http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/"Windows on Humanity" -blog tries to find the greatest quotes by secular and humanist thinkers, writers, poets, philosophers and scientists of the past and it also tries to interpret them for a modern reader. This blog could also be seen as tentative first draft for a little guidebook on leading a good life in this little blue dot of ours. (This blog was formerly known as "A Little Book for Humanity")en-EUhttp://backend.userland.com/rss092http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/http://data5.blog.de/design/preview/35/c13b31776452220ddef545af8e5a12_160x200.jpg <p><img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-8cBNRsDmwiA/UTZmpYQJ3vI/AAAAAAAAQZU/donrBLIx-tE/s686/popper_ignorance.JPG" alt="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius - Creative Commons" title="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius - Creative Commons"></p> <blockquote><p><strong>The more we learn about the world, and the deeper our learning, the more conscious, specific, and articulate will be our knowledge of what we do not know, our knowledge of our ignorance. For this, indeed, is the main source of our ignorance — the fact that our knowledge can be only finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite."</strong></p> <p><em>- Karl Popper in Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (1963)</em></p></blockquote> <p><strong>Here are some of my own thoughts on this field of life: </strong></p> <p>General knowledge of a person is like a cloud-system. It is inevitably thicker in some places and thinner in some others. In some places, it will disappear altogether, but in some other (normally small) areas, it can reach the ground like a tornado.<br> Some people have heavy storm clouds in a few places, but vast clear spaces in most others. On the other hand, some people have a quite even, but a thin layer of clouds all over the place, but it never gets thick.<br> Every single person has a different cloud-system. In fact, I can easily guess that we would be thoroughly surprised the real level of these differences. This cloud system moves and evolves constantly; in some places, it gets thicker, but thinner in some others.<br> Some people gather knowledge into areas that have a practical use in every-day life, but others gather gems of knowledge from all over the place. Knowledge is just a tool for some, but some people can get immense pleasure from the very act of gathering new knowledge.</p> <p>Karl Popper is in Facebook at:<br> <a href="http://www.facebook.com/popperphilosopher">http://www.facebook.com/popperphilosopher</a></p> <p><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/43/Karl_Popper.jpg/220px-Karl_Popper.jpg" alt="Karl Popper - Wikipedia" title="Karl Popper - Wikipedia"></p> <p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_popper">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_popper</a><br> "Sir Karl Raimund Popper, CH FRS FBA (28 July 1902 – 17 September 1994) was an Austro-British philosopher and professor at the London School of Economics. He is generally regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of science of the 20th century. He also wrote extensively on social and political philosophy. In 1992 he was awarded the Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy for "symbolising the open spirit of the 20th century" and for his "enormous influence on the formation of the modern intellectual climate".</p> <p></p> <p> <small> <a href="http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2013/03/05/karl-popper-on-knowledge-and-ignorance-15595607/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p> http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2013/03/05/karl-popper-on-knowledge-and-ignorance-15595607/Tue, 05 Mar 2013 23:48:29 +0100 <p><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-gZosWeTu_3s/UO8icxSc89I/AAAAAAAAQDw/piSaWGFJfA8/s530/darwin_science.JPG" alt="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius with Creative Commons 2.0" title="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius with Creative Commons 2.0"></p> <blockquote><p><strong>It is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.”</strong></p> <p><em>- Charles Darwin, in the introduction to Descent of Man (1871)</em></p></blockquote> <p><strong>Some of my own ideas on the issue:</strong></p> <p>The fact that we cannot answer a question now does not mean that we cannot answer it next year, after two years or after 10 000 years of refining our tools and data. Science has widened its range of explanations in immense ways during the last millennium. It would be pure madness to expect that the range of scientific knowledge would not expand at least in its present rate at least in the near future also. We just cannot know exactly what things can be discovered.<br> On the other hand, can adding a supernatural agent really explain anything? Accepting such claims can only support the claim that supernatural agents do exists, which is a totally unscientific, unsupported claim as it is.</p> <p>Claiming that something has "god-given" properties will not expand our knowledge over it a single tiniest bit. The same explanation will explain all things that we could ever want. This is true if we accept supernatural as a possible source of explanation. After that, we would not need any other explanations.<br> Supernatural is always the simplest possible explanation, and the accepted method in science is to accept the simplest possible explanation. This is not the case, however, if the simplest available explanation is untrue, of course. A theory that does explain everything normally does explain very little. When you can say 'god did it for his unfathomable reasons" you have explained nothing, zero, zilch, nada. One has just added a unneeded level of complexity. It is just a big question mark.</p> <p>A real philosophical problem with the theory of 'god' is the problem of reverse-engineering. You have a basic idea like 'god' and you start inventing reasons why this idea needs to be true.When the outcome is always clear, it is easy to start inventing such formulations that can only produce 'god' as a result.<br> The nice part is that when you are free to give a 'god' almost any kind of properties. They just need to invisible and intangible. Then one can reverse-engineer one's reasoning so that it will be always just right.</p> <p><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2e/Charles_Darwin_seated_crop.jpg/220px-Charles_Darwin_seated_crop.jpg" alt="Charles Darwin - Wikipedia" title="Charles Darwin - Wikipedia"></p> <p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin</a><br> "Charles Robert Darwin, FRS (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding."</p> <p></p> <p> <small> <a href="http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2013/01/10/charles-darwin-on-rejecting-progress-in-science-15415766/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p> http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2013/01/10/charles-darwin-on-rejecting-progress-in-science-15415766/Thu, 10 Jan 2013 22:21:50 +0100 <p><img src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-rl6ZKcmBVe8/UKILn7miE9I/AAAAAAAANnc/ddw1mcSJb5Y/s511/einstein_violence.JPG" alt="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius & Creative Commons" title="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius & Creative Commons"></p> <blockquote><p><strong>Heroism by order, senseless violence, and all the pestilent nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism — how I hate them! War seems to me a mean, contemptible thing: I would rather be hacked in pieces than take part in such an abominable business.”</strong></p> <p><em>- Albert Einstein in "Mein Weltbild" (1931) [English: My World-view)</em></p></blockquote> <p><strong>Some thoughts of my own on the quote:</strong></p> <p>No one thinks that theft has become extinct from the world just because it has been universally condemned. However, if it would be universally stated that theft under certain circumstances is a good thing, and we cannot ever get rid of theft, and we just need to live with theft, the willingness of people to steal just could be heightened a bit.<br> There are strong interest groups which want to make sure that violence is condemned only when wrong people use it. No kind of universal condemnation of violence like that we are used to in the case of theft is simply not possible.</p> <p>Few people expect that psychopaths can be changed by anything, but chancing our attitude towards violence just could have an positive effect on normal people. People just tend to go with the crowd.<br> The supporters of violence always seem to forget that you need an adversary that wants to use physical violence to have a need for even self-defense. If that person also would think that physical violence is beneath the dignity of a man, there would not be a need for even defensive violence.</p> <p>As long as people propagate the belief that violence is good in some form, there will more violent tendencies than in a society where all violence is condemned. Religious or political extremists will never go away.<br> However, if violence would be always treated as evil and disgusting thing that one must use just only if hard pressed to by others and in situations where you cannot act with any other means, our world would be a much nicer place to live.</p> <p>A culture that glorifies and admires violence will breed more violence. The admiration of violence lowers the threshold of using violence even in situations that would not really warrant it. There is no doubt about it.<br> The evidence is everywhere around us. There just are extremely strong and vocal forces in our societies whose interests are best served by maintaining admiration for violence. The need to defend one from thugs is a quite different thing than adoration and wholesale acceptance of violence as an accepted means for conducting a policy. It is funny how this difference is so difficult to see for so many people.</p> <p><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f5/Einstein_1921_portrait2.jpg/220px-Einstein_1921_portrait2.jpg" alt="Albert Einstein - Wikipedia" title="Albert Einstein - Wikipedia "></p> <p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_einstein">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_einstein</a></p> <p>"Albert Einstein ( /ˈælbərt ˈaɪnstaɪn/; German: [ˈalbɐt ˈaɪnʃtaɪn] ( listen); 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the general theory of relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics[2][3] and the most influential physicist of the 20th century. While best known for his mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc2 (which has been dubbed "the world's most famous equation"), he received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect". The latter was pivotal in establishing quantum theory within physics."</p> <p> </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/11/13/albert-einstein-on-violence-15198973/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p> http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/11/13/albert-einstein-on-violence-15198973/Tue, 13 Nov 2012 11:02:31 +0100 <p><img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-dkmIUBQMAIE/UJZ6jQj5k_I/AAAAAAAANXc/t5S4np7LcgQ/s576/seneca_fortune.JPG" alt="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius & Creative Commons" title="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius & Creative Commons"></p> <blockquote><p><strong>We are all chained to fortune: the chain of one is made of gold, and wide, while that of another is short and rusty. But what difference does it make? The same prison surrounds all of us, and even those who have bound others are bound themselves; unless perchance you think that a chain on the left side is lighter. Honors bind one man, wealth another; nobility oppresses some, humility others; some are held in subjection by an external power, while others obey the tyrant within; banishments keep some in one place, the priesthood others. All life is slavery. Therefore each one must accustom himself to his own condition and complain about it as little as possible, and lay hold of whatever good is to be found near him. Nothing is so bitter that a calm mind cannot find comfort in it. Small tablets, because of the writer's skill, have often served for many purposes, and a clever arrangement has often made a very narrow piece of land habitable. Apply reason to difficulties; harsh circumstances can be softened, narrow limits can be widened, and burdensome things can be made to press less severely on those who bear them cleverly.”</strong></p> <p><em>Seneca The Younger(c. 4 BC - A.D. 65) in "On Tranquility of the Mind" (A letter to Serenus)</em></p></blockquote> <p><strong>My own ideas on the quote</strong>:</p> <p>One's worries and pain can only become greater with every moment one spends just worrying about them and not solving them if they are solvable. If these worries are not solvable, the best method just might not be to dwell in them. Then the way might be trying to diminish the effect that these worries and pains have in one's life. This is the essence of Stoic philosophy.<br> However, there seems to be people who just could not live if they can not complain. They complain about the things that they see as wrong in their lives and around them. Many of them seem to get real relief from this activity. They are a minority.<br> Perhaps even most of us could improve our lives if we could let go for a moment and live for the day. We just could grab all the possibilities that life can offer if we could forget our pains and sorrows even for a short moment every day.</p> <p><em>(This piece was refurbished on 12th of January, 2013)</em></p> <p>Seneca the Younger is also in Facebook at:<br> <a href="http://www.facebook.com/senecaphilosopher">http://www.facebook.com/senecaphilosopher</a></p> <p><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9b/Seneca-berlinantikensammlung-1.jpg/220px-Seneca-berlinantikensammlung-1.jpg" alt="Wikipedia" title="Wikipedia"></p> <p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seneca_the_Younger">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seneca_the_Younger</a><br> "Lucius Annaeus Seneca (often known simply as Seneca; ca. 4 BC – AD 65) was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and in one work humorist, of the Silver Age of Latin literature. He was tutor and later advisor to emperor Nero. While he was later forced to commit suicide for alleged complicity in the Pisonian conspiracy to assassinate Nero, the last of the Julio-Claudian emperors, he may have been innocent. His father was Seneca the Elder and his elder brother was Gallio."