THINKING AND ACTING STRAIGHT .....

Some things that govern our lives, are clearly very obscure, for instance I don't know whether there is a God, nor does anyone else know, I don't know what will happen after death, shall I survive death and move forward or not, nor does anyone else, I do not have a good answer as to my having a soul, if it sticks to me or leaves me or transforms itself into something else after my body decays, and no one else knows either.

Many religious adherents have unshakable convictions, or what they proudly call faith, in such matters they are sure they know, but convictions emanating from blind faith are not real knowledge. Somehow it seems incredible that Sapiens do not know what they are, or the nature of their being. These questions were as old as humanity, the Greek pre-Socratic Xenophanes said; "The Gods did not reveal from the beginning all things to us, but in the course of time, thorough seeking, may lead to learning and knowing things." Until today, there is a strong consensus among most philosophers, including religious ones, that the existence of a soul, life after death and absolute divine power cannot be proven.

We basically had no saying about coming into existence, we just woke up and found ourselves in this world. So what gives us the pretense of knowledge and certitude of a next one. The self as it is seems to be and remains forever unknowable. We feel ourselves, here on earth, but do we know our inner selves? and what happens to it when we die!! Yes it's easier to convince ourselves of the pretension of knowing what will happen, but we all know deep down that it could be not so after death.

It's difficult to live with such incertitude and being lost with such questions, but as Socrates said;"The unexamined life is not worth living" And being lost in daylight is very different than being lost in total darkness. Some people believe there is a God, the creator, the designer of our will, the basis of morality, and there are others who believe there's no God, and our morality is not of a godly source.

Historically, we know that human morality has advanced and developed toward the better, and we talk about it openly. many of us (but not all) are more compassionate and caring than most of our ancestors were 4k and 3k even 2000 years ago. But God cannot be gradual, and not from low to upward, so if it is a godly affair, it should have been the reverse, starting with the perfect and better morality, and slowly deteriorating or fading, if at all.... and not the contrary.

The fact that we can never be sure that something is right, though we can be sure that something is wrong confirms Socrates saying; that he had an inner voice which occasionally told him not to do things, but it never told him what to do. I personally have never found myself able to believe in the existence of a God, or a divine will and power, though I admit that I can not prove his non-existence, the challenge in these matters is to live with it, die with it, without really understanding it. This is our fate in life, and our situation. The existence of God cannot be explained by simply asserting the existence of God.

For centuries people were congratulated on the strength of their faith, and the more blind it was the better, but these beliefs have very little or no evidence, and there's nothing really to congratulate in it. Most people are only stubborn about the entire affair, because they were totally and perfectly brain-washed, ordered and indoctrinated since early childhood. And leaders of all sects, political and religious want and strive for such followers.

Obviously arguing with these people is absolutely futile, as they are not committed to the pursuit of truth. But no one should expect all sides to agree with baseless faith, whether positive or negative. Locke puts it nicely;" Where is the man that has incontestable evidence of the truth of all that he holds, or of the falsehood of all he condemns." We have no choice but to live and act based on the best of our knowledge and understanding, but far from believing these to be true, we need always to keep in mind the fact and possibility that they might not be.

 The entire blog here, was inspired and influenced by an excellent work by B. Magee, entitled Ultimate Questions , I'm grateful for his insight and wisdom. My as always, many thanks to all, stay safe.                         

POLITICS IN OUR TIMES ......

Few people around the world are totally indifferent to the United States, its politics and politicians. As the U.S had in the past century always played a big role and interfered heavily in world's affairs. The supposedly greatest power on earth evokes strong and contrasting sentiments, either you love America, despite its flaws, or you hate it, not withstanding its arrogance and selfish partiality.

Lately America is showing signs of retreat and weakness, at least vis-a-vis China and few other powers ... let's quickly look at how the political game is being played in our times; Always and invariably, everywhere, the best way to reach somewhere is to listen to all sides, to both sides at least of any position or argument, and only then make an educated decision on any matter, our major problem nowadays is that most politicians everywhere are becoming little dictators, playing the nationalistic, fascistic side, imitating and competing as to who can do more and beat all others.

to name a few, our own Mr. Trump, Mr. Bolsonaro of Brazil, Mr. Putin, Orban of Hungary , Erdogan of Turkey, Netanyahu of Israel, Bin Salman of Saudi, Modi of India, and the list goes on with some traditional dictators as in Syria, political parties as in Lebanon, and theocracies as in Iran ... and more in Africa , Latin America and Asia. This is not good for the future of our world combined, but only serves these politicians, their families and oligarchies.

