I am Free...
Showing posts with label write. Show all posts
Showing posts with label write. Show all posts
Friday 21 May 2021
Wednesday 17 March 2021
Wednesday 9 December 2020
What will we say - Luca Sofri - Wittgenstein - Ilpost.it
What will we say
9 December 2020
In her passionate and admirable discourse today on the commitment to protect oneself from contagion, Angela Merkel used at some point an ancient rhetorical formulation to which we are no longer accustomed. It is interesting, because the problem with solemn rhetorical formulas is that over time they lose meaning and become empty, even not tolerable. Instead, this is so out of our way of thinking, that it now sounds with an extraordinary and very concrete meaning, as if it had resurfaced from a distant memory.
What will we say when we look back?
It’s a wonderful, moving question. It sounds familiar, a rhetorical expression often heard, and yet we realize that we no longer hear it: we have often heard it in certain documentaries, perhaps, or in certain biographical films. In some history books, who knows. But no political leader or speaker says it anymore.
Because no one thinks about looking forward anymore, when you look back.
No one judges any more the nonsense, the volatility, the laziness, the whims, the sterility of each of our days, with the ability to detach and look at them from a distance. As we said yesterday, imagine judging the energies and the commitment and the stress spent this year, last year, in the last five years, six years ago, in the things we spent them on. Imagine someone coming from that time and asking us "was it worth it? was it really important? what did we get, then?". And who remembers, with all the Facebook posts we have to be indignant about every day.
Of course, good things happen and each of us has his own, private or public: and some may even be proud of it. But how are the days going by - the weeks, the months, the years - our politics, our public debate, our commitment, the history of this country that we have been accustomed to think of as progress so far? What are we building, what have we built? How long will it remain, what will it have grown? Does it concern us?
What will we say when we look back?
Nice sentence. Mark it, speechwriters.
Wednesday 17 June 2020
LIVE IN A SHORT TIME - The Second Life Book Club with Draxtor
or live on you tube at
- h 9 pm italian time
- 12 am Second Life time
( that I believe is the
pacific coast USA time)
with author LL McKinney.
or on you tube in Second Life (LOL)
Tuesday 9 June 2020
Second Life Book Club Island - video
music by RZRS
CETACEAN
thanks to https://icons8.com/
I’m here at Draxtor's Second Life Book Club Island, while tomorrow show is trying to get rid of a lot of technical issues.
I’m admiring Draxtor’s T-shirt and I decided to show it to you.
I believe that you can follow the program directly here and on facebook
Wednesday 3 June 2020
There’s nothing to do with social networks - Luca Sofri - wittgenstein - ilpost.it
Luca Sofri
As several people have noted, the discussion as to whether Facebook and Twitter and Google should be considered ¿editori ¿. doesn’t make sense for a long time. The temptation of our heads to convert what is new to known models is normal and understandable, but it generates failures and contradictions: probably someone, when it came to regulating the traffic of the first cars, It was questioned whether they should be considered carriages or ships, before it was finally understood that they were neither carriages nor ships, and that they were also both.
"Platforms" are not publishers but they are not non-publishers either: they are very different from publishers as we are used to imagining them, but they are not neutral and intervene on the contents they host and their diffusion in many ways, just as publishers do . Censoring content for different reasons, encouraging others, and promoting with the notorious algorithms this compared to that, that is establishing in fact what we read and what we don't. The neutrality of social networks is a fake and Zuckerberg's phrase about "not being able to be arbiters of the truth" is a hypocrisy contradicted by the thousand Facebook announcements of recent years on this or that social network intervention against fake news (including enlist third-party “arbiters of truth”, chosen by Facebook, arbiter of truth arbiters).
Recognizing this power to Facebook or Twitter and its exercise in fact naturally generates a mountain of problems: of responsibility first of all, but above all of inconsistency, and weights and measures. The case of Twitter and Trump is interesting: the intervention on Trump wants to limit the spread of false information that generates a great danger for society in the course of its democratic mechanism. If we decide that Twitter doesn’t have to because it doesn’t decide what Twitter is fake, then why didn’t we protest when Twitter announced that it would report false news about the coronavirus? And if we decide that Twitter doesn’t have to because it doesn’t decide what’s dangerous on Twitter, then why don’t we protest when Twitter blocks or censors persecution and personal harassment?
I’m saying what’s right and what’s wrong in all this? Or is Twitter or Trump right? No, for one simple reason: that it is impossible to say. It has become impossible. The criteria of right and wrong, compared to the rules we were used to, have skipped, as far as the big online platforms are concerned. The simplest answer, for example, would be that Twitter and Facebook and Google are private enterprises and completely in their right ( except violations of the law, of course ( in making editorial or commercial choices: they are not a public service, we citizens do not pay taxes for a service of which we are defrauded, the choice whether to use or not to use them is free, the contractual conditions are known.
And yet.
And yet they have become an unavoidable service in fact, because they act in a monopoly regime, legal but blackmail. You can’t help it, in fact, because there are no alternatives. And, to make matters worse, they are monopolies that owe their success to their own monopoly condition. Many say that the problem would not exist if there were a hundred social networks to choose from: but there may not be a hundred social networks to choose from because the quality and effectiveness of a social network (or search engine) It is precisely because of its ability to be used by everyone and to collect the information of all: it is the nature of the social network, unlike an electricity supplier or I know that it can be competitive even only with the convenience and quality of supply. Even if I only use it.
The further nuances, the examples, the contradictions, the comparisons, can still be many, in a debate that is also compelling for the scenarios and questions that it poses, for a couple of decades. But the synthesis is only one: everything has been skipped, and these contradictions are no longer resolved with a thought and criteria of the twentieth century, and probably they are not resolved in any way, least of all with the ingenuous. No rule, precedent or comparison fits any more and they will always be all wrong and all right: and we hope that this does not extend to everything else.
Friday 15 May 2020
Sabelli Fioretti's blog: Church and covid
As a child I attended Catholic Action (Azione Cattolica), I went to Mass every Sunday, I confessed and I took communion. Then, electrocuted on the road to Damascus, but in the opposite sense, I forgot everything, Church, religion, faith, priests, sacraments. Everything.
