Knowing, you are in the know

The ‘learning paradox’ also known as ‘Meno’s paradox’ are a tantalizing conundrum that has plagued mankind from the times of Plato ~ (429?–347 B.C.E.). The paradox involved is best explained in one of Plato’s writings, where Socrates, the protagonist, is described as having to have said the following: ‘[A] man cannot search either for what he knows or for what he does not know[.] He cannot search for what he knows–since he knows it, there is no need to search–nor for what he does not know, for he does not know what to look for.’

 

Obviously, knowing is a somewhat tricky business. The use of the word implies that knowledge is a tool to be utilized. The question that needs to be put to bed on this subject is ‘what is known and what is purported to be known in that claim of knowing?’  

 

There are two main ingredients in knowing and those ingredients are, reasoning (a priori) and witnessing (empirical). Of course, in most situations what someone ‘knows’ is derived from a combination of both empirical evidence and an a priori effort. Yet there is a third method by which people ‘know’ something and that is via information transfer. For this author, the only knowing that is going on in an information transfer is that person A told person(s) B the words ‘X’; the validity and veracity of statement ‘X’ is outside of the scope of what person B knows until person B applies reasoning or witnessing to validate statement ‘X’. Just listening and believing must not be standard for anyone who doesn’t wish to live in a cult like atmosphere.

 

It seem that too many people these days live in a cult like atmosphere for they have abandoned reasoning and witnessing for the more lackadaisical approach of ‘just listen and believe’. This is most likely the result of Person(s) J silently abdicating the mandate and role long understood to be part of the profession of Journalism. In previous years the lack of retractions was a source of pride for many a media outlet; those days seem to have drifted off into the mists of the past.

 

In those days gone by, the keystone for most of the journalistic profession was a story wasn’t considered to be true unless three independent witnesses were required. This practice has been replaced with the ‘un-named source close to the situation’. There is a term known as the ‘fog of war’ which describes the situation where a third party observer is bombarded by claims by both sides as to who is winning on the field. The fog of war is now being played out right in front of everyone’s eyes when it comes to social and political issues throughout much of the western world.

 

The digitalization of media/news outlets has degraded the profession of journalism for both the vendor and the consumer. The reader is requested, moving forward, to note the number of online articles from news outlets that have the term ‘modified on’ showing the last time the article was changed; the result of this is the possibility that two people in a discussion will be referencing the same article that has two different timestamps, thus resulting in two different ‘fact’ statements. 

 

Context

The mental exercise above was born out of a conversation with a close friend of this author. The discussion was around the transportation of illegal aliens flown into Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts under the direction of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. This author’s position was that DeSantis made a good political move to bring to the attention of the American people the impact of an open southern boarder. The counter argument presented by the friend was that it is wrong to use people for political purpose. There is no problem with the counter argument in principle; unfortunately not everyone is as principled as this friend.  

 

For relationship purposes the conversation was mutually ended by both sides; side-note, empirical evidence has shown that some arguments are best not had with this friend and this one single item is not the hill to damage or bury the relationship on. It is known to this author and the friend that this author has a tendency to be more in the know on current social political matters, while the friend has a some interest and is mostly informed by a small sampling from the journalistic profession.

 

‘Whataboutism’ can be used to derail a discussion, though this is not always the case, especially when there is reasonable equivalence, a chance of hypocrisy, or perhaps the other person just doesn’t know. Applying Hanlon’s razor, the last listed item was the starting position not taken.

 

Moving on to what wasn’t said, the DeSantis move was not a novelty because both Obama and Biden played the same game, just against in the other direction. Article I, Section 2 of the US Constitution mandates that every resident of a state is counted in the census that takes place every ten years. There is an interesting clause in some law somewhere that makes the number of people in a US State the measuring stick for the number of delegates sent of to the US Electoral College and yet only US citizens are permitted to vote in elections, at least for now.

 

Those are the ideas not conveyed via words that were not spoken. The judicious lack of persistence for this topic at hand was based on the awareness of this friend’s childhood, for this friend was once categorized as a refugee remaining in a refugee camp for two years, thus giving them what some might call a soft spot for refugees.

 

 

The moral lesson realized - while it may be a feel-good moment to be right, taking the moral highroad might just lead one away from the hill that an important part of one’s life may just die on if that path is not taken.

 

 

 

Definitions

A priori - relating to or denoting reasoning or knowledge which proceeds from theoretical deduction rather than from observation or experience.

 

Empirical - based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic.

 

Semantics - the branch of linguistics and logic concerned with meaning. There are a number of branches and sub-branches of semantics, including formal semantics, which studies the logical aspects of meaning, such as sense, reference, implication, and logical form, lexical semantics, which studies word meanings and word relations, and conceptual semantics, which studies the cognitive structure of meaning.