</p> <p></p> <p> <small> <a href="http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/11/04/seneca-the-younger-on-fortune-15165060/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p> http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/11/04/seneca-the-younger-on-fortune-15165060/Sun, 04 Nov 2012 16:20:17 +0100 <p><img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-1g3mOqGvNPQ/UDneBtXe3ZI/AAAAAAAAK3E/mR5WRm_6L08/s512/popper_misunderstanding.JPG" alt="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius & Creative Commons" title="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius & Creative Commons"></p> <blockquote><p><strong>"Always remember that it is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood: there will always be some who misunderstand you." </strong></p> <p><em>- Karl Popper in "Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography (1976) </em></p></blockquote> <p><strong>My own ideas on the quote:</strong></p> <p>A major problem in all communication is that what we can write and say is always just the visible tip of an iceberg. Underneath the waves there always lies a vast sea of ideas, history and experience. This vast body of knowledge does help us produce the words that we have chosen to express ourselves in any particular moment. To fully understand our meaning in a complex issue the reader needs to know our way of thinking quite intensively.<br> Alas, that is normally just impossible. We just must learn to live with the fact that we will be misunderstood in some way or another in even most of our communication with others. The risk of misunderstanding naturally grows exponentially when opinions differ. The tendency to misinterpret things is always at its greatest in a moment of righteous fury.</p> <p>On the other hand, the famous figures of thinking and writing just might be more accessible to us than less known figures (and sometimes even deeper thinkers) because we know more of them and how their thinking has been formed.<br> This simple thing of familiarity of a figure just might be the reason why, for example, this darling of all totalitarians or Plato is still kept in so high esteem. This is true when many other (for me, even greater) Greek thinkers like Epicurus, Protagoras, Democritus or Epictetus, are not valued at the same level at all.</p> <p><em>(This piece was refurbished on 11th of January, 2012)</em></p> <p>Karl Popper is also in Facebook at:<br> <a href="http://www.facebook.com/popperphilosopher">http://www.facebook.com/popperphilosopher</a></p> <p><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/43/Karl_Popper.jpg/220px-Karl_Popper.jpg" alt="Karl Popper - Wikipedia" title="Karl Popper - Wikipedia"></p> <p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_popper">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_popper</a><br> "Sir Karl Raimund Popper, CH FRS FBA (28 July 1902 – 17 September 1994) was an Austro-British philosopher and professor at the London School of Economics. He is generally regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of science of the 20th century. He also wrote extensively on social and political philosophy. In 1992 he was awarded the Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy for "symbolizing the open spirit of the 20th century" and for his "enormous influence on the formation of the modern intellectual climate".</p> <p></p> <p> <small> <a href="http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/10/23/karl-popper-on-misunderstanding-15113970/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p> http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/10/23/karl-popper-on-misunderstanding-15113970/Tue, 23 Oct 2012 07:59:41 +0200 <p><img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-dG6tzRnr7HM/UIXBfIp7qKI/AAAAAAAAM-Y/EQ3OdeHzSAM/s512/fuller_thinking.JPG" alt="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius & Creative Commons" title="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius & Creative Commons"></p> <blockquote><p><strong>We are powerfully imprisoned in these Dark Ages simply by the terms in which we have been conditioned to think."</strong></p> <p><em>- Buckminster Fuller in "Cosmography" (1992)</em></p></blockquote> <p><strong>Some of my own thoughts on the limits of thinking:</strong></p> <p>We all seem to be bound into living in our own private bubbles. When we look through this bubble, the whole world is colored to match the color of it. Some people's bubbles are so strong that almost nothing of a wrong color can get through it. Some other bubbles may admit more colors in.<br> Inevitably, however, each of us will have our own bubble, the construction of which has often lasted for decades. Bubbles can also break down. However, the human nature just seems to be so constructed that the building of a new bubble will begin immediately.</p> <p>It might very well be that this protection is sorely needed, and the bubble is a extremely necessary human protection mechanism. It can keep us operational in an environment that is full of contradictory signals.<br> It just could be that the mere maintaining of mental health requires the existence of some kind of protective bubble. In the mental institutions there might be a large number of people whose bubble has broken, but who have not been able to build a new one.</p> <p>On the other hand, too strong protective bubbles will us from accepting new ideas. They will stop us from adopting correct information when it is inconsistent with the one that we already have in our bubble. On the other hand, they just might also keep us sane.<br> However, it can be possible to recognize the existence of the problem. I think that we can work to weaken our own bubble at least a little, a bit by bit. The mere denial of the existence of these bubbles does not necessarily help anything. All of this is of course a self-evident any thinking person, but sometimes it is good to reflect on the obvious too.</p> <p><em>(This piece was refurbished on 10th of January, 2013)</em></p> <p><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3b/BuckminsterFuller1.jpg/170px-BuckminsterFuller1.jpg" alt="Buckminster Fuller - Wikipedia" title="Buckminster Fuller - Wikipedia"></p> <p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminster_fuller">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminster_fuller</a><br> "Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller (/ˈfʊlər/; July 12, 1895 – July 1, 1983) was an American systems theorist, architect, engineer, author, designer, inventor, and futurist. Fuller published more than 30 books, inventing and popularizing terms such as "Spaceship Earth", ephemeralization, and synergetic. He also developed numerous inventions, mainly architectural designs, the best known of which is the geodesic dome. Carbon molecules known as fullerenes were later named by scientists for their resemblance to geodesic spheres." </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/10/23/buckminster-fuller-on-condtioning-in-thinking-15112416/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p> http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/10/23/buckminster-fuller-on-condtioning-in-thinking-15112416/Tue, 23 Oct 2012 00:00:43 +0200 <p><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-aWTJEduXaa0/UHALcL5moKI/AAAAAAAAMKg/sTWfyW3O6Sw/s512/lucretius_death.JPG" alt="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius & Creative Commons" title="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius & Creative Commons"></p> <blockquote><p><strong>Therefore death is nothing to us, it matters not one jot, since the nature of the mind is understood to be mortal.”</strong></p> <p><em>- Lucretius in De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things) Book III, line 831.</em></p></blockquote> <p><strong>My own thoughts on the quote:</strong></p> <p>I may have some firsthand experience on this subject. I was diagnosed with an incurable cancer in the November of 2011. In early January of 2012, I was promised just a few days to live. Happily, I did survive this immediate crisis. I am still here, even if the cancer itself will never be cured, and I will die of it someday.<br> However, nobody knows when this day comes. With the aid of radical chemotherapy, the illness has not been at least spreading anymore during the last months and has at times it has even receded.</p> <p>A strange fact is that I was not for a single moment really afraid even during this darkest of the dark hours in my life. Maybe a real crisis can be a cure for purely mental fears and phobias. Of course, there just might be a mental structure or mechanism in me that makes the fear go away.<br> However, my intimate knowledge of Epicureanism and Stoicism did also help me to overcome the situation on a mental level. Especially Marcus Aurelius has some great and comforting ideas on this front. However, the Epicurean basic ideas over death that were expressed by Greek Epicurus and Roman Lucretius are very helpful also.</p> <p>I have also a history of severe depressions, but surprisingly I even think that this history has helped me in my current crisis. Every bout of deep depression has ended some day. This knowledge just may have helped me to build a mechanism deep into my mind that makes me understand and trust that ongoing ordeals can and will so go away also some day.<br> This gradual accumulation of basic underlying optimism may have helped me through the last ones of extremely deep mental crisis more easily than before. Happily during the last decade I have had none of them anymore.</p> <p>Epicurus believed that death was not to be feared. When a person dies, one does not feel the pain of death because one no longer feels nothing. Epicurus famously said, <em>"Death is nothing to us"</em> and this idea is forwarded here also by Lucretius. All sensation and consciousness ends with death. In death there is neither pleasure nor pain. The fear of death partly arises from the belief that even after death there can be some kind of awareness.<br> From this doctrine rose also the Epicurean epitaph: <em>“Non fui, fui, non sum, non curo”</em> (“<em>I was not; I was; I am not; I do not care”</em>). This text was inscribed on the gravestones of many Epicureans in Rome. This quote is still sometimes used today at humanist funerals.</p> <p>Epicurean poet Lucretius also says that anyone who fears death should consider the time before he was born. The infinity of non-existence before birth is quite like the future infinity of non-existence after death. However, we do not normally consider not having existed for an eternity before birth to be a terrible thing. According to Lucretius we should not think that existing for an eternity after death would be a bad thing either.<br> Epicurus adds that if death causes no pain when one is dead, it is foolish to allow the fear of death to cause pain. However, understanding the real meaning of these ideas just might be the real key out of fear of death. Sadly, nobody can force it on others; it must come naturally.</p> <p><em>(This piece was refurbished on 8th of January, 2012)<br> </em><br> <img src="http://www.humanistlife.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/lucretius.jpg" alt="Lucretius" title="Lucretius"></p> <p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucretius">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucretius</a><br> "Titus Lucretius Carus (ca. 99 BC – ca. 55 BC) was a Roman poet and philosopher. His only known work is the epic philosophical poem De rerum natura about the beliefs of Epicureanism, and which is translated into English as On the Nature of Things or "On the Nature of the Universe". The De rerum natura was a considerable influence on the Augustan poets, particularly Virgil (in his Aeneid and Georgics, and to a lesser extent in his Eclogues) and Horace. It virtually disappeared during the Middle Ages, but was rediscovered in a monastery in Germany in 1417, by Poggio Bracciolini, and played an important role both in the development of atomism (Lucretius was an important influence on Pierre Gassendi) and the efforts of various figures of the Enlightenment."</p> <p> </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/10/06/lucretius-on-death-14986978/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p> http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/10/06/lucretius-on-death-14986978/Sat, 06 Oct 2012 12:48:56 +0200 <p><img src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-IGuw3zE8AeA/UDndihpUD3I/AAAAAAAAKok/zJhcuVCsELE/s693/bacon_death.JPG" alt="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius with Creative Commons 2.0" title="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius with Creative Commons 2.0"></p> <blockquote><p><strong>Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other.</strong></p> <p><em>- Francis Bacon in "Essays, Of Death" (1597)</em></p></blockquote> <p><strong>My own thoughts on the quote:</strong></p> <p>We die because death plays an extremely central part in our biology. Death is a similar part of life as birth, even if it is often much less painful than birth is, I hear. There could not be life without death.<br> The fact we do not like death does not change it's basic necessity. All life is built from the building blocks that were offered by the deceased lifeforms in some form or another. Death of all living organisms is an inevitable reality, but people have invented extremely ingenious ways to deny this fact.</p> <p>However, there is no more "secret" in death than there is in birth. Admittedly, people have created a lot of myths to explain death away. In the end, death is the central force that drives evolution. Without the existence of death, the original bacteria would be still around, but perhaps nothing much more.</p> <blockquote><p><strong>It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.”</strong></p> <p><em>- Francis Bacon in "Essays, Of Death" (1597)</em></p></blockquote> <blockquote><p><strong>The fear of death is worse than death.”