Posts tagged "news-actualia":

America "the world's bully"

Sherifa Zuhur on Mastodon referred to the US is the "baltaji al-Alam".

America might be the world's bully, but I doubt whether its current administration is capable of taking on many issues at once,. So, despite the fact that the media can be used as a tool to harness our attention with one headline story, while government perpetrates other horrors in the background, I'm not sure that the current story can work so effectively in the Trump administration's interest. Because it is not just the media but the US government that is going to become bogged down in this issue and its repercussions.

Instead, the danger is more in what happens while we are not watching, elsewhere in the world; what other regimes and US pawns are doing.

Back from America

Back from the US to the turmoil of this Jewish-Israeli intifada, which is only getting worse. With this people and government it's like the cliché about when an irresistable force meets an immovable object. So far neither are giving way though the government is showing more signs of stress than the people on the streets are showing signs of despair.

I'm jetlagged - should be asleep now. Besides the change in time zones, there have been two daylight saving time switches: first in the US and now here.

I went for a walk with my new old camera on Thursday to learn more about it. I've posted a few photos. Spring is about at its peak here now and the greenery is lush, with more rain predicted for the weekend.

NATO and Russia

It's frustrating to see that people calling for peace in Ukraine can be dismissed so easily as Putin sympathizers. This is a classic move to silence critics and peaceniks, in almost every conflict. Accuse them of working for, or playing into the hands of the enemy. So that's how we should relate to these statements also today. There are some, like Donald Trump, who aren't afraid to speak bluntly. Quoting Jonathan Cook's article of today, Trump apparently said: “FIRST COME THE TANKS, THEN COME THE NUKES. Get this crazy war ended, NOW.” Easier said than done. A stitch in time would have saved nine. But for people with vision and courage, there could also be an opportunity here: to rethink and remake the security arrangements between NATO and Russia in such a way that neither side feels threatened, and ensure peace into the 22nd century. This was something that needed to be done quite some time ago. How much further do we have to go down the road towards annihilation before we realize that this is what was needed? I think the war was, all along, never really about Ukraine.

Trends I'm seeing

A film, thoughts about Epicyon and federation, links

Diary

Journal

War and occupation

Jonathan Cook and Noam Chomsky have good pieces comparing western attitudes on the war in Ukraine to wars and occupation in Palestine and Iraq. Predictably, it's fine to express righteous indignation towards what the Russians are doing in Ukraine but not against the US or Israel.

On one level, it's a great relief to be in the consensus regarding the Russian invasion, but this should make us feel profoundly uncomfortable if we are not similarly anti-war-&-occupation in other cases too, when we are not within the consensus. Iraq and Palestine are excellent examples.

The mainstream press and public opinion are full of bull. We are blinded by propaganda and unconsciously drawn into hypocritical positions. The only good thing about the Russian war machine is its lack of apology and pretence, its "this is who we are" stance, though the lack of pretence is itself a pretence.

We the people lack sufficient power to stop nations in their tracks when they go on a war footing. If we are lucky, we can vote; we can register our opposition through protest. Or maybe we can grab the kids and go somewhere else - somewhere safe.

We can't remove ourselves from the equation, however. As much as we try to exclude ourselves, we are responsible. The racism is our racism. The violence is our violence. I am the arms merchant. I am the pirate.

I am also the victim. Empathy and compassion are more appropriate than detachment, cynicism and despair. Looking for ways to help counts for more than being right.

Freedom outside the press

Yesterday I listened to a 90 minute interview of Kim Stanley Robinson by journalist Ezra Klein in his podcast. It's the first time I'd listened to Klein - I had never even heard of this seasoned American journalist. But the interview was impressive from both sides. Klein, who says that Robinson's Ministry of the Future was the most important book that he'd read that year managed to ask questions about many of the central features of the novel, and, in response, Robinson spoke about topics like Eco-Marxism, which is an ism that I hadn't heard of.

