Arrogance and Humility, Greenwald and Snowden, Not Helping vs Breaking Rules, Running Interference
It takes a high degree of arrogance to attempt anything thought to be extremely difficult to impossible, and (to) succeed (in it). It must go way beyond the scale of confidence. One must also need something to balance that, an equal degree of modesty [humility] that it is not always about you, is not achieved ever by you alone and not part of the process, and that nothing ever done is really any less likely than anything else ever done, it is merely how we choose to see it and ourselves. Notes 2, 2004
(Notesworthy 1 of 3: To Attempt the Near Impossible or Improbable and True Seeing vs. Machine-Think)
TruthRevival.org
Greatness or great achievements comes from a balance between arrogance and humility. It takes a certain amount of arrogance to attempt anything truly great. Whether it be to rule a country, the creation of a better political state or system, a grand and sweeping military victory to which many still hold as a measure of greatness, to design the largest or best building or monument, or write the best music ever heard, or paint the greatest or best loved painting ever seen, to attempt anything great is to be arrogant to the extreme.
Some would use the term confidence instead, it sounds so much nicer. But the only differences between arrogance and confidence are in the interpretations, who is doing the judging, oneself or others, in the attitudes or feelings about that individual, and of the success or lack thereof of translating it into achievements.
Humility is the great gadfly of arrogance. Without arrogance the humble might be content with their or others lot in life. Humility forces one to say I am not great, merely adequate or not to the task needing to be done. Of the two, humility is the most powerful.
When one removes oneself from the equation, one can truly give oneself over to any task and do it far more completely than anyone who might even for a second think that what "I" do is great because it is I who is doing it. Those who are truly humble when doing even the smallest tasks, creating the most minor crafts, can bring such skill to bear that it will far outlive them and be recognized as great art or a great achievement long after the individuals name has been forgotten, should the work somehow survive by luck, fate, or happenstance.
Religion is a great source of humility, the notion that all men must one day bow down before their maker, that all are equal in being judged for their actions or inactions. In their days, Alexander and Muhammad, no one was stronger as a leader or had a greater army. Like them and a thousand lesser leaders before or since, all reasoned that their preeminence was divine, that God was working his will here on Earth through them, and their successes beyond measure proved it to those in their times.
Great poets may think their inspirations to write are divine and their conveyance of such notions at best merely adequate. Great painters have said that it felt as though God was guiding their hands while they painted their greatest works. By deflecting praise and adulation for their successes away from themselves they were able to better fulfill their potentials and take their successes to greater levels.
I hope and pray that most have a mixture of these two characteristics. We have seen great accomplishments in the Twentieth Century of both seemingly boundless arrogance on one hand, and individuals of almost saintly humility on the other. We need both but in balance in the world, and at best, in balance within each individual.
It takes a great degree of arrogance to say that something you may see in your government or society is wrong, in your culture, in your common attitudes toward others of different beliefs, and to stand up as an individual against society and risk ostracism to say that it is wrong, that the Emperor has no clothes, and face the uncertain but most likely negative personal consequences. To say I am right and everyone else is wrong, or this minority opinion is truer than the opinion of the majority of people, even if the majority are in fact wrong, this is arrogant, and dangerous, and a necessity of evolution.
Without anything to keep such arrogance in check unthinkable abuses of power inevitably occur whenever these opinions take root enough to realistically threaten the established opinions, beliefs, or political orders. Abuses to shut out such movements or changes of opinion dawn, and abuses by the new after reaching critical mass enough to become the new norm to secure that position for the future.
As I have stated already, humility is stronger than arrogance. Without recognizing the limitations of anything which we do, anything which we put forth, and know it to be imperfect, flawed, and know that in a fair and just world, it will be surpassed many times over often and soon, nothing which we do, say, make, or believe will really be worth a damn. Humility is the glue needed to shape our aspirations into something worthy of existing at all, now or in the future, for only by focusing solely on what needs to be done, may what needs to be done get done when times become far more challenging than now.
Arrogance and Humility, 1999
The more dispassionate you are about something, the fuller perspective you can gain upon it, yet the more useless or irrelevant (that perspective) becomes, for the less likely you need to become toward interfering with or changing it. Still, nothing is to prevent you from caring again at some unspecified point in the future if you suddenly desire to do so, with the added or accumulated perspectives you gained when you didn't care one way or the other. The past can be redefined at whim to whatever, however, or whoever wishes to make it, or make use of it, differently at each new day. In the end everything exists only to be changed to something else. It is only a matter of what to and how.
One can understand this world, humanity, and so on, better in sense by interacting with it as little as possible, and simply watching to see how they would turn out left to themselves. The only time one should interfere is if the experiment seems to be over and you want it to continue awhile longer. Interactions soon make the results completely related to them and soon one cannot see anything independently of them.
