for - stats - construction mafia impacts - South Africa - 2019 - R63 billion - Overview of the Construction Mafia Crisis in South Africa - Inclusive Society Institute - 2023

for - critique - extreme wealth inequality cannot be avoided for the greater improvement of society - The Gospel of Wealth - Andrew Carnegie - stats - Mondragon corporation - comparison of pay difference between highest paid and lowest paid - adjacency - Gandhi quote - Andrew Carnegie beliefs in The Gospel of Wealth

critique - extreme wealth inequality cannot be avoided for the greater improvement of society - The Gospel of Wealth - Andrew Carnegie - It's a matter of degree - Wealth differences within US corporations of 344 to 1 are obscene and not necessary, as proven by - Wealth difference of 6 to 1 in Mondragon federation of cooperatives - To quote - Gandhi, there is enough to meet everyone's needs but not enough to meet everyone's greed - The great problem with such large wealth disparity is that those who know how to game the system can earn obscene amounts of money - and since the concept of luxury goods is made desirable and proportional to monetary wealth, it creates a positive feedback loop of insatiability - The combination of engaging in ever greater luxury lifestyle and power is intoxicating and addictive

to - stats - Mondragon corporation - comparison of pay difference between highest paid and lowest paid - https://hyp.is/QAxx-o14Ee-_HvN5y8aMiQ/www.csmonitor.com/Business/2024/0513/income-inequality-capitalism-mondragon-corporation

for - from - recommendation - from - Michel Bauwens - on Fair Share Commons chat thread, 2024 Oct 17 - context Karl Marx liberation of the individual - to - substack article - Why Human (Contributive) Labor remains the creative principle of human society - Michel Bauwens article details - title: From Modes of Production to the Resurrection of the Body: A Labor Theory of Revolutionary Subjectivity & Religious Ideas" (2016) - author: Benjamin Suriano

to - Substack article - Why Human (Contributive) Labor remains the creative principle of human society - Michel Bauwens - https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2F4thgenerationcivilization.substack.com%2Fp%2Fwhy-human-contributive-labor-remains&group=world

for - interesting perspective - Karl Marx - He wasn't principally interested in equality - book - Capitalism: the word and the thing - perspectival knowledge of - Michael Sonenscher - misunderstanding - modern capitalists - misunderstand Karl Marx's work - Michael Sonenscher - Karl Marx and Capitalism - Maximizing each individual's freedom while not trampling on the same aspiration of other individuals within a society

Interesting perspective - Karl Marx wasn't principally interested in equality - Sonenscher offers an interesting interpretation and perspectival knowledge of Karl Marx's motivation in his principal work paraphrase - Marx's thought centered on is interest in individuality and the degree to which in certain respects being somebody who is free and able to make choices about his or her lives and future activities is going to depend on each person's: - qualities - capabilities - capacities - preoccupations - values, etc - For Marx, freedom is in the final analysis something to do with something - particular - specific and - individual w - What matters to me may not matter entirely in the same sort of way to you because ultimately - in an ideal State of Affairs, my kinds of concerns and your kinds of concerns will be simply specific to you and to me respectively - For Marx, the problems begin as is also the case with Rosseau - when these kinds of absolute qualities are displaced by - relative qualities that apply equally to us both - For Marx, things like - markets - prices - commodities and - things that connect people - are the hallmarks of equality because they put people on the same kind of footing prices and productivity - Whereas the things that REALLY SHOULD COUNT are - the things that separate and distinguish people that make each individual fully and and entirely him or herself and - the idea for Marx is that capitalism - which is not a term that Marx used, - puts people on a kind of spurious footing of equality - Getting beyond capitalism means getting beyond equality to a state of effect in which - difference , - particularity, - individuality and - uniqueness - in a certain kind of sense will prevail