And I did well. I never regretted that choice. And even if I were to repent, the Church would promptly take the field to remind me not to make the mistake. Eight per thousand, tax evasion, ostentatious wealth, pedophilia, IOR, interference in politics. There has always been a great deal of reason to stay on this side of the Tiber. Every now and then there is a good pope, sometimes you meet healthy and just priests (I call them the pretacci). But in principle the Church remains an institution from which it is better to stay away.
It never disappoints us. Would you have imagined that the Church would oppose the rules of engagement with the coronavirus? Is it really so indispensable to go to mass endangering people’s health? Go! Everyone inside the churches to breathe poisonous bacilli. He says: all right but the host we take it with gloves! He says: but we will no longer exchange the sign of peace! He says: but we will respect the distances! And we will leave out those for whom there will be no room. I don’t believe in God. But if it does exist at this moment he is shaking his head murmuring to himself: But why did I create them so stupid?
Wednesday 18 March 2020
One get a little bit fascist - Luca Sofri
One get a little bit fascist
Luca Sofri
Luca Sofri
Il Post
18 March 2020
It is nothing new in the historical and sociological view that fear is the main incentive to demand strong manners, authoritarian regimes, I should like to thank the rapporteur for the work he has put into this report. On the contrary, the advocates of such regimes and approaches have often turned the relationship of cause and effect upside down, trying to spread with force or words a growing measure of fear precisely to push the demand, precisely, of authoritarian regimes.
In these weeks after many parts of the world worked to build artificial fears for years, with success– it came from where less expected a real fear, concrete, founded, enormous. That on the one hand does little to the case of those who wish strong manners because– unlike the fears that suggest propaganda manuals– does not accompany an enemy against which to arouse and direct anger. It is not excluded that from right– they are capable of everything– soon they begin to claim that "the left is a friend of the coronavirus", but it is a rhetoric that does a bit of work: as stupid you think your voters, To incite them to hate a microscopic pallet with pispoli around is not easy even for the most reckless fomentators of hate.
On the other hand, however, this natural, real, motivated fear is already generating shares of natural, real, motivated fascism in all: extreme intolerance and demands for repression towards those who leave the house (with DIY justice tips and fanaticism between the ridiculous and the disturbing)indulgence for measures of censorship even on books, which in other times would have been much discussed for their implications, a widespread feeling of having to each of us defend a higher need, a feeling that legitimizes us and puts us all in a uniform, I want to call the police, report someone, or intervene ourselves. Congratulations on exemplary punishment. Even, in our own small, impatience on the part of the moderators of the Post comments against expressions of stupidity on which we are usually more tolerant. "If you don’t understand it well, you have to be a little more aggressive," Fontana said today. And each of you will have examples around you, and within you. We are becoming– a bit at a time, – more intolerant, more eager for intransigence, more prone to discipline imposed by the bad, and without going for the subtle.
Don’t think too hard.
That’s normal, of course. He’s motivated, often. Is that okay?
You pay attention to that.
https://www.wittgenstein.it/2020/03/18/si-diventa-un-po-fascisti/
translated with https://www.reverso.net/
18 March 2020
It is nothing new in the historical and sociological view that fear is the main incentive to demand strong manners, authoritarian regimes, I should like to thank the rapporteur for the work he has put into this report. On the contrary, the advocates of such regimes and approaches have often turned the relationship of cause and effect upside down, trying to spread with force or words a growing measure of fear precisely to push the demand, precisely, of authoritarian regimes.
In these weeks after many parts of the world worked to build artificial fears for years, with success– it came from where less expected a real fear, concrete, founded, enormous. That on the one hand does little to the case of those who wish strong manners because– unlike the fears that suggest propaganda manuals– does not accompany an enemy against which to arouse and direct anger. It is not excluded that from right– they are capable of everything– soon they begin to claim that "the left is a friend of the coronavirus", but it is a rhetoric that does a bit of work: as stupid you think your voters, To incite them to hate a microscopic pallet with pispoli around is not easy even for the most reckless fomentators of hate.
On the other hand, however, this natural, real, motivated fear is already generating shares of natural, real, motivated fascism in all: extreme intolerance and demands for repression towards those who leave the house (with DIY justice tips and fanaticism between the ridiculous and the disturbing)indulgence for measures of censorship even on books, which in other times would have been much discussed for their implications, a widespread feeling of having to each of us defend a higher need, a feeling that legitimizes us and puts us all in a uniform, I want to call the police, report someone, or intervene ourselves. Congratulations on exemplary punishment. Even, in our own small, impatience on the part of the moderators of the Post comments against expressions of stupidity on which we are usually more tolerant. "If you don’t understand it well, you have to be a little more aggressive," Fontana said today. And each of you will have examples around you, and within you. We are becoming– a bit at a time, – more intolerant, more eager for intransigence, more prone to discipline imposed by the bad, and without going for the subtle.
Don’t think too hard.
That’s normal, of course. He’s motivated, often. Is that okay?
You pay attention to that.
https://www.wittgenstein.it/2020/03/18/si-diventa-un-po-fascisti/
translated with https://www.reverso.net/
Friday 13 March 2020
figure it out for themselves - Luca Sofri - Wittgenstein - Ilpost.it
figure it out for themselves
Luca Sofri
Wittgenstein
Ilpost.it
11 Mars 2020
A few years ago, during an American holiday with my family, my son Ludovico was very intrigued by the discovery of the honor system, which was illustrated by a friend who lives in Seattle. We had come across a discount in a museum for those who prove to have come by bike, showing the bike helmet. And Ludovico had prudently asked: "how do they know that one did not wear the helmet only for the discount, and came in the car?". So our friend Diego explained the honor system to him.
Unfortunately, we would have liked to have done without it, but the government decrees on the coronavirus and their formulations on behavioural and travel restrictions are an interesting laboratory of reflection on the balance between education and repression, but also more extensively on the State’s interference in people’s autonomous choices, on citizens' ability to "look after themselves" and on many other concepts that have always been discussed with many contradictions (think of those right-wing people who want at the same time more freedom from the state and more control of the state). And finally, they generate reflections on the education of citizens, on the information, on the cultural work to be done to improve the functioning of a community and a country.