You can't keep people from making their own mistakes. It is literally what they live for or to do. However painful for them to experience or for you to see, interfere only when required upon request.
Notes 2, 2004
(Notesworthy 1 of 3: To Attempt the Near Impossible or Improbable and True Seeing vs. Machine-Think)
TruthRevival.org
Once you interfere and tip the balance of power within another society, or even in regards to another person's life, that balance may never again be in the same position again, and there is no telling where the new balance will be found, only that wherever it may be will be a temporary balance and will continue to keep shifting as long as they live, and each seeming status quo is a matter of perspective until you blink. Any "balance" in present circumstances is only due to constant overwhelming pressure from all sides offsetting each other. It always wants to unravel, it is just a matter of which direction.
Notes 3, 2005
(Notesworthy 2 of 3: Narrower Definitions of Palatable "Popular"Truths, What People Are "Allowed" to Know, Media's "Realities")
TruthRevival.org
In regards to the so-called "second wave" of democratic revolutions in the former USSR and Eastern Europe (Serbia 2000, Georgia, 2003, Ukraine 2004 [2014 note: & 2014?]), some have maintained that outside interference, NGO's, the European Union, and especially the US have been instrumental in effecting these movements, an argument I believe is not without merit. While outside money and the idea of gaining greater backing of richer countries to develop your economy or just enrich yourself if you make the changes that you think those countries or corporations want you to make, to take a stand against an election those countries and groups would agree with you on as having been rigged, [2014 note: and even when not evidently] these factors are great in helping success and even more, inspiring people to believe that successful opposition is possible, or even that the regime will have to back down at some point. The Russian Federation and other FSU republics have been claiming these new "revolutions" were merely constructs to gain influence, remembering well how quickly their influence and their own governments collapsed when facing the same questions of legitimacy in a similar succession of popular uprisings 15 years ago, and the propensity their own public and officials had to turn westward in their thinking because that was where the money and outside support were perceived to be found.
In my mind, these "colored" revolutions are not true revolutions, more replacing one discredited leadership with another group of oligarchs or different oligarchs' supporters, often within the same circles of power, promoting much the same agenda as the previous leaderships, and often just as corrupt. Also I believe that they are not true revolutions because they came about within the normal electoral processes, albeit with greater hurdles than most countries must face to get a fair accounting of votes. They do qualify though as popular movements which are political in nature.
Excerpt from 'Mass Mobilizations Aiming at Ensuring Electoral Revolutions
Against Corruption Are Recognized and Upheld', Fall 2005
A person could have spent many years in a coma or hospital, (in) prison or (in the) army. The point is not everyone of the same age thinks alike or has had similar histories, though most do, take jobs at a certain age, have children at a certain age, etc. Though I have never been as yet taken out of society as completely as the types above, I have had a very freeform life not conducive to any standard modes or models of experiences as others have had. As a result, most of my outlooks are not typical as being defined (greatly influenced) by age, ethnicity, or location, nor even eras of history. I am in a way grown to be an observer of human nature loathe to interfere, yet by being sometimes cannot help but to. It is more than any senses of identity, preference, or interests, what we are all born and solely exist to do: to interfere with the lives, plans, and worlds of others around us.
Whether pre-existant or existent away = factors not yet come together for present experience to yourself, survive independently or exist to others without interference. Multiple (futures) with your interference (interacting with and varying reality)(and) one without, multiples without, or one of each? Notes 5, Early 2006
(Notesworthy 3 of 3: Without Honor or Truth, Corruption, FalseHistories, and Supplicant Propagandizing Media Strangleholds)
TruthRevival.org
My initial “visions” or “interpretations” were also founded in Revelations, so I have much in common with the maniacs now in power today. Like I have said above, I have been fighting against that view much of my life, how to push it, change it, amend it to limit its potential for damage, yet also to not interfere with the democratization of a future that should be decided by all together when the time comes. But time, at least for me, is running short. What the future is heading towards now, while some sort of twisted torturous double-think monstrously selfish yet preachingly the epitome of virtuosity, even far greater in scale and absurdity than is now manifest, yet it is a future to which I must yield must be allowed, though I can fight to the death to say it ought not to be chosen, agreed with or upon, and fought against whenever possible. That fight when engaged is always won, that environment of things needing to be fought against will always be there, yet it ought to be engaged not with some “other”, some “enemy” but the shortcomings within yourself and to alter your own society that defines you, makes you something better or something worse. ...