comment - This perspective is quite enlightening on Marx's motivations on this part of his work and is likely misconstrued by those mainstream "capitalists" who vilify his work without critical analysis - Of course freedom - within a social context - is never an absolute term. - It is not possible to live in a society in which everyone is able to actualize their full imaginations, something pointed out in the work of two other famous thought leaders of modern history: - Thomas Hobbes observed in his famous work, Leviathan, and - Sigmund Freud also made a primary subject of his ID, Ego and Superego framework. - Total freedom would lead - first to anarchy and then - the emergence within that anarchy of those which possess the most charisma, influence, self-seeking manipulative skills and brutality - surfacing rule by authority - Historically, as democracy attempts to surface from a history of authoritarian, patriarchal governance, - democracy is far from ubiquitous and authoritarian governance is still alive and well in many parts of the world - The battle between - authoritarian governments among themselves and - authoritarian and democratic governments - results in war, violence and trauma that creates the breeding ground for the next generation of authoritarian leaders - Marx's main intent seems to be to enable the individual existing within a society to live the fullest life possible, - by way of enabling and maximizing their unique expression, - while not constraining the same aspiration in other individuals who belong to the same society

Der kurz vor der COP16 zur Biodiversität veröffentlichte Living Planet Index zeigt das Ausmaß des Biodiversitätsverlusts in den vergangenen 50 Jahren, auch wenn an den dabei angewendeten statistischen Verfahren starke Zweifel bestehen. Die Wirbeltier-Populationen haben nach diesem Index um 73% abgenommen, am stärksten in Lateinamerika und der Karibik. Die wichtigste Ursache ist die veränderte Landnutzung. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/10/collapsing-wildlife-populations-points-no-return-living-planet-report-wwf-zsl-warns

for - Book - Society of the Spectacle - 1967 - Guy Debord - Advertising - critique

Summary - This is a youtube that presents the work of French Marxist theorist Guy Debord and his important book "The society of the spectacle" that critically examines the power of mass media to shape our reality and transform us - from an active participant to - a passive spectator (hence the "spectacle" and consumer - When mass media fabricates images that become the aspirations for large swaths or the population,<br /> - it can implant market ideology that channels their future consumerist behaviour to conform with elitist hidden agenda - The idea emerged from a group of leftist scholars and activists called the Situationist International that dissolved in 1972 but - the idea is quite relevant to describing global capitalism and information systems in modernity

to - Wikipedia - Situationist International - https://hyp.is/L4ObqISEEe-gJpNANP04Mw/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situationist_International

for - society of the spectacle - insight - quote - illusion and free will

society of the spectacle - insight - quote - illusion and free will - The false reality governed by images - facilitates the work of the capitalist system - The system gives you the illusion of having Free Will and choosing what you consume - but in reality everything has already been decided for you

for - question - the society of the spectacle - is it just another critique of capitalism?

question - the society of the spectacle - is it just another critique of capitalism? - In short, no. It adds something new. - The new subtlety added by the creation of the spectacle by the market economy or by capitalism is that - the spectacle aims to produce the same passive and predictable individual everywhere - ** A SPECTATOR!" - This new being is - a passive consumer instead of - an active participant in society - The Spectator - sacrifices his authenticity to fit in society and - isn't a decision maker in his life anymore - The spectator is a passive human being who just awaits orders to execute (and consume)

for - the society of the spectacle - global brands

for - adjacency - the largest companies in the world have more capital than many countries - the society of the spectacle - lobby industry

adjacency - between - the largest multi-national companies in the world have more capital than many countries - the society of the spectacle - adjacency relationship - It is a well publicized fact that the world's largest multi-national companies have more capital than many countries - This fact is a prime example of the conclusions of the society of the spectacle, - Governments are coopted to serve the needs of the multi-nationals through corporate lobbyists - In fact, multi-national corporations are called "multi-national" precisely because they are so large that they exceed the boundaries of nation states, they are LARGER than nation states - Advertising, movies and products all flow trans-nationally across political boundaries - Military weapons developed by the military industrial complex and sold to nation states make modern warefare between them exponentially more harmful - In the end, the elites within such corporations benefit from the most from the consumption - The diversion is towards maximizing their profits at the expense of all else: - people - the environment - life on earth

for - adjacency - the society of the spectacle - internet society of modernity - Deep Humanity - BEing journey - to discover the society of the spectacle