All these politicians enforce policies and tactics that only listen and get advise strictly from one side, their followers are driven and brainwashed to listen to one side, the side they like, and keep their opinions and actions and votes in check with the official propaganda. This is the typical partisanship of many engaged people in politics, and politicians who blindly endorse the one side to serve their survivability and strict interests.

We only listen to one side, our side, no matter how demagogue and sometimes irrational our side is, and always act accordingly. The U.S. will end up suffering  and paying for some of the worse effects in the world, because of its incompetent leadership and their one sided system and experts. The president, his administration and some States governors and mayors, who all follow a one prescribed policy dictated by incompetence and immaturity.

The U.K. and Brazil and some other spots are already paying for imitating our foolish model of leadership and shortsightedness. Of course some big, big money will make its way to some big pockets and their political benighted beneficiaries, at the expense of too many innocents who could have been spared and saved.   

The challenges in our lives, all over, are massive, but we must have the courage and enough compassion to fight for the world that is still possible, never has this been more clear and obvious than it is right now, in the midst of our global crisis and irresponsibilities. We will have enough time to calmly inspect and caution each and every country of its delays and cover up, it's not the time now to find culpable, culprits and victims to clear our conscience, and justify ourselves and our acts.

                       My, as always, many thanks to all my good readers, stay safe.             

ADDENDUM TO THE ADDENDUM ....

Again the focus of this blog is on the COVID-19 pandemic, as it is shaping our present lives and our futures. As we all sit contemplating our past with all its wars, hegemony, colonialism and imperialism, apartheid, fascism, and all forms of man-made aggression and brutality, a virus crippled the entire world, its population, armies and politicians, its corporate and very rich as well as its poorest segments.

Practically every country around the world is asking the same, where are the corona tests? where are the masks and the protective equipment? where are the ventilators? where are the vaccines and cures to treat patients? where's the direct support to people who lost or cannot go to their jobs? and to small businesses who lost any hope to recover, to people who's rents and bills were due weeks ago?

 China and India are helping many needy countries with medical equipment and medicine, while we the civilized, white, Christian and noble West cannot decide to lift our vindictive sanctions on many countries and trapped desperate people like the Gaza Palestinians or Iranians or Venezuelans, or Yemenis, we only think in terms of annihilation, domination and warring. 

We are facing an unprecedented moment in the life of humanity, health care providers are asked to create and make miracles, while being denied basic equipment and protective gear, parents are asked to school their children at home, isolate and attend their loved ones, while they don't know if they'll have enough money for food and rent and basic necessities.

Grocery and food delivery workers are told they are essential workers, and yes they are our heroes, while being denied the basic ability to stay safe at work by their companies and our legislation. So forgive me for a moment if bailing out Boeing or Wall-Street, or even the pharma and military industries, or reopening Mar-A-Lago club and hotel isn't a top priority of mine. In Mr. Trump's language and logic "America first" does not necessarily mean Americans first, certainly not all of them.

All over, God, tribes and political partisanship, big business and free enterprise failed to save the U.S. and the world from a minute virus. It's high time to stop thinking and theorizing that unlimited money to "Keep America and Americans safe" can and should only be spent on planes, bombs and stupid imperialist aggressive adventures, while one pandemic is wiping up tens of thousands of Americans and many, many more worldwide, while we're sitting and watching helplessly.

These unprecedented and dangerous times, should when we all, over the entire world, get over it and regain some normalcy in our lives, then hopefully we can all sit and reexamine what has caused it, and how to prevent it in the future, globally, as well as our deep fractional divisions worldwide and in this country.
             My as always many thanks to all my readers, stay safe .               

ADDENDUM TO THE PREVIOUS .....

The rules applied in America, and some other industrial countries, of total free markets and wild forms of capitalism, the abuse of social and economical laissez-fair and the free reign of corporate power, and their bought politicians, should start changing, and be rethought in light of the corona virus pandemic world wide and the deadly effects all over.