</strong></p> <p><em>- Robert Burton in "The Anatomy of Melancholy" (1621)</em></p></blockquote> <p><em>(This piece was refurbished on 7th of January, 2012)</em></p> <p><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a7/Pourbus_Francis_Bacon.jpg/220px-Pourbus_Francis_Bacon.jpg" alt="Francis Bacon - Wikipedia" title="Francis Bacon - Wikipedia"></p> <p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Bacon">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Bacon</a><br> ”Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St. Alban(s), KC (22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626) was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist and author. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Although his political career ended in disgrace, he remained extremely influential through his works, especially as philosophical advocate and practitioner of the scientific method during the scientific revolution.”</p> <p> </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/08/06/francis-bacon-on-death-14386511/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p> http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/08/06/francis-bacon-on-death-14386511/Mon, 06 Aug 2012 12:20:03 +0200 <p><img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-e-hl13NkxB4/UDndfwmsvxI/AAAAAAAAKnY/LNukmI14x2E/s512/asimov_violence.JPG" alt="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius with Creative Commons 2.0" title="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius with Creative Commons 2.0"></p> <blockquote><p><strong>Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."</strong></p> <p><em>- Isaac Asimov in "Foundation", published in "Astounding Science-Fiction" (May 1942)</em> </p></blockquote> <p><strong>My own thoughts on the quote:</strong></p> <p>Of course, the quote above is a joke. However, the pure incompetence of political leaders has  killed millions of people in real life. The quote is, in fact, derived from the famous phrase by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Johnson">Samuel Johnson</a>: "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." Most of all violence is a method for coercing other people to follow one's wishes.<br> When <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clausewitz">Carl von Clausewitz</a> said "War is the continuation of politics with other means", I would say "War is a continuation of politics after politicians have failed in their job."</p> <p>This failure of politics can happen due to dogmatic faith in some form of "manifest destiny" or dogmatic faith in "a divine mission of our nation" or some other dogmatically held belief by some of parties involved. However, very often war happens just due to pure and simple incompetence.<br> This is the case when the incompetent leaders just cannot fathom any other solution the use of violence, as in World War I or the second war on Iraq. War just is very often a result either of open hate or greed and failure to suppress them or failure of diplomacy.</p> <p>It is funny how so many people think of violence only as a reaction to something. However, there is always the "incompetent" who has initiated the use of violence. This all too often happens because he or she does not know how to negotiate and to get what they want without violence.<br> Self-defense is clearly very different thing than using  violence to get something that you want because you do not know or want not to use other means. However, there is no need to even for self-defense if there are no incompetent attackers.</p> <p><em>(This piece was refurbished on 7th of January, 2012)</p> <p></em></p> <p><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/34/Isaac.Asimov01.jpg/220px-Isaac.Asimov01.jpg" alt="Isaac Asimov - Wikipedia" title="Isaac Asimov - Wikipedia"></p> <p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_asimov">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_asimov</a><br> "Isaac Asimov (c. January 2, 1920 – April 6, 1992) was an American author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. Asimov was one of the most prolific writers of all time, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. His works have been published in all ten major categories of the Dewey Decimal System (although his only work in the 100s—which covers philosophy and psychology—was a foreword for The Humanist Way)."</p> <p> </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/08/01/isaac-asimov-on-violence-14339570/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p> http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/08/01/isaac-asimov-on-violence-14339570/Wed, 01 Aug 2012 15:57:58 +0200 <p><img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-aUa6AOXrKaQ/UOn6Z_loIaI/AAAAAAAAQCQ/hT2W68sPkas/s512/orwell_history.JPG" alt="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius with Creative Commons 2.0" title="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius with Creative Commons 2.0"></p> <blockquote><p><strong>"Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past."</strong></p> <p><em>- George Orwell, in Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), Chapter 3.</em></p></blockquote> <p><strong>Some of my own thoughts on the issue of history:</strong></p> <p>Archimedes said: "Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the Earth." I say : "Give me a new vantage point and I will move the history of the Earth." This is a naturally just a joke. However,  moving to a new vantage point can give one tremendous new insight into our common history.<br> The central facts do naturally always remain the same. The way how the facts that are deemed important and are chosen, however, has a tremendous impact on how the history we present will look like. </p> <p>Simply moving the vantage point away from the facts that have been chosen and thoroughly colored by Christians of the past can have a tremendous impact on how we see our past. One needs to realize how tremendously Christianity has affected the writers of past generations. One needs to understand how Christianity has colored the whole way we do see the past. This realization can make a world of difference.<br> Many people have difficulty in understanding that history that is written by Christians is not impartial history. It is history that has been warped by a distorting lens of an ideology. This is true even if this warping did often happen in societies where no other ideologies were simply available.</p> <p>Even the most impartial writers of the 18th or 19th century simply could not see the effect that this ideology did have on their thinking. They commonly did not even see that of any other model of thinking could exist in their own society.<br> My page for George Orwell was in Facebook also before the page was taken down for unknown and unreported reasons in January 2011; see <a href="http://www.facebook.com/orwellblair">http://www.facebook.com/orwellblair</a> if it has been returned to its creator.</p> <p><em>(This piece was refurbished on 7th of January, 2012)</em></p> <p><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7e/George_Orwell_press_photo.jpg/220px-George_Orwell_press_photo.jpg" alt="George Orwell - Wikipedia" title="George Orwell - Wikipedia"></p> <p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_orwell">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_orwell</a><br> "Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist and journalist. His work is marked by clarity, intelligence and wit, awareness of social injustice, opposition to totalitarianism, and belief in democratic socialism."</p> <p> </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/07/26/george-orwell-on-history-14236590/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p> http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/07/26/george-orwell-on-history-14236590/Thu, 26 Jul 2012 12:13:51 +0200 <p><img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-Qa9yxQZHw9I/UOmPLu-x_TI/AAAAAAAAQBQ/MvzGWwMQ4NE/s512/einstein_work.JPG" alt="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius with Creative Commons 2.0" title="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius with Creative Commons 2.0"></p> <blockquote><p><strong>Every individual should have the opportunity to develop the gifts which may be latent in him. Alone in that way can the individual obtain the satisfaction to which he is justly entitled; and alone in that way can the community achieve its richest flowering. For everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.”</strong></p> <p><em>- Albert Einstein, as quoted in Educational Trends: Journal of Research and Interpretation (1936)</em></p></blockquote> <p><strong>Some of my own thoughts on the quote:</strong></p> <p>To be happy in the workplace a person needs most of all to be proud of what he or she is doing. The best scenario is that a person is producing something that one can be proud of. However, one can be proud of also of the way he or she does this work or even be proud of how he or she stands for the rights of workers in the workplace.<br> If the reason for being proud of one's work does not exist or is taken away, work soon becomes something that is done only for the money. This is not a good situation either for the worker or the employer.</p> <p><em>On the other hand, there is another and more sinister side to work in a modern society:</em></p> <blockquote><p><strong>It is assumed by most people nowadays that all work is useful, and by most well-to-do people that all work is desirable. Most people, well-to-do or not, believe that, even when a man is doing work which appears to be useless, he is earning his livelihood by it — he is "employed," as the phrase goes; and most of those who are well-to-do cheer on the happy worker with congratulations and praises, if he is only "industrious" enough and deprives himself of all pleasure and holidays — in the sacred cause of labour. In short, it has become an article of the creed of modern morality that all labour is good in itself — a convenient belief to those who live on the labour of others. But as to those on whom they live, I recommend them not to take it on trust, but to look into the matter a little deeper.”</strong></p> <p><em>- William Morris in "Useful Work vs Useless Toil" (1885)<br> </em></p></blockquote> <p><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f5/Einstein_1921_portrait2.jpg/220px-Einstein_1921_portrait2.jpg" alt="Albert Einstein - Wikipedia" title="Albert Einstein - Wikipedia"></p> <p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_einstein">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_einstein</a><br> "Albert Einstein (14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the general theory of relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and the most influential physicist of the 20th century. While best known for his mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc2 (which has been dubbed "the world's most famous equation"), he received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect". The latter was pivotal in establishing quantum theory."</p> <p> </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/07/20/every-individual-should-have-the-opportunity-to-develop-the-gifts-14156044/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p> http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/07/20/every-individual-should-have-the-opportunity-to-develop-the-gifts-14156044/Fri, 20 Jul 2012 12:58:02 +0200 <p><img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-UoWsknhjrEU/UOh-B329tDI/AAAAAAAAP_8/W8_YoHXUgk0/s512/lennon_imagine.JPG" alt="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius with Creative Commons 2.0" title="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius with Creative Commons 2.0"></p> <blockquote><p><strong>“Imagine there's no heaven<br> It's easy if you try<br> No hell below us<br> Above us only sky<br> Imagine all the people<br> Living for today...</p> <p>Imagine there's no countries<br> It isn't hard to do<br> Nothing to kill or die for<br> And no religion too<br> Imagine all the people<br> Living life in peace...”</strong></p> <p><em>-John Lennon in "Imagine" (1971)</em></p></blockquote> <p><strong>Some of my own thoughts on the quote:</strong></p> <p>I was sitting in the garden, and I watched as a small plane flew over me. I thought how nice it would be to be able to fly and be free. However, at that same moment I realized that aviation is the most heavily regulated form of human activity there is.<br> You must learn an incredible number of rules and restrictions to be able to fly. All this is also incredibly costly. I did also realize at that very moment that human imagination can soar in the sky where it likes, when it likes and without asking anybody for permission. It does not cost a penny to fly in your imagination.<br> A silly and childish thought, I freely admit. In the modern world you need to climb that mountain, dive that cave and run that desert to be able to feel them. However, in the times when people did not have the money and resources to do these things, the voyages of imagination were valued in a different way.</p> <p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagine_(album)">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagine_(album)</a><br> "Imagine is the second album by John Lennon. Recorded and released in 1971, it tended towards songs that were gentler, more commercial and less avant-garde than those on his previous album, the critically acclaimed John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. The album is considered the most popular of his works. In 2012, Imagine was voted 80th on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time".</p> <p> </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/07/16/john-lennon-on-imagining-14124349/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p> http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/07/16/john-lennon-on-imagining-14124349/Mon, 16 Jul 2012 20:45:13 +0200 <p><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-lV8zp8BwcLc/UDneYeOMKEI/AAAAAAAALCI/2V-Qc85fGhs/s512/wilson_tribalism.JPG" alt="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius with Creative Commons 2.0" title="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius with Creative Commons 2.0"></p> <blockquote><p><strong>The toxic mix of religion and tribalism has become so dangerous as to justify taking seriously the alternative view, that humanism based on science is the effective antidote, the light and the way at last placed before us."