... All exist, all can be known, yet time requires the choosing, and that provides the definition. What there is to choose from, that is not always part of the choice, not under direct control, but to submit or not to the choices offered is a limited way of breaking the rules. That is what alters the mix for those who seek to yoke humanity, to restrain the human spirit for the purpose of political power today and greater influence and power for their heirs tomorrow. I have been motivated since earliest childhood to stop what is being done in research to control people, break them, yet I know this is impossible to stop because of the potential power and profits behind it make its desirability irrepressible. Yet such abuses can be mitigated, delayed, pushed into the future a year at a time, for more reasonable persons and societies than we deal with now to grapple with the implications of this drive to turn thinking humans into programmable machines.
... Both of these “recognitions” combined to make going to them predictable in a way too great to really reasonably be able to stand up to, but it was more than that. To know for certain a potential for future events when the present is endangered and unmanageable, tempts one to take it. Because I did not know the source of these potential precognitions, the potential implications of the far away nature in time and distance, and interfering with things I swore to avoid, made me constantly have to double-think not only the future and what I was hoping to achieve, but what events past which might have contributed to creating that path which in effect would not have existed without the perception of it. ...
The other place I “recognized” was Kolomenskoe, a park in the south of Moscow. I saw the movie “The Russia House” around the same time, and the recognition of it all was intense; the archway, the cannons, walking along the bricks in front of the church, and the churches themselves. Money problems, legal problems, possible changes going there would create in my life, and the effects spilling over into others lives, it all became pushed to the periphery. I knew that place in another sense, though I can circumstantially be sure I had never actually been there before, but would be shortly. It took less than 9 months to [be] there and see what I could figure out by being there, what the trip to go there would require, what future it would require, and what that perspective was about or for. Finding out it was called the "Church of the Ascension" was a kick in the pants. The order of which I say this now is simply to set up things to come and to give perspective upon a past I perceived as a necessity. Much that I do and write now has a prescribed order relating to future intended effects. The order may be 1 dimensional, but it is also what some will remember as what really happened, and that is why I take the order of things now very seriously indeed.
Excerpt from Ascension (as in, Church of the) 4 Years After
JaredDuBois.Blogspot.com
February 24, 2007
I love when I get to say that, and this time probably it was warranted, but I also did a good job at explaining why I really think it is not my place to 'interfere' with what is about to happen, very strange things in Washington, at a time when the world's fate and democracy at home hang by a hair.
I figured since the only way forward for me in my chosen path, schooling, was blocked at the only University I could reasonably attend (the [political] asylum thing probably rules out going to school out of the country at the moment and this is the only state I would live in), and a public school at that, was a good reason to STFU for awhile. But what Chalmers article raised should neither fall flat nor be unchallenged critically. It is a good step forward.
What I called the press's No Maas moment has not blossomed fully yet but has been surprisingly budding. What I said needed to be 'real time' challenging of the lies has actually occurred. ABC News referred to false claims (again) about a 'rebel' leaders death in Iraq as 'propaganda' and it was. I put 'rebel' in quotes because an overwhelming number of Iraqis want us out of the country, a majority of their Parliament has asked us to begin to withdraw, and it is getting ridiculous that our government still has any pretense that we are their for the Iraq people and not for their oil, or that the attacks against us are a 'minority' or 'criminals' and not what the public at large could do if they only had the ammunition, and not without good reason. Our troops know this is how the public there feels toward their presence, have overwhelmingly said so, and now have been silenced about it on the Internet. Also a leaked poll showing growing animosity of our troops toward innocent Iraqi citizens because of their unwelcomeness there is more damage being done to us, to our soldiers, and our reputation, what is left of it anyway. ...
So my polite statement of how the worlds problems are no longer my problems because I have something to seize upon to show I have nowhere academically to turn, no real way forward in my chosen direction other than being made to bide my time and wait, will have to wait a little while. I will 'interfere' a little more though hopefully it will go unnoticed but Chalmers raised some good points, which I will speak about soon. [Referred to the then-as-yet unwritten 'Empire Needs Redefinition & Transmutation, Not A Dangerous Collapse,' of May 25th, 2007 (written 9 days later).]Excerpt from Not down and out yet, and the perils of mile high blogging
JaredDuBois.Blogspot.com
Wednesday, May 16th, 2007
The third time I will mention happened a few months before that. It relates to the other two in various ways. What set me on the course for thinking I needed to know Everything about Everything was that there was a place I saw on TV that I knew, also mentioned before, Kolomenskoe, a park in Moscow. Once I knew that place existed, and that I knew it in another sense, I thought if I went there, I would be able to figure out how or why, or at least what going there would mean. To do that, I saw it if not taking the world in an entirely different direction, it threatened to change my life completely into something else. It was a branch or wing onto my life that was unfamiliar and almost unthinkable, yet it also needed to be understood.