As the filmmaker A.Taylor eloquently said; It's clear that in a crisis, the rules don't apply, which makes one wonder why they are rules in the first place, this is an unprecedented opportunity to not just hit the pause button and temporarily ease the pain, but to permanently change the rules so that untold millions of people aren't so vulnerable to begin with.

Our Washington administration and intelligentsia, are adamant at buying people's forgiveness with cheap stimulus packages while ignoring the reality and the real battlefield, ignoring how to pay for these trillions and who will provide them, and later who's going to live with several trillions of more debt and who will finance it, I don't have an answer and no one is giving one either.

To borrow the Atlantic Peter Wehner's words, "Taken together, this is a massive failure in leadership, that stems from a massive defect in character. our president is so impulsive, short sighted, and undisciplined, that he is incapable and unable to plan or even think beyond the moment, beyond his little interests,and he is so narcissist and unreflective that he is totally incapable of learning from his mistakes".

The nation is slowly recognizing these facts, and reacting to the indecisiveness and open signs of disarray and contradiction within the leadership. Treating him as a bystander, the nation's businesses, sports, schools and colleges, even mayors and governors are all taking it upon themselves to shut down, and find appropriate measures to save people and save the situation. People are self quarantining themselves, their children and their loved ones, all independently from the president or the White-House or the CDC guidance. This president, his oligarchy and family are shrinking on daily basis before everyone's eyes.

Since the outbreak of this virus affair, the president and his followers of republican politicians, the conservative movement, including many evangelicals branches, mega churches and schools, and the ultra right media, and social networking platforms have all conspired to miseducate, even brainwash rank and file conservatives, and who ever was willing to listen, of how trivial this pandemic is, as a result, many believe it's no big deal, just another form of ordinary flu, it's all a hoax and an organised effort by the liberals to undermine Trump's reign and reelection bid.

The president Oval office address, press talks and exchanges, even his constant tweets that are all meant to calm and reassure the markets, Wall-Street and the citizenry are all failing gravely, they are becoming more awkward and contradictory, prompting members of his administration continually to revise, correct and attempt to explain what was meant,  Lets all wake up and face reality......
               My usual many thanks to all my good readers, be safe .                        

LEADERSHIPS AND PANDEMICS ......

It's unfortunate for America, and partially for the world, that we are governed by a president who is fundamentally unfit intellectually, temperamentally, morally and psychologically to be president of even a banana republic, and surely not a super power with the economical and military force of the U.S., he is unfit to govern, nor to be a model of any sort to any leader around the world.

Take our present pandemic, our president as well as few other failed leaders of the world who all tried their best to deny reality, and mask it all with misinformation about everything concerning the virus, our president claimed that it was contained in America, when it was and still is spreading at more and more alarming numbers. He claimed that we had shut it down, when we had not and our medical system are far from ready for it now. He claimed that testing was available and plentiful when it proved to be almost totally out of reach.

Testing kits, ventilators, vaccines and curing medicines have to be bought from different sources, mostly European, with very dubious tactics for exclusivity and profit. He claimed that the Corona virus will soon vanish and be wiped out like a miracle, while it seems it won't, at least not before it gets much worse and many innocent pay with their lives and well being.

He claimed that a vaccine would soon be available, with uncontrollable prices set by the pharma industry, while Dr. Fauci a famous immunologist who serve as director of the national institute of allergy and infectious deceases and as a member of the White House Corona task force and many other eminent experts confirmed the contrary, stating that such vaccines would take more than a year to be available and distributed. Mr. Trump is still refusing to use his power of forcing or asking industry to accelerate production of pertinent medical equipment, he's leaving it all to market demand, profitability and big pharma corporate discretion. 

The aim obviously was to bullshit and deceive the population and try to uplift the markets with false propaganda, all to save his reign and reelectability, his oligarchy played even a worse role covering his many daily gaffes, contradictions and panic .

This president and his administration did everything in their power to keep all information of the virus, here and elsewhere contained and artificially low, except China and Iran, who were both labeled as originators of the virus and accused of intentionally diffusing the pandemic. All to benefit strictly his immediate interests and electoral ambitions, and on and on it still goes, under rules of lying, falsification and deceit .

                My usual thanks to all, hoping the world will get together to confront and defeat the virus.

      

THE NEW WORLD EQUILIBRIUM .....