Being journey - to discover the society of the spectacle - Modernity, so steeped in social media and the internet is INDEED a new mode of living and perceiving the world - To discover the extend to which we have socially normalized a social pathology, we can introduce BEing journeys that help us explore how a life that is freed from the social norm feels like

for - definition - the spectacle - context - the society of the spectacle - cacooning - the spectacle - social media - the spectacle

definition - the spectacle - context - the society of the spectacle - A society where images presented by mass media / mass entertainment not only dominate - but replaces real experiences with a superficial reality that is - focused on appearances designed primarily to distract people from reality - This ultimately disconnects them from - themselves and - those around them

comment - How much does our interaction with virtual reality of - written symbols - audio - video - two dimensional images - derived from our screens both large and small affect our direct experience of life? - When people are distracted by such manufactured entertainment, they have less time to devote to important issues and connecting with real people - We can sit for hours in social isolation, ignoring our bodies need for exercise and our emotional need for real social connection - We can ignore the real crisis going on in the world and instead numb ourselves out with contrived entertainment

for - insight - society of the spectacle - secrecy and diversion is inherent to it

insight - society of the spectacle - secrecy and diversion is inherent to it - it's a society where things happen normally like in any other society but - where we don't know who is pulling the strings - Its main objective is - to divert people's attention by - hiding the real and - promoting the Irrelevant

for - from youtube - society of the spectacle - A Brief Look at the Juvenal’s “Bread & Circuses”

for - from - youtube - the society of the spectacle

from - youtube - the society of the spectacle - https://hyp.is/aJX4NoRsEe-7c5M0eZf09w/www.youtube.com/watch?v=93jXDJhi6_c

for - book - The Society of the Spectacle - definition - recuperation - from - youtube - The Society of the Spectacle - politics - Marxist group - Situationist International

definition - recuperation - A technique of the spectacle whereby - Official culture is considered a "rigged game" - Conservative powers forbid subversive ideas to have direct access to public discourse - Subversive ideas must first - get trivialized - get sterilized - before they are safely incorporated back within mainstream society - where they lose their agential power and - they can be exploited to add new flavors and bolster the status quo dominant ideas of the rigged game

from - youtube - The Society of the Spectacle - https://hyp.is/K2b2OIR5Ee-khSfaPJUKWg/www.youtube.com/watch?v=93jXDJhi6_c

for - from - AnMaonaigh - annotation - Christian Monastic Communities - from article - Why Human (Contributive) Labor remains the creative principle of human society - Michel Bauwens - Substack - https://hyp.is/iITCrH2hEe-nIc9iOR4VeQ/4thgenerationcivilization.substack.com/p/why-human-contributive-labor-remains

for - Hanseatic cities - from - annotation - Why Human (Contributive) Labor remains the creative principle of human society - Michel Bauwens - Substack article

from - annotation - WHy Human (Contributive) Labor remains the creative principle of human society - Michel Bauwens - Substack article - https://hyp.is/Pcejdn2fEe-ppu9TjwiF_g/4thgenerationcivilization.substack.com/p/why-human-contributive-labor-remains

from - annotation of - Why Human (Contributive) Labor remains the creative principle of human society - Michel Bauwens - Substack article - https://hyp.is/v5Qe2H2gEe-v1O_KRz3jSQ/4thgenerationcivilization.substack.com/p/why-human-contributive-labor-remains

(~2:10)

Fascinating. Rob Pierri mentions that there had been a shift in education from the development of the soul to the development of monetizable skills... Keep society manageable.

The question that remains for me is, what will ultimately leave society better and advance it? In the end, what matters more, the material or the immaterial? Why?

A critique on the Mass Media... The problem is that they want the Mass Media system to operate on the code of "True/False" rather than "Known/Unknown"... But if it were to be so, it would not be Mass Media anymore, but rather the Science System.

For Mass Media to be Mass Media it needs to be concerned with selection and filtering, to condense and make known, not to present "all the facts". Sure, they need to be concerned with truth to a certain degree, but it's not the primary priority.