</strong></p> <p><em>- E. O. Wilson in "Can biology do better than faith?" (in New Scientist 2005)</em></p></blockquote> <p><strong>Some of my own thoughts on the issue:<br> </strong></p> <p>Human mind seems to be built in a way where "us" are quite automatically seen as the good guys. You must just get people to believe that they belong to same "us" and they will believe "Them" are the bad guys. However, humans have reigned in many other features that are products of evolution.<br> Even the disease of tribalism can be cured to a point. People just need to understand how in a modern extremely interconnected world all humans need to protect the interests of whole human species to be able to be happy in the long run.</p> <p>Humans have successfully made children sit in schools for years, even if we prefer to run free on fields and roam the forests. It is simply silly to claim that we cannot get rid of tribalism if we just want to do it. A sad fact is that so many people benefit from fostering these dangerous ideas that people who speak against tribalism are seen as dangerous. They are commonly frowned upon and even silenced in many cultures.<br> I admit that it is a extremely common fallacy to see in-group-thinking as a feature of humans that cannot ever be overcome. The very same people often also claim the same thing about war and all forms of inequality too. These ideas are just often extremely forcefully marketed to people. They do often not even realize that these things are just human ideas that can be changed when there just is the will.</p> <p>It does not matter how strongly we followed some ideas in the forgotten past of the human species. We have made people forget many of their sexual desires. They are one of the strongest desires that a human can have. We have successfully made people sit in offices for eight hours a day for decades in the end, which is as unnatural, and against "human nature" as anything can be.<br> Tribalism was beneficial in the early days of human history to small groups and beneficial even in the process of state-formation. However, in the extremely interconnected modern world it has become a direct liability. Tribalism has always been a major source of unnecessary human suffering. However, its role is becoming even greater when other sources of human suffering like diseases and hunger have been eradicated from whole continents.</p> <p>However, tribalism kills countless people every year. Every single day your newspaper is filled with the ugly results of tribalism. A person who is embedded in the ideology of tribalism will think that the critique of an ideology is a critique of the people, which is of course a completely false assumption.<br> A person can change his ideology at will and his or her basic personality will not change at this process. However, the way he or she treats other people can change even considerably, when he stops treating people who think differently as a threat.</p> <p>Religions are just now a major source of tribal way of thinking. I well know that many religious people think that religion is like blue eyes, and it is an inherited and inseparable part of a person. However, this is only because their religious leaders make them think so. It is part of the mechanism that makes people continue believing in these bronze-age things, that have very little to give in a modern world.<br> However, saying this is not the same thing at all as dismissing the people who for many kinds of historical and cultural reasons are made to believe these things. They are so often just taught as little children to never, ever doubt these ideas in any way. This does not mean that they could not change, however, if they see the need for it.</p> <blockquote><p><strong>"Civilization is the process in which one gradually increases the number of people included in the term 'we' or 'us' and at the same time decreases those labeled 'you' or 'them' until that category has no one left in it."</strong></p> <p><em>- Howard Winters</em></p></blockquote> <p><em>"We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom" or the very best bits from E.O. Wilson in Being Human-blog:</em><br> <a href="http://beinghuman.blogs.fi/2011/03/13/we-are-drowning-in-information-while-starving-for-wisdom-or-the-very-best-bits-from-e-o-wilson-10820667/">http://beinghuman.blogs.fi/2011/03/13/we-are-drowning-in-information-while-starving-for-wisdom-or-the-very-best-bits-from-e-o-wilson-10820667/</a></p> <p><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9d/Plos_wilson.jpg/220px-Plos_wilson.jpg" alt="E.O. Wilson - Wikipedia" title="E.O. Wilson - Wikipedia"></p> <p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._O._Wilson">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._O._Wilson</a><br> “Edward Osborne Wilson (born June 10, 1929) is an American biologist, researcher (sociobiology, biodiversity), theorist (consilience, biophilia), naturalist (conservationist) and author. His biological specialty is myrmecology, the study of ants, on which he is considered to be the world's leading authority. Wilson is known for his scientific career, his role as "the father of sociobiology", his environmental advocacy, and his secular-humanist and deist ideas pertaining to religious and ethical matters. As of 2007, he is Pellegrino University Research Professor in Entomology for the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University and a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. He is a Humanist Laureate of the International Academy of Humanism. He is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction."</p> <p> </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/07/11/e-o-wilson-on-religions-and-tribalism-14086777/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p> http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/07/11/e-o-wilson-on-religions-and-tribalism-14086777/Wed, 11 Jul 2012 17:36:43 +0200 <p><img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-VeCbPnU00q4/UOWSeIVwg7I/AAAAAAAAP9o/Ty9X2I-Mq4U/s576/wallenius_quote.JPG" alt="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius with Creative Commons 2.0" title="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius with Creative Commons 2.0"></p> <blockquote><p><strong>"A great quote will make people see problems that they had not realized even to exist. However, a great quote will not provide any kind of final answers, but just opens one's eyes to see the possible solutions."</strong></p> <p><em>Jaakko J. Wallenius in "Windows on Humanity " -blog(2012)</em></p></blockquote> <p>A great quote can be a tremendous source of wisdom and insight. However, this does require that the reader can concentrate on the quote itself, and not on who said it, what school of thought it does represent, or what others might have said on the subject.<br> One needs to be able to immerse oneself in a pure thought to understand it as a separate entity from its writer. All truly great thoughts can  acquire a life of their own. The life of a quote can even be quite separate of the life and fate of its original creator.</p> <p>The funny thing is that all too many people seem not to be able to look at thoughts itself. They seem to be stuck on who said it as if it would be the only thing that is important in a quote. However, it is often not even important who said this or that, when it was it said or was the person who said in a position of authority or not.<br> Sadly, many people discussing quotes seem very often to be able to discuss only the persons who uttered these ideas and not the ideas themselves. A simple fact is that even if I would come up with the wisest idea in the world, it would be largely ignored because it was me who uttered it. That just is the way it is, I know.</p> <p>There is a major problem with false quotes and quotes that can give a wrong impression of the thinking of the writer in question. However, I have always presented only verified quotes in this blog and quotes that do really represent the core thinking of the writer.<br> Wrongly attributed and wrong quotes is an evil that can be combated. However, this battle can be won with diligence and hard work.</p> <p>Most of all, I always only publish quotes in this blog that I love myself. I naturally end up publishing only quotes that fit in to my own world-view. However, this fact can just give a needed consistency to this kind of collection, I think. Then it is not a random collection of wise words anymore, but it can form the basis for one possible way of seeing how the human world works.<br> Other major problem with quotes naturally is that for some people there is always the horror of not knowing what the next sentence is. However, a good quote does not need pages of explanations, but it can work as a separate entity. A quote that does need a lot of explaining and context just is not a good quote at all.</p> <p><em>(This piece was refurbished on 3rd of January, 2012)</em></p> <p><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-2msT6YwXYbk/T_CSbAc6JcI/AAAAAAAAG-g/-nGOohaOdok/w604-h466-k/Jaakko_Wallenius.jpg" alt="Jaakko Wallenius at Raasepori castle" title="Jaakko Wallenius at Raasepori castle"></p> <p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaakko_Wallenius">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaakko_Wallenius</a><br> "Jaakko Wallenius (b. 30.January 1958 Hämeenlinna) is a Finnish writer and journalist."</p> <p>I am in Facebook at:<br> <a href="http://www.facebook.com/jaskaw">http://www.facebook.com/jaskaw</a></p> <p> </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/07/01/jaakko-wallenius-on-understanding-quotes-14013105/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p> http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/07/01/jaakko-wallenius-on-understanding-quotes-14013105/Sun, 01 Jul 2012 20:19:48 +0200 <p><img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-p5e5vMkBpa8/UOSbaAgd46I/AAAAAAAAP8U/u0-vcc4e4OM/s576/skidelsky_money.JPG" alt="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius with Creative Commons 2.0 " title="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius with Creative Commons 2.0"></p> <blockquote><p><strong>Making money cannot be an end in itself - at least for anyone not suffering from acute mental disorder. To say that my purpose in life is to make more and more money is like saying that my aim in eating is to get fatter and fatter. And what is true of individuals is also true of societies. Making money cannot be the permanent business of humanity, for the simple reason that there is nothing to do with money except spend it. And we cannot just go on spending. There will come a point when we will be satiated or disgusted or both. Or will we?"</strong></p> <p><em>- Edward and Robert Skidelsky in "How Much Is Enough? Money and the Good Life" (2012)</em></p></blockquote> <p><strong>Some of my own thoughts on the subject: </strong></p> <p>What happens after you have a lot of nice things already? Do you just want bigger, faster, or shinier nice things? Our economy does not simply work without consumption. However, just maybe we do not need more of the same, but just smarter consumption. Perhaps we do not need more cheaply mass-produced things from faraway countries. Perhaps we need more consumption of local services and things made by local producers.<br> When this happens our money will create more well-being in our own neighborhood. Then it will not just add the profits of the multinational conglomerates. These all too often often destroy the environment and exploit defenseless workforce in faraway countries.</p> <p>I think that at this point I need to mention that I gave my own car away last winter. This did happen when I was not able to drive a car because of my then current serious illness. I did not think that I would not need a car anymore as I was promised just a few days to live at the darkest point. However, I did recover against all odds. With time, I found out that I will need a car again to get around. The more so as I was still too weak to walk to the nearest bus stop a kilometer away.<br> However, because of my illness, my economy was in bad shape and I could not even borrow much money for a new car. Therefore, I just had to find the cheapest car in town that would be of least trouble. I found a 10-year old little 1.0-liter odd-looking and the odd-colored thing, but which was in an extremely good shape for its age.</p> <p>Now I have a much smaller, less powerful and overall much less macho car than its predecessor was. However, I am extremely happy with it. My new car is really snappy, has good proportion and uses much less gasoline than the old one. Overall, it is a colorful and bright little thing. I just love it more day by day, when the old much more mainstream vehicle did not give me any such emotional feedback.<br> The moral of the story is that you do not always need faster, shinier, and more macho things to be happier. One needs stuff that does really fulfill one's current needs. The things that fill them just might be slower, less shiny and less macho...</p> <blockquote><p><strong>We have used our unprecedented freedoms … not to agitate for justice, for redistribution, for the defense of our common interests, but to pursue the dopamine hits triggered by the purchase of products we do not need."</strong></p> <p><em> - George Monbiot</em></p></blockquote> <p><img src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-sleKX-CUDG8/T-3kQUhRnnI/AAAAAAAAG6Y/nd6i2BnomEA/s512/edward_and_robert.JPG" alt="Edward and Robert Skidelsky" title="Edward and Robert Skidelsky"></p> <p><a href="http://socialsciences.exeter.ac.uk/sociology/staff/skidelsky/">http://socialsciences.exeter.ac.uk/sociology/staff/skidelsky/</a></p> <p><a href="http://www.skidelskyr.com/">http://www.skidelskyr.com/</a></p> <p> </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/06/29/edward-skidelsky-on-making-money-as-an-end-in-itself-14000984/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p> http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/06/29/edward-skidelsky-on-making-money-as-an-end-in-itself-14000984/Fri, 29 Jun 2012 19:17:58 +0200 <p><img src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-ZD67XvSl3-c/UOMkVuOCwPI/AAAAAAAAP7U/oOxF2PoAqTU/s526/russell_capitalism.JPG" alt="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius with Creative Commons 2.0" title="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius with Creative Commons 2.0"></p> <blockquote><p><strong>Advocates of capitalism like to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.”