Country after country, in our present times, are falling to a sort of new motto in politics and governance, whereby they are all dominated by rapacious and greedy extortionate elites consumed strictly by looting their states and its resources, using different ideologies, wars, crimes, brutality even lately pandemics and other dangerous ailments hitting humanity.

Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Israel and Saudi Arabia and many others within the tight Middle-Eastern regional sphere are all prime front examples, and they all constitute typical products of these elitist policies, benefiting directly from higher superpowers' hegemony and interests.  Countries like Russia, Turkey, Iran and many other military, or semi military dictatorships are firmly on their way to do the same.

I will give a sort of an example from here in the United States, trying to elucidate this new mentality, Mr. Trump and his administration came up lately with a projected budget, according to them it's great and they're all so proud of it all, they firmly believe that it sets the right priorities to save America, its economics and its malignant long term problems.

Funding the famous wall, supporting blindly our chaotic Pentagon top brass, our military, our wars and nuclear armaments, our new projected adventures on all continents, and our continuous war machine. Cut most wasteful foreign aid, even humanitarian ones, except of course what we generously advance to our closest allies, who happen to have the power to impose their will and scare us politically and electorally.

Cut short all wasteful welfare programs and abandon most of their recipients, no mention of social security improvement , or student learning expenses or infrastructure creation or maintenance, no mention of medicare for all, not even for some. On the contrary, Mr. Trump is doubling down on his plans to cut and kill social security and medicare while doubling the national deficit since taking office and further enriching the very rich and corporations by cutting their taxes, even now with our fast growing pandemic he's mostly concerned by further cutting rich taxes.

Mr. Trump and his administration are, and openly so, on the good path of destroying the middle-classes, and turning them into a proletarian type of cheap hard working robots, even animals for the absolute power and wealth of a filthy rich small minority, their interests, and their corporate reign . The Lebanese, Syrian and Iraqi examples are even more blatant showings of open corruption and theft, leading to the same results.

No wonder these countries hate the non conforming other, and only alienate themselves to similar regimes.  Mr. Trump hates the Chinese and the European examples, the former for its dazzling success, especially economic, and the later for it's rationality, social equilibrium and well being, thus he continuously looks for ways  to punish them.

As always my profound thanks to all, here in the U.S. and across the world.               

THEISM VERSUS SECULARISM ..... part two.

All religions, and more so the three monotheistic ones held women in a condition of undeclared slavery, made women an afterthought in the creation, labeled her as the author of sin in direct collusion with the devil, deserving a just punishment for affecting the downfall of man.

It all belonged to an exclusive masculine religion, typified in the Hebraic books by an elusive historic grand figure personified in a Moses and later his many and often contradictory prophets, in the new testament it was Peter and Paul following Jesus steps and sermons and teachings And finally, all Muslem interpreters, claiming to follow literally their prophet's sacred words and deeds, through the direct words of God, closed the doors for any new prophets or godly representatives.

All religions falsely claimed that they represent the words of God, their books and their interpreters were women's biggest problem, they were man-made inventions that relegated women as well as other religions adherents to second and third class status. Every self proclaimed theologian of these ancient religions is still desperately trying to chain us to the past, and not address any works for human betterment,

Take our present Corona virus pandemic, I haven't heard one religious figure come up with any rational explanation or solution. They all do not dare to address or challenge the superstition, hypocrisy and sham that always created and ended in barbarism, cruelty, inquisitions, invasions of all others, apartheid, brutality, massacres and annihilation.

Here in the U.S. many states still require a religious test or declaration of belief in God, and in some instances Jesus and the trinity when applying to an official public office or political appointment , Betsy Devos, the secretary of education in the glorified Trump administration, claims that the school and classroom should instill an advocacy of the "Advance of God's kingdom" with assault arms in the hands of teachers and students to protect it all . But not a secular belief grounded on sciences, common sense, equity and justice, love of humanity and compassion, outside of religion.

It is funny though, to observe how every minority , or person of color when addressing any issue, believe they are the true and sole representatives of their communities, the same exactly applies to Christianity, Judaism and Islam, every spokesman believes that he or she do represent the entire community of his constituency, even the entire believers of his or her creed. Israel is a prime and fantastic example, and the Islamic world comes second. 
                   
                            Few words describing the huge influence still exercised by religions and religious figures in our modern societies, and our lives. My usual many thanks to all my good friends across the world.