I live very much on the periphery of ideologies, though of course the ideas trickle down through alternative social media and even mainstream media. Wikipedia has a comprehensive article on Eco-socialism. In the interview Robinson describes Marx as a good historian but a bad science fiction writer "like all of us" - because it is so difficult to predict the future. Of course, this is a bit ingenuous, because Marx would have been trying not passively to predict but to shape the future. If the analogy doesn't seem ingenuous to Robinson, it would be because he too is trying to model and to promote scenarios in which we might beat the climate crisis.

It's interesting that Robinson, in his novel, gave comparatively little space to the role of the news media. Perhaps, as a novelist, he can afford to stand somewhat outside the media and its influences, though of course he needs it as a platform to speak about and sell his books. The podcast was a good example. As a novelist and a science fiction writer ("cli-fi" is another of the terms I have just heard about), Robinson has greater freedom than journalists or even non-fiction writers, to speak about ideas like eco-terrorism, and to assign a role to these in the coming years.

The degree to which journalists enjoy freedom depends upon where they are situated and who they work for. The journalist Jonathan Cook yesterday published a critical article about the Guardian's George Monbiot. Monbiot is one of the newspaper's most important voices and he specializes in climate change. Cook challenges him not on climate change but on his lack of interest in the case of Julian Assange.

Assange, I think Cook would agree, is probably the world's most important/iconic persecuted journalists: a person whom the US government wants incarcerated, if they can't assassinate him first. The Guardian reports on his case because it has to, but without much enthusiasm, and Monbiot, one of the more radical journalists in the Guardian's employ, ignores the case. Cook says it's because Monbiot is an "owned man", in the pay of the Guardian and the Guardian is, in turn, in the pay of the establishment.

Cook has an even more potent example - the recent series by Al Jazeera on the character assassination of Corbin and the way this was used to promote a more moderate figure like Starmer. He says, justifiably, that the Guardian, together with other British newspapers, have almost totally ignored the story in the attempt to get it squashed. He also asks why it took a Qatari paper to uncover the story in the first place.

I recently subscribed to Jonathan Cook's Substack account, as well at to the nonpaid part of Glenn Greenwald's Substack. These are two journalists who decided to leave the pay of mainstream media and to go-it-alone, for similar reasons: they think that in order to do the kind of the journalism they are interested in, they need a greater degree of freedom than is accorded to them in mainstream media. Greenwald even felt obliged to leave the alternative media outfit that he helped found.

Cook, Greenwald and others like them are doing a good job, but we, and even they, still need mainstream media, obviously. They need it to get their stories out, even on a freelance basis. We need it because independent journalists can only cover a smidgeon of stories - those that are of interest to them.

We still need Big Media, just as we need nation-states and all the other apparatus of the establishment, even as we try to change it. But in order to get a fresh and independent perspective, as in the example above, we need to look beyond our country's mainstream news media. Al Jazeera certainly isn't free or independent. It's owned by Qatar, a corrupt, undemocratic oil state. But on some issues, they can talk freely and provide a different perspective. They can give us the dirt on Britain's Labour Party. If we want to learn about Qatar, we will need to look elsewhere. If it's Ukraine? Al Jazeera follows pretty much the Western line, as far as I've seen, with some editorial exceptions. "Editorial exceptions" we can find even in the Western press, though.

If we want to form a balanced view, it's crucial for us to look outside the prison of our own cultural perspective and deliberately hunt for different points of view, wherever we can find them.

Robinson, in his novel, does not ignore the influence of social media. His Ministry of the Future even creates a new, non-corporate version of it. He seems to be unaware of already existing phenomena like the Fediverse. Unfortunately, the Fediverse, like mainstream social media, is a mixed bag when it comes to the expression of independent voices: Just as on Twitter or Facebook, the Fediverse has influential people who are in thrall to the established opinions that they have picked up from mainstream media. The dialogue, or lack of it, around Ukraine is a recent example. The war is being followed like a football match, with everyone rooting for the same team. Very few people are actively seeking an end to the war. If they do so, they can, as in one post I saw, face being censured like Pope Francis for piping up "just when Ukraine seems to be doing well." Western leaders are, in the meantime, happy to see Russia humiliated, while their weapons industries benefit from this new lucrative market.