I did not get really any grand realization by being there, though it was confirmation that I was familiar with that park somehow. But what happened after that was curious and crushing when combined with it and the place in general. While waiting for my shuttle, I went by an old lady sitting in the freezing rain with a puppet on her hands that lit up. It was probably the most heartbreaking sight I ever saw. A woman of 80 or older selling apples slightly rotten with this puppet on her hand trying to get people to notice her.
Normally, I think it my place to help anyone life puts in my path, but I felt I was on the wrong path, and it was not my place to “interfere” with things there. That feeling of being on the wrong path, not really the wrong path but too off-center to any longer get definite bearings, has now spread so that many more things I now think are wrong for me to “interfere” with, even to the point sometimes of everywhere and everything no longer being my place. I just seem out of sync with the world sometimes, and at that point in time, I felt more “not belonging” there or least “ought not” to affect anything happening there than anywhere else I had been in my life up until that time.
I ran though every possible way to try to help that old woman and could not find a way that I did not think it would backfire. That is how I see it sometimes. To break the “rules” of what is “interfering” means risking throwing someone else's life off in a direction possibly negative. ...
It is hard to say what criteria I use for deciding what is “interfering” and what is not. So much of life is strange to me now, so much past the end of the line, that to do anything at all can seem to me to be to risk the opposite of what I attempt or hope will occur later. But that is life, to do without knowing everything that you will affect nor being able to control everything that follows from what you do. I used to believe “nothing done in good faith can have a lasting negative effect,”but that is just words, old words and an old idea to me now.
That night I broke down and cried hard. It was a weight almost unbearable. In New York years before, I cried because I was blindsided suddenly without warning and missed a chance to help someone, far worse and more completely than I ever could have imagined being caught off-guard. In Moscow, I cried in part because a well-thought out attempt to help someone that worked exactly as I saw it could have, later than I anticipated slowly unraveled, possibly into exactly why I feared to try to help her, and thought it best that I should not attempt it. That even when someone is standing right before me and that I think I could help, I know I am helpless to help them because of everything else around us both.
That is a weakness, a part of my circumstances, that is hardest to bear, by choice or not. Knowledge of why this is so is not lacking in me anymore, but it is not always a comfort. Life is always best a friction, a coarseness, meant to make a mark or impression upon you. Without it, without deep feeling, gliding too easily, you are not engaged in it and less a part of it than you can be. How much you should be a part of it, a part of them, a part of their lives, that is your choice.
Excerpt from Triple Heartbreak: NY Beggars, Yoshoo, and Rotten Apples in Moscow
JaredDuBois.Blogspot.com
June 17, 2007
I broke off my criticism and toned it down many times over years ago now, not only because such a course was ill advised or possibly counter-productive, but because I bowed to the inevitably inescapable conclusion I was the wrong person to be pushing such things. I leave aside the notion that such things going on illegally are 'classifiable' and 'nobody's business' when a government is operating outside of the law, that it is every single one of its citizens right, and even duty, to expose such things because a government which does not follow its own laws is an illegal and criminal organization, period. But I also understand the efficacy of an argument is determined not only by the choice of words, as well as timing being optimal for being heard, but due to a large measure by the person saying it. What is their status in society? What is the position they are in? How did they come into the picture?
Such things were a concern but were a concern from the start. I broke off, lowered my criticisms greatly and took a longer road because inescapably to me, the environment had significantly shifted by that time. Even within the previous Bush Administration, movement was clearly heading in a different direction. That movement toward a greater openness and honesty was undeniable but the events of this week capping of a general trend during Obama's presidency has meant that things have taken an enormous turn toward the exact opposite of Obama's words. The words and the actions are not only not matching, but the actions show clearly the words have become meaningless.
Bush said famously 'America does not torture.' Obama says 'Ok, that was not the case, but we will not do that anymore' (for awhile at least while he is in charge). Bush said “The secret prisons that never existed, well they really don't exist now.” Obama improved that to, “Well they did exist, but now we are really closing them down for good.”
It is not the rhetoric though but the actions. An executive order is a meaningless self-restraint. Even a specific hard fought bill outlawing (fought because we were told it already was illegal and unnecessary) waterboarding and other such methods too secret to until recently even legally mention were overturned instantly via a presidential signing statement mentioning that the prohibitions against torture which were signed in from of the cameras could simply be ignored at will. And NOTHING which Obama has done cannot be undone just as easily 10 seconds into a new administration, or if he were to decide to simply change his mind.
The ideal way for this to play out, I acknowledged, was for those in a position to approve such things, ideally those who carried them out, to be the ones to call for an inquiry. In my notes at the time I put it as “2nd Church- ask for”. Later I expanded that a bit because if I abbreviate something a bit too much, I can forget what it was supposed to mean. More fully to remember it later, it became “2nd Church (Commission, who should) ask for”. I chose at the time to believe, as many I think did, that given the chance those who did the worst most illegal things under the Bush Administration, would when the time came, be willing to go public themselves. To think otherwise might have been more accurate, but who would wish to more accurate at the expense of giving people the benefit of the doubt to be so less human as to feel no guilt, no remorse, and be content not to come forward if given the chance, but to instead to choose to keep such things buried forever?