A confident and constructive reading of the decrees we are talking about can in fact consider them as such: they are a measured attempt to suggest to people a gravity of the situation and a need for sacrifices that had hitherto been underestimated, without recourse to explicit prohibitions, restrictions on freedom, authoritarian and repressive approaches. Despite the widespread use of the term these days, those rules are not "prohibitions" and the Count himself at the press conference was careful not to call them so, with balanced but revealing formulations of this attempt.
And being excluded also in practice that the observance of the demands of the decree can be managed in a police and systematic way, I think that the idea, sensible, was: we raise the voice and ask for help at the same time, we scare and responsibility at the same time. Let us rely on– once the dangers are cleared–to the understanding and conscience of people, but this cannot be enough without the deterrent of sanctions for those who have not understood even now. A right balance– in my opinion– of education and repression, in which the first always prevails and allows there to be no overpowering of an authoritarian state with respect to the autonomy of judgment and freedom of persons.
After this encouraging reading, however, three problems arose. I count three, at least.
The first is a formal and substantial contradiction: on the one hand there is the communication that there are no absolute prohibitions, the relying on a part of common sense and interpretation ("of course you can go shopping"), the hint that the various cases of "necessity" – obviously very ambiguous and elastic term– they are delegated to the judgement of the individuals; on the other hand there is the explicit call to sanctions and defined criminal consequences. And you understand that it is difficult for people to feel serene about their autonomy of judgment and common sense if at the same time something says to them "if you fail in judgment, we will put you in jail". It’s the honor system of one of its founding halves.
Tell me exactly what I can do and what I can’t.
And here is the second problem: that in such an unprecedented state intervention situation to overturn common and customary behaviors, to regulate exactly what can and cannot be done is practically impossible. The most diverse eventualities are manifesting themselves right after the announcement of the rules, many unforeseen events. I am not a lawyer, but it could be the decree with the highest relationship between its brevity and the field of occasions to which it applies: field summarized in "lives". Of 60 million people. These days even the Post– and I imagine even more the major newspapers– receives frequent requests for explanation on very singular (and often poignant) cases of people with the most diverse and delicate needs and problems. "Can I do this?" we all ask ourselves several times every day. And we have all already imagined great and small "normative voids", sometimes insignificant but other times very significant and dramatic. A greater example of all concerns families that for one reason or another (the separated, for example) do not live continuously and permanently together: simply wanting to see oneself, is in those cases a "necessity"? (Of course it is, I say: but I decide, it is not written or said anywhere). Not to mention the simple romantic relationships of non-cohabitants.
It is true, as some complain, that the instructions are vague and sometimes frightening. It is also true that they are instructions that are trying to do something that has never been done, and perhaps you can not do so much better than this– adding gradually more clarity, and "to understand" – remaining a democratic country, libertarian and with a Constitution.
The third problem is related to this, but it has a whole history, and it is the biggest and most enlightening problem of the functioning of the country, in my opinion: that precedes and will follow this emergency. The honor system, or any even more moderate and controlled investment in citizens' responsibility and awareness, needs citizens' awareness. Many, in recent days, have rather called for severe, authoritarian and repressive interventions, after observing the lightness with which a part of the population was reacting to requests for prudence. And the feeling is that often we ourselves need "orders", not instructions: many of us struggle to appropriate the responsibility to decide for the best, feel disoriented, fear to do the wrong thing. They want "orders" and someone to give them to them.
It is partly human and understandable, but it has also increased extraordinarily from the low level of information and culture that we receive. Being responsible, conscious, autonomous in reasonable and conscientious judgment is the result of knowing things, understanding them, being informed of them, as well as being educated in the sense and functioning of a community (and perhaps also to the understanding and methods of science). "to understand it alone" is the result of a political and cultural work that is now more weakened than ever. The rituals and secular comments about Italians who need to be commanded are once again the overflow towards the repression of something that should be left to education: Italians– we– need to be educated, or educate themselves if you prefer (on the meaning of educating and the sensibilities that collide here); it is not by chance that the honor system is widespread in countries where the investment in civic education, education and correct information has always been greater.
Maybe we’ll remember that when it’s over. maybe it’ll help.
https://www.wittgenstein.it/2020/03/11/capirlo-da-soli/
in this new there are several other link
I translated this one:
https://free-libbberamente.blogspot.com/2020/03/nobody-drives-me-to-me-luca-sofri.html
here is the remaining in italian, the first link are the italian goverment infos for Corona virus:
https://www.ilpost.it/2020/03/10/governo-coronavirus-domande-risposte-faq/
https://www.wittgenstein.it/2012/02/04/educare-le-masse/
https://www.wittgenstein.it/2019/03/06/sorvegliare-e-punire-2/
english
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor_system
Luca Sofri
Wittgenstein
Ilpost.it
11 Mars 2020
A few years ago, during an American holiday with my family, my son Ludovico was very intrigued by the discovery of the honor system, which was illustrated by a friend who lives in Seattle. We had come across a discount in a museum for those who prove to have come by bike, showing the bike helmet. And Ludovico had prudently asked: "how do they know that one did not wear the helmet only for the discount, and came in the car?". So our friend Diego explained the honor system to him.
"An honor system or honesty system is a philosophical way of running a Variety of Endeavors based on trust, honor, and honesty. Something that operates under the rule of the "honor system" is usually something that does not have strictly enforced rules governing its principles.
The honor system is also a system granting freedom from customary surveillance (as to students or prisoners) with the understanding that those who are so freed will be bound by their honor to observe Regulations (e.g. prison farms are operated under the honor system), and will therefore not abuse the trust placed in them.
A person engaged in an honor system has a strong negative concept of breaking or going against it. The negatives may include community shame, loss of status, loss of a personal sense of integrity and pride or in extreme situations, banishment from one’s community."