 

Whataboutism - Whataboutism or whataboutery denotes in a pejorative sense a procedure in which a critical question or argument is not answered or discussed, but retorted with a critical counter-question which expresses a counter-accusation.

Politics Ruins Everything.

 In one of his Federalist Papers, James Madison wrote: ‘Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.’ Madison’s words imply that even the most reasoned man would disagree with himself, if that situation arose. People make choices every day, those choices for most are not as clear as a mathematical solution and so any given person will be forced to make their choice on what they understand of the situation in the moment they choose.

 

Before getting into the meat of this article, this author would like posit the idea that we are all watching the same movie and yet walking away with our own unique opinion of which their favourite scene was.

 

In preparation for the article the definition of what is politics given by The Oxford Dictionary provided a concise explanation: ‘the activities associated with the governance of a country or other area, especially the debate or conflict among individuals or parties having or hoping to achieve power.’

 

Who is thinking about the children?

Children were once disposable and still are in some countries on Earth due to environmental conditions; evidence of this can be noted by birth rates and child mortality rates. Leaping through both time and space, one can see that both birth and death rates have dropped in the advanced countries where both technology and medicine have improved when one ignores abortion.

 

Political overreach has long been a mainstay within the political arena. Child abuse has been and always will be a matter in all societies. The politicians sought to stamp abuse out where they could by legislating away physical punishment by creating ‘child protection’ laws. Without the capacity to provide consequence, many parents turned to reward for their child management strategy.

 

Spoiler Alert – Spoiling children creates spoiled adults who end up behaving like spoiled children, for they no other way. All societies of any duration are based on the co-operation of the population at large. Some societies are based on fear, some are based on religion, while others look to a monarchy, and others still coalesce under a flag and a constitution.  Of course these basic descriptions can be combined in a variety of ways and proportion.

 

Returning to our time time/space machine we reach this the current year, 2022, and we reconnoiter the present surroundings. What is noticed is that the ‘same’ societies who thirty years earlier outlawed the spanking of children are now promoting and legalizing double mastectomies and hysterectomies , for girls below the age of consent and boys, also below the age of consent are having their penises removed, for non-medical reasons. Is the oath of ‘do no harm’ still a thing?

 

Sticking with the Hippocratic Oath, surely a yellow card and potentially a red card needs be raised on the treatment of children during pandemic restrictions; for those readers not familiar with soccer/football/calcio, a quick entry in your favorite search engine will remove any confusion.

 

In regards to the pandemic restrictions politics took over from the get go, as it was known that COVID-19 is a human coronavirus. Coronaviruses were first identified in humans back in 1965 and include strains such as SARS, MERS, Canine coronavirus HuPn-2018 and while the common cold is typically a rhinovirus some strains are a mild coronavirus. To date, there has not been a vaccine for any coronavirus and the latest round at a vaccine shows that there still isn’t a cure for a coronavirus seeing as the vaccine is now being described as a therapeutic, at least in Ontario Canada.

 

Continuing on, it has been known for sometime that the difference between females and males is that females are more ‘people’ focused while males are more ‘thing’ focused; this has been shown in chimpanzees as well. Additionally, others have asserted that children learn language by watching the mouth shapes associated with the sounds being heard. This author agrees with both of the ideas posited immediately above.

 

The two years of off and on isolation coupled with the off and on masking practiced by many due to the fear, uncertainty and doubt propagated by the political class has stripped many children of these much needed experiences in their formative years. Moving up in age, after the mobility and the linguistic basics are achieved the next goal in the development of a child is basic is socialization. This phase is intended to normalize children to societal standards with the intent of reducing the bullies from bullying and the meek from being meekly.

 

The knock-on effect of the restrictions inflicted on school age children will be a challenge for many societies for years to come. This writer imagines the political class will lower the education standards to make the current cohort of youngsters appear to be not as damaged as they have been; the measure of a child should be based on substance and not presentation.

 

Is the planet being saved?

The saying ‘Save the planet’ is quite clear in meaning, and yet are the actions being taken look like the planet is being saved? Is the reader willing to accept that when discussing this planet mankind is a part of the planet’s ecosystem, thereby making mankind just as worthy as any other inhabitant animal of this planet?

 

Like any complex system, the ecosystem of this planet is not a single item issue; this has been made obvious by the multiple climate activist groups that are single subject matter specialists. The Earth’s ecosystem, while impacted by the animals of this planet, is not managed by the animals of this planet. There is a certain level of hubris by mankind to think that they can out manage the planet’s ecosystem better than Mother Nature herself.