Little by little, the Obama Administration began closing off those doors, eliminating such potentials one by one. Then more and more, and now to shut everything down completely. ...
As I said above, I am not in a position to be the one to condemn this as I was not in their shoes, not in possession of the facts that they were. However, Obama, despite all promises about 'open government' has made the worst crimes America has ever committed now not even crimes in a legal or technical sense. Thank god we did not have similar 'pragmatists' as that when the original Church Commission did manage to bring the US into some semblance of a nation abiding by laws. Ironically their courage allowed people like Obama to reach the point and become president to be able to flush all of that down the drain today. Similar inquiries and truth-outings are 'mistakes' he at least will not let happen again. Abuses of and by the system are inevitable. Learning of them and correcting of them has become optional no matter how much the corruption destroys us all.
What I can condemn is that Obama has said those who committed crimes because they were told to, they were heroes. But as others have rightly pointed out, what does that make those who refused to follow illegal orders? Obama has thus far to my knowledge upheld that those who exposed criminal wrongdoing by the government were the criminals, and not those higher ups they reported on. Not the illegal programs because there is no such thing anymore, an illegal program, if it is authorized by the president in violation of US law, international law, human rights treaties, the UN charter, and even in direct violation of the US Constitution itself.
These people who have revealed such crimes, who have actually when taken an oath, have been punished for upholding that oath for their noble deeds at grave personal risks, and those that did the blatantly illegal things Obama may as well have given medals to them for their crimes. ...
If he thinks it is not the Justice Departments place to look into such things, if making sure politicians and Justice Department officials must actually follow the law on little things such as torturing human beings, breaking the most serious international laws on human rights possible, if this is not the job of the police, the FBI, or the Justice department to look into, just whose job does Obama think it is? The press, some reporters, left-wing ACLU types, some right-wing get-government-off-our-backs types, bloggers, whom?
As if they have the power or even the right anymore to expose crimes the government itself is committing especially since 'President' Obama, unlike 'candidate' Obama or 'Senator' Obama, has stated exposing criminal acts and programs by the government is itself again a higher more punishable crime than the criminal programs themselves, even and especially when those crimes are the most indefensible acts one person can do to another, and the exposure, letting the public know, is actually as required by law to be told as the memos he was so 'tortured' about whether or not he would follow the law in revealing?
Excerpt from More on Obama's reducing Torture to merely bad judgment, certainly not a crime
TruthRevival.org
April 27, 2009
My hope for a renewal of democracy lies predominately outside of the United States at this time. I have long thought democracy best can flourish, develop, and grow outside of the notice or interference of the main powers of the world: Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Iceland; smaller countries fairly wealthy or at least not poor, and mostly to the extent as much as they can be these days: unaligned. My interest in the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania was/is in the hope that they could have been shown to be experimental testing grounds for new ideas for or had new interpretations of government and democracy, given their somewhat unique histories and perspectives. That was true many years ago, but now lessened due to the predominance of heavily neo-conservative [and neo-liberal] influences, which got in there early and somewhat wrecked havoc on their potential developments in original approaches.
But obviously the focus or hope for democratization now in 2011 is in the unlikely place of the middle-east, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Syria, Bahrain, et all. I say unlikely because, for the reason I think democracy is best developed naturally and therefore best studied in out of the way, smaller, less strategic countries is that democracy developing, or trying to develop, in countries where the major powers of the world have strong interests in, as they say, have many chefs stirring the pot there so to speak.
That is not to say that democracy cannot develop under these conditions, with interventions and interests of one or many major powers of the world meddling, openly or behind the scenes through their covert intelligence services, but it is hardly a “natural evolution” and often, hardly “democratic” in any sense.
The only thing fairly shockingly missing from how the of “peaceful revolutions” in the post-soviet space were talked about or presented, whether the first round in 1989-1992, or the so called “colored revolutions” going on at the second time I was studying, (Georgia, Ukraine, etc.) was the lack of stressing the involvement or interests of the West and of the United States. It was as insane as talking or writing about why communism or socialism struggled in Cuba without talking about the embargo and policies of the United States toward Cuba. Not that Cuba should or would have been more successful, but with an intertwined world, one cannot look at politics of movements developing anywhere without mentioning heavily the outside or world trends, and the influences of the more powerful countries meddling or policies and relations, and their reactions toward those movements. It can be a minor factor in a region's “natural” development, or it can be more defining than practically anything else to the history of those regions.