Unfortunately, we would have liked to have done without it, but the government decrees on the coronavirus and their formulations on behavioural and travel restrictions are an interesting laboratory of reflection on the balance between education and repression, but also more extensively on the State’s interference in people’s autonomous choices, on citizens' ability to "look after themselves" and on many other concepts that have always been discussed with many contradictions (think of those right-wing people who want at the same time more freedom from the state and more control of the state). And finally, they generate reflections on the education of citizens, on the information, on the cultural work to be done to improve the functioning of a community and a country.
A confident and constructive reading of the decrees we are talking about can in fact consider them as such: they are a measured attempt to suggest to people a gravity of the situation and a need for sacrifices that had hitherto been underestimated, without recourse to explicit prohibitions, restrictions on freedom, authoritarian and repressive approaches. Despite the widespread use of the term these days, those rules are not "prohibitions" and the Count himself at the press conference was careful not to call them so, with balanced but revealing formulations of this attempt.
"there will be the constraint to avoid any displacementThe same decree distinguishes between the formulas of "absolute prohibition of mobility" intended for the infected and that "avoiding any movement" for all the others.
we do not have a total ban on transfer, but there is a need to motivate it, and therefore certainly there is a reduced mobilitywe must all be more responsible"
And being excluded also in practice that the observance of the demands of the decree can be managed in a police and systematic way, I think that the idea, sensible, was: we raise the voice and ask for help at the same time, we scare and responsibility at the same time. Let us rely on– once the dangers are cleared–to the understanding and conscience of people, but this cannot be enough without the deterrent of sanctions for those who have not understood even now. A right balance– in my opinion– of education and repression, in which the first always prevails and allows there to be no overpowering of an authoritarian state with respect to the autonomy of judgment and freedom of persons.
After this encouraging reading, however, three problems arose. I count three, at least.
The first is a formal and substantial contradiction: on the one hand there is the communication that there are no absolute prohibitions, the relying on a part of common sense and interpretation ("of course you can go shopping"), the hint that the various cases of "necessity" – obviously very ambiguous and elastic term– they are delegated to the judgement of the individuals; on the other hand there is the explicit call to sanctions and defined criminal consequences. And you understand that it is difficult for people to feel serene about their autonomy of judgment and common sense if at the same time something says to them "if you fail in judgment, we will put you in jail". It’s the honor system of one of its founding halves.
Tell me exactly what I can do and what I can’t.
And here is the second problem: that in such an unprecedented state intervention situation to overturn common and customary behaviors, to regulate exactly what can and cannot be done is practically impossible. The most diverse eventualities are manifesting themselves right after the announcement of the rules, many unforeseen events. I am not a lawyer, but it could be the decree with the highest relationship between its brevity and the field of occasions to which it applies: field summarized in "lives". Of 60 million people. These days even the Post– and I imagine even more the major newspapers– receives frequent requests for explanation on very singular (and often poignant) cases of people with the most diverse and delicate needs and problems. "Can I do this?" we all ask ourselves several times every day. And we have all already imagined great and small "normative voids", sometimes insignificant but other times very significant and dramatic. A greater example of all concerns families that for one reason or another (the separated, for example) do not live continuously and permanently together: simply wanting to see oneself, is in those cases a "necessity"? (Of course it is, I say: but I decide, it is not written or said anywhere). Not to mention the simple romantic relationships of non-cohabitants.
It is true, as some complain, that the instructions are vague and sometimes frightening. It is also true that they are instructions that are trying to do something that has never been done, and perhaps you can not do so much better than this– adding gradually more clarity, and "to understand" – remaining a democratic country, libertarian and with a Constitution.
The third problem is related to this, but it has a whole history, and it is the biggest and most enlightening problem of the functioning of the country, in my opinion: that precedes and will follow this emergency. The honor system, or any even more moderate and controlled investment in citizens' responsibility and awareness, needs citizens' awareness. Many, in recent days, have rather called for severe, authoritarian and repressive interventions, after observing the lightness with which a part of the population was reacting to requests for prudence. And the feeling is that often we ourselves need "orders", not instructions: many of us struggle to appropriate the responsibility to decide for the best, feel disoriented, fear to do the wrong thing. They want "orders" and someone to give them to them.
It is partly human and understandable, but it has also increased extraordinarily from the low level of information and culture that we receive. Being responsible, conscious, autonomous in reasonable and conscientious judgment is the result of knowing things, understanding them, being informed of them, as well as being educated in the sense and functioning of a community (and perhaps also to the understanding and methods of science). "to understand it alone" is the result of a political and cultural work that is now more weakened than ever. The rituals and secular comments about Italians who need to be commanded are once again the overflow towards the repression of something that should be left to education: Italians– we– need to be educated, or educate themselves if you prefer (on the meaning of educating and the sensibilities that collide here); it is not by chance that the honor system is widespread in countries where the investment in civic education, education and correct information has always been greater.
Maybe we’ll remember that when it’s over. maybe it’ll help.
https://www.wittgenstein.it/2020/03/11/capirlo-da-soli/
in this new there are several other link
I translated this one:
https://free-libbberamente.blogspot.com/2020/03/nobody-drives-me-to-me-luca-sofri.html
here is the remaining in italian, the first link are the italian goverment infos for Corona virus:
https://www.ilpost.it/2020/03/10/governo-coronavirus-domande-risposte-faq/
https://www.wittgenstein.it/2012/02/04/educare-le-masse/
https://www.wittgenstein.it/2019/03/06/sorvegliare-e-punire-2/
english
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor_system
Nobody drives me, to me! - Luca Sofri - Wittgenstein - Il Post
Nobody drives me, to me!