Accepting that culpability is seldom equal, each party goes into a conflict with its own set of needs. The way out, when there is a mediation process, is not necessarily a compromise. For example if Ukraine is demanding territorial integrity and the ability to make alliances independently of Russia, but Russia wants guarantees that its security needs will be respected and that it will not be encircled by hostile powers, a way can be found to meet both of these needs. I'm just speculating. But the best way to end this is not by penalizing, squashing or obliterating one side while championing the other, even if that's our fantasy.

Besides being out of step with our times, the war has been a crime against the earth at the most critical time in the history of our civilisation. We have to find a way of stopping it immediately, as well as to discover a formula to prevent future wars like it. We cannot afford to fight on two fronts at this time.

Europe and its problem with Fascism

The world watches in trepidation while yet another European election threatens to bring in right-wing populists - this time in Italy. It's pretty exasperating to see this constant tussle between inept centerist parties and their far-right adversaries. Europe needs change, but its people keep looking in the wrong direction, choosing the worse over the simply bad.

Sometimes it looks like we have to either fight tooth and nail or flee, like those Russians now massing on the borders and trying to get out, because the state eventually came knocking on their doors. Or like the Israeli leftists who leave to countries where they can learn to shrug off the local politics. Or the Brits who fled Brexit, or refugees everywhere. Sometimes living in another country is simply less painful. If you live as a resident outside you native country's borders, the army recruitment center isn't going to come looking for you or your children. It's true that you'll have less power and influence, and will probably be unable to create change either in the country of your citizenship or in the country of your residency. In the conditions of today, that's the price that you pay.

One day, in a more stable world, the purpose of nations will be to serve their citizens and safeguard the environment. Citizenship could be abolished and replaced with residency. You live in a nation of your choosing and both you and the nation enter into a contract. You pay your taxes and the nation provides you with the social services that you need. That's the basis. On a local level there are other commitments, in order to build a sense of community, since loyalty anyway works more naturally on a local level, while "patriotism" and "nationalism" are usually encouraged artificially, by politicians, for extraneous or nefarious objectives. In the 21st century, it has become more important for everyone everywhere to pledge our alliegance to the planet than to the nations that are working together to destroy it.

2022-4-26 - olives, loquats | dealing with complexity | web fonts

The olives are in bloom, meaning many people will have allergies. It looks like there are many flowers this year: does that mean there will be many fruits? (Olives are famously biennial bearing).

Low-hanging loquats: the birds leave us a few.

2022-04-14 Collective fantasies

I've been thinking that, considering the unreality of the world, or worlds, that we inhabit, it may be more intelligent to spend as little as possible time with what seems to be “the hard reality”. Children, when they are given the freedom to be somewhat detached from a need to earn a living or take an active part in their parents' world, grow wings. They have the ability to dream, to engage in fantasies of their own making. We all think that this is wonderful. Yet, when children “grow up” they are gradually expected to conform to the hard realities of the adult world, where engaging in fantasy is excoriated and shunned. Collective fantasies especially are reviled, such as QAnon, by people who are not part of that, and vice-versa. Half of society is accusing the other half of engaging in fantasy, and there are sub-groups and cults: political and spiritual.

The phenomenon is not as new as we tend to think that it is. Thinking back a little, we remember the “flat earth movement”, Nazism, the Inquisition, and historical cults. So that it looks as if engaging in collective fantasy is fundamental to the human spirit. The world that intelligent, informed, mainstream humanity currently inhabits, where opposition to the exploitation of women, castigation of “war crimes” (by our adversaries only), religious tolerance, LBGT acceptance, concern for the environment, etc. are the norm, is historically abnormal, and artificially constructed. The values we share today may be seen as baneful in the future.

So to what extent should we avoid the “collective fantasies”, when accepting that we already inhabit one ourselves? Collective fantasies contain elements of community that are important for our mental equilibrium. Perhaps the test is when they cause harm to others? For example, if my fantasy involves the genocide of all Jews, of Ukrainians, of the elimination of Muslims from my country, then it can be said to be harmful. If it comes into contact with people who embrace an opposing fantasy, do we greet them with guns, or with tolerance?