 

No one seems to complain to the beavers about their ongoing deforestation projects or the water management undertakings. When the beavers become over enthusiastic, other animals will take notice and go shopping by preying on them. When the lions over shop in the meat isle, the lions will deplete their own food supply and will look on in wonder at the empty shelves as it were. Nature is by its very nature self correcting, it is only mankind who seems to want to step out of their lane for years on end mucking about with Nature and the ecosystem.

 

Forest fires have been a long standing process on planet Earth in areas long before mankind even embraced the vista. The basics of the circle of fire look something like this: a seed finds its way to some fertile ground and takes root, the tree grows and sheds more seeds which also take root until a forest takes hold, during this process leaves and branches will fall adding some nutrients to the soil, animals will also move in seeking shelter and food, be that food vegetal based or the aforementioned animals, eventually the trees will leach the nutrients from the soil and die. The penultimate step is that one of the dried dead trees will get hit by lightning, sparking a fire. The resultant tree ash and animal corpses will refresh the soil, which is then ready for the next seed to find its way to the newly fertilized ground. The circle of forest life and fire can be envisioned as a miller’s wheel that just keeps turning and grinding away.

 

Rivers and creeks much like forests have predated mankind by quite a few years, regardless of the efforts of the local beaver population in regards to creeks. Droughts and floods have long been part of the reality of these waterways and it was only until mankind showed up that the rules were changed as it was mankind and mankind alone who tried to change the rules, as the rest of the animals didn’t take much notice of the rules they just lived or died by them. Lookup ‘hunger stones europe’ to see the point.

 

This author feels that the true proof  that climate change activists are typically political is due to the lack of moral investment or actual actions taken on behalf of the these persons and parties. There would be much more faith in these climate champions would be on a surer footing atop the hill they wish to die on if they were to put the money where they mouth was, as it were. To the reader, how many of these climate champions would accept a rubbish bin being dropped off and then proceed to fill it with every item that contained or required fossil fuels in the supply chain?

 

Here are a few hints for the items listed on the destined for that bin: computers, cell phones, refrigerators, electricity, electrical grids, power meters, plumbing parts, tar based shingles, asphalt roads, diapers, any clothing from factories with machines and child labour, solar panels and the blades of a wind mill and finally carbon credits. Upon consideration, the exemption list from the bin is probably a much shorter list.

 

One thing to keep in mind is that Mother Nature always wins.

 

Now on to relationship

The value attributed towards relationship is currently under attack. Of course there are many levels of relationship; from the familial to the neighbourly, along with the full spectrum of relationship types which falls in between. Due to the present political discourse everything has been reduced to a single ‘hot button’ issue that provides a single sound bite for both sides. Anything beyond these peddled sound bites would be a conversation, a conversation no-one seems to want to, or are incapable of having.

 

It has been said that politics is downstream of culture, yet culture is downstream of media and when the media thrives on the idea of ‘if it bleeds it leads’ the outcome seems quite obvious.

 

What about Politics?

This may seem like an odd question, a question that is right up there with ‘if you throw a bucket of water into a pool, does the water in the pool get any wetter?’ Politics doesn’t have to ruin politics, though it often does, when and only when those involved prioritize the need for power above and beyond the political goals for which they were elected. When the political class loses sight of what they told people as to why they should be elected, then yes politics will ruin politics.

 

In the closing of the Oxford entry quoted above, it reads ‘conflict among parties having or hoping to achieve power.’ When the maintenance of political power or the acquisition of political power becomes the focus for the political class is when the political pandering starts. Rather than agreeing on the problems of society and then debating the path to a solution as politics of this nature drags down a society when everyone begins raising their own personal ‘my problem is the biggest problem’ flag in order to capture the attention of those people who control the public purse and the legislative pen.

 

Politicians and their held close bootlickers currently have a problem and that problem is that these political class people have a heavy trust in poles and many of them seem to have slotted Social Media in as a form of polling; the premise being that if one person types it, then ten people think it and one hundred people feel it, for that is how poling works. Imagine any poll where the respondents step up to check the boxes over being randomly selected; this scenario would out push any push-poll ever taken, thus making society at large seem as divisive as Twitter itself.

 

So yes, politics can ruin everything but it doesn’t have too, if more people lived by the motto ‘stop, look and listen’.

 

 

NOTES

Define: Politics

Oxford Dictionary - the activities associated with the governance of a country or other area, especially the debate or conflict among individuals or parties having or hoping to achieve power.

 

Miriam - Webster –

                             a: the art or science of government

b: the art or science concerned with guiding or influencing governmental policy

c: the art or science concerned with winning and holding control over a government