Luca Sofri
Wittgenstein
Il Post
18 February 2013
Today there is a nice interview with Elio and the stretched Stories about Repubblica, beautiful because they say different intelligent things and not banal (while lately it has become banal and predictable almost everything that happens and is said around Elio and the tense Stories). Among the other answers, however, at a certain point Elio says something banal yes:
What makes this sentence original is that Elio says it, putting into crisis the cliché that would like such thoughts to be only in the head of soloni, snobs, and overbearing Stalinist intellectuals (the same, I see that it has generated irritation around). The "educational" role of everything we do, and of those who have tools to transmit to others their own culture and competence, is indeed indisputable: but it is systematically hindered by a childhood hypersensitivity that we all have towards the idea that someone guides us, educate us, address us, give us lessons (what am I doing, me here: if not try to guide, address?). How much one should be careful not to hurt sensibility had also noticed mounts, before me (here is Roman Vlad, instead; and here an American astrophysicist): but I wrote a long thing that I willingly attach here.
The comparison of ideas and reflections is the first mechanism of building knowledge and an informed opinion on things. That in turn is what a better society is built on: understanding things, understanding what is right, from time to time, and making wise and informed choices. There are the right things and the wrong things, and you have to do the right things. You only get it by studying, accepting lessons, taking every piece of information as a teaching and an extra piece of your treasure trove of knowledge (even when you discard or discard it). This gives us a double responsibility, corresponding to the double duty we have in life, the improvement of ourselves and of the world. I repeat it all the way back, sorry: the world is getting better by improving ourselves and others and making us willing to be improved by ourselves and others. The first thing is to spread and offer to others the things that we know and understand, especially about what is right and what is wrong and about the tools to understand it. Imparting lessons.8 The second thing you get symmetrically by accepting lessons. It is a virtuous circle, increasingly interrupted by the attitudes of which we have spoken. And that equally affects– even their relationship creates a virtuous or vicious circle– society and us other people on one side, and politics on the other.
It seems to me that there are two main obstacles to the reconstruction of this virtuous circle. One is the psychological one about which I have spoken and which lies behind the accusations of snobbery, presumption of moral superiority, presumption, distance from the «real country» that boil those who try to improve it, the real country, starting from itself: how dare you? Who does he think he is? Even more if it does not have a position of recognized power that saves it from the above questions (we are conformists: in competition with our peers, and discreet with our superiors). The other obstacle is linguistic intolerance. A social reprobation for some words, which blinds us to their real meaning and value.9 We cannot stand «lessons». We can’t stand someone «teaching us» things. Nobody is allowed to «educate us», despite the fact that educating literally means «lead out, so free, bring to light something that is hidden». If someone educates me it means I’m rude, we think. If someone teaches me, it means I’m ignorant. If someone explains me, it means I don’t understand. I’m an idiot. And my insecurity– which suggests to me that it really is– makes me even more unbearable. And so we reject pedagogy and education– for their infantilizing sound to our ignorant ears and for the «crest cagone» – and allow a general instigation, and a claim of ignorance. A thick layer of insecurity is glued around us and makes us react to everything with fear of the effect it will have on our image in the eyes of others. Every time someone fills our glass, we rush to find justifications for the fact that it was empty. We live every human shortcoming as a public failure. We are very concerned about the effect we have, and too insecure to make this anxiety a stimulus rather than an incentive to escape.
To conclude: all this is not solved by analyzing it. Analysing serves to understand, and discussing serves to understand. And understanding serves to confront. In this case, however, understanding and discussing are hampered by the very limit we were talking about: the unwillingness to understand and discuss. How do you learn to take lessons, how do you take lessons? Do we work on words, by hypocritically tiptoeing and using political-linguistic correctness that avoids very sensible but potentially offensive terms to our sensibilities? 10 (as you may have noticed, I’M done flooring myself at several points of this exhibition, which some will then find too cautious and others too wise). At a certain point inside the barbarians, Baricco speaks in a very acute way of how much the question of the sensibility of the receiver with respect to the content of the things that are said, having traced his analysis to the reading of a Goffredo Parise text (again! Of course he said of enlightening things, this Parise):
The word written at a certain point became communication where it used to be expression, says Baricco. And it follows that any subsequent attempt at expression must now come to terms with the fact that it will always be understood as communication: «What are you saying to me?» «What do you want me to think?» «where are you going?» «where does this book go?» «yes, yes, but then?».
And so, what do you do? Do you work on words so much that communication becomes hyperexpressive?
Do you make a great collective self-analysis? Do you give up?
******
8 Not only do we find it difficult to accept lessons, but when they can be good and fruitful we are even reluctant to give them. God forbid we make anyone’s life any better. The entrepreneur Alessandro mannarini, interviewed by «Corriere della Sera» on the parties of his friend gianpaolo tarantini with drugs and exploitation of prostitution, answered candidly: «I’ve seen others do but everyone on holiday does what he wants. I couldn’t stand up to moralizer».
9 Richard Thaler and Cass sunstein, in their popular nudge essay, have from the beginning felt the reader of such linguistic difficulty. They call their political attitude «libertarian paternalism», knowing well «that readers will not find this expression of their immediate liking», because both terms «have been taken hostage by dogmatists».
10 Fofi uses this formula, attentive to sensibilities and alternative to the use of misunderstood verbs such as «teaching» and «educating»: «(Man helps himself) helping him to bring out of himself the ability to understand the world and find his own place, active and supportive».
https://www.wittgenstein.it/2013/02/18/amme-non-mi-guida-nessuno-amme/
Luca Sofri
Wittgenstein
Il Post
18 February 2013
Today there is a nice interview with Elio and the stretched Stories about Repubblica, beautiful because they say different intelligent things and not banal (while lately it has become banal and predictable almost everything that happens and is said around Elio and the tense Stories). Among the other answers, however, at a certain point Elio says something banal yes:
«The public must be guided, addressed»
What makes this sentence original is that Elio says it, putting into crisis the cliché that would like such thoughts to be only in the head of soloni, snobs, and overbearing Stalinist intellectuals (the same, I see that it has generated irritation around). The "educational" role of everything we do, and of those who have tools to transmit to others their own culture and competence, is indeed indisputable: but it is systematically hindered by a childhood hypersensitivity that we all have towards the idea that someone guides us, educate us, address us, give us lessons (what am I doing, me here: if not try to guide, address?). How much one should be careful not to hurt sensibility had also noticed mounts, before me (here is Roman Vlad, instead; and here an American astrophysicist): but I wrote a long thing that I willingly attach here.
