Love my country? That feeling started going south with my flight from Catholicism when I was around 14. Then came Vietnam, so by 21, I had nothing left in my kit bag of emotions, but disgust for its stupidity, its complete barbaric aggression toward the poor of the third world. Yet I still tried to give it a break. Until I recognized that no amount of juggling parties or faces in DC would make a difference -- corrupt exceptionalist mindset had already rotted it from the inside out. Love a rotted shell of some delusional militaristic authoritarian monster making a pretense of duh mock crazy? Fat chance of that.
My “a-ha” moment came at age 16 when I read Dee Brown’s “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee”. I wept through the entire book, and there came the realization that everything I learned about the “greatness” of this country was a falsehood.
I too am a member of the Vietnam generation. We gals feared for the draft to claim our boyfriends, husbands, brothers and friends. It consumed our lives. My closest friend was in Nam as well as two of his brothers; they were all Agent Orange’d and have all suffered various cancers.
I always tell the story of my friend P who went there as a clerk because he was an early computer geek; and he worked as an admin in office days, but the mofos still had to hand him a rifle, shove him in a perimeter foxhole on some nights, where of course he got AOed . . . lymphoma . . . radiation . . . tissue adhesions . . . chronic pain, dances with the VA etc.
My deepest sympathies to both of you. We should have NEVER gotten involved in Vietnam. I’ve heard of the horrific atrocities committed by a certain lieutenant Kiley, I believe. He ordered his men to massacre civilians in Vietnam. So despicable. Makes me cringe, sick to my stomach.😢😞🙁🤮
My daughter’s biological father was a Marine there. He refused to shoot anyone and became a heroin addict. When he returned home, he was 100% percent psychological disability. He eventually died from a drug-induced heart attack.
But some people _do_ love their nations, or regions, or whatever. Millions of citizens of the US elected to leave it politically and join the Confederacy and fight, kill, and die to preserve Negro slavery. They professed love for their states (also a political artifact, like their former nation-states). And of course their opponents professed love for _their_ nation-state, effectively enough to kill a lot of them and force them back into their previous political arrangement. Human beings aren't particularly logical, but one thing that has developed out of how they evolved were a remarkable talent for collecting in large groups and killing one another. I understand chimpanzees do this too, a sad development if so.
But Bonobos don't. Not all primates are so cursed with equivalent homicidal tendencies. And I'd be the last biologist on the planet to cheer for the current structure of the evolutionary "tree" with Hominids on top. First, screw the tree; and second, in both evolutionary and ecological terms, clearly FUNGI at the top -- worldwide communicative networks, murderers of dead tissue for recycling, pathogens usually of already sick devitalized tissue, and have been successful in all niches for 2.5 billion yrs as compared with hominids paltry 1 million at best.
Actually, Jenny, no soil fungi, no trees, not like we know 'em. Around 95% of all plants have mycorrhizzal root mutualistic fungal partners. Although trees communicate through the air, they also use their subsoil fungal networks for that purpose. Mosses are ancient and they're a treasure like all peaceful photosynthetic organisms, but they don't, far as I know have the broad ecological roles that fungi subserve.
Trees are sentient beings as you know. Some produce substances that prevent other trees from growing near them, in order that their own species remain dominant.
The black walnut is one of them. We planted several on our property when we were young and ignorant; they killed several of my beloved Scotch pines so they HAD TO GO. We are down to one now, an enormous one planted away from other trees so it will not be allowed to murder them!
But no murder. For me, that's the key divider. Reasonable humans and bonobos can push, shove, and slap, spit mucus and curses, but it stops at homicide. Sociopaths, some chimps, Bibi Satanyahu (thanks, gypsy), and Zionist freaks cross that line without a thought.
As chimpanzees and bonobos are equidistant from us, the last of the hominids, I've long wondered why we seem to take after the chimps more than the bonobos, and was it always like that. Sometimes I think the men got the chimp genes, and women the bonobo. Or, did it take something like organized religion to turn our feet down the chimpanzee path? I've even writting poems about such topics.
Aw, y'all know this is all tongue-in-cheek because who knows the vagaries of intermediate form evolution/early environment and competitors etc., so many factors to consider; why anthropologists toil.
With one exception. I'd say there's evidence for a set of get-even gene mutations occurring in certain women predisposing them to prove they can be as efficient and effective murderers as men. Madeleine Albright, Victoria Nuland, and the queen, gypsy's correctly noted Hitlery Clinton.
It wasn't to "preserve Negro slavery". It was an attempt to preserve their personal freedom. Slavery would not have survived in the South much longer. The North never gave a shit about slavery. The South was their greatest source of income and secession could not be allowed. Once again it was good old American Imperialism and propaganda at its finest. It continues today all over the world
Go into the South Carolina statehouse mezzanine and to the left is the original articles of secession where it clearly states the need to maintain slavery. Were there related issues? Of course, but clearly slavery.
While slavery was still an issue the trends in society were rapidly finding slavery more repugnant. By most accounts it was on its way out and would not have survived much longer at any rate. With typical strategies of sowing discontent the U.S. government (as it still does) were sowing hatred and discontent which is really what spurred the civil rights movement of the '60's.