</strong></p> <p><em>Bertrand Russell in ”Sceptical Essays” (1928)</em></p></blockquote> <p><strong>My own ideas on some of the issues raised by the quote:</strong></p> <p>I must hasten to point out that Bertrand Russell never did advocate the Soviet model of communism or the end of private ownership. He was always a keen follower of western, democratic form of social reform. His aim was to mend capitalism so that more and more people could find their lives tolerable.<br> Bertrand Russell was from a stoutly aristocratic lineage. However, in a very early stage of his life he found out that open greed of capitalism must be restrained. His aim was reform capitalism so that the fruits of labor would not benefit only selected few, not to overthrow it.</p> <p>Happily, the western democratic socialist movement were in very many countries successful in their fight for more just division of the fruits of capitalism. The western societies did with time become much more livable and safer for also the paid employees.<br> However, there is a major new threat emerging in the form of the ultra-capitalist ideologies. They are made even more dangerous by the sad situation where many people fail to understand that ultra-capitalist ideas like Randian “philosophy” or Libertarianism are just theories like communism is.</p> <p>Many people do not see that what is presented as a 'scientific economic theory' can be part of an ideology. These ideologies have been created to protect the interests of the owning class and most of all to give moral justification to open greed.<br> There are many academics who forward these ideas, as well there are very many Christian academics forwarding Christian ideology. These builders of ultra-capitalist ideology have in common the habit of denying the central role of labor and socialist movements in building up the western standard of living. In fact, they often seem to be not interested in general standard of living at all, but just about creating maximally benevolent environment for capitalism.</p> <p>For ideological reasons, they always absolutely deny the central role of the labor movement in the modern economy. They commonly also deny that without labor movement the rise of productivity would not have necessarily risen living standards of the workers, but only for the owners. They can for example, deny that the rise in cost of labor has been a central factor reason in the rise of productivity also. This did happen because the rise in the cost of labor has made it more worthwhile to invest in new work-saving machines.<br> I well know that very many people think that economic theories would be somehow free of ideology. This has happened mainly because creating this illusion has been a major aim of the academic builders of these ideas. There is nothing wrong in having an ideology. However, I see a problem in denying its existence and claiming that it is ‘science’. This is a very similar method that was used by the communists also when they claimed that Marxism-Leninism was a ‘science’.</p> <p>A very central problem with all ultra-capitalist ideologies is that they take just one aspect of production and make the whole society serve that end. This happens even if it will benefit just one part of the society or the owning class and its immediate high-salaried employees.<br> When you take the interests and needs of the whole society as your aim, all ultra-capitalist ideologies do fall flat on their face. Such an ideology can never aid the lot of the sick, the weak, the retired or the mentally disabled. It is an ideology for the strong, the able, but also for people with inherited wealth, even if they are unable to do anything real by themselves.</p> <p><em>(This piece was refurbished on 1st of January, 2012)</em></p> <p>Bertrand Russell is in Facebook at:<br> <a href="http://facebook.com/russellbertie">http://facebook.com/russellbertie</a></p> <p><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/ff/Bust_Of_Bertrand_Russell-Red_Lion_Square-London.jpg/220px-Bust_Of_Bertrand_Russell-Red_Lion_Square-London.jpg" alt="Bust of Bertrand Russell in Red-Lion-Square, London. -Wikipedia" title="Bust of Bertrand Russell in Red-Lion-Square, London. -Wikipedia"></p> <p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell</a><br> "Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic."</p> <p> </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/06/26/advocates-of-capitalism-like-to-appeal-to-the-sacred-principles-13950328/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p> http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/06/26/advocates-of-capitalism-like-to-appeal-to-the-sacred-principles-13950328/Tue, 26 Jun 2012 21:52:56 +0200 <p><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-g_XhqOt6ngg/UOFeIRNsbhI/AAAAAAAAP6Q/iSL9ggBbTRk/s512/johnson_judgment.JPG" alt="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius & Creative Commons" title="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius & Creative Commons"></p> <blockquote><p><strong>Sir, as a man advances in life, he gets what is better than admiration, — judgement, to estimate things at their true value."</strong></p> <p><em>- Samuel Johnson, reported in James Boswell: "The Life of Samuel Johnson" (1791)</em></p></blockquote> <p><strong>My own ideas on the issue:</strong></p> <p>In the world of ideas, the hardest part can be to convince yourself that you have contributed something worthwhile. However, before you can convince yourself, you will have a hard time convincing anybody else. We just are extremely dependent of the judgment of others. However, with age the dependence on the acceptance of others may diminish, even if all people do not undergo this kind of change.<br> The big thing is to understand that you can never please everybody. Sometimes the ire of people who dogmatically oppose your ideas can be the best confirmation of their validity.</p> <p>However, we are just humans. The idea that all people cannot ever accept our ideas is difficult to implement in practice, even if we can well understand it in theory. Criticism will always hurt. This is true even if we can understand on a rational level from where it is coming fro.</p> <p><em>(This piece was refurbished on 31th of October, 2012)</em></p> <p><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/20/Samuel_Johnson_by_Joshua_Reynolds.jpg/220px-Samuel_Johnson_by_Joshua_Reynolds.jpg" alt="Samuel Johnson - Wikipedia" title="Samuel Johnson - Wikipedia"></p> <p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Johnson">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Johnson</a><br> "Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 [O.S. 7 September] – 13 December 1784), often referred to as Dr Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. Johnson has been described as "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history". He is also the subject of "the most famous single work of biographical art in the whole of literature": James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson."</p> <p> </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/06/19/samuel-johnson-on-judgment-13900421/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p> http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/06/19/samuel-johnson-on-judgment-13900421/Tue, 19 Jun 2012 11:40:13 +0200 <p><img src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-qcjjUF3h_ss/UODLIpCZdrI/AAAAAAAAP44/Sg_zIImjXco/s640/russell_passions.JPG" alt="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius with Creative Commons 2.0" title="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius with Creative Commons 2.0"></p> <blockquote><p><strong>Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching the very verge of despair..Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people..the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer. This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.</strong></p> <p><em>Bertrand Russell in "The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell" (1967), Prologue: "What I Have Lived For"</em></p></blockquote> <p><strong>My own thoughts on the quote:</strong></p> <p>Even Bertrand Russell would certainly have approved the idea that a part of human spirit does survive in the writings of that person. An honest book is always a window to the mind of another person. In fact, it does not matter if that person is living or dead.</p> <p>A part of a person's mind will be preserved in his or her writings. This is true as long as there are people who are able to decipher the symbols that were used to convey these thoughts and if these writings do survive in a readable form. In this sense, a person really can achieve a certain level of immortality.</p> <p>However, one needs to produce words that will interest also coming generations and which are not commentary of current affairs. In this respect, Bertrand Russell has certainly achieved a high degree of immortality, I think.</p> <p><em>Bertrand Russell is in Facebook at:<br> <a href="http://www.facebook.com/russellbertie">http://www.facebook.com/russellbertie</a></em></p> <p><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/ff/Bust_Of_Bertrand_Russell-Red_Lion_Square-London.jpg/220px-Bust_Of_Bertrand_Russell-Red_Lion_Square-London.jpg" alt="Bertrand Russell - Wikipedia" title="Bertrand Russell - Wikipedia"></p> <p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_russell">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_russell</a><br> "Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS[1] (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. His work has had a considerable influence on logic, mathematics, set theory, linguistics, computer science (see type theory and type system), and philosophy, especially philosophy of language, epistemology, and metaphysics. Russell was a prominent anti-war activist; he championed anti-imperialism and went to prison for his pacifism during World War I. Later, he campaigned against Adolf Hitler, then criticised Stalinist totalitarianism, attacked the United States of America's involvement in the Vietnam War, and was an outspoken proponent of nuclear disarmament. In 1950 Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought."</p> <p> </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/06/19/bertrand-russell-on-the-passions-governing-his-life-13899723/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p> http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/06/19/bertrand-russell-on-the-passions-governing-his-life-13899723/Tue, 19 Jun 2012 09:55:45 +0200 <p><img src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-uLxoor7dTQM/UDnde_x7KjI/AAAAAAAAKnA/lfvErKX4CSg/s714/aiken_ideas.JPG" alt="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius with Creative Commons 2.0" title="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius with Creative Commons 2.0"></p> <blockquote><p><strong>Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats." </strong></p> <p><em>- Howard H. Aiken, as quoted in Portraits in Silicon (1987) by Robert Slater</em></p></blockquote> <p><strong>Some of my own recent thoughts on the issue of ideas:</strong></p> <p>Radically new ideas are perhaps the most difficult things to sell. One of the main reasons for this can be that when one just goes along with the old ideas one needs not know precisely what they are and what they really mean. To accept a radically new idea one needs know the field in question well. Many people just may have a nagging fear that they do not know enough to step out of the crowd.<br> On the other hand, we tend to think that other people know more than we. Most people also tend to hide their lack of knowledge as well as they can. That can create a situation where most people think that others know more than they. Consequently, by just going in with the crowd people can best hide away their perceived lack of knowledge that can, in fact, be quite illusory.</p> <p>However, one of the most personally liberating things a person can say is: "I do not know". Only after this moment occurs one is able to say this one can really learn from others. It is very, very difficult.<br> However, personally  I well remember the feeling of liberation which I did feel after I realized that a person cannot know everything. After that, I could concentrate just on the things that felt important to me personally. Before that, I had just accumulated knowledge. However, now I could put it also into better use as a base for ideas of my own.<br> There perhaps are no shortcuts for reaching this point. It can be that this stage can be reached just by living a life that shows you the limits but also the strong points in your knowledge.</p> <p><em>(This piece was refurbished on 30th of December, 2012)</em></p> <p><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c9/Aiken.jpeg/180px-Aiken.jpeg" alt="Howard H. Aiken - Wikipedia" title="Howard H. Aiken - Wikipedia"></p> <p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_H._Aiken">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_H._Aiken</a><br> "Howard Hathaway Aiken (March 8, 1900 – March 14, 1973) was a pioneer in computing, being the original conceptual designer behind IBM's Harvard Mark I computer."</p> <p> </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/06/16/howard-h-aiken-on-stealing-ideas-13883977/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p> http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/06/16/howard-h-aiken-on-stealing-ideas-13883977/Sat, 16 Jun 2012 11:13:46 +0200 <p><img src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-kL-f6TWj0XU/UDnd28s_fMI/AAAAAAAAKyI/_eI5jEObkRg/s691/leguin_ideas.JPG" alt="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius with Creative Commons 2.0" title="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius with Creative Commons 2.0"></p> <blockquote><p><strong>"It is of the nature of idea to be communicated: written, spoken, done. The idea is like grass. It craves light, likes crowds, thrives on crossbreeding, grows better for being stepped on."