The comparison of ideas and reflections is the first mechanism of building knowledge and an informed opinion on things. That in turn is what a better society is built on: understanding things, understanding what is right, from time to time, and making wise and informed choices. There are the right things and the wrong things, and you have to do the right things. You only get it by studying, accepting lessons, taking every piece of information as a teaching and an extra piece of your treasure trove of knowledge (even when you discard or discard it). This gives us a double responsibility, corresponding to the double duty we have in life, the improvement of ourselves and of the world. I repeat it all the way back, sorry: the world is getting better by improving ourselves and others and making us willing to be improved by ourselves and others. The first thing is to spread and offer to others the things that we know and understand, especially about what is right and what is wrong and about the tools to understand it. Imparting lessons.8 The second thing you get symmetrically by accepting lessons. It is a virtuous circle, increasingly interrupted by the attitudes of which we have spoken. And that equally affects– even their relationship creates a virtuous or vicious circle– society and us other people on one side, and politics on the other.
It seems to me that there are two main obstacles to the reconstruction of this virtuous circle. One is the psychological one about which I have spoken and which lies behind the accusations of snobbery, presumption of moral superiority, presumption, distance from the «real country» that boil those who try to improve it, the real country, starting from itself: how dare you? Who does he think he is? Even more if it does not have a position of recognized power that saves it from the above questions (we are conformists: in competition with our peers, and discreet with our superiors). The other obstacle is linguistic intolerance. A social reprobation for some words, which blinds us to their real meaning and value.9 We cannot stand «lessons». We can’t stand someone «teaching us» things. Nobody is allowed to «educate us», despite the fact that educating literally means «lead out, so free, bring to light something that is hidden». If someone educates me it means I’m rude, we think. If someone teaches me, it means I’m ignorant. If someone explains me, it means I don’t understand. I’m an idiot. And my insecurity– which suggests to me that it really is– makes me even more unbearable. And so we reject pedagogy and education– for their infantilizing sound to our ignorant ears and for the «crest cagone» – and allow a general instigation, and a claim of ignorance. A thick layer of insecurity is glued around us and makes us react to everything with fear of the effect it will have on our image in the eyes of others. Every time someone fills our glass, we rush to find justifications for the fact that it was empty. We live every human shortcoming as a public failure. We are very concerned about the effect we have, and too insecure to make this anxiety a stimulus rather than an incentive to escape.
Our capacity to educate is experienced realistically in ourselves: by educating us, we will have educated others.Piero gobetti, The Liberal Revolution
To conclude: all this is not solved by analyzing it. Analysing serves to understand, and discussing serves to understand. And understanding serves to confront. In this case, however, understanding and discussing are hampered by the very limit we were talking about: the unwillingness to understand and discuss. How do you learn to take lessons, how do you take lessons? Do we work on words, by hypocritically tiptoeing and using political-linguistic correctness that avoids very sensible but potentially offensive terms to our sensibilities? 10 (as you may have noticed, I’M done flooring myself at several points of this exhibition, which some will then find too cautious and others too wise). At a certain point inside the barbarians, Baricco speaks in a very acute way of how much the question of the sensibility of the receiver with respect to the content of the things that are said, having traced his analysis to the reading of a Goffredo Parise text (again! Of course he said of enlightening things, this Parise):
Suddenly the written word shifted its center of gravity from the voice that spoke it to the ear that I was listening. As it were, he went up to the surface and sought the transit of the world: at the cost of losing all its value in the departure from its roots.
The word written at a certain point became communication where it used to be expression, says Baricco. And it follows that any subsequent attempt at expression must now come to terms with the fact that it will always be understood as communication: «What are you saying to me?» «What do you want me to think?» «where are you going?» «where does this book go?» «yes, yes, but then?».
And so, what do you do? Do you work on words so much that communication becomes hyperexpressive?
Do you make a great collective self-analysis? Do you give up?
******
8 Not only do we find it difficult to accept lessons, but when they can be good and fruitful we are even reluctant to give them. God forbid we make anyone’s life any better. The entrepreneur Alessandro mannarini, interviewed by «Corriere della Sera» on the parties of his friend gianpaolo tarantini with drugs and exploitation of prostitution, answered candidly: «I’ve seen others do but everyone on holiday does what he wants. I couldn’t stand up to moralizer».
9 Richard Thaler and Cass sunstein, in their popular nudge essay, have from the beginning felt the reader of such linguistic difficulty. They call their political attitude «libertarian paternalism», knowing well «that readers will not find this expression of their immediate liking», because both terms «have been taken hostage by dogmatists».
10 Fofi uses this formula, attentive to sensibilities and alternative to the use of misunderstood verbs such as «teaching» and «educating»: «(Man helps himself) helping him to bring out of himself the ability to understand the world and find his own place, active and supportive».
https://www.wittgenstein.it/2013/02/18/amme-non-mi-guida-nessuno-amme/
Sunday 1 March 2020
F.D.R. Proposes a Second Bill of Rights.— Open Culture (@openculture) February 24, 2020
A Decent Job, Education & Health Care Will Keep Us Free from Despotism (1944) https://t.co/ngFfHLkjvO pic.twitter.com/0Hg6sQYE8J
Thursday 27 February 2020
Coronavirus, psychiatrists: “there is a cognitive epidemic. Unjustified and excessive”reactions. Here is the decalogue against panic
To curb anxiety the Italian Society of Psychiatry (sip) has developed the rules ‘anti-panic’and launches an appeal to “not to overturn daily habits”. Stick to the official communications of health authorities; rely only on authoritative newspapers; do not treasure what you intercept online and on social media, especially if ‘shared by only virtual friends, who really do not know each other, and if not thoroughly verified; ask your doctor and do not ask questions about social groups, asking opinions; recognize that the frightening‘’s things that attract our attention are not necessarily the most risky; Contain fear and avoid making decisions until the panic has passed; if symptoms appear such as panic, anxiety or depression consult the specialist for a proper diagnosis.