Agreed that with industrialization wage slavery was a more manageable and appropriate strategy over chattel slavery from the viewpoint of the newly emerging industrial Capitalist class.
Whatever the fate of chattel slavery it can be truly stated that the Confederate troops were objectively defending the property rights of the Southern Oligarchy despite whatever their subjective attitudes might have been.
In class terms the Confederate troops had in most cases more in common with the Negro slaves than with the slave masters. And some of them knew it.
Genuine history never finds its way into public education because that is an absolute requirement of sustaining the illusion that is empire's empty shell of virtue.
Only alternative enclaves study narratives such as Howard Zinn's.
Ursula K. LeGuin, who was many things, but an apologist for the current system or gender relations was not one of them, noted that women are capable of far more cruelty than most men, but only men and ants can make war.
It's so true. Unlike dogs, cats are inherently too smart to become enslaved by their idiot human "owners", and I think that also makes them reluctant of tribes as well, which can also put the strictures on freedom.
Consider there are two, rather impressive, feline exceptions, the lion, and male cheetahs. Normally, those that join together are related, but exceptions have been known and studied for many years.
I once saw a giant hornet. It was pretty damn scary. It's body was as big as my thumb. It's head is high visibility orange. It had just gotten done plundering a defenseless bee hive. I didn't mess with it.
The USA in its wisdom recently named a weapons configuration after this species of hornet.
I have always said that until it is understood that women can be just as evil and cruel as men, women will not be free. Men are often physically stronger than women which enables them to hurt each other and women more, but women are just as mean and sometimes more angry because we have been forced into these stupid roles as "nurturers". I once had a complete stranger come up to me and touch my stomach when I was pregnant. And another person who was completely flabbergasted when I, an obviously pregnant woman, got very angry at her.
I can be nice, but it is not my aim in life. Justice is what I want. I have been working on embracing the things in life that are often considered negative. I find I learn a lot more that way.
"Men are often physically stronger than women which enables them to hurt each other and women more" - the key word is "physically". They're physically stronger and so can hurt women more **physically**.
It's a rare man that can hurt others emotionally as well as most women can. The compensation, I guess. And when at the top - look how much evil the current crop of women at power in the West have produced.
I wrote a letter to Ursula LeGuin when I was 10 years old, back in the 70s. Pleading for her to continue her "Earthsea" trilogy as I loved those three books quite a bit in my youth. She surprisingly, wrote back to me, and drew a beautiful small dragon at the end of the letter with her signature.
Later in life, I recall reading a magazine interview LeGuin gave, and she talked about how many of psychologist Carl Jung's ideas were the catalyst for her story of Ged and Earthsea, and the importance of "real" names - and a journey to find oneself. In the interview, she said many themes for the Earthsea trilogy she had borrowed from Jung's concepts of archetypes and the "Shadow". That really struck me at the time, and brought new light to the story for me as an adult.
Although I have no idea what Ursula might have known about chimps, she sure seemed to know quite a bit about dragons.
regarding chimpansees, i think it is not that common. i read of the chimp-wars (quite nasty), but they still seemed to be an exception and maybe caused by external territorial pressures (the (not so) great apes, known as humans).
You link religious sectarianism with nationalism insightfully. Ideologies and more fleshly tribalism both demand subsuming personal ties, personal decency, to an abstract unity. A supposed "unity" that always involves a hierarchy with greatest benefits for the elite.
Yes, Caitlin, Carlin nailed it: symbolism for the symbol-minded.
What about family as probably the smallest hierarchical unit? Aren't personal sacrifice etc required to maintain its health to ensure survival and propagation?
Pure individualism leads to extinction. It's the height of the hierarchy tree that might be the trickiest to identify and maintain.
In concert with the group discussion, I was suggesting that symbolic belonging across society tends to be entrenched and pernicious, and pressures individuals to be so.
Family matters are another thing. And those ties are absolutely genetic.
I think, given people's feelings about their families and close relatives, that an interest in their survival and well-being is genetic and under more primitive conditions is probably crucial for both individual and group survival. Hence its genetic persistence. I am not talking here about something abstract or theoretical, but powerful emotions directly experienced.
It is confusing for kids who are made to stand up and sing the national anthem at the start of every day. But kids get smart faster than those in power would like.
Indeed they do. Not the anthem, but even more authoritarian, I still recall the every morning pledge of allegiance. When I was 5 or 6, it was just blather, but by 6th or 7th grade as I approached puberty, it started to feel wrong to me at a gut level; wtf, pledging to a flag seemed pretty corny, silly-ass, if not downright asinine. And kids now seem more awake than we were. They won't stand for cieg heiling the empire's flag for very long.
I started placing my hand near my pubic area ha. I think at that time teachers understood that move ha. Of course that lead to class walkouts and sit-ins over the war on Vietnam and it's kind, and loving people.
as a Brit, I find many people are obsessed with our colonial past, labouring under the delusion that we brought 'civilisation' to backward people, whereas I can only apologise to our victims for the theft and murder our forbears committed. I feel for Americans who similarly understand what their country is doing, and have to be embarrassed, as am I, considering my government is totally complicit in all the atrocities being carried out to this day.
yes - they brought a lot of death, disease, massacres, slavery, corruption, assassination, abuse, opium wars, exploiting local rivalries by arming both sides to increase violence and to weaken opposition to colonial takeover, using military superiority to enforce governing systems that were not suited to their victims way of doing things, re-drawing traditional boundaries between states / tribes / kingdoms which split ethnic groups and created new conflicts, and, of course, imposed an alien religion on people - I could go on.