Despite the benefits of community found in the collective fantasies, my tendency, at this stage in life is to try to avoid them and to find my own way. I hope I will be strong enough.

2022-04-10 Spread of Autocracy | Messaging | Degoogle resource | Libre-DNS | Sri Lanka

I am thinking to make the font size of this blog bigger. In my browser, I do that anyway, and I find that I like the look of blogs with a large font size.

The trend in countries all around the world, despite reversals, seems definitely to be towards more autocratic leaders. Jonathan Freedland [1] in the Guardian has an article about Putin lovers in the west. Orban was just re-elected. Marine Le Pen is inching towards leadership. Trump is still skulking in the background, as is Netanyahu. I'm not optimistic. Altogether the dunia is in such a sad state, it's funny.

I looked again at Delta Chat [2], which tries to use traditional email as a secure messenger, and makes a convincing case for it. I think the fragmentation of communications into proprietary services, Matrix, XMPP, etc. is really unfortunate. Email is/was a good format; it is decentralized and amenable to encryption. Why can't it be fixed and reused also as a messenger? Why do we need so many formats and different ways to communicate? Who profits from this fragmentation? Not us.

2022-03-24 нет войне

I am home alone for a long weekend while D is away on a mindfulness retreat. Plenty of work to do though - both for the office and around the house - some gardening if the weather permits. Just woke up at around 5 AM and am sitting here listening to Cafe de Anatolia music [1], a little loud.

When I look at the headlines from Ukraine and Russia with an eye, a mind, and a back-of-my-mind understanding that there is disinformation everywhere, it still computes to the fact that a big military giant is bearing down on a smaller neighbour with an army that has recently been committing despicable and hardly noticed atrocities across Syria. I'm pretty certain that the Russian leader is facing a growing wave of discontent at home, and that this will eventually explode, in ways that we will probably be clueless about. I don't think the guy is a madman, but just badly out of touch. And yet, with his help, Assad, similarly aloof, has managed to keep his chokehold on a nation. That's the way it is with dictators and strongmen. Their rule eventually wizzens and dies, but not always according to a predictable time-frame.

Likely Zelenskiy is similarly facing opposition and discontent, although it hasn't been reported, in the name of presenting a united front. His position is equally tenuous. Meanwhile Ukraine is being destroyed, and all for what? To score points against NATO? Wars serve no purpose other than allowing angry people to let off steam. The motivations and the outcomes are clouded in fog. The narrative can be made up, the facts doctored. History becomes a jumble of divisive narratives, as with the tkuma and the nakba. A people will always remember what it wants to remember. Meanwhile, humans die for stupid unnecessary reasons.

"Killing people is so easy," I said to D after the stabbing attack that killed 4 in Beer Sheba the other day. Our bodies are fragile. Sometimes a disease gets us, or a storm, or a radicalized Islamic militant. It makes little difference. On a recent car journey, the truck just ahead swerved out suddenly into my lane, which meant that I swerved into the next lane, with no time to look. It could easily have been the end for me, my wife and for other unfortunates. We are fragile and can die for no reason at all, kill others senselessly. In the arithmetic of causes and effects nothing adds up but the final balance is always a zero.

If we want to look for the reasons behind the reasons, we need to look to the metaphysical. The other day, into the office walked a gardener. A big scary guy in dark attire; a beard in the style that only religious Muslims wear, a large skull cap. He was looking for work, but ended up giving me a sermon. He asked if I "believed" and I said sure - I believe that the god of the Muslims and all the other gods are one and the same. He was very happy with this answer, asked if I knew the kalima, and I repeated after him La Illaha Il Allah. He departed after giving me a hug.

It is the same god that sends militants on a stabbing spree, the same that rescues us from a car wreck, and both the killers and the rescued praise him. Both are right to do so. We are just agents in an agency at the top of which stands an aloof and unknown owner - an oligarch - sailing somewhere in his super-yacht. Perhaps even he is unsure whether the next port will allow him to dock, will turn him away, or will seize his boat in the name of trumped-up sanctions.