Il Fatto Quotidiano
As it rises, inevitably, the number of infections from Cov2 sars also increases people’s anxiety and fear. The outbreak, due to the coronavirus, has two faces: one biological and one more mind-bound, cognitive. “Human beings– explains Enrico Zanalda, president of the Italian Society of Psychiatry (sip) and director of the Department of Mental Health of’ASL TO3 and – have a common fear: the fear of being overwhelmed by an epidemic. It is a fear so deep that it leads to uncontrolled actions, those of those who no longer know what to do and try them all to save themselves. This atavistic fear is amplified by the infodemia, the viral and very fast diffusion, which in the past did not exist, of partial and contradictory, if not even false, news that can cause a breakdown of confidence in relationships between people and institutions, and make more powerful the effect on the psyche of a phenomenon that has always existed”.
“In Italy, which is the European country with the highest number of cases – explains Professor Massimo Di giannantonio, elected president of the sip and ordinary of psychiatry at the University of Chieti-There are unjustified and excessive psychological reactions to the spread of the virus, together with the measures taken by the authorities to contain the infection. An anxiety-inducing mix that has altered our habits and the perception of individual health and well-being. We are therefore not only attacked by a severe flu virus but also by a cognitive epidemic that is likely to generate not only fright and confusion but also mass panic and anxiety by untori”. “Each of us...
Thursday 20 February 2020
Luca Sofri - The new dangerous game between adults
wittgenstein
The new dangerous game between adults
20 February 2020
Even in my parents' chat has generated sudden alarm and anxiety news of an alleged spread among children around the world of a dangerous joke (a trip, in essence), shared by a worried mother who read about it on the site of a large daily. It’s a thing that has precedent, as many will remember. And risks that we can imagine if we underestimate, but so far no more than a thousand other dangerous nonsense that teenagers do every day: the main risk remains the one described by one of the few sites that have tackled the issue with seriousness and conscience, without limiting to excited copy from the first terrorist tabloid.
The dangerous phenomenon is gaining notoriety on TikTok, but its true viral spread comes from worried parents and schools trying to warn children and young people.
And I would add editorials. Concerned, of course.
https://www.wittgenstein.it/2020/02/20/il-nuovo-pericoloso-gioco-tra-gli-adulti/
and blogger, of course...
Monday 17 February 2020
Sapienza university, young right-wing will speak before mrs. Segre. Left students: “No, it is neo-fascist”. He: “I share her battles against the hate”
The young man, who is part of the right-wing youth movement "Popular Generation" and says he has Matteo salvini and Giorgia meloni as points of reference, assures that his speech will have "nothing political": "I’m sorry to be labeled without people knowing my contents," he said in response to who asked for his intervention to be deleted
16 FEBBRAIO 2020
IL FATTO QUOTIDIANO
“adheres to neo-fascist organizations“. This is the attack of the left-wing students on the columns of Corriere della Sera to Valerio Cerracchio, a right-wing student from La Sapienza who will speak on Tuesday on behalf of the university students at the opening of the academic year. During the ceremony will be awarded the honoris causa degree to Liliana segre in the presence of the President of the Republic Sergio mattarella. Cerracchio rejected the accusations and spoke of attempts to exploit“, saying that he had nothing to do with fascism which belongs to another era”; and to believe in democracy and the principles of our Constitution”. Wisdom did not comment on the controversies.
Cerracchio, an engineering student, belongs to the university list“Students on the move“, which brings together young people from different policy areas. Individually, however, is part of the right-wing youth movement“Popular Generation“. This is precisely what has earned him the accusations of neo-fascism by some colleagues in the university. Cerracchio, as a young right-wing man, acknowledges that his political references are Matteo salvini and Giorgia meloni. At the same time he says he fully shares the battle against the life-long senator’s hatred and witness of the Shoah Liliana segregates: “The hate has no political color and, in small, I am experiencing it myself right now.
The student said that his speech will have no“nothing political“, but“will focus on the difficulties and loneliness that a student may encounter in his or her studies. I’m sorry to be labeled without people knowing my contents. Even the battles I bring out of the university range from environmental protection to social“. Antonio lodise, the student representative on the Board of Directors of the university elected by“Sapienza in Movimento”, a student who defines himself as“left”, also stood at his side: “In our list we are apartitic, not apolitical, we fight for students and the goal is to overcome positions that prevent dialogue. Everything that happens in accordance with our Constitution, which is anti-fascist, is admissible, the rest is not. A democracy is based on comparison, not censorship. This is instrumental chatter that creates barricades I regret”.
“adheres to neo-fascist organizations“. This is the attack of the left-wing students on the columns of Corriere della Sera to Valerio Cerracchio, a right-wing student from La Sapienza who will speak on Tuesday on behalf of the university students at the opening of the academic year. During the ceremony will be awarded the honoris causa degree to Liliana segre in the presence of the President of the Republic Sergio mattarella. Cerracchio rejected the accusations and spoke of attempts to exploit“, saying that he had nothing to do with fascism which belongs to another era”; and to believe in democracy and the principles of our Constitution”. Wisdom did not comment on the controversies.
Cerracchio, an engineering student, belongs to the university list“Students on the move“, which brings together young people from different policy areas. Individually, however, is part of the right-wing youth movement“Popular Generation“. This is precisely what has earned him the accusations of neo-fascism by some colleagues in the university. Cerracchio, as a young right-wing man, acknowledges that his political references are Matteo salvini and Giorgia meloni. At the same time he says he fully shares the battle against the life-long senator’s hatred and witness of the Shoah Liliana segregates: “The hate has no political color and, in small, I am experiencing it myself right now.
The student said that his speech will have no“nothing political“, but“will focus on the difficulties and loneliness that a student may encounter in his or her studies. I’m sorry to be labeled without people knowing my contents. Even the battles I bring out of the university range from environmental protection to social“. Antonio lodise, the student representative on the Board of Directors of the university elected by“Sapienza in Movimento”, a student who defines himself as“left”, also stood at his side: “In our list we are apartitic, not apolitical, we fight for students and the goal is to overcome positions that prevent dialogue. Everything that happens in accordance with our Constitution, which is anti-fascist, is admissible, the rest is not. A democracy is based on comparison, not censorship. This is instrumental chatter that creates barricades I regret”.