</strong></p> <p><em>- Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed (1974), Ch. 3</em></p></blockquote> <p><strong>Some of my own thoughts on the subject:</strong></p> <p>There is a crucial difference between physical attack and a mental aggression. You normally just must respond to a physical attack, but a mental aggression is often best foiled by just ignoring it.<br> In fact, all too often you will gain absolutely nothing if you are drawn into a meaningless battle of words with a troll. A troll likes nothing more than make other people angry. If they get no response, they will just fade away. A troll lives and thrives on the anger of others.</p> <p>However, the chance to have a honest discussion with a person who has a different set of ideas from you is a completely different matter altogether. It is a chance that one just must never miss. The chance of testing your ideas with a different mind is an extremely valuable asset if you ever want to develop your ideas further.<br> The difficulty, of course, is how to see when the other party is just out to search and destroy and when he is out to test his or her own ideas.</p> <p><em>(This piece was refurbished on 30th of October, 2012)</em></p> <p><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/53/UrsulaLeGuin.01.jpg/220px-UrsulaLeGuin.01.jpg" alt="Ursula K. Le Guin - Wikipedia" title="Ursula K. Le Guin - Wikipedia"></p> <p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_K._Le_Guin">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_K._Le_Guin</a></p> <p>"Ursula Kroeber Le Guin (born October 21, 1929) is an American author of novels, children's books, and short stories, mainly in the genres of fantasy and science fiction. She has also written poetry and essays. First published in the 1960s, her work explores alternative imaginings of sexuality, religion, politics, anarchism, ethnography, and gender. She is influenced by central figures of Western literature, including feminist writers like Virginia Woolf, and also by modern fantasy and science fiction writers, Norse mythology, and books from the Eastern tradition such as the Tao Te Ching. She has won various awards, including the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and World Fantasy Award multiple times."</p> <p> </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/06/14/ursula-k-le-guin-on-the-nature-of-ideas-13872599/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p> http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/06/14/ursula-k-le-guin-on-the-nature-of-ideas-13872599/Thu, 14 Jun 2012 13:16:46 +0200 <p><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-eLyXY0_oVMQ/UDndxggvOYI/AAAAAAAAKvo/y3YUFDCBiL0/s733/herbert_life.JPG" alt="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius with Creative Commons 2.0" title="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius with Creative Commons 2.0"></p> <blockquote><p><strong>"If you need something to worship, then worship life — all life, every last crawling bit of it! We're all in this beauty together!"</strong></p> <p><em>- Frank Herbert in "Dune Messiah" (1969)</em></p></blockquote> <p><strong>My own ideas on the issue:</strong></p> <p>Some people seem to think that animals are just made by humans to look like humans when we say that an animal is jealous or shy or reclusive. There is a fundamental misconception here. We share at least all the very basic ones of our basic emotions with other animals.<br> Emotions are not something that humans need to teach to animals. Emotions are things that are shared by all animals that have passed beyond certain evolutionary level. We have these feelings and emotions because we are animals and not the other way around.</p> <p>Animals do have emotions. The more evolved an animal is the more like human emotions these emotions tend to be. In the special case of dogs, there has been for many thousands of years a strong evolutionary pressure of selecting into breeding of those dogs who best in understanding human motions.<br> However, the fact that a dog can so well interpret human emotions is based on the simple fact it has quite similar basic emotions itself. The intensive breeding has just intensified this ability and now dog is a breed of animals that can read and understand human emotions better than any other breed of animals, I think.</p> <p>The extremely strong human cultural evolution that originated from the invention of speech has molded how humans handle, show and control their emotions to a degree that is unknown in other species of animals.<br> However, the very basic emotions have been developed by evolution during the hundreds of millions of years of development that has produced the species of animals that roam at the face of the earth at this moment.</p> <p>All emotions do serve a species in a very basic level. They help us cope with wild variety of different situations. They also keep us doing different things that will benefit us, our society and sometimes even the whole species. Most of all in the long run they can drive us into doing things that emotionless animals would not even dream of doing.<br> Emotions are sometimes seen as a disgusting animal-like force in otherwise rational humans. However, there is a very rational reason for the existence of every single emotion that we have.</p> <p>A major problem is that emotions are also misused in ways that were unimaginable before the invention of language. Emotions are often used to make people do irrational things. This is, however, not a problem with emotions, but with the people who knowingly misuse them.</p> <p><em>(This piece was refurbished on 29th of December, 2012)<br> </em></p> <p><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/19/FrankHerbert1978-cropped.jpg/150px-FrankHerbert1978-cropped.jpg" alt="Frank Herbert - Wikipedia" title="Frank Herbert - Wikipedia"></p> <p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_herbert">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_herbert</a><br> "Franklin Patrick Herbert, Jr. (October 8, 1920 – February 11, 1986) was a critically acclaimed and commercially successful American science fiction author. Though also a short story author, he is best known for his novels,most notably Dune and its five sequels. The Dune saga, set in the distant future and taking place over millennia, deals with themes such as human survival and evolution, ecology, and the intersection of religion, politics and power. Dune itself is the "best-selling science fiction novel of all time," and the series is widely considered to be among the classics in the genre."</p> <p> </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/06/10/frank-herbert-on-worshiping-life-13839916/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p> http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/06/10/frank-herbert-on-worshiping-life-13839916/Sun, 10 Jun 2012 22:04:15 +0200 <p><img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-3yWNTg6_6EY/UDneTQrD8XI/AAAAAAAAK_s/0cRx6L4IxYk/s512/vonnegut_decency.JPG" alt="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius with Creative Commons" title="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius with Creative Commons"></p> <blockquote><p><strong>"I am a humanist, which mean, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without any expectation of rewards or punishments after I'm dead. My German-American ancestors, the earliest of whom settled in our Middle West about the time of our Civil War, called themselves "Freethinkers," which is the same sort of thing. My great grandfather Clemens Vonnegut wrote, for example, "If what Jesus said was good, what can it matter whether he was God or not?"</strong></p> <p><em>- Kurt Vonnegut, in God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian (1999)</em></p></blockquote> <p><strong>Some of my own recent ideas on humanism:<br> </strong></p> <p>In an analogy from the world of computers, humanism is an antivirus-program. It is not an operating system like religions, who want to decide what other programs are allowed into the system. However, humanism will check and prevent hate-inducing, fear-mongering and abuse-inducing programs (ideas) from taking over the system. A humanist is free to use any other programs (ideas) that he on she sees fit.<br> Humanism does not diminish a person’s freedom of choice. Accepting a humanistic basic attitude will, however, normally make a person reject violence and coercion as tools for advancing his or her personal interest or ideas.</p> <p>The basic ideas of humanism are a deeply buried respect for all humans and the idea of striving for a basic human equality. This is done in full knowledge of the fact that not all things that humans do deserve respect. Humans have also never been and will never be fully equal.<br> A humanist just does think that acting humanely also towards those that we do not like or respect is our duty as humans. A true humanist will think that the cost of treating all people humanely will be paid back with dividends right here on Earth. </p> <p><em>(This piece refurbished on 29th of October, 2012)</em></p> <p>Kurt Vonnegut is in Facebook at:<br> <a href="http://www.facebook.com/vonnegutwriter">http://www.facebook.com/vonnegutwriter</a></p> <p><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c8/Kurt_Vonnegut_at_CWRU.jpg" alt="Kurt Vonnegut - Wikipedia" title="Kurt Vonnegut - Wikipedia"></p> <p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Vonnegut">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Vonnegut</a><br> "Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. ( /ˈvɒnɨɡət/; November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007) was a 20th-century American writer. His works such as Cat's Cradle (1963), Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), and Breakfast of Champions (1973) blend satire, gallows humor, and science fiction. As a citizen he was a lifelong supporter of the American Civil Liberties Union and a critical leftist intellectual. He was known for his humanist beliefs and was honorary president of the American Humanist Association."</p> <p> </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/06/09/kurt-vonnegut-on-behaving-decently-13835235/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p> http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/06/09/kurt-vonnegut-on-behaving-decently-13835235/Sat, 09 Jun 2012 17:31:13 +0200 <p><img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-PrRquKEBDNY/UDndjbMzclI/AAAAAAAAKpM/QOny7sCFJao/s707/blades_ignorance.JPG" alt="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius with Creative Commons 2.0" title="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius with Creative Commons 2.0"></p> <blockquote><p><strong>I think we risk becoming the best informed society that has ever died of ignorance.”</strong></p> <p><em>- Rubén Blades, in a conference at Harvard University (1993)</em></p></blockquote> <p><strong>Some of my own thoughts on the subject:</strong></p> <p>Human society is like a deep sea. Just a tiny part of it is visible on the surface. Even when it is high winds and massive waves at the top, there can be great calm all over in the deep recesses of this sea.<br> As in a sea the winds on the surface can go to one direction while the deep currents deep under go unhindered to another direction. They can have flown for centuries quite unshaken by the changes of the winds on the surface.</p> <p>As in research of seas is done from mainly from the surface, so is the research of society. The direction of the prevailing winds is well known and often even predictable, but we still know surprisingly little of the deep currents. However, these currents do in the end keep the whole system going century after century.<br> These deep currents change so slowly that their changes can be passed over quite unnoticed. However, when they do break to the surface, they can have a devastating effect. </p> <p>A major problem is that the deepest changes are too slow to be noticed in the endless stream of information that does drown us daily. This onslaught can make us gasp for air after a day of being bombarded by violent things that are news because they so often just are so rare, not because they would be in any way important to us personally.<br> In this endless bombardment, it is very difficult to pause and look around to search for the really important things. We may not even notice how the way we see other humans does change in this bombardment of meaningless violence.</p> <p>This thought comes to my mind sometimes: Who benefits from the fact that we are losing our trust and faith in other humans when we are subjected to constant and endless stream of violent images. This often happens even if in our immediate neighborhood there is nothing to be really afraid of.<br> I do not have any answers as I am not a follower of conspiracy theories. I’m just afraid that humankind has a bad record of going carried away with the trade winds as long as the going is good. Humans can just go on forever without ever realizing what they are doing to themselves.</p> <p><em>(This piece was refurbished on 28th of December, 2012)</em></p> <p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruben_Blades">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruben_Blades</a><br> "Rubén Blades Bellido de Luna (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈruβen ˈbleðz] born July 16, 1948) is a Panamanian salsa singer, songwriter, actor, Latin jazz musician, and activist. He holds a law degree from the University of Panama and a master's in international law from Harvard University. He managed to attract 18% of the vote in his attempt to win the Panamanian presidency in 1994. In September 2004, he was appointed minister of tourism by Panamanian president Martín Torrijos for a five-year term."