Excerpt from Democracy DOA : Prognosis up from Dead On Arrival
TruthRevival.org
April 28, 2011
I first thought about reposting 'Arrogance and Humility' a few months ago when Pope Francis gave a good speech about the importance of humility. The current Pope has said many things that the Ann Randian "Christians" have been upset with, for due reason. That is because their "let the poor fend for themselves" version of "Christianity" has become dominate in the United States and just like others, uses that base to spread itself to become dominant worldwide.
But with that speech on 'Humility' I heard, (it turns out there were many so I will not link to it), I thought here is a person, a Pope no less, that really seems to "get" the humility stressed so much in the words attributed to Jesus of Nazareth. His words of compassion for the poor and the underclass would likely fall dead upon the utter hypocrisy of those who mock the poor, really have the utmost contempt for those struggling to survive in need of genuine help, where they are offered on mock sympathies. And even that has become too much a stretch and too much to ask for in the age of Obama. But maybe, he might have thought, they might better understand, or at least consider or reconsider, the concept of humility.
"Democrats" and "leftists" went ballistic when right wing religious leaders talked about taking out the references to helping the poor, the prostitutes, the disabled and disfigured, who Jesus held up as the most worthy. It is ignored so much, why would simple writing it out of the Bible be much of a stretch for those who by and large already have written it out of their hearts. I had already seen the same argument listening to how Obama merely substituted the words "Middle Class" when any other statesman or politician might have used the word "poor" or "poverty."
The millions of homeless, and those who were about to become homeless (and now have), simply were cured in the least expensive most politically acceptable and expedient way, never to be referred to again. Simply remove all references to the "poor" in the Bible and replace it with the "Middle Class" and you would already get an idea of what has to pass for empathy allowable by politicians (and much clergy) in the United States these days. The Pope really seems to get the concept of humility, all American politicians can understand from the false left to the far right, is understanding, and preaching, the arrogance aspect of the spectrum.
The second time I thought of reposting 'Arrogance and Humility' was when a famous American writer wrote about how arrogant he thought Edward Snowden was for thinking to leak the documents he did to Glenn Greenwald. I am not saying that I agree or disagree with either that assessment or that action, just that I thought it was an interesting take on what arrogance is. That was also around the time Glenn Greenwald wrote something I could not help but think came off as arrogant in how he should not be questioned in how long he takes or how selective he is in choosing what to write about. I am not implying that he is wrong in his decisions or timetable, only how arrogant that short take was (which I cannot find to link to).
The reasoning Glenn Greenwald used was valid, the same reason I would tend to not be judgmental about Snowden, that lack of knowledge, that "you have not seen what I have seen so you are not in a position to judge" his actions or lack thereof. But it came off as arrogant.
The same logic the other writer applied, that it is not up to people as Snowden to make such determinations about what the public should or should not be allowed to know, Greenwald ignored. His take seemed to be that his being a "journalist" meant that automatically, his judgments or motivations should not be questioned either, at least in that short post.
This past week has been filled with very powerful people in Washington musing over why that is, with First Amendment rights notwithstanding, and that that is becoming an increasingly "thin" argument against retaliation. Anyone else other than a journalist would have been arrested long ago, and the seeming to profit from it aspect would not help his making a case on how he only has the public's interests at heart in what he chooses to release, and when and how he decides to publish them.
Glenn did a much better job in explaining his position on January 6th, 2014, about how he is approaching his articles and seemed to back away from the arrogance of the previous one I mentioned reading. It even seemed to make some tilts towards humility, at least somewhat. However, it seems that as much as politicians and the "mainstream journalists" in America who cover them seem to be in a bubble, it seems he and others cannot appreciate that fact that many, many people who are bothered by the things he is reporting on will also question, and be critical, of not only his motivations, but on "why is he more entitled to decide what the public should know and should not find out about than the intelligence professionals?"
I don't wish that to sound like I am saying the public has a right to know everything and that less than full disclosure is wrong, only that people will always question the motivations for what is withheld, as they also should constantly be judgmental in "why" they are told the things they "are" told. And both, what is told vs. what is withheld, is meant to have them think a certain way, and ultimately to create an intended reaction or response to the telling.
I can hardly say I have never advocated that more should be known about what the government has done illegally and the damage I think it is doing. I have said that occasionally in extreme ways and in very strong language, and I have said it more subtly and often as well. The secrecy and subterfuge, not only to the public but to the Congress, and possibly even the President, on what has been going on these past dozen years has vastly diminished the United States' reputation, economy, honor, and standing in the world. And it is not the "telling" of these things which has done the damage, but the actual "doing" of them in the first place. The second makes the first inevitable, so long as the truth is valued. It may not be as valued in the here and now, but hopefully will one day become again considered of the utmost importance.