Thursday 13 February 2020
The wedding of Cadmus and Harmony - Roberto Calasso
The wedding of Cadmus and Harmony was the last occasion on which the gods of Olympus sat down with the men for a feast. What happened before then, for immemorial years, and after that, for a few generations, forms the immense tree of Greek myth.
In the Wedding of Cadmus and Harmony a breath of wind returns to move the branches of that tree. As an ancient writer wrote, «these things never happened, but they are always». Telling the, intertwining them down to the smallest detail, imposes some questions, which are also «always»: why did the gods of Olympus take on a human figure, and why that figure? Why are their stories so scandalous, and mysterious? What is a simulacrum? Why was the age of heroes short, convulsive and unrepeatable? What is Zeus threatened by?
Maybe the myth is a narrative that can only be understood by narrating. Perhaps the most immediate way to think of the myth is to tell its fairy tales again. A thin, clean light, here invests them all and shows them in their multiple connections, like a vast and very light network that is resting on the world.
https://www.adelphi.it/libro/9788845918926
Lara Fiorani University College London Roberto Calasso - Deconstructing mythology A reading of Le nozze di Cadmo e Armonia . PDF
Tuesday 11 February 2020
claire bretécher .... everybody hate me .- I love it
everybody hate me .- I love it
We lost a great cartoonist today. A women's rights activist, the one who had innovated in terms of the representation of women in comics. And whose comics made me laugh so much. R I P #clairebretecher 😢 pic.twitter.com/34ILfKiRS1— Sandrine Chevalier (@c4chevalier) February 11, 2020
http://www.europecomics.com/author/claire-bretecher/
all images from google
Sunday 26 January 2020
Friday 27 December 2019
Drugged bonds and bonds
WITTGENSTEIN
Luca Sofri
24 December 2019
The terrible way in which some newspapers are treating the sad story of the two girls who were hit and killed in Rome reveals among other things a disease typical of Italian discussions and information: the substitution of facts and their understanding with empty labels and generalizations. And given that– I advance the OTHER-PEOPLE-GOODER – in this story there are several serious aspects, I just want to cite an example of this, of this sloppiness of thought that will continue to repeat itself beyond this story: the use of the term“drugged” by some of the titles.
“drugs” do not exist: in the sense that there is no exact category of substances that for some reason or criterion differs from another that we call“non-drugs”. It is a hasty definition with which in Italian we call coarsely substances that induce changes in the psycho-physical state (but like wine, too, or as medicines) and that are prohibited by law (but despite the legalization of cannabis or personal use, we call them the same soft drugs). You will understand that the second thing is a completely volatile criterion and not the nature of the substances and their effects. To be clear, this says Treccani enciclopedia, drugs:
dròga s. f. [perhaps from’Oland. droog «dry, dry»]. – 1. Name of various dry, aromatic vegetable substances (better known as spices), used to give more flavour to beverages or foods: e.g. cinnamon, nutmeg, pepper, vanilla, carnation, products that, for their origin, were also called in the past colonial. 2. In pharmacology, any natural, plant or animal product containing one or more active principles (alkaloids, glycosides, essential oils, bitter, purgative, aromatic substances, etc.), and which, when properly prepared and preserved, find therapeutic or experimental indications which are being studied by pharmacoknowledge. 3. a. In current language, any substance capable of temporarily modifying the state of consciousness or in any case the psychic state of the individual (narcotic, hallucinogenic, barbiturate, psycho-stimulant); also, name of certain substances likely to increase energy and physical performance, especially in sports competitions
Of course we neglect the definition 1; the definition 3, as we said, is very elusive and ambiguous (it would concern precisely also the alcohol, or the aspirin), and speaks not randomly of“current language”; the definition 2, instead, is technical and exact: and does not distinguish drugs and medicines. Wikipedia says even more clearly that:
In pharmacology, the drug, also called a drug, is a chemical used to treat, cure, prevent or diagnose a disease or to promote well-being.
That is, he gives drugs and drugs (medicine) for synonyms. That is what happens in English: where the term“drugs”””; – means drugs (medicine). A similar issue is doping: there are no inherently correct or incorrect substances, there are simply those that we have decided are permitted or prohibited, with variable criteria established by human commissions. What we can call“doped” is an athlete who has today taken among the other substances that are banned today. In other words, he violated the rules.
And who can we call "drugged”, then? The one who has taken substances that make us lose lucidity, so any of us has ever been a little tipsy? Or the one who is at a given time? Or who has taken substances whose intake is prohibited? (not who has done a joint). Or who with continuity (we have the term“drug addict”, not for nothing) takes drugs“heavy”? And the definition of what is heavy and what is not, is it universally written somewhere?
The answer can be chosen by each of us in his current speech at the bar, if he wants: but he should be consistent and know how to answer the contradictions I mentioned. What is not acceptable is that serious work of information on an extensive, complex and serious problem such as addiction, and on tragedies such as that of Rome, should be done at the hands of the drug addict”in the headlines. It’s Cronaca Vera in the '70s, not serious pretentious newspapers in 2019.
And yes, I know that.
https://www.wittgenstein.it/2019/12/24/titoli-drogati/
Wednesday 18 December 2019
Wednesday 11 December 2019
MOEBIUS
Pascal Blais- THE INCAL from TONIC DNA on Vimeo.
Jean Giraud, aka Moebius, was a comic book artist who combined blinding speed with boundless imagination. He shaped the look of Alien, Empire Strikes Back and The Fifth Element. He reimagined the Silver Surfer for Stan Lee. And he is an acknowledged influence on everyone from Japanese animating great Hayao Miyazaki to sci-fi writer William Gibson.
In 1996, the Mexican newspaper La Jornada published a lecture given by Moebius called “Breve manual para historietistas” – a brief manual for cartoonists – which consists of 18 tips for aspiring artists. If your Spanish isn’t up to snuff – mine certainly isn’t – then there are a couple translations out there.... KEEP READING IN THE ORIGINAL SITE HERE
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