2022-03-07 - Media blindfolding

"The first casualty is truth" is drivel in a world where wars are completely unnecessary for the proliferation of fake facts, but I know from my Israel-Palestine experience that whenever a truth seems too unequivocal, reality is probably not what it seems. So when, thanks to someone on the Fediverse, I discovered Max Blumenthal's article on neo-Nazi infiltration in Ukraine, I breathed a sigh of relief and started fishing around for more. Noam Chomsky, of course has interesting things to say too (US Approach to Ukraine Has “Left the Domain of Rational Discourse”).

There is no doubt which side is being more evil just now, and which side needs huge support. But the western news media seem to approach the war like an old Hollywood movie, or a Marvel comic-book, where the good guys are beyond reproach and the bad guy is a super-villain. And all kinds of crude, unacceptable stuff like Ukrainians smearing their bullets with pigs' fat to demoralize Chechnian soldiers becomes suddenly fine. Someone had got inspired by 1857.

Putin needs new laws, courts, government ministries and policemen to enforce his media-clampdown. All that western countries seem to need is a collective will to block out anything that spoils the collective narrative. This is as true when it is Ukraine being reported as it is in Palestine. If only greater respect could be shown to the news consumer's intelligence, perhaps it would become a thing. It's the inability to see reality in more than two dimensions that is the real danger and instigator of wars.

We are currently in a very dangerous moment, when in our naivety and gullibility, we can too easily be swayed by warmongers and arms merchants. It's Putin's fault, and it's our fault too. And when war comes to us it really doesn't matter who started it. Innocents and non-innocents end up suffering just the same.

2022-02-23 - Russia and Ukraine | Sufi music | Garage Philosophy

2022-02-22 - Russia and Ukraine

Now that Russia is actually invading Ukraine, thoughts about what both sides could have been doing to de-escalate the situation and avoid war become irrelevant. It's a clear case of a large country bullying a smaller one, and the Russian leader deserves to be reviled. There was a lot of nonsense spoken about how such military intervention and aggression is no longer possible in the 21st century, and that the build up we were seeing was "actually the war". Subtlety of that sort doesn't exist in Putin's world; people were forgetting his long record. I also feel incredulous at wars and military campaigns. I feel like that every time Israel embarks on its periodical campaigns against Gaza. But it is dangerous to project one's personal value system and think that leaders and nations share it. They don't. It's the same group violence we have known for 10,000 years, using the technological means and systems of the current era. It isn't likely ever to stop, just to adopt new forms.

The question is now what the world needs to do now. I'm stumped. I will wait to see what develops.

Diary and links

2022-02-02 22:22 - Wow that's quite a time and date! Not intentional, I swear. Today was also my brother's birthday, and the day my eldest son moved to his new house. Our own house suddenly got bigger since they were moving out from the part that we divided off to rent out. I think we're done with renting, so we'll have a couple of guest rooms.

World Wide Waste

There's a website called "World Wide Waste" that is dedicated to the subject of digital waste and its costs to the environment. It seems to me that it is less of a subject for the individual than for the corporations, although we are all guilty of over-streaming. I wonder whether the environmental costs of internet streaming is greater than reliance upon satelites? It may be that since both exist, it makes little difference. It must be better to use videoconferencing than traveling and commuting. Harari makes the point that we don't really have an energy problem - there is infinite energy that we could obtain. It's just a technological and an environmental problem. If we can only solve the 21st century technological problems of polluting industries, we will be able to enjoy the tech advantages, but, along the way, we are making terrible misjudgments. Humans are inherently wasteful. We need to cut down on packaging and processed foods, products that are wasteful.

Of course, writing these words, I'm aware that this is actually delusional and that we are still on the way to annihilation. I can make personal improvements, but the problems are endemic. Seeing the wasterfulness of Americans, of my brother for example, there is little hope for humanity. And no doubt in Israel too I am unaware of the way many people are living. But there is satisfaction whenever one can make personal good decisions. These can be shared and communicated over our own networks in order to help popularize environmental consciousness.

