I’m bad (Alphonse Daudet)

 

(not AI)

In front of the freshly dug grave of his lifelong friend, Chingachgook, Natty Bumppo said a sentence that is certainly the most important one of all humanity. 

This is the original epitaph, the end of it which will be our purpose here:

« …; and it may be said of him that his faults were those of the time and his virtues those of his nature. », which means, his qualities were his own and his wrongs that of his people.

At first, such a phrase seems innocuous but the grave on which it is written may be the only one on earth to support such a text ! Usually, one find as an epitaph a few words of hope to depict the good deeds of the deceased, an eulogy, a prayer, but never ever anything that describes what bad he might have been !

What Fenimore Cooper is saying through the voice of the Deerslayer, in The pioneer, is that a man can be a good man while doing wrongs at the same time during his life. But wait ! isn’t that the very situation everyone of us finds himself embroiled in without being able to overcome it most of the time ? Isn’t that the very feature that hinders humanity’s progress ?

So what ? We are good men ending up doing bad things ? We were great children ending up doing the worst ? The answer lies in one word: society. Society allows you to eat meat without having to kill, you can shit without having to dig a hole far away, society allows to live a borrowed life. You don’t depend on yourself anymore, on family, friends and neighbours, on human beings but on a system, an invisible system because it seems natural, it is unquestioned. And this comes with a price.

Being able to form societies gave our species the strength to become dominant but this ability carried a hidden weakness, an inherent defect that can, and has brought down human societies. In a society where there are butchers and plumbers, there also are bankers and robbers. Then, affluent people designate a sheriff to fight the outlaws in the name of all, followed quickly by the salesmen of pleasure together with the merchants of repentance. All of it forming the web of artificial thoughts, the sum of illusions we call society.

As a fish born in the ocean, we are immersed since birth in our local space time of the matrix with which we’ll have to deal with or to die because it is our water. In our childhood, we learn about every corner of the monster and we end up as adults having taken a stand into it, whatever it is. 

We are no more what we were as a child by fitting into the role we forcibly chose in society. Then, we find ourselves thinking, acting and feeling as someone else, our immanent properties having been overcome by the emergence of new ones fitting the group we live in, just like a molecule of water in a river has grabbed properties and moves that cannot be derived from the single original one.

That is how, despite being someone, we act as someone else, this is how we carry two faces of ourselves, this is how we can be good persons who perform wrongs. 

This was Michael Jackson’s message in his song « I’m bad », this is the story of Jack*, the hero of the extraordinary book of the same name by Alphonse Daudet !

*free download at Gutenberg.org

nb: probably the most important text I wrote; it is worth a book, and many parts of it are under developed and documented. 

It is worth a book !

What I am saying here, every one of us has experienced it whatever the place and the time.

Maybe this text is one of the most essential, fundamental of all time !

(not kidding & without ill conceived pride whatsoever)

nb2: I have begun to write the first ten pages, beginning with freewill vs. determinism, of a book that would include what I just talked about & so much more, and, since I live on a mini-minimum, I’m not sure that I will have the strength to carry that on before I will just not be able to do that, being 67 at the time, so, if some guy would be interested and wealthy enough to support ???

Best, Succoth sameah !

(mformankind@gmail.com)

How the human algorithm could win

 

The real trigger of 1789, the one that shook the apathy of ages was the convocation to the Estates-Generals on the 27 of April 1789, and not the event in itself, from which there was little hope, but the process that led to it.

The decision was announced on the 8 of august 1788, nearly a year before and officially proclaimed on the 24 of January 1789. This timeline gave the people nearly one year to prepare themselves, and that’s what they did !

(see: Ernest Daudet, Le roman d’une jeune fille, chapter5)

They opened « Clubs ». From the deep in the city suburbs to the tiniest village, read ‘Ange Pitou’ of Alexandre Dumas for example. In those clubs, they counted themselves, they raised questions, they set up agendas to reclaim their freedoms from the church, the king ands the nobility that for a thousand years took it all, and more, their honour to be free individuals.

Today, the church is the government and the noble the capitalist. Today, the situation is not that far away. We are decimated by endless wars of profit, be they for money or for power, which have the same results: violence and misery, sometimes on the front page but most often hidden behind the infinite desire to be seen as strong, able to cope with whatever ambush and profit too from the cake, no matter the collateral damages as seen specifically during the covid.

Today as in 1788, we have a goal, the same one, individual freedom. Socialo-communists are the church, Capitalo-republicans are the nobility and they ate both oppressing people on one form or another round the world. So, we need an agenda to counter the threat that is today global, we need to talk between us, people of good faith, and, yes, despite the apparences, we are a lot !

In the end, we must call for an

« Estates-Generals of Humanity »

As I said, the event in itself is not the goal but the trigger for getting people together, for us to step out apathy, to assemble and raise the never solved existential problems of humanity in order to solve them with both hands once and for all.

The event would just be the middle of a process to make humanity great, not again but for the first time !

Instead of being the nest of happiness, society is its destroyer. Why ? What are its fundamental flaws and which are the ways to fix them ?

Perhaps the most important flaw is that profit is a possible goal to reach in one’s life. It is not. Society is not for individuals to be able to profit from it and within it.

We don’t know how life appeared but we know what is its natural goal: family thriving and rejoicing together with all sorts of life. And that’s not just walking the dog alone in enclosed properties.

Then we have violence as a mean to reach one’s goal, and on a collective level, war.

And poverty (related in part to land property, see Henry Georges) and water, and so much more topics that have never been addressed with a genuine will to solve them, in one word, sharing the world honestly and happily. 

The second part of such a agenda should be to devise how to replace the current for profit/for power structures. The capitalist/socialo-communist machine must be deconstructed. Instead of the never ending top down governance system, a local accountable grid of decision making should be created.

You may say that’s utopia ? Well, it depends ! Today, with the social networks, and seeing comments, it appears that many many more people are concerned who do not show it otherwise in daily life. Sometimes, a small thing can bring about huge effects !!!

Last point, I think such an event should have one representation in every group of nations linked by similar conditions, likely 2 for Africa, north and south, same for America and Asia (east/west), 1 for Europe and 1 for oceania, that’s 8. A central point of these representation could be set up right under Massada where people of the time sacrificed themselves not to become slaves of the Romans.