 points, surely we owe another 35 to our great greatgrandkids.  And if our great  great grandparents could increase the peacein the world by a factor of ten, surely we owe our great great grandkids tentimes more.  

 But to carry out thisobligation, we need to see and value what we’ve achieved.  And we need to tenaciously defend thecivilization that has given us these gifts.  We need to realize that Western Civilization is not the worstcivilization in the  history of mankind,it is the best.  And we need to defendits values—freedom of speech, tolerance, and democracy.  Topping all that, we need to defend westerncivilization’s greatest hidden secret—a perpetual balancing act between threeelements—government, private enterprise, and the protest industry.

 ***

 What are Westerncivilization’s core values?  Democracy,pluralism, tolerance, and freedom of speech.

 The result?  Western civilization is the only civilizationin the history of the world that has ever invented:

 ·       Human rights

·       The abolition of slavery

·       The concept of freedom

·       Individualism

·       The peace movement

·       The anti-imperialist movement

·       Diversity

·       Freedom of speech

·       Freedom of the press

·       The concept of equality.

·       The environmental movement

·       A concern about endangered species

·       A concept of animal rights

·       The idea of global warming

·       The desire to save the planet

 If Western civilizationgoes, all of these things go with it. Under the Russians, the Chinese, or the Muslims, all of these woulddisappear and be replaced by the requirement to say only what the authoritieswant you to say.  No more rights.  No more LGBTQ.  No more protests.  In Afghanistan, imprisonment in the house forwomen.  And the right to beat your wife.

 We must keep westerncivilization alive.  And we must keepwestern civilization striving for a glittering future for all of humankind.

with warmth and oomph--howard

-----Original Message-----
From: Pedro C. Marijuán <pedroc.marijuan at gmail.com>
To: fis at listas.unizar.es
Sent: Thu, May 5, 2022 3:45 pm
Subject: Re: [Fis] Book Presentation. The "protest industry"

 Dear Mariusz and List colleagues, 
  I much agree with your comments below, but there is a point where more analysis would be needed (an idea from Howard could be approached): 
  How can we fight the crisis? In my opinion, just raising awareness and describing the crisis is not enough (there are many publications describing the current crisis). We need systemic changes (e.g. elimination of commercialism in science) and, above all, we should propose some positive alternative that will release our intellectual potential and creative possibilities. 
  In my opinion, aspects such as the commercialization of science (or of the arts) would not be so relevant. Conversely, the disconnection of exploratory research from the very support structures of society could be negative: the sciences and the arts should be partially autonomous but also partially applied. This happens in all epochs, inevitably. In our times, the importance of visual-computer arts in social propaganda and media advertisement, now coupled with social networks information/disinformation technologies, has grown enormously. It has happened in an extremely fast pace, coupled with the new possibilities to assemble collective agents (new social identities) that have suddenly dominated large discussion spaces. These new social media & social networks are sculpting a new psychology of the masses which becomes very easily exploited by radical, polarized opinions and anti-system activists. 

  The "protest industry", to use Howard's terms, has gone awry. It is, seemingly, one of the pillars of Western societies, but if it attacks the foundations of collective freedoms and the whole historical legacy, it becomes "nihilist (adolescent?) destruction" rather than mature "creative destruction" (a la Schumpeter). It is very relevant that the protest against climatic change was symbolized by an adolescent (Greta Thunberg). Yes, let us follow adolescents, let us dress like them, and let us think & act like them. 
  Proposing some positive alternative is far from easy... a new intellectual avant-garde should crystalize. 
  Best--Pedro

  El 26/04/2022 a las 17:27, Mariusz Stanowski escribió:

Dear Pedro and collegues, I agree that "the historical evolution of art becomes a fascinating mirror of social evolution itself. Human evolution like other phenomena of reality is subject to cyclical changes. Currently we have a crisis in development/evolution, which has taken the form of a postmodern/neo-Marxist cultural revolution. Among other things, it consists in the deconstruction of all values, meanings, and emerging structures-ideas (in the name of avoiding totalitarianism) with simultaneous dependence on ideology. 
  As a consequence, it leads to destructive chaos and degradation consisting in elimination of intellectual diversity and creative freedom. In such a situation, economic (globalism) or military (Ukraine) power determines what the world should look like. Cultural revolutionists have also succeeded in controlling art. I was at the Venice Biennale 4 years ago and saw Marx's Capital being read at the same hour/place every day. 
  How can we fight the crisis? In my opinion, just raising awareness and describing the crisis is not enough (there are many publications describing the current crisis). We need systemic changes (e.g. elimination of commercialism in science) and, above all, we should propose some positive alternative that will release our intellectual potential and creative possibilities.
  Best regards Mariusz

   dniu 2022-04-26 o 14:20, Pedro C. Marijuan pisze:

Dear Mariusz, 
  Beyond philosophical nuances, one of the most intriguing aspects of art would concern its relationship with the intellectual & cultural ethos of each epoch. Art, stemming from inner drives of almost unfathomable origins, seems to provide a compensation for some of the absences in the daily life of citizens (a mostly urban phenomenon). The observer, or listener, gets some of the intellective/emotional contents emitted by the art producer, and that's satisfying for the permanent search for novelty that characterizes our species in civilized life regimes. Your polysemic use of "contrast" is well adapted to discuss the above, I think, both in the art object and in the receiver whole appreciation. 

  The curious point is that the historical evolution of art becomes a fascinating mirror of social evolution itself. Thinking on Western art (classic, medieval, renaissance, neoclassic, modern...), how contents and styles have been evolved with the mentality of each epoch.... Reminding about "media", It would echo what McLuhan was saying about means of communication: every new media alters the psychic equilibrium and forces a mental readaptation of the individual within the whole communication mosaic. 

  Coming to our times, How far could go the present "deconstruction" of art, seemingly reduced to presentation of brute "novelty"?  Is there a way back to art contents satisfying the appetite  for intellective/emotional contents? 
  To complicate things for the worse, some portions of "public art" seem to have been swallowed by the superultimate "cancelation culture". Is there anything left uncensored of the cultural & artistic past? 

  I will appreciate your comments & opinions --and of the list colleagues, Best--Pedro

  El 26/04/2022 a las 9:41, Mariusz Stanowski escribió:

  Dear Joseph, 
  Thank you for your clarification, however I was only referring to Cartesian dualism. 
  You also write that "the best art is neither totally realistic or abstract but has features of both".  My understanding is that there is no absolutely abstract or realistic art at all. In the history of 
  art we had both realism (Courbet) and abstractionism (Kandinsky).

  Best regards Mariusz

  W dniu 2022-04-24 o 16:06, joe.brenner at bluewin.ch pisze:

Dear Mariusz, 
  Please let me try this first rapid response, without re-presenting my entire approach. I understand your desire to avoid dualism, but dualism is a part of physics, of our world. There is thus "bad" dualism, which brings in invidious distinctions and separations. "Good" dualism  recognizes the fundamental difference between what is (primarily) actual and (primarily) potential, as well as the movement from one to the other, and between many other real pairs. 
  In my logic, ontological and epistemological entities are in any event not totally distinct, but some share some of one another's properties, as do parts and wholes and so on, without conflation. 
  The dualism of electrostatic charge and magnetic polarity are real and influence the way we exist and feel neurologically, and cognitively. Another example is what is called colloquially "up" and "down" nuclear spin, and there is some thought that some sub-atomic particles are self-dual. I have even suggested that a form of self-duality may exist at cognitive levels of reality.  
  As I stated above, the best art is neither totally realistic or abstract but has features of both. Perhaps the best strategy is to keep an open mind on the subject or perhaps, like some sets, a closed-open (clopen) mind. 
  Best, Joseph

----Message d'origine----
 De : stanowskimariusz at wp.pl
 Date : 24/04/2022 - 10:52 (CEST)
 À : fis at listas.unizar.es
 Objet : Re: [Fis] Book Presentation. The Interpersonal domain

  Dear Joseph,   
   You've written: "such as information processes, has both an ontic and an epistemic component"   
  If we introduce a distinction between ontic and epistemic then we are assuming a dualistic view in advance, which, for example, I am not in favor of.  
   Best regards   
   Mariusz 

  -- 
-----------------------------------------------------------
Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
pedroc.marijuan at gmail.com
pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es
http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/

Editor special issue: Evolutionary dynamics of social systems
https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/biosystems/special-issue/107DGX9V85V
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