This is a reflection based on my knowledge of Luhmann's theory of society as functionally differentiated systems; as explained by Hans-Georg Moeller (Carefree Wandering) on YouTube.

This is basically critical thinking. Which is also my goal for (optimal) education: To build a society of people who think for themselves, critical thinkers; those who do not take everything for granted. The skeptics.

See also Nassim Nicolas Taleb's advice to focus on what you DON'T know rather than what you DO know.

Related to syntopical reading/learning as well. (and Charlie Munger's advice). You want to build a complete picture with a broad understanding and nuanced before formulating an opinion.

Remove bias from your judgement (especially when it comes to people or civilizations) and instead base it on logic and deep understanding.

This also relates to (national, but even local) media... How do you know that what the media portrays about something or someone is correct? Don't take it for granted, especially if it is important, and do your own research. Validity of source is important; media is often opinionized and can contain a lot of misinformation.

See also Simone Weil's thoughts on media, especially where she says misinformation spread must be stopped. It is a vital need for the soul to be presented with (factual) truth.

Die globale Erhitzung zwingt Baumarten in den nördlichen Wäldern dazu, neue Habitate aufzusuchen, deren Böden oft weniger nährstoffreich sind. Ein Hauptgrund dafür, den eine neue Studie untersucht, sind die Bedürfnisse von Pilzen, mit denen diese Bäume in Symbiose leben.

By killing himself, he is cleansing the world of his "inner darkness" being a Turk, the beastliness that ruined the superior and ordered Venetian society. It is this, himself, who he kills -- showing he is, at heart, still a Turk, and not the driving motivation that causes all these events to unfold (Iago) -- as Iago is stabbed but has not died. This signifies the curse of suspicion and reason cannot be eliminated -- reason preys on individual people and is not something one can rid. In the end, he chooses once again to rid the tumor of society (which he believes first is his wife, Desdemona, now it is him, the Turk), following honor rather than personal desire.

https://westernsydney.pressbooks.pub/criticalanalysis/chapter/the-use-of-knowledge-in-society/

Cross reference Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Use_of_Knowledge_in_Society

Highlights in para 1 build the case that trans/detransition is attracting public attention (i.e. it's an important, topical issue) Last sentence highlights an important gap in the coverage.

To improve society, ingrain a fear of the Lord. Don't deceive thyself.

Similiarly, the intrinsic purpose of a society as an individual organism, a superorganism is to maintain vitality and sustain a flourishing of itself, including its extended self through its cognitive architecture - sensing, evaluating, modeling, anticipating and taking action.

Imperial News. ‘“Issue of Inequalities” for Long COVID Patients Needs to Be Addressed | Imperial News | Imperial College London’. Accessed 22 April 2022. https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/232234/issue-inequalities-long-covid-patients-needs/.

Chen, Cathy Xi, Gordon Pennycook, and David Rand. ‘What Makes News Sharable on Social Media?’ PsyArXiv, 9 July 2021. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/gzqcd.

Societies have been inexorably been moving toward interdependence. More and more people specialize and sub-specialize into smaller fragments of the work that we do. As a result, we become more interdependent on the work of others to underpin our own. This makes the worry about renting a domain seem somewhat disingenuous, particularly when we can reasonably rely on the underlying structures to work to keep our domains in place.

Perhaps re-framing this idea may be worthwhile. While it may seem that we own our bodies (at least in modern liberal democracies, for the moment), a large portion of our bodies are comprised of bacteria which are simultaneously both separate and a part of us and who we are. The symbiosis between people and their bacteria has been going on so long and generally so consistently we don't realize that the interdependence even exists anymore. No one walks around talking about how they're renting their bacteria.

Eventually we'll get to a point where our interdependence on domain registrars and hosts becomes the same sort of symbiotic interdependence.

Another useful analogy is to look at our interdependence on all the other pieces in our lives which we don't own or directly control, but which still allow us to live and exist.

