A central rule