Yes, despite the luxury of an independent, non-connected blog, it makes much more sense to communicate ideas that to keep them to oneself. I simply haven't cracked the technique of doing it in a manner that doesn't lead to disgust or embarrassment. Effective communication requires a style that is far removed from my slow circumlocution and roundabout thinking. Writers like George Monbiot are effective communicators, though even they manage to invoke the ire of folks who are quite near to them ideologically. And then there are the superstars, like Michael Moore, who also make terrible mistakes, unforgivable errors, which create great damage. So where does that leave someone like me? I guess it is all about an honest dialogue. Actually, I have little patience for one.

It's useful to do lots of reading I think I prefer to do my thinking, my writing or communicating as a monologue. Blogging is better for me than a Reddit-style back-and-forth, and even one-line responses to my posts bother me immensely. So that's how I end up with a blog that does not permit responses, or simply a private journal. The dialogue is simply me reading what other people have said, and then writing, in my own fashion, reflections on what I have read; or sometimes my own thoughts. There are folks who are better than me for the true dialogue. If am more private, it isn't arrogance, exactly, but the need for personal space. It's the reason that it is much easier for me to write offline, by hand, in a personal journal, than to write blog posts. But there is still room to transcribe these later.

Extraordinary times

We are living in an extraordinary time in which the viability of our institutions, the myths of society, and the true worth of leaders, is severely tested. Some leaders, like Donald Trump, are so completely confounded by the challenges that whatever they do or do not do places them in a situation of appearing ridiculous. Others, like Angela Merkle, do not need to be very vocal, since they sit atop functional systems that just work, or at least work better.

Countries like Sweden are being shown that some of the assumptions about themselves as societies are poor companions when they are confronted by a new kind of threat. They do not know how to adapt to it.

The virus managed to out-wait Israel. It is waging a war of attrition against a society that prides itself on being able to pull together in order to fight massive, but short term existential crises. Some of the behaviours that aid it in other circumstances fail it in this kind of crisis.

The pandemic is helping societies learn about themselves and their resilience in times of adversity.

Foreign workers

“Foreign workers are particularly vulnerable, with a weaker support network and language barriers that prevent them from seeking government help…”

Seems like an enduring universal truth.

(https://gu.com/p/dnkfp/stw)

Thoughts on Brexit

The UK has not been my home since childhood. I will probably never go back to live there. Yet my only passport is British, and I might wish to live one day in a European country. Here’s what I think about Brexit.

Any major change in the status of a country should require a referendum with a two-thirds majority. That would take care of situations where the majority is slim, as was the case in this one. Joining the EU should have required such a referendum; leaving it too.

The referendum on leaving the EU should have been built from the outset on the principle of holding a second referendum, once the conditions agreed between Parliament and the EU would be known.

Since joining the EU made every British citizen a citizen of the EU, any automatic abrogation of that citizenship should be illegal. Although the gaining of EU citizenship is dependent upon national citizenship in an EU member country, losing of such citizenship should be conditioned upon the acceptance by the individual. It is not for a country to take away citizenship, even of a dual citizen, without due cause (i.e. individuals themselves have done something that would be a cause of revoking citizenship) – otherwise, this only causes anguish to the individual. The case should be adjudicated by the European Court of Justice.

Whatever I think about Brexit, it seems to me that at this moment, Johnson’s deal is the only one on the table. Parliament should decide on that deal and stop quibbling. Labour should support the deal on condition that there will be a second referendum; that’s what they said they would do. They might still have illusions of passing their own deal, but that’s not going to happen. Even if, as I suspect, a second referendum would come out in support of Brexit, the step is still necessary as a means to national healing. All this literal demonization of the other side, whichever side, should stop.

Richard Stallman's site

I’ve been checking Stallman’s site to see what he will say about his resignation from the Free Software Foundation, as I think it is curious that on the site he mentions his resignation from CSAIL at MIT but nowhere mentions his resignation from FSF. That’s true till today, though a week has passed. I suppose he’ll get around to mentioning it eventually, but it does seem a little odd. For now, there is only the notice on the FSF website to rely upon.

What is new on Stallman.org is an explanation of his talk at Microsoft, which is interesting.