Reminds me of the simpletons that stand and put their hand over their heart as they hear the national anthem at every ball game. It’s the same idiots who yell “we’re number one” when their favorite team franchise wins a championship.
Legally, the U.S. can’t cut Israel off completely. Since 2008, the U.S. has had to weigh all arms sales to Israel and other countries in the region against the requirement that Israel maintains a “qualitative military edge” against all enemies, both state and non-state actors. I’m not saying he wasn’t at all culpable, but he was following the law. Netanyahu on the other hand is disgraceful. BTW I’m Jewish.
Civil disobedience is what it's called. An unjust law doesn't warrant enforcing. Sort of like what Abolitionists did when they helped to hide freed slaves along the Underground Railroad.
Yes, our not so friend Obummer. Thank you for informing. There are very few places in the past that would allow that to be written or heard. Thanks to Caitlin we have each other : )
It's even gross and cringy to be a security services prostitute for the USA as a non-US national, to have let the US commit countless genocides the past 50 years with uttering a word, yet miraculously still fuliminate about Russia and try to claim that Russia has imperialistic designs for the entire former Soviet Union, when NATO has expanded eastwards to Russia's western borders and never ending bellicose US statements about nuking Russia etc.
I do not think that education (critical thinking, common sense, logic, ratio, etc.) is answer or will improve situation. Education is also highly inert system.
There is another side to human race - lack of self-awareness, lack of morals and ethics, decadent, easily corruptible, lack of honesty and integrity, arrogance, wickedness, selfishness, stupidity or lack of intelligence (and I don't mean professional training but universal intelligence), etc.
I really believe that humanity is at the worst and most dangerous situation since its origin and is counting its last days/months/years on this planet. The worst thing in life is sharing it with a bunch of stupid vile idiots combined with the lack of sufficiently massive response from good people. This will drag us all down.
>>"I do not think that education (critical thinking, common sense, logic, ratio, etc.) is answer or will improve situation."
I DISAGREE with you COMPLETELY! Teaching "critical thinking" AND "media literacy" and many other things "like personal finance basics", "morality", etc. has HUGE impact on people (There are research studies that DEMONSTRATE the affect that teaching people about biases, fallacies, heuristics, statistics, probability, etc. has far-reaching consequences on the decision making capabilities of people).
>>"I really believe that humanity is at the worst and most dangerous situation since its origin"
Not really. People have ALWAYS BEEN this way. The environment (i.e. culture/society/etc.) has a huge impact on how people develop (analogy -> stable DNA vs. epigenetics). What has changed is the "technology" - hence even small decisions have a higher magnitude/probability of putting homosapiens (and the planet) in danger. People ONLY THINK humans have become worse - but that is to ignore large chunks of human history.
And only rational thinking (i.e. critical thinking, probability, statistics, etc.) can help people make BETTER DECISIONS (which is at the heart of all positive changes required to save humanity and the planet).
In order to teach "critical thinking" one must first teach "thinking". Chang how do you then explain that many well educated/trained people (mathematicians, statisticians, physicists, etc.) are being total jerks and fully justify genocides. How do you explain US government which is full of people with degrees from Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, Yale etc., yet being totally abhorrent a$$holes? Isn't there a single "critical thinker" among them? It is a fact that overwhelming majority of universities in the west today are super expensive shitholes. This is what exceptionalism, corruption, and worship of money and power brings.
People rarely practice what they preach - regardless if the subject is economics, history, finance, politics, etc.
You can ALWAYS teach "critical thinking" and "media literacy" skills - and some schools do (but unfortunately most don't - unless you're lucky enough to have taken a course in University).
commendable, but also a bit of a problem of 'la resistance', imo. caitlin often mentions 'realizing the strength of our numbers' and that the strong tribalism of the rulers and our divisiveness is really the only thing preventing us from taking the reigns. mind you, i'm absolutely not the best student in my class regarding that issue (but we might have been bred that way, maybe?).
well probably we evolved into that. referring to the chimps above we probably lived in smaller groups at one point. we don't know all of human history and i find some solace in the thought that there might have been a millennium or a few hundred years when we weren't bashing each others skulls because of material pressures and procreational competition.
Feral cat groups of my light acquaintance sometimes live in large colonies or groups, when conditions are favorable for them, like the woods behind the Burger King dumpster. So also raccoons. But they don't organize themselves in teams for killing each other. Only humans and some other primates seem so advanced, unless you count ants.
That is accurate. Cat colonies are rather loose, as cats don't hunt in packs and the only time I've 3ver seen cats fight in teams is when nesting females cooperate to defend territory and litters.
It's hard to watch people cheer on Trump when Israel has clearly bought and paid for him. They cheer one ton bombs being sent to Israel to kill more innocent people in Gaza. I pray everyday for peace and I pray for the Palestinians, nothing is worse than whats been done to them.