People only tend to notice the major breakdowns of these bits of our interdependence. Recently there has been a lot of political turmoil and strife in the United States because politicians have become more self-centered and focused on their own needs, wants, and desire for power that they aren't serving the majority of people. When our representatives don't do their best work at representing their constituencies, major breakdowns in our interdependence occur. We need to be able to rely on scientists to do their best work to inform politicians who we need to be able to trust to do their best work to improve our lives and the general welfare. When the breakdown happens it creates issues to the individual bodies that make up the society as well as the body of the society itself.

Who's renting who in this scenario?

ReconfigBehSci[@SciBeh}(2020, August) Videos of talks from July's eBridges conference on "SOCIETY, PSYCHOLOGY AND BEHAVIOUR DURING AND POST COVID-19 LOCKDOWN" are now all available here: Twitter. Retrieved from:https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1297863598144999424

Each syllabus is a sample from Project Syllabus, hosted by the Society of Teaching of Psychology.

Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: COVID-19 Series: Medical journals - Episode 24. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the webinar. (n.d.). Zoom Video. Retrieved June 20, 2020, from https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_4_dGVRvDQEWi_d7ll7kMtQ

RSM COVID-19 Series | Episode 24: Medical Journals. (2020, June 24). YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=et-kl5ypx8Q

Leitner, S. (2020, April 18). On the dynamics emerging from pandemics and infodemics. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/nqru6

The nature of the wants that commodities satisfy makes no difference. This is perhaps somewhat surprising to readers, given the extent to which everyday critiques of capitalist society often center around the role that consumerism plays and the subjective effects that this produces, namely, the way that consumer society creates all sorts of desires (as well as the obverse--many will defend capitalism on the grounds that it is able to satisfy our inordinate appetite for novelty by producing an enormous proliferation of desirable commodities). Yet, for Marx, the nature of these desires "makes no difference."

It is worth pointing out that the critique of the appetites that consumer society spawns is by no means new (a rather early moment in the history of consumer society). We find it already on display in Book II of Plato's Republic. In looking to shift the terrain of the analysis of justice from the individualistic, social contractualist theory of justice elaborated by Glaucon, Socrates founds a 'city' based on the idea that no one is self-sufficient, that human beings have much need of one another, and that the various crafts--farming, weaving cloth, etc.--fare best when each person specializes in that craft to which they are most suited by nature. After sketching out a kind of idyllic, pastoral community based on the principle of working together to satisfy our natural appetites, Socrates aristocratic companion Glaucon objects, describing this city as a 'city fit for pigs'. At this point, Socrates conjures what he calls the 'luxurious city', at which point a whole host of social ills are unleashed in order to satisfy Glaucon's desire for the luxuries to which he is accustomed. Currency and trade are introduced, along with a more complex division of labor (and wage labor!), and quite quickly, war. On the basis of the principle of 'one person, one craft', Socrates argues that making war is itself a craft that requires specialization (and thus a professional army).

For Plato, this represents the beginning of class society, as the profession military becomes a class distinct from the class of producers and merchants.

Plato thus anticipates a version of a view that becomes one of the key theses of the Marxist theory of the state, namely, the idea that the state exists only in societies that have become "entangled in an insoluble contradiction within itself" and which are "cleft into irreconcilable antagonisms which it is powerless to dispel," (Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State). The state emerges as "a power apparently standing above society...whose purpose is to moderate the conflict and keep it within the bounds of 'order'" Engels writes, "this power arising out of society, but placing itself above it, and increasingly separating itself from it, is the state." Lenin cites this passage in the first pages of State and Revolution in order to critique the 'bourgeois' view that the state exists in order to reconcile class interests. In Lenin's reading of Marx, the state exists as "an organ of classs domination, an organ of oppression of one class by another," a view articulated in The Communist Manifesto, (cf. V.I. Lenin, State and Revolution in V.I.Lenin: Collected Works, Vol. 25, pp. 385-497).

Marx cites this same passage from Republic in a long footnote to his discussion of the Division of Labor and Manufacture on pp. 487-488, which also happens to be the sole place in Capital where Marx cites Plato.

