Os Despojados II

• [...] from the start the Settlers were aware that that unavoidable centralization was a lasting threat, to be countered by lasting vigilance. 
  
• It is of the nature of idea to be communicated: written, spoken, done. The idea is like grass. It craves light, likes crowds, thrives on crossbreeding, grows better for being stepped on.
• It is hard, however, for people who have never paid money for anything to understand the psychology of cost, the argument of the marketplace.
• You can’t crush ideas by suppressing them. You can only crush them by ignoring them. By refusing to think, refusing to change.
• What drives people crazy is trying to live outside reality. Reality is terrible. It can kill you. Given time, it certainly will kill you. The reality is pain [...] But it’s the lies, the evasions of reality, that drive you crazy.
• The individual cannot bargain with the State. The State recognizes no coinage but power: and it issues the coins itself.
• We came from a great distance to each other. We have always done so. Over great distances, over years, over abysses of chance. It is  because he comes from so far away that nothing can separate us. Nothing, no distances, no years, can be greater than the distance that's already between us, the distance of our sex, the difference of our being, our minds; that gap, that abyss which we bridge with a look, with a touch, with a word, the easiest thing in the world.
• They think if people can possess enough things they will be content to live in prison.
• Government: The legal use of power to maintain and extend power.
• The will to dominance is as central in human beings as the impulse to mutual aid is, and has to be trained in each individual, in each new generation. 
• We've made laws, laws of conventional behavior, built walls all around ourselves, and we can't see them, because they're part of our thinking. [...] Those who build walls are their own prisoners.
• You own nothing. You are free. All you have is what you are, and what you give. [...] We have no law but the single principle of mutual aid between individuals. We have no government but the single principle of free association. [...] We are sharers, not owners.  
• The principle of organic economy was too essential to the functioning of the society not to affect ethics and aesthetics profoundly. “Excess is excrement,” Odo wrote in the Analogy. “Excrement retained in the body is a poison.”
  
• You are rich, you own. We are poor, we lack. You have, we do not have. Everything is beautiful here. Only not the faces. On Anarres nothing is beautiful, nothing but the faces. The other faces, the men and women. We have nothing but that, nothing but each other. Here you see the jewels, there you see the eyes. And in the eyes you see the splendor, the splendor of the human spirit. Because our men and women are free — possessing nothing, they are free. And you the possessors are possessed. You are all in jail. Each alone, solitary, with a heap of what he owns. You live in prison, die in prison. It is all I can see in your eyes — the wall, the wall!”
  

Ursula K. LeGuin -- The dispossessed

Os despojados I

"“It exists,” Shevek said, spreading out his hands. “It’s real. I can call it a misunderstanding, but I can’t pretend that it doesn’t exist, or will ever cease to exist. Suffering is the condition on which we live. And when it comes, you know it. You know it as the truth. Of course it’s right to cure diseases, to prevent hunger and injustice, as the social organism does. But no society can change the nature of existence. We can’t prevent suffering. This pain and that pain, yes, but not Pain. A society can only relieve social suffering, unnecessary suffering. The rest remains. The root, the reality. All of us here are going to know grief; if we live fifty years, we’ll have known pain for fifty years. And in the end we’ll die." Ursula K. LeGuin -- The dispossessed

Inevitabilidade

Temos um problema catastrófico nas fontes da economia global -- recursos, energia -- e nos seus escoadouros -- poluição, aquecimento global. De que forma e quão profundamente as nossas soluções para os direitos económicos e políticos -- capitalismo, democracia -- terão de se transformar para serem capazes de verdadeiramente atacar esta questão? 

Ontology & Epistemology

I tend to gravitate around "the Map is not the Territory" concept in the ontology/epistemology discussion. I understand «territory» as the event generator, aka reality. We are only able to measure events indirectly using our senses and tech (events with no effects are non-existent for all purposes). The 'map' is a tangled web of shared and private beliefs that we, Humanity, build and maintain for centuries. The «Map» is the meaning generator (I'm dropping the guillemets now).

The terms objective/subjective imho only make sense in the Map. Objective beliefs are those not dependent of personal mind states, and those dependent are subjective (this is more like a spectrum than a boolean feature, but let's keep it simple). Beliefs not dependent of private or social features (even if they are known just because of specific historical contexts) and which are known using logic/evidence/reason are (more) objective like Math. This does not mean that objective beliefs are necessarily 'true' (it depends on the semantics of the word 'true') but they are not, or should not be, dependent of persons X's or Y's state of mind. This also does not mean that objective beliefs are necessarily better than subjective ones (that requires a value judgement which is context-dependent). Anyway, this is why I think that, say, my liking of ice-cream is subjective. That is a private belief that would not exist if I would not exist. It depends of my current mind state. On the other hand, the theory of evolution by natural selection or the Central Limit Theorem are beliefs that do not depend on any person's mind. But, either objective or subjective, all are map denizens. Even scientific models are just that: maps; not intrinsically true or false, just more or less adequate to the known relevant evidence and current knowledge. 

However this way of classifying beliefs is just one way not the way. Thinking about the divide between public or private beliefs is as important as seeing them as objective or subjective (Ethics and Politics seems a much more interesting and important subject that Ontology and Epistemology but that's my perspective). 

One more thing: in a subtle way, every belief belongs to the Territory -- human beliefs are caused by certain neuro-electric impulses, and those are measurable events -- which is a trivial fact and not that interesting (even if it is important, because it protects this model of ontology against the charge of dualism, the Map is not independent of the Territory). The meaning of those brain impulses only makes sense in the Map. Without humans -- the makers and keepers of the Human Map -- the only thing that would exist would be the physical phenomena that we label with words and inject with meaning. Without a 'Map' there would be no stars, no colors or sounds, no art or philosophy or love. There would only exist 'meaningless indifferent stuff' (for lack of better words).