I am very happy to hear this Caitlin....godammit I don't even want a passport! After living in 4 countries it is nonsensical to love any. The politics of all 4 resembles an apocalypse. Always been an outsider looking in and 'patriotism' to me is a ridiculous waste of space.
There are good and bad things in every country.
I understand fully that some people, because of continual strife, (Palestinians) do want their homeland. Just a place to feel safe.
It's the people in every country that count/friends etc.
It's one of the greatest cons in the world if not the greatest, being loyal to a government/country that doesn't care whether you live or die. Why can't we all coexist trading freely? Why do we have to pay exorbitant taxes to support what crushes our freedoms? Some governments are less obvious in their oppression than others but they all have the same motive. They rule over people, people who never ever consented to this absurdity. I have had people tell me the Royal family is the keystone of democracy. Royalty goes back centuries and the indoctrination makes people bow down to an absurdity. If they stopped and thought about it the absurdity of it they would rise up
Saturday I was elated to see an indigenous person with his long braids , A Sioux, far from his Reservation in my present state of residence. It brought back memories of supporting the people who came to the Wounded Knee trials so long ago. Americas actions are nothing to deserve respect or praise. Ask our indigenous tribes!
It’s gross and cringe to love any state under current paradigms. States, as they exist, are collective intelligences optimized to consume their individual components and the world around them. Loving an abuser is always gross and cringe, and nationalism is just a socially accepted form of enabling abuse.
Without better science and ethics guiding how collective intelligences operate, all states remain abusers—some neglect to abuse evenly, but none escape the fundamental logic of exploitation embedded in their design.
But - people in the U.S. who were raised and educated here are taught lies at a young age, and that includes that the U.S. is the greatest Democracy the World has ever known. Indoctrination works all too well, but when you understand the reality of what the U.S. is and does, there is no turning back into being clueless and loving "your" Nation -often just the opposite!!!
Love my country? That feeling started going south with my flight from Catholicism when I was around 14. Then came Vietnam, so by 21, I had nothing left in my kit bag of emotions, but disgust for its stupidity, its complete barbaric aggression toward the poor of the third world. Yet I still tried to give it a break. Until I recognized that no amount of juggling parties or faces in DC would make a difference -- corrupt exceptionalist mindset had already rotted it from the inside out. Love a rotted shell of some delusional militaristic authoritarian monster making a pretense of duh mock crazy? Fat chance of that.
Hi Vin
My “a-ha” moment came at age 16 when I read Dee Brown’s “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee”. I wept through the entire book, and there came the realization that everything I learned about the “greatness” of this country was a falsehood.
I too am a member of the Vietnam generation. We gals feared for the draft to claim our boyfriends, husbands, brothers and friends. It consumed our lives. My closest friend was in Nam as well as two of his brothers; they were all Agent Orange’d and have all suffered various cancers.
But god bless fucking Amerikkka.
Might I suggest a great book if you liked Bury my Heart, Scalp Dance by Thomas Goodrich if you want a real a-ha moment.
I always tell the story of my friend P who went there as a clerk because he was an early computer geek; and he worked as an admin in office days, but the mofos still had to hand him a rifle, shove him in a perimeter foxhole on some nights, where of course he got AOed . . . lymphoma . . . radiation . . . tissue adhesions . . . chronic pain, dances with the VA etc.
pretty much 90% disability
My deepest sympathies to both of you. We should have NEVER gotten involved in Vietnam. I’ve heard of the horrific atrocities committed by a certain lieutenant Kiley, I believe. He ordered his men to massacre civilians in Vietnam. So despicable. Makes me cringe, sick to my stomach.😢😞🙁🤮
Thank you Smokey. The lieutenant’s name was Calley, and one of his men actually sat next to my husband in one of their high school classes!
Oh wow, gypsy! Small world.
Yes. I was incredulous.
I’m sorry for him, Vin.
My daughter’s biological father was a Marine there. He refused to shoot anyone and became a heroin addict. When he returned home, he was 100% percent psychological disability. He eventually died from a drug-induced heart attack.
Deepest sympathy gypsy. You were much closer to it than I was. I nearly had to go but escaped and the only casualties were friends not family.
Thank you Vin…it was unfortunately a terrible, terrible relationship.
I’m happy you escaped Nam. My brother also did because he was in medical school; Uncle Sam didn’t use future doctors for cannon fodder.
I don't think I can love you more.
It’s good to be loved! ❤️
But some people _do_ love their nations, or regions, or whatever. Millions of citizens of the US elected to leave it politically and join the Confederacy and fight, kill, and die to preserve Negro slavery. They professed love for their states (also a political artifact, like their former nation-states). And of course their opponents professed love for _their_ nation-state, effectively enough to kill a lot of them and force them back into their previous political arrangement. Human beings aren't particularly logical, but one thing that has developed out of how they evolved were a remarkable talent for collecting in large groups and killing one another. I understand chimpanzees do this too, a sad development if so.
But Bonobos don't. Not all primates are so cursed with equivalent homicidal tendencies. And I'd be the last biologist on the planet to cheer for the current structure of the evolutionary "tree" with Hominids on top. First, screw the tree; and second, in both evolutionary and ecological terms, clearly FUNGI at the top -- worldwide communicative networks, murderers of dead tissue for recycling, pathogens usually of already sick devitalized tissue, and have been successful in all niches for 2.5 billion yrs as compared with hominids paltry 1 million at best.