The fact that Marx here expresses indifference to the particular appetites that commodities satisfy is thus intriguing and ambiguous. Given that this question both clearly animates Plato's discussion of the origin of class society in Republic and, additionally serves as an alternative to the social contractarian view of justice that descends from Glaucon through Hobbes and the 18th century 'Robinsonades', this seemingly technical point also touches upon questions concerning Marx's engagement with both classical and modern political theory.

If for Plato, the unruly appetites represent the seed of which class-divided society is the fruit, Marx's dismissal of the question of the nature of the appetites that are satisfied by commodities points to exchange-value and the social forms that it unleashes as being key dimensions of the particular form that class-antagonism takes in capitalist society.

I found this statement interesting because it demonstrates the never-ending trend of society continuously advancing and moving forward. It is almost comical to think back how in 1818, when the document was written, the writers believed that their society and educational systems were so advanced. Looking back, this was obviously not the case; however, it is true that they had made many advances from previous centuries. Furthermore, today’s society has surpassed the first generations of UVA by a remarkable amount, not only in the technological and educational regard, but also in the moral regard, considering the original UVA was a school for solely white men of high status. The “indigenous” neighbors the document goes on to mention who the writers perceive to be less advanced than themselves are described as “barbaric and wretched.” This description is ironic considering the low moral standard of these founders who are almost barbaric and wretched themselves. Finally, it is again ironic that the writers are calling themselves “advanced” when they still have ignorant and amateur views about themselves and others.

The authors of the Rockfish Gap Report affirm that religious worship is not conducive to a truly liberal arts education, going so far as to propose "no professor of Divinity." Yet religious language is smatter throughout the document (such as "blessings," "faithfulness," and "religious worship.") In the Virginia Statue for Religious Freedom which Thomas Jefferson also drafted, it is written,"all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities." In this way, the assertions of both texts are consistent, but the biases of the authors are apparent in their use of religious language. This demonstrates that a collective view of what a society should be is not necessarily reflected in individual beliefs.

In this act, mistaken identity is used to break tension. Apart from the obvious comedic relief this scene adds to the ever mounting tension and drama in the play, this scene also indicates the disintegration of society and the lack of social restraints of the general public after Caesar’s death.

In this scene, the plebeians initially surround Cinna the poet after confusing him with Cinna the conspirator. Even when Cinna repeatedly tells them “I am not Cinna the conspirator”, the citizens, in their bloodthirsty rampage, still decide to kill him, stating that “It is no matter, his name’s Cinna”. This degradation of social standards and the crumbling of the social foundations of Ancient Rome bolster the image of the plebeians as ‘sheep’ to be swayed and controlled by the ruling classes, and solidifies their position in the play.

It is also no coincidence that Shakespeare made Cinna a poet. In the citizens’ interrogation of Cinna, Cinna not only speaks for himself, but as a poet and as a projection of those in scholarly fields and free speech as a whole. With this, Shakespeare compels the audience to question whom poets and those who provide information to the public are accountable to, and whether free speech is more important than a stable and safe society.

In some ways, it’s quite remarkable that one of the key figures of post-development was also the one who called for “deschooling society”. As is obvious from observing humanitarian and philanthropic work is that “development” participates in neocolonialism, despite (or often because of) the best of intentions. MOOCs are closer to development than to postdevelopment. Even cMOOCs.

I really enjoy this idea, for some reason, as something so unfathomably sad has happened to Dorian, as if his life were a novel (hmhmhm) and he finds it too amusing to be bothered by. Wilde demonstrates the surreal reality that plagues life and continues somewhat of a commentary on how precious one's life is, and how it must not be wasted on conforming when one does not see fit.

Wilde uses this dialogue to convey his theory on the meaning of life. "People are afraid of themselves nowadays" is Wilde's call to the oppression of individuals by society. Wilde opens the concept of living as one sees fit - their true identity. This dialogue probably cause issue from early critics of Wilde's work, as it holds a somewhat secular message.

In precise contrast with school. In some ways, literacy is such a basic part of schooling that it’s nearly impossible to imagine other core skills (from numeracy to empathy) giving pupils and students any kind of social status outside of literacy.