Jul 31, 2013

Debating with an expert - Zygmunt Bauman

Part 1 of Zygmunt Bauman Interview 
http://essayist.in/2013/04/de-familiarize-and-familiarize/2/

"And that all suggestions of scientists and experts possessing such (future-prediction) powers thanks to their professional training are in my view fraudulent!"


Although I read the second part first (Escaping Inside Utopia) and then started reading this first part, second, I couldn't move past this sentence without reacting and commenting.
I can predict right now, based on available data and prediction modeling based on research methodology of which statistics is a tool, that as I write this, it is dark and later it will be bright and the sun will rise from the East.  I claim to be neither a scientist nor an expert, but I challenge ZB to call me fraudulent within the next 24hr unless he is currently living in the Antarctic, in which case the sun will only come up late September.  An other prediction of the future.

Brief thought on the physical status of the universe and life

If one is to assume scientific modeling of how can life be possible, what spectrum of physical conditions can host life on a planet, is correct, then it is easily deduced through the statistical probability and the estimated size of the known universe, that life is possible in billions of planets.  The possibility of two or more to be in such proximity as to be able to have contact is small but not negligible.
But what is life?  Human life, humanity for example, is a life.  A single form of life with a lifespan that is not yet defined, but due to the possibilities of transferring elsewhere and if it is not achieved before the planet's destruction from physical or artificial causes, this lifespan is finite.
So, why would we be interested in this?  We are just cells within one organism, humanity, and she lives on and on and it is made out of us.  She coexists with other organisms often in competition for existence.  We should study her health condition and her health needs and work collectively to improve her condition.  And she is getting sick.  We should seek the solidarity of good willing cells and organize to destroy the effects of the cells that cause the illness.  It is our only duty and only cause for existence as cells.
Did you listen?  It is the sound of your world that is crumbling.  It is the sound of our world that is surfacing on planet earth.

From:  the students of the Social Physics Institute

Did you listen? It is the sound of your world crumbling. It is the sound of our world resurging

Communiqué of the Clandestine Indigenous Revolutionary Committee – General Command of the Zapatista National Liberation Army, Mexico
 

December 21, 2012

To Whom It May Concern:
Silent march in Chiapas 12.21.12

Did you listen?
It is the sound of your world crumbling.
It is the sound of our world resurging.
The day that was day, was night.

And night shall be the day that will be day.

Democracy!
Liberty!

Justice!

From the Mountains of Southeastern Mexico,

For the Clandestine Indigenous Revolutionary Committee – General Command of the EZLN

Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos,

Mexico, December 2012

The system of education is the education of the system

Zapatistas Showcase Their Autonomous School System to the Nation and the World

Refusing Government Money or Teachers, Indigenous Communities Have Built More Schools and Educated More Children Than Ever Before

By Amber Howard
Special to The Narco News Bulletin

January 6, 2007
When the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN, in its Spanish initials) began the public phase of its struggle on New Year’s Eve, 1993, it made eleven demands, one of which was “education” (the others were: work, land, shelter, food, health, independence, freedom, democracy, justice, and peace). Thirteen years later, they have seen that demand met as never before in the highlands and jungles of Chiapas. But it was not the Mexican government or any other institution that complied. They did it for themselves.

Foto: D.R. 2007 Gerardo Osuna
Whereas prior to the rebellion in these rural lands of Mexico’s poorest state schools were few and far between, Zapatista communities have built new ones, trained teachers from their own ranks, and widened the scope of what kind of education their children receive. And they did this without accepting a peso from the government. On December 31, 2006, thousands of Zapatistas and visitors from throughout Mexico and the world met in the mountain town of Oventic for the Gathering of the Zapatista Peoples and the Peoples of the World, where an entire session was dedicated to “The Other Education” and civilian authorities from throughout EZLN territory explained what they have done, and what they still hope to do.

Jul 22, 2013

The suicidal organism and the cells

A response to an article by Nilesh Chatterjee & Dharmendra Singh from http://essayist.in/2013/07/playing-hot-potato-with-mother-nature  also reproduced here as http://socialphysicsinstitute.blogspot.gr/2013/07/playing-hot-potato-pass-parcel-with.html


Through the training in the "individual sciences", medicine and psychology in specific, one may fail to see the forest past the trees.  This training focuses on the individual, its behavior, its development, its health, its illness, its death.  If humanity was viewed as an organism, we are unsure of when it was born/created/transformed, but it is an organism that has survived on earth for many long years, centuries, millenniums. Unlike some other organisms that were born and died, like the mammoth, the dinosaur, etc. (how is our Panda doing today? feeling a little dizzy? it must be a side effect of the life support system!), the human organism has grown, concurred, and dominated the earth and all other organisms, except a few, HIV for a example.

It may be close, or past the point of sustainable growth and domination and it will need to readopt to survive.  This can not be done by individual training, behavior modification, influence, sensitivity, or brutal force.  If it is done partially and not in totality it would be like cancer, where some cells seem to have different programming than the rest.  Cells are
born, live and die to maintain the organism.  They must have a common programming for the organism to survive.  Either an external force to the organism must alter its genetic encoding, or the organism must be forced to realize its discomfort, its pain, its  threat, and adopt to the environment to survive.  Unless, the majority of the cells can realize this urgent need, turn against the few cells and organs that drive the problem of maintaining humanity's path, and in an organized manner KILL or AMPUTATE the organs and cells that are not willing to adopt.

Playing Hot Potato (Pass the Parcel) with Mother Nature


A recent (June 2013) World Bank report titled: ‘Turn Down the Heat: Climate extremes, regional impacts and the case for resilience’, says that South Asia, with India at its centre, will experience a temperature rise of two degree Celsius. This will happen in next two to three decades; much before the expected date of 2050. This will lead to major climate crisis causing widespread food shortages, prolonged droughts, unprecedented heat-waves, more intense rainfall and flooding, threat to energy production, and most importantly water scarcity.

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Do we need more evidence to argue that the Earth’s environment is getting polluted and degraded? Probably not.