It’s amusing that some people are only now noticing his “Political Notes” and the topics that concern him, and have concerned him for years. I don’t know whether he composes all of those notes himself, but I have always found that work impressive and helpful, a kind of compendium of news stories that we should be paying attention to; as concise as one could wish for. I think at least some of the people who scorn his “embarrassing behavior” and obvious sexism are actually made more uncomfortable by his unyielding positions and radical politics.

Stallman's resignation from MIT and FSF

https://fsfe.org/news/2019/news-20190917-01.html

https://www.fsf.org/news/richard-m-stallman-resigns

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9ke3ke/famed-computer-scientist-richard-stallman-described-epstein-victims-as-entirely-willing

Famed Computer Scientist Richard Stallman Described Epstein Victims As ‘Entirely Willing’

Reddit threads: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/d5a4dz/richard_stallman_resigns_from_mit_due_to_pressure/f0l50w4/

https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/d59r46/richard_stallman_resigns_from_mit_over_epstein/f0kpd5w/

“Richard Stallman Does Not and Cannot Speak for the Free Software Movement”

Hellekin is leaving the GNU project in protest against Stallman’s comments on the Epstein affair.

https://ps.zoethical.org/t/the-injustice-of-the-word-assaulting/2776

Stallman has been vilified by those who don’t know him, Sylvia Paull

"This might be what will kill the GNU project. Unfortunately because I see nobody here able to take your succession, and also because too many people have been taking too much of your awkward behavior towards women. This is the drop that breaks the camel’s back."

Regarding Stallman

I once went to a Buddhist meditation workshop where the teacher pointed out that if we were there in the room, it meant that we had not attained perfection, and that we still had something to learn. It’s also true that if we still believe ourselves to be here on the planet, living a separate existence, we have something to learn. And what we have to learn is basically that there is an underlying unity upon which everything depends. Our world is an illusion because our perception is false. It is false because it fails to include awareness of the unseen unity that gives life to all that we see. Including ourselves. There are many ways to express this truth, and none of them are going to do it very well, because we are attempting to express the inexpressible. When we do so, contradictions emerge – a Buddhist will say this in a certain way; an Adwaita Vedantin will say it in another way, a shaman in a third way, and to our minds they seem to be contradicting one another. When it comes down to words, there are always going to be contradictions. Words are a vehicle for our thoughts, and thought cannot capture the reality that underlies the thinker and her thoughts.

At one and the same time we are imperfect beings caught in an imperfect, illusory world and we are also perfect, because that upon which we and our world depends is perfect and indivisible. Our world is going to be populated by imperfect beings for the same reason that we ourselves are imperfect. We look at others and separate them in multiple ways. We check whether they belong to our group, whether we can trust them, whether we should admire or shun them, whether we can get something from them like knowledge, money, sanction, sexual gratification, whatever.

Somewhere among these divisions we place an Epstein or an Einstein, a Polanski or a Stallman. We decide whether, on the basis of their deeds and statements, we approve of them. Our approval rating depends on ever-changing standards. Behavior that was permissible a few years ago may not be permissible now. Some behavior was never considered permissible, true. Sometimes we can acknowledge that a person has been a great artist or programmer or teacher, but that their behavior has been reprehensible in other ways.

It is better not to elevate any person to a place that is beyond reproach. In so far as they walk the earth they carry its imperfections. At the same time, no one deserves to be demonized, because they simultaneously embody perfection. Behavior can be angelic or demonic; and can be lauded or castigated. Human beings can be vehicles for both, but not consistently. There are no demons or saints in human form, and everyone is a mixture of traits.

Because we too are not perfect, we should neither demonize nor sanctify persons. We can aspire to and praise good behaviors, and should do so, even if we sometimes fall down from them. We should call out bad action when we see it.

Stallman is not just a good programmer, but is also a clear voice drawing attention to many kinds of injustice. Most of us can only wish for his earnest vigilance in doing so. I hope he will continue to write his political notes, and will continue to read them even with the knowledge that his own behavior* is not above reproach.

*I should have written “and statements” or something similar, because the recent controversy was not about what he did, but what he said. I have previously heard criticism of his own behavior, though nothing authoritative. Anyway, in terms of behavior, he has now resigned from MIT and the Free Software Foundation. The latter say that they “welcome the decision.”