This little referenced "reality," given the wars it makes possible based upon falsified and easily falsifiable "evidence," that such a mentality makes inevitable, is not only a danger to our economy but to everyone everywhere. It will make starting that "one" next war not only possible but probable, whichever one it might be, that "Great" one which we will not be able to control or to stop until tens of millions, hundred of millions, and yes, even billions are dead relatively quickly. I have not made the arguments for greater openness for truth's sake alone, though that is a good reason, but because it should also be considered as a necessity for survival.
I also thought of writing about how the word or concept of "interference" kept popping up in my writings and what I meant by it. At times I state it is inevitable that we end up "interfering" in others lives, often in ways we would not wish to, but that is what living does and what living cannot help but doing. At other times, I sound aloof, like in "Star Trek" with the "Prime Directive," as if it is not my place to change anything, to not interfere in anything going on now, only to study it as a detached "observer" of people.
This going back and forth on if it is "intefering" or not, I see as similar to 'Arrogance and Humility' and what it came out of or was included in, "Morality: Individual and Social." How we live and interact within society is also creating what society will become, and whether it will become more just or more unjust. To simply always "go along to get along" pretty much means whether it improves or not will always be left only to those others who do not do that, and when you see that those others are not pushing it in a positive direction, that "going along to get along" means you are also keeping it going in that wrong direction by not standing up and saying, this is wrong.
When you see that happening, know or believe that it will continue to happen, and still do nothing, you can no longer hide and say it is not your place to interfere, because at that point, by letting what is right or good continue to lose out or to die, you have chosen a side simply by doing nothing. And if you see it sliding downward, you have probably by default, chosen or ended up on the wrong side, if you care or if you might ever again begin to care.
When is it "your job" to speak out, when is it your turn to take an unpopular but principled stand, that something that each person needs to decide for themselves. And as much as countries like to revel in their "power," when they try to kill that "conscience" in its public, making them think they have no right to make such assessments of their government or culture, they devolve into selfishness, greed, and brutality. But whether to get involved against the real or "silent" majority, which is often really a minority simply killing all dissent, that is up to each person to weigh and decide for him or herself.
As I put it above in 'Arrogance and Humility'...
It takes a great degree of arrogance to say that something you may see in your government or society is wrong, in your culture, in your common attitudes toward others of different beliefs, and to stand up as an individual against society and risk ostracism to say that it is wrong, that the Emperor has no clothes, and face the uncertain but most likely negative personal consequences. To say I am right and everyone else is wrong, or this minority opinion is truer than the opinion of the majority of people, even if the majority are in fact wrong, this is arrogant, and dangerous, and a necessity of evolution. Without anything to keep such arrogance in check unthinkable abuses of power inevitably occur...
I said it differently in my notes 6 years later...
To imagine freedoms and know of them beyond what your government allows or wants you to think about is to begin seeing a wider view, not of the world how it is but how you might think it could be or should be. Once upon a time, some governments understood this as good. That was before they wanted to preserve the present at all cost because in deprivation, there is more power. But the desire grows within those who can see or know those more honest worlds of more intellectual freedoms, and it cannot be destroyed by any government no matter how totalitarian it becomes in trying to control what people think about freedom or define freedom to mean by controlling society and the media, even if it imagines itself to still be a democracy. That makes the dictatorship stronger, the hypocrisy, but true freedom cannot be forgotten once tasted, and the heart and soul remember even after the mind has been cleansed of it. If any people were ever willing to accept their governments definition of freedom, the Soviet Union would never have collapsed, feudalism would not have collapsed, slavery and serfdom would never have been abolished, and democracies would never have arisen, even if they have since abandoned the principle that the people count more than the economic interests, and decry "populism".
Notes 3, 2005
(Notesworthy 2 of 3: Narrower Definitions of Palatable "Popular"
Truths, What People Are "Allowed" to Know, Media's "Realities")
Sometimes if you don't do something, your society or government cannot positively evolve, but only continue negatively devolving or getting progressively worse and more corrupt.
'Arrogance and Humility' I wrote in the middle of several very short essays about morality. At the time I did not really think it belonged or fitted in there, but now, I see it as not much different that what I wrote to begin that 15 years ago, and what I wrote to end it 14 years ago. We need people to make such judgements for themselves, to speak out and speak up, or instead watch our worlds slowly or not so slowly get progressively worse.
Not that we have not already made life a hell on Earth for a vast number, billions probably, of the seven billion people now on Earth. That we have such freedoms to speak out, and that we do even when we do not have such freedom to do so, legally speaking, is as important today as it was when others did so in the past to give us what measure of freedom we may now have which they did not. They were often destroyed for doing so, but many, even humanity itself, eventually benefited from their actions, little appreciated and even sometimes vastly condemned at the time.
The very beginning and the very end of "Morality: Individual and Social" tried to stress that as well. The key points of that are below.