It's not easy being a primate.
Hello Vin..
No trees no funghi? Trees communicate.
Where does Moss come into this. I am an avid Moss grower!
Actually, Jenny, no soil fungi, no trees, not like we know 'em. Around 95% of all plants have mycorrhizzal root mutualistic fungal partners. Although trees communicate through the air, they also use their subsoil fungal networks for that purpose. Mosses are ancient and they're a treasure like all peaceful photosynthetic organisms, but they don't, far as I know have the broad ecological roles that fungi subserve.
Hi Vin
Trees are sentient beings as you know. Some produce substances that prevent other trees from growing near them, in order that their own species remain dominant.
The black walnut is one of them. We planted several on our property when we were young and ignorant; they killed several of my beloved Scotch pines so they HAD TO GO. We are down to one now, an enormous one planted away from other trees so it will not be allowed to murder them!
My Son is a Microbiologist, so I understood most of what you have said having heard a few times ha. Thank you for the info my friend : )
Hi Landru
Just don’t plant one! 😭 Besides exuding the killer substance juglone, you have to pick up all the damn walnuts come autumn!
I understand that Bonobos are much nastier than their reputation among humans,
https://www.science.org/content/article/bonobos-hippie-chimps-might-not-be-so-mellow-after-all#:~:text=The%20results%2C%20Mouginot%20says%2C%20%E2%80%9C,hit%2C%20and%20bite%20their%20foes.
But no murder. For me, that's the key divider. Reasonable humans and bonobos can push, shove, and slap, spit mucus and curses, but it stops at homicide. Sociopaths, some chimps, Bibi Satanyahu (thanks, gypsy), and Zionist freaks cross that line without a thought.
The articles also makes it clear that this is mostly a matter of geography.
An overly simplistic opinion. I differ.
Genetics plus environment and culture interacting --always.
As chimpanzees and bonobos are equidistant from us, the last of the hominids, I've long wondered why we seem to take after the chimps more than the bonobos, and was it always like that. Sometimes I think the men got the chimp genes, and women the bonobo. Or, did it take something like organized religion to turn our feet down the chimpanzee path? I've even writting poems about such topics.
Aw, y'all know this is all tongue-in-cheek because who knows the vagaries of intermediate form evolution/early environment and competitors etc., so many factors to consider; why anthropologists toil.
With one exception. I'd say there's evidence for a set of get-even gene mutations occurring in certain women predisposing them to prove they can be as efficient and effective murderers as men. Madeleine Albright, Victoria Nuland, and the queen, gypsy's correctly noted Hitlery Clinton.
Hi Joy
I believe that there were conquests before the advent of organized religion, but the latter sure as hell didn’t help matters.
I can think of a few women who got the chimp genes; top of the list, Hitlery Clinton 😉
It wasn't to "preserve Negro slavery". It was an attempt to preserve their personal freedom. Slavery would not have survived in the South much longer. The North never gave a shit about slavery. The South was their greatest source of income and secession could not be allowed. Once again it was good old American Imperialism and propaganda at its finest. It continues today all over the world
Go into the South Carolina statehouse mezzanine and to the left is the original articles of secession where it clearly states the need to maintain slavery. Were there related issues? Of course, but clearly slavery.
While slavery was still an issue the trends in society were rapidly finding slavery more repugnant. By most accounts it was on its way out and would not have survived much longer at any rate. With typical strategies of sowing discontent the U.S. government (as it still does) were sowing hatred and discontent which is really what spurred the civil rights movement of the '60's.
Agreed that with industrialization wage slavery was a more manageable and appropriate strategy over chattel slavery from the viewpoint of the newly emerging industrial Capitalist class.
Whatever the fate of chattel slavery it can be truly stated that the Confederate troops were objectively defending the property rights of the Southern Oligarchy despite whatever their subjective attitudes might have been.
In class terms the Confederate troops had in most cases more in common with the Negro slaves than with the slave masters. And some of them knew it.
The poor man fights the rich man’s wars.
And always will until people stand up as one and say NO! Being a natural cynic I find this scenario highly unlikely.
🎯 Well said Peter Sawchuk - and accurate! (too many people are sold false narratives on the REAL history of the US)
Chang, Being Chang you would have read Howard Zinn's "A people's History of the United States".
Yep! Worth reading several times over...
Genuine history never finds its way into public education because that is an absolute requirement of sustaining the illusion that is empire's empty shell of virtue.
Only alternative enclaves study narratives such as Howard Zinn's.
Pretty much every one of the Southern states' declarations of seccession indicated otehrwise.
Slavery seems to have worked like an addictive drug. The more it was practiced, the more addictive and destructive it became.
Works a treat, for those on top.
I'm not the first cat to point out that Ancient Athens was a slave society.
Ursula K. LeGuin, who was many things, but an apologist for the current system or gender relations was not one of them, noted that women are capable of far more cruelty than most men, but only men and ants can make war.
I suspect that she was ignorant of chimps.
The problem, of course, is that teams or tribes are what Get Shit Done.
This is why cats, in spite of being obviously superior beings but also famously resistant, have not taken over the world.
Give it time, Feral.
Give it time.