</p> <p><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3c/RubenBladesCT2002b.jpg/220px-RubenBladesCT2002b.jpg" alt="Ruben Blades - Wikipedia" title="Ruben Blades - Wikipedia"></p> <p> </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/06/08/ruben-blades-on-dying-of-ignorance-13831073/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p> http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/06/08/ruben-blades-on-dying-of-ignorance-13831073/Fri, 08 Jun 2012 21:01:23 +0200 <p><img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-e9mXasJzyTk/UDneJ-ztY3I/AAAAAAAAK7I/CxO0OGQZQm8/s749/russell_thinking.JPG" alt="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius with Creative Commons 2.0" title="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius with Creative Commons 2.0"></p> <blockquote><p><strong>We all have a tendency to think that the world must conform to our prejudices. The opposite view involves some effort of thought, and most people would die sooner than think — in fact they do so." </strong></p> <p><em>- Bertrand Russell in "The ABC of Relativity" (1925), p. 166</em></p></blockquote> <p><strong>My own thoughts on the issue:</strong></p> <p>The biological and most of all cultural evolution of humans has created a bewilderingly complex and varied subject. No single one even of the greatest existing explanations can wholly explain why humans and human societies are what they are. Most of all no single explanation can wholly explain why humans will want humans and human societies to be in a certain way.<br> A very basic thing is that what humans are and what they would want to be are two different questions altogether. We just so easily see things be as we would so much want them to be. Making us realize this will just make us angry.</p> <p>The world that would be as would like it to be just is so often much more to our liking than the world as it is. So often, it would all too painful to give up the illusion that we have nurtured and cherished often for a very long time. Therefore, we keep constantly finding support for our own illusions and rejecting all contrasting evidence.<br> The other big problem with humans is that we seem to have an inner need to gain some kind absolute knowledge. We just cannot accept the fact such a thing just do not exist in very many things.</p> <p>An unpleasant fact is that we so often have big trouble living with uncertainty. We easily accept explanations that seem to offer great certainty on the surface, but so often are just one way for looking at things.<br> There can be fine, forceful, and beautiful explanations. However, very often other explanations can offer more but different insight to the same issue when it is just seen from a bit different angle.</p> <p>We (and this group naturally include the writer of this piece)just do not have the nerve to accept the simple fact there just is no single ultimate answer to even most of the complex question that can bother us. We all are unable for some degree to face the fact that most questions that concern the nature and development of humans and human societies are bound to be extremely complex. With high probability they will always remain without a single, definite, final answer, when things do also continue to change and evolve.<br> There just perhaps never will be a single answer that will explain the big questions wholly. This is an extremely difficult thing to accept. We all are just humans and as humans we will quite inevitably fall in love with beautiful and final-sounding explanations.</p> <p><em>(This piece was refurbished on 27th of December, 2012)</em></p> <p>Bertrand Russell is in Facebook at:<br> <a href="http://www.facebook.com/russellbertie">http://www.facebook.com/russellbertie</a></p> <p><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/ff/Bust_Of_Bertrand_Russell-Red_Lion_Square-London.jpg/220px-Bust_Of_Bertrand_Russell-Red_Lion_Square-London.jpg" alt="A statue of Bertrand Russell in London - Wikipedia" title="A statue of Bertrand Russell in London - Wikipedia"></p> <p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_russell">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_russell</a><br> "Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. He is considered one of the founders of analytic philosophy along with his predecessor Gottlob Frege and his friend Ludwig Wittgenstein, and is widely held to be one of the 20th century's premier logicians. Russell was a prominent anti-war activist; he championed anti-imperialism and went to prison for his pacifism during World War I. Later, he campaigned against Adolf Hitler, then criticised Stalinist totalitarianism, attacked the United States of America's involvement in the Vietnam War, and was an outspoken proponent of nuclear disarmament."</p> <p> </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/06/08/bertrand-russell-on-prejudices-and-thinking-13827390/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p> http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/06/08/bertrand-russell-on-prejudices-and-thinking-13827390/Fri, 08 Jun 2012 10:31:49 +0200 <p><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-hcuAFJ8z9JI/UDneNoj_KaI/AAAAAAAAK8w/mXfKV7qOBzg/s720/schopenhauer_will.JPG" alt="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius with Creative Commons 2.0" title="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius with Creative Commons 2.0"></p> <blockquote><p><strong>"Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.”</strong></p> <p><em>- Arthur Schopenhauer in "On The Freedom Of The Will" (1839)</em></p></blockquote> <p><strong>My own ideas on the quote:</strong></p> <p>I personally understand this marvelous sentence by Arthur Schopenhauer as explaining that we have a free will to a limited degree. We are driven but also restrained by our instincts. However, we are guided most of all by the existing customs and codes of morality that are current in our part of society.<br> These customs and codes of morality that will tie down an individual free will need not be the ruling ones. An ethnic, political or religious minority does can create an even more binding and even suffocating framework of allowed and forbidden actions than any ruling class.</p> <p>We are normally really free to choose only the things which are available within the framework that is presented to us by accidents of birth. It really depends on your definition of 'free' when you think that somebody has a free will or not on a given situation. There just is no absolute truth for even this problem.<br> A person can have a definite freedom of will in some question and issues and lesser or no freedom of action in some others at the same time. I have a little string-theory of my own that is based on the idea that we have countless of little mental "strings". They are attached constantly to every individual when they live their lives. Some new ones will add up. Some others will be lost during the whole duration of our lives.</p> <p>These invisible strings may pull the person to also different directions at the same time. However, the sum of the forces of these "strings" largely decides what we will decide to want as Arthur Schopenhauer says. In the end, it all boils down to the question of what we want to 'will' and from where do these ideas come from.</p> <p>On the other hand, philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote in his 'Meditations' this:</p> <blockquote><p><strong>The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it."</strong></p></blockquote> <p>We can break free from some of the models of thought that will always try to tie down our thinking. As humans are most of all social animals no person will ever have a completely free will, even if a person can create even a quite perfect illusion of having one.<br> We can still at least strive for more intellectual freedom. However, this can happen only after we understand the limits for exercising free will that being part of a human society will always set.</p> <p><em>(This piece was refurbished on 26th of December, 2012)</em></p> <p><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6b/Arthur_Schopenhauer_Portrait_by_Ludwig_Sigismund_Ruhl_1815.jpeg/220px-Arthur_Schopenhauer_Portrait_by_Ludwig_Sigismund_Ruhl_1815.jpeg" alt="Arthur Schopenhauer - Wikipedia" title="Arthur Schopenhauer - Wikipedia"></p> <p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schopenhauer">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schopenhauer</a></p> <p>"Arthur Schopenhauer (22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher known for his pessimism and philosophical clarity. At age 25, he published his doctoral dissertation, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which examined the four separate manifestations of reason in the phenomenal world. Schopenhauer's most influential work, The World as Will and Representation, claimed that the world is fundamentally what humans recognize in themselves as their will. His analysis of will led him to the conclusion that emotional, physical, and sexual desires can never be fully satisfied."</p> <p> </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/06/05/arthur-schopenhauer-on-free-will-13811785/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p> http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/06/05/arthur-schopenhauer-on-free-will-13811785/Tue, 05 Jun 2012 22:57:21 +0200 <p><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-c5Dd01as_hg/UNnxNYiwPwI/AAAAAAAAPqw/u75exSpCwA8/s732/aurelius_doing.JPG" alt="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius with Creative Commons 2.0" title="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius with Creative Commons 2.0"></p> <blockquote><p><strong>The happiness and unhappiness of the rational, social animal depends, not on what he feels but on what he does; just as his virtue and vice consist not in feeling but in doing.<br> </strong></p> <p><em>- Marcus Aurelius in "Meditations"</em></p></blockquote> <p><strong>Some of my own ideas on the subject of happiness.</strong></p> <p>Unhappiness is normally a result of a conflict between expectations and reality. To achieve happiness one needs to adjust either one's expectations or the reality. One's choice normally depends on which method is easiest to accomplish in any particular case.<br> However, if one chooses not to even try anything the state of unhappiness will all too often just continue unresolved.</p> <p>By adjusting reality I mean things like chancing your job, taking up an interesting hobby or in general things and actions that will change things in one's life or environment environment or in other words reality. Naturally one needs to spot the thing that can make one unhappy and which one can change by oneself. There are naturally a lot of things that one simply cannot change.<br> There are always these two options. A very good option is always to lower one's expectations when they show to be too hard to realize. This can happen if one feels oneself unhappy,for example, because one can't travel to faraway places, buy a bigger house or buy a more expensive car.</p> <p><em>(This piece was refurbished on 25th of December, 2012)</em></p> <p>Marcus Aurelius also in Facebook at:<br> <a href="http://www.facebook.com/aureliusphilosopher">http://www.facebook.com/aureliusphilosopher</a></p> <p><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3f/Marcus_Aurelius_Glyptothek_Munich.jpg/220px-Marcus_Aurelius_Glyptothek_Munich.jpg" alt="Marcus Aurelius - Wikipedia" title="Marcus Aurelius - Wikipedia"></p> <p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Aurelius">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Aurelius</a><br> "Marcus Aurelius (Latin: Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus (26 April 121 – 17 March 180 AD), was Roman Emperor from 161 to 180 AD. He ruled with Lucius Verus as co-emperor from 161 until Verus' death in 169. He was the last of the "Five Good Emperors", and is also considered one of the most important Stoic philosophers."</p> <p> </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/06/03/marcus-aurelius-on-achieving-happiness-by-doing-13796609/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p> http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/06/03/marcus-aurelius-on-achieving-happiness-by-doing-13796609/Sun, 03 Jun 2012 09:04:46 +0200 <p><img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-XJdaQ0TXbSI/UDnd0UBiA7I/AAAAAAAAKw4/OIHE1ASBWdY/s698/ingersoll_freedom.JPG" alt="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius with Creative Commons 2.0" title="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius with Creative Commons 2.0"></p> <blockquote><p><strong>I am a believer in liberty. That is my religion — to give to every other human being every right that I claim for myself, and I grant to every other human being, not the right — because it is his right — but instead of granting I declare that it is his right, to attack every doctrine that I maintain, to answer every argument that I may urge — in other words, he must have absolute freedom of speech."'</strong></p> <p><em>- Robert G. Ingersoll, at the trial of C.B. Reynolds for blasphemy (May 1887.</p> <p></em></p></blockquote> <p><strong>Some of my own current thoughts on the issue of freedom of thought:</strong></p> <p>A really free person should be able to value ideas and actions on their own real merits. A free person will not do it based only on how new ideas do fit into an ideology one already has. This kind of state is naturally immensely difficult or even impossible to achieve fully.<br> However, at least understanding the dilemma and setting freedom of one's own thought as a real goal can give immense rewards, I think.</p> <p>Every person does have a basic view of how the world should be. However, this view will inevitably change when life goes on. Thankfully, very often a person will see more and more shades of grey also when time passes.<br> A real-world problem is that if you don't fully subscribe to any ideology, you will very easily left out in the cold by followers of all ideologies. So, a real search for a freedom of thought will be a lonely journey.</p> <p>On the other hand, morality is always based on human opinions and needs of the current society and sometimes on even very ancient human opinions. However, this is not the point here. The point is the ability to break free from any ideology that has stored ready-made, pre-programmed standard answers to your own brain.<br> This is extremely difficult task, and a very basic level of response comes always from the gut (or level 1 reasoning according to <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/1846140552/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1338279855&sr=1-1">Daniel Kahneman</a>). However, even noticing how ideologies can affect one's own thinking is a major step forward, given that one wants to evaluate the world as it really is.