Though both laws and religion can show us better ways to behave and instill us with morals in addition to those which we learn from our parents, in the end we deserve the credit or the blame for the morality which we internalize as our own. And for any and all behavior which follows from those ideals we both borrow from others, or in the case of those who go beyond notions of what is immoral in their own era, those which we invent or more accurately discover more just ways of behaving which later will seem self-evident and others will wonder later how people now could ever have acted as we do now in certain ways.
Whether it is killing whales or dolphins for sport or for food, allowing people to freeze to death or die of hunger because they don't meet the standards of homeless shelters, causing enormous suffering in members of species of primates to test cosmetics or purposely giving them lethal doses of drugs just to see what limits it takes to cause cancers (something we humans have until recently done to even other humans though they knew better than to publicize it, such as Nazi medical experiments in concentration camps in the 1940's, U.S. radiation experiments on people in the 1950's), there are no shortages of causes that people fight against which are 'legal' today which they hope history will find as abhorrent in the future as we find today such things as slavery, lethal animal fights for sport, animal sacrifices for religious purposes, and a host of other things which were perfectly legal once but now [in many places] are not.
Likewise some are hoping that history will be on the side of removing restrictions deemed immoral today which were not in the past, such as legalizing recreational drug use or prostitution, and believe that they stand on the side which is right just as many now view as having been right those who successfully challenged and overturned [Alcohol] Prohibition [in the US] in the 1930's.
Not everyone one may agree today on what if any changes should be made to our present notions of what is moral or what is immoral. But through that rather irksome thing called talking about it and bothering us with their notions which usually do not often jibe with our own, that slow roll is inching toward what people will find aghast 30 years from now which people are doing legally today but just prefer not to talk or think about, just as racial discrimination was 30 years ago from today.
Not having it happen at all would be to be completely and utterly morally stagnant as a society as China [Maoist era in the 1950's] has been in recent times, attempting to eliminate all avenues of change. It is in the narrow-mindedness of those who always think that today's culture is the penultimate and requires no improvements at all which slows or halts societies from ever becoming more just, by eliminating debates which inevitably will disturb and disrupt, to a minor degree many or most in a society, but which future notions of morality depend upon.
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This I hope has done a fairly good job of covering some aspects of morality as it applies both to individuals and their societies at large. On an individual basis morality lies somewhere between always doing what is expected of you, to gently nudging ones greater society or culture to becoming what the individual believes to be more just, fair, or even-handed or to embrace their own sets of beliefs that their culture does not abide by. On a larger basis I would say each society, by my own measure, its morality is defined by its willingness to embrace or to suppress its own dissension, with greater openness being morally superior.
This is not a given across everyone's beliefs or cultures. Surely many see their own cultures beliefs, traditions, or values as the penultimate of civilization, and those who seek to challenge this to be misguided or deranged at best, criminals or subversives at worst.
To the extent where an individuals desire for social change leads them to commit criminal acts, whether in the interest of advancing or publicizing such views or viewpoints, or whether simply trying to live their lives on their own terms regardless of what they consider oppressive restrictions, they are most certainly, by definition anyway, criminal or subversive. When their values are too far apart from members of their own society and they provide a source of constant irritation to those who provide the structure of passing on the cultures or societies values from one generation to the next, when seen in this light, people of such views are misguided and deranged in some way.
However to whatever degree we deem our present societies to be fair, good, or just, we owe to those who once were seen as such. We like to think we know which values we hold will be embraced by future generations as being the one to measure the value of such distention now, which may be seen in a different or nobler light by those yet to come but it would be guessing at best.
Just as those generations gone by might hold our present civilizations as morally decrepit for such things as open adultery and not uncommon divorce, we judge their moral shortcomings in regards to race or gender relations. Throw anyone today a hundred years into the future and they most certainly will see moral degradation by some measure by our definition, mixed together hopefully with some new freedoms or more expansive or inclusive notions or implementations of justice or equality no one in our present time might ever do more than just dream.
This is humanity on the long term scale. Each generation picking and choosing morals leftover from previous generations like sorting through antiques at an auction. By whim or taste, some will be cherished for more than we value them now, some we cherish will be discarded as mere junk.
The best we can do is make our best cases for the values we hold and let the ones we do not value also be aired or debated as any idea which we can conceive surely will be existent in one form or another even if never realized by anyone. Only by thrashing these ideas out a bit, can we make it easier for those yet to come to see their values or their shortcomings.
And like the most useful of antiques there will be those ideals long forgotten that not only will be dusted off and reused but will still carry forward their original essence, the inherent notion of their utility, and will be adapted and improved upon in ways we can never imagine. That is the hope, and leave to them the reality.
1999/2000
posted by Jared DuBois | 11:40 PM