It's so true. Unlike dogs, cats are inherently too smart to become enslaved by their idiot human "owners", and I think that also makes them reluctant of tribes as well, which can also put the strictures on freedom.
Part of this is because cats are self-sufficient. A dog or most humans will not survive long without a pack.
Hi Feral.
Dump a man, a horse, a dog and a cat in a place with no hope of reaching “civilization “.
Who will survive? Certainly not the man. The horse will if it can avoid large predators. The dog: doubtful.
But the cat, with all its amazing abilities, most certainly.
Consider there are two, rather impressive, feline exceptions, the lion, and male cheetahs. Normally, those that join together are related, but exceptions have been known and studied for many years.
She should have said 'only male primates and ants/wasps/hornets.' That would have covered it.
I once saw a giant hornet. It was pretty damn scary. It's body was as big as my thumb. It's head is high visibility orange. It had just gotten done plundering a defenseless bee hive. I didn't mess with it.
The USA in its wisdom recently named a weapons configuration after this species of hornet.
Shit Patrick, that giant orange head sounds like a Trump hornet😳
I have always said that until it is understood that women can be just as evil and cruel as men, women will not be free. Men are often physically stronger than women which enables them to hurt each other and women more, but women are just as mean and sometimes more angry because we have been forced into these stupid roles as "nurturers". I once had a complete stranger come up to me and touch my stomach when I was pregnant. And another person who was completely flabbergasted when I, an obviously pregnant woman, got very angry at her.
Hi Susan
Us gals get back in different ways, though I’ve never backed off from a good fistfight 😉
I’m the nicest mean person you will ever meet!
I can be nice, but it is not my aim in life. Justice is what I want. I have been working on embracing the things in life that are often considered negative. I find I learn a lot more that way.
"Men are often physically stronger than women which enables them to hurt each other and women more" - the key word is "physically". They're physically stronger and so can hurt women more **physically**.
It's a rare man that can hurt others emotionally as well as most women can. The compensation, I guess. And when at the top - look how much evil the current crop of women at power in the West have produced.
Being physically attacked and hurt is also emotionally painful.
Emotional stings sometimes affect physical health like no blows can. 😉
I wrote a letter to Ursula LeGuin when I was 10 years old, back in the 70s. Pleading for her to continue her "Earthsea" trilogy as I loved those three books quite a bit in my youth. She surprisingly, wrote back to me, and drew a beautiful small dragon at the end of the letter with her signature.
Later in life, I recall reading a magazine interview LeGuin gave, and she talked about how many of psychologist Carl Jung's ideas were the catalyst for her story of Ged and Earthsea, and the importance of "real" names - and a journey to find oneself. In the interview, she said many themes for the Earthsea trilogy she had borrowed from Jung's concepts of archetypes and the "Shadow". That really struck me at the time, and brought new light to the story for me as an adult.
Although I have no idea what Ursula might have known about chimps, she sure seemed to know quite a bit about dragons.
That woman was a unique aspect of counterculture; I always feel a certain good nostalgia when I hear her mentioned.
She may have been talking about my ex-wife : )
Mrrooow!
regarding chimpansees, i think it is not that common. i read of the chimp-wars (quite nasty), but they still seemed to be an exception and maybe caused by external territorial pressures (the (not so) great apes, known as humans).
You link religious sectarianism with nationalism insightfully. Ideologies and more fleshly tribalism both demand subsuming personal ties, personal decency, to an abstract unity. A supposed "unity" that always involves a hierarchy with greatest benefits for the elite.
Yes, Caitlin, Carlin nailed it: symbolism for the symbol-minded.
Trenchant analysis!
What about family as probably the smallest hierarchical unit? Aren't personal sacrifice etc required to maintain its health to ensure survival and propagation?
Pure individualism leads to extinction. It's the height of the hierarchy tree that might be the trickiest to identify and maintain.
In concert with the group discussion, I was suggesting that symbolic belonging across society tends to be entrenched and pernicious, and pressures individuals to be so.
Family matters are another thing. And those ties are absolutely genetic.
I think, given people's feelings about their families and close relatives, that an interest in their survival and well-being is genetic and under more primitive conditions is probably crucial for both individual and group survival. Hence its genetic persistence. I am not talking here about something abstract or theoretical, but powerful emotions directly experienced.
It is confusing for kids who are made to stand up and sing the national anthem at the start of every day. But kids get smart faster than those in power would like.
Indeed they do. Not the anthem, but even more authoritarian, I still recall the every morning pledge of allegiance. When I was 5 or 6, it was just blather, but by 6th or 7th grade as I approached puberty, it started to feel wrong to me at a gut level; wtf, pledging to a flag seemed pretty corny, silly-ass, if not downright asinine. And kids now seem more awake than we were. They won't stand for cieg heiling the empire's flag for very long.
When kids are forced to mouth the pledge of allegiance, that is clearly child abuse.
I started placing my hand near my pubic area ha. I think at that time teachers understood that move ha. Of course that lead to class walkouts and sit-ins over the war on Vietnam and it's kind, and loving people.