</p> <p>Naturally, even the grand majority of people do not want to do it. The ready-made ideologies do offer safe-heavens, where one is spared from the heavy task of taking a stand and analyzing things by oneself. This is not a bad thing as such. Life just is too short to find out everything and people do have different kinds of goals in life. Short-cuts do just make ones life so much easier.<br> People who gather around ideologies do also very often initiate real changes in society. Ideologies have immense value as initiators and tools for political and social activity. However, people who are seriously interested in how human societies and the universe do really work need to be aware of the danger of ending up as a mouth-piece for a ready-made ideology.</p> <p><em>(This piece was refurbished on 24th of December, 2012)<br> </em><br> Robert G. Ingersoll is in Facebook at:<br> <a href="http://www.facebook.com/ingersollorator">http://www.facebook.com/ingersollorator</a></p> <p><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/RobertGIngersoll.jpg" alt="Robert G. Ingersoll - Wikipedia" title="Robert G. Ingersoll - Wikipedia"></p> <p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_G._Ingersoll">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_G._Ingersoll</a><br> "Robert Green "Bob" Ingersoll (August 11, 1833 – July 21, 1899) was a Civil War veteran, American political leader, and orator during the Golden Age of Freethought, noted for his broad range of culture and his defense of agnosticism."</p> <p></p> <p> </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/05/28/robert-g-ingersoll-on-the-freedom-of-speech-13761910/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p> http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/05/28/robert-g-ingersoll-on-the-freedom-of-speech-13761910/Mon, 28 May 2012 15:29:46 +0200 <p><img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-YrkJxM_vHwQ/UDneGX721VI/AAAAAAAAK5Q/BI-vTaQpjMY/s590/russell_domanation.JPG" alt="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius with Creative Commons 2.0" title="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius with Creative Commons 2.0"></p> <blockquote><p><strong>For love of domination we must substitute equality; for love of victory we must substitute justice; for brutality we must substitute intelligence; for competition we must substitute co-operation. We must learn to think of the human race as one family."</strong></p> <p><em>- Bertrand Russell in the "New Internationalist Magazine" </em></p></blockquote> <p><strong>My own ideas on the quote:</strong></p> <p>One can only add to this wonderful quote that competition is not the only or even major force that has driven humanity and progress forward especially in the field of science. With whom did Newton or Einstein compete when they did their findings? The answer is: nobody. They were driven by intellectual curiosity and most of all by an inner need to understand and know more.<br> Newton or Einstein were not competing with other people, but with just their former selves. The need to improve one's thinking and mind is not dependent on competition with others. The need and will to improve oneself is, in fact, one of the greatest forces that have driven mankind forward.</p> <p>Pure intellectual curiosity and the need to understand more have been the biggest motivators of all great minds, I think. The possible rewards in the form of money or fame have been secondary in all really big innovations.<br> Of course, small-scale and industry-level innovation can be motivated with monetary rewards also, but it hardly the case that Newton or Einstein would have produced anything bigger or better if they  would have received more money because of their world-changing innovations.</p> <p>Bertrand Russell is in Facebook at:<br> <a href="http://www.facebook.com/russellbertie">http://www.facebook.com/russellbertie</a></p> <p><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9b/Honourable_Bertrand_Russell.jpg/220px-Honourable_Bertrand_Russell.jpg" alt="Bertrand Russell - Wikipedia" title="Bertrand Russell - Wikipedia"></p> <p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_russell">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_russell</a><br> "Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic."</p> <p> </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/05/17/bertrand-russell-on-human-race-as-one-family-13695378/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p> http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/05/17/bertrand-russell-on-human-race-as-one-family-13695378/Thu, 17 May 2012 12:36:53 +0200 <p><img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-16_I0PiyTVk/UDndnvQ1uGI/AAAAAAAAKq8/FuTRQShrflQ/s689/durant_past.JPG" alt="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius with Creative Commons 2.0" title="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius with Creative Commons 2.0"></p> <blockquote><p><strong>"It is a mistake to think that the past is dead. Nothing that has ever happened is quite without influence at this moment. The present is merely the past rolled up and concentrated in this second of time. You, too, are your past; often your face is your autobiography; you are what you are because of what you have been; because of your heredity stretching back into forgotten generations; because of every element of environment that has affected you, every man or woman that has met you, every book that you have read, every experience that you have had; all these are accumulated in your memory, your body, your character, your soul. So with a city, a country, and a race; it is its past, and cannot be understood without it."</strong></p> <p><em>- Will Durant as quoted in "The Gentle Philosopher" (2006) by John Little at the Will Durant Foundation</em></p></blockquote> <p><strong>My own ideas on the quote:</strong></p> <p>One of my biggest sorrows has always been how so many people disregard and disrespect history. All too many people seem to live in on the environment where there is no real past and no future; just the present. The biggest danger here is how this kind of thinking can lead into missing the idea of change.<br> However, if a person is unable to understand change, he easily becomes unable to judge so very many things that do happen around him or her. The most important thing is that if one does not understand that people really do change, a major portion of human resources can be wasted. People can end judging other people on grounds of what they once were, and not on what they really are now.</p> <p>Other thing that really irritates me is how some people dismiss even some first class thinkers and writers because of trivial matters. People do this because some thinkers have at some point of their life thought and written something that later turns out to be foolish or silly.<br> However, a person’s whole lifework does not turn into nothing simply because he or she does something that is at a later time point is deemed as silly or wrong. Often the idea that makes a person susceptible at our eyes has been socially fully acceptable at that time.</p> <p>However, the main point Will Durant does make here is that we are living on a top of an iceberg. We normally just can see the part that is over the water. The real mass of an iceberg is always under water. It can take time and effort to see what is hidden there.<br> We cannot project how the iceberg will behave in the future without knowing the sunken part of it. Similarly, trying to foretell the future without knowing the past is a doomed adventure.</p> <p>Our knowledge has expanded incredibly especially during the last hundred years. The massive influx of new information has had also had negative effects. There are people for whom all this is just too much. One way to avoid being buried under the mass of new information is simply to reject it and its worth.<br> The rise of radical conservatism and radical religiousness can also be seen as reactions to the immense rise of our knowledge. Some people simply tend to see new information also as a threat to traditional values.<br> The requirement to understand immensely complex new ideas and scientific theories can lead really to a backlash, where people just reject new information out of hand. Sticking to the bronze-age religious ideas does make life so much easier for many people. It just does give them a respectable reason to reject the influx of new information.</p> <p><em>(This piece was refurbished on 22th of December, 2012)</p> <p></em></p> <p><img src="http://www.pappasontaxes.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/WillDurant1961.jpg" alt="Will Durant" title="Will Durant"></p> <p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Durant">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Durant</a><br> "William James Durant (November 5, 1885 – November 7, 1981) was a prolific American writer, historian, and philosopher. He is best known for The Story of Civilization, 11 volumes written in collaboration with his wife Ariel Durant and published between 1935 and 1975. He was earlier noted for The Story of Philosophy, written in 1926, which one observer described as "a groundbreaking work that helped to popularize philosophy."</p> <p> </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/05/13/will-durant-on-present-as-merely-the-past-rolled-up-and-concentrated-13673459/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p> http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/05/13/will-durant-on-present-as-merely-the-past-rolled-up-and-concentrated-13673459/Sun, 13 May 2012 22:14:07 +0200 <p><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/--XPvNQ-6ucE/UNSrDDZygdI/AAAAAAAAPmk/1LIlapWa1u4/s720/russell_reason.JPG" alt="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius with Creative Commons 2.0" title="Copyleft: Jaakko J. Wallenius with Creative Commons 2.0"></p> <blockquote><p><strong>If you think that your belief is based upon reason, you will support it by argument, rather then by persecution, and will abandon it if the argument goes against you. But if your belief is based on faith, you will realize that argument is useless, and will therefore resort to force either in the form of persecution or by stunting and distorting the minds of the young in what is called "education". This last is particularly dastardly, since it takes advantage of the defencelessness of immature minds. Unfortunately it is practiced in greater or less degree in the schools of every civilised country.”</strong></p> <p><em>- Bertrand Russell in Human Society in Ethics and Politics (1954)</em></p></blockquote> <p><strong>Some of my own ideas on the quote:<br> </strong><br> One could add to this fantastic quote that to be really able to speak out freely a writer should be able to forget for the brief moment that one has friends or relatives. As soon as one starts to think how somebody else would react to the ideas, a writer is not able to speak fully freely.<br> This kind of self-induced censorship can be  one of the main reasons why people like Bertrand Russell are so rare. It is not because his level of intellect would be impossible to achieve, even if also it is undoubtedly a major challenge.</p> <p>Of course, the fear of what others will think is one of the most important sources for self-censorship for all of us who are not self-employed. The later career as a free writer gave new mental  freedom also to Bertrand Russell.<br> However, even there is always the wishes of the publisher and buyers of books to be considered. If one takes this idea to the utmost, one sees that a really free thinker and writer must be a person who does not write for money or even fame, but who just writes about what he or she really thinks.<br> A fine example of this is Marcus Aurelius, who’s book ‘<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Meditations-Penguin-Classics-Marcus-Aurelius/dp/0140449337/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1336417638&sr=1-1">Meditations</a>' was found among his belongings only after his death.</p> <p>In our own age, getting ones thoughts to many others to read is easier than it has ever been in human history. This is naturally thanks to blogs and all the other channels for self-publishing that are offered by the Internet.<br> Of course, there are masses of rubbish published in the net. However, there is also a lot of great and fresh thinking that we would perhaps never know of, if these new methods for free self-publishing would not be available.</p> <p>It is true, that the subconscious part of our mind will never be completely free. We will undoubtedly take into consideration what others think of us on the subconscious level, even if we try to be as free as possible on a conscious level. However, even trying to be more free will undoubtedly result in freer way of thinking than not even trying.</p> <p><em>(This piece was refurbished on 21th of December, 2012)<br> </em></p> <p>Bertrand Russell is in Facebook at:<br> <a href="http://www.facebook.com/russellbertie">http://www.facebook.com/russellbertie</a></p> <p><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/ff/Bust_Of_Bertrand_Russell-Red_Lion_Square-London.jpg/220px-Bust_Of_Bertrand_Russell-Red_Lion_Square-London.jpg" alt="Bertrand Russell - Wikipedia" title="Bertrand Russell - Wikipedia"></p> <p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_russell">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_russell</a><br> "Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS[1] (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. He is considered one of the founders of analytic philosophy along with his predecessor Gottlob Frege and his protégé Ludwig Wittgenstein. He is widely held to be one of the 20th century's premier logicians. He co-authored, with A. N. Whitehead, Principia Mathematica, an attempt to ground mathematics on logic. His philosophical essay "On Denoting" has been considered a "paradigm of philosophy." His work has had a considerable influence on logic, mathematics, set theory, linguistics, computer science (see type theory and type system), and philosophy, especially philosophy of language, epistemology, and metaphysics."</p> <p> </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/05/07/bertrand-russell-on-reason-faith-and-persecution-13642756/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p> http://thelittlebook.blogs.fi/2012/05/07/bertrand-russell-on-reason-faith-and-persecution-13642756/Mon, 07 May 2012 21:08:30 +0200