Did not Memphis Minnie teach the masses thusly "I had to travel, 'fore I got wise...."?
as a Brit, I find many people are obsessed with our colonial past, labouring under the delusion that we brought 'civilisation' to backward people, whereas I can only apologise to our victims for the theft and murder our forbears committed. I feel for Americans who similarly understand what their country is doing, and have to be embarrassed, as am I, considering my government is totally complicit in all the atrocities being carried out to this day.
you speak for me
💯 thank you!
But you should not be embarrassed. This is a good time to get really pissed off.
Britain did indeed bring a lot to many and varied countries around the world.
Clearly, either you are not familiar with history, or you are blinded by prejudice.
yes - they brought a lot of death, disease, massacres, slavery, corruption, assassination, abuse, opium wars, exploiting local rivalries by arming both sides to increase violence and to weaken opposition to colonial takeover, using military superiority to enforce governing systems that were not suited to their victims way of doing things, re-drawing traditional boundaries between states / tribes / kingdoms which split ethnic groups and created new conflicts, and, of course, imposed an alien religion on people - I could go on.
Have you ever lived in - or even visited - any country that was in the Empire, now Commonwealth?
Please tell.
yes, what is your point - that modern countries have many modern things like cars and fridges or airports?
Reminds me of the simpletons that stand and put their hand over their heart as they hear the national anthem at every ball game. It’s the same idiots who yell “we’re number one” when their favorite team franchise wins a championship.
Netanyahu is a war criminal.
Yes, but I don't think he will meet justice in a court of law, unless some powerful nation emulates the kidnap of Adolf Eichmann.
The ultimate WAR CRIMINALS are the US Empire (and all its lackeys).
So is Biden and his gang?
Legally, the U.S. can’t cut Israel off completely. Since 2008, the U.S. has had to weigh all arms sales to Israel and other countries in the region against the requirement that Israel maintains a “qualitative military edge” against all enemies, both state and non-state actors. I’m not saying he wasn’t at all culpable, but he was following the law. Netanyahu on the other hand is disgraceful. BTW I’m Jewish.
Wrong headed laws need to be rethunk, not enforced
Civil disobedience is what it's called. An unjust law doesn't warrant enforcing. Sort of like what Abolitionists did when they helped to hide freed slaves along the Underground Railroad.
IF it was passed by Congress then it can be changed?
Most republicans continue to support Israel.
so do most democrats.
Obviously......but things change?
Why can't the US cut of Israel.legally.
Go look at uscode.house.gov
The bill is posted there. It was passed by Congress.
And laws cannot be repealed?
Adding new ones is much easier and profitable to politicians and bureaucrats.
Ask the Republican Congress.
Yes, our not so friend Obummer. Thank you for informing. There are very few places in the past that would allow that to be written or heard. Thanks to Caitlin we have each other : )
It's even gross and cringy to be a security services prostitute for the USA as a non-US national, to have let the US commit countless genocides the past 50 years with uttering a word, yet miraculously still fuliminate about Russia and try to claim that Russia has imperialistic designs for the entire former Soviet Union, when NATO has expanded eastwards to Russia's western borders and never ending bellicose US statements about nuking Russia etc.
Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.
- Albert Einstein
Caitlyn never fails to precisely express things that NEED saying
I feel similarly about ideology or tribe, as both short-circuit critical thinking.
Most people don't have enough "critical thinking" to begin with, hence short-circuiting something that is already sparse is a separate issue.
IMHO, people need to be taught about "critical thinking" principles in school/etc. - but TPTB wouldn't want/support that (for obvious reasons).
I do not think that education (critical thinking, common sense, logic, ratio, etc.) is answer or will improve situation. Education is also highly inert system.
There is another side to human race - lack of self-awareness, lack of morals and ethics, decadent, easily corruptible, lack of honesty and integrity, arrogance, wickedness, selfishness, stupidity or lack of intelligence (and I don't mean professional training but universal intelligence), etc.
I really believe that humanity is at the worst and most dangerous situation since its origin and is counting its last days/months/years on this planet. The worst thing in life is sharing it with a bunch of stupid vile idiots combined with the lack of sufficiently massive response from good people. This will drag us all down.
>>"I do not think that education (critical thinking, common sense, logic, ratio, etc.) is answer or will improve situation."
I DISAGREE with you COMPLETELY! Teaching "critical thinking" AND "media literacy" and many other things "like personal finance basics", "morality", etc. has HUGE impact on people (There are research studies that DEMONSTRATE the affect that teaching people about biases, fallacies, heuristics, statistics, probability, etc. has far-reaching consequences on the decision making capabilities of people).
>>"I really believe that humanity is at the worst and most dangerous situation since its origin"
Not really. People have ALWAYS BEEN this way. The environment (i.e. culture/society/etc.) has a huge impact on how people develop (analogy -> stable DNA vs. epigenetics). What has changed is the "technology" - hence even small decisions have a higher magnitude/probability of putting homosapiens (and the planet) in danger. People ONLY THINK humans have become worse - but that is to ignore large chunks of human history.
And only rational thinking (i.e. critical thinking, probability, statistics, etc.) can help people make BETTER DECISIONS (which is at the heart of all positive changes required to save humanity and the planet).
In order to teach "critical thinking" one must first teach "thinking". Chang how do you then explain that many well educated/trained people (mathematicians, statisticians, physicists, etc.) are being total jerks and fully justify genocides. How do you explain US government which is full of people with degrees from Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, Yale etc., yet being totally abhorrent a$$holes? Isn't there a single "critical thinker" among them? It is a fact that overwhelming majority of universities in the west today are super expensive shitholes. This is what exceptionalism, corruption, and worship of money and power brings.
How can you teach critical thinking when the first thing your students do is surely going to be practicing what you preach?
People rarely practice what they preach - regardless if the subject is economics, history, finance, politics, etc.
You can ALWAYS teach "critical thinking" and "media literacy" skills - and some schools do (but unfortunately most don't - unless you're lucky enough to have taken a course in University).
You can teach critical thinking by example, but then your students become "difficult" and you get fired.
Huh? No, students don't get "difficult" when they are taught critical thinking and you don't get "fired".
Have you taught "critical thinking" to students? Have you heard of ANYONE get fired for teaching "critical thinking that made students difficult"?
Where are you getting all these "beliefs" about "teaching critical thinking" from?
You obviously never taught in your life
commendable, but also a bit of a problem of 'la resistance', imo. caitlin often mentions 'realizing the strength of our numbers' and that the strong tribalism of the rulers and our divisiveness is really the only thing preventing us from taking the reigns. mind you, i'm absolutely not the best student in my class regarding that issue (but we might have been bred that way, maybe?).
The resistance, far as I can tell, are too dithering, hesitant, and nice. They are no threat to take power.
Contrast with a Fidel Castro or a Amilcar Cabral.
systemic rulers learned a lot of past revolutions while gatekeeping this knowledge from the masses.
Far as I can tell, it was almost always thus. Most humans are herd animals.
well probably we evolved into that. referring to the chimps above we probably lived in smaller groups at one point. we don't know all of human history and i find some solace in the thought that there might have been a millennium or a few hundred years when we weren't bashing each others skulls because of material pressures and procreational competition.
Me neither unless 2 cats and 1 dog constitute a tribe?
Perhaps you are a cat?
Chirrup!
As you know, Feral, I’m a cat in a woman’s body. 😻
Maybe you're in the anti-tribe tribe. The gathering-in-hostile-groups thing seems difficult to escape.
Feral cat groups of my light acquaintance sometimes live in large colonies or groups, when conditions are favorable for them, like the woods behind the Burger King dumpster. So also raccoons. But they don't organize themselves in teams for killing each other. Only humans and some other primates seem so advanced, unless you count ants.
That is accurate. Cat colonies are rather loose, as cats don't hunt in packs and the only time I've 3ver seen cats fight in teams is when nesting females cooperate to defend territory and litters.
But Feral.. as a Tom, haven’t you ever fought another for the favors of a Queen? 😉
It's hard to watch people cheer on Trump when Israel has clearly bought and paid for him. They cheer one ton bombs being sent to Israel to kill more innocent people in Gaza. I pray everyday for peace and I pray for the Palestinians, nothing is worse than whats been done to them.
💯
I am very happy to hear this Caitlin....godammit I don't even want a passport! After living in 4 countries it is nonsensical to love any. The politics of all 4 resembles an apocalypse. Always been an outsider looking in and 'patriotism' to me is a ridiculous waste of space.
There are good and bad things in every country.
I understand fully that some people, because of continual strife, (Palestinians) do want their homeland. Just a place to feel safe.
It's the people in every country that count/friends etc.
The ones who beat their chests the loudest are also usually the ones with the most doubts, and hope the noise they make covers that.
It's the same with religion.
Sounds like Trump!!
It also sounds like the Demonrats banging on about "Democracy vs Autocracy" tbh. They didn't believe that either, in their hearts.
It's one of the greatest cons in the world if not the greatest, being loyal to a government/country that doesn't care whether you live or die. Why can't we all coexist trading freely? Why do we have to pay exorbitant taxes to support what crushes our freedoms? Some governments are less obvious in their oppression than others but they all have the same motive. They rule over people, people who never ever consented to this absurdity. I have had people tell me the Royal family is the keystone of democracy. Royalty goes back centuries and the indoctrination makes people bow down to an absurdity. If they stopped and thought about it the absurdity of it they would rise up
en masse. Trouble is they don't and they won't.
Saturday I was elated to see an indigenous person with his long braids , A Sioux, far from his Reservation in my present state of residence. It brought back memories of supporting the people who came to the Wounded Knee trials so long ago. Americas actions are nothing to deserve respect or praise. Ask our indigenous tribes!
It’s gross and cringe to love any state under current paradigms. States, as they exist, are collective intelligences optimized to consume their individual components and the world around them. Loving an abuser is always gross and cringe, and nationalism is just a socially accepted form of enabling abuse.
Without better science and ethics guiding how collective intelligences operate, all states remain abusers—some neglect to abuse evenly, but none escape the fundamental logic of exploitation embedded in their design.
👏👏
Oh my God Caitlin you outdo yourself every time.
This piece should be read by everybody on earth. It is spot on ,timely and most of all sane.
But - people in the U.S. who were raised and educated here are taught lies at a young age, and that includes that the U.S. is the greatest Democracy the World has ever known. Indoctrination works all too well, but when you understand the reality of what the U.S. is and does, there is no turning back into being clueless and loving "your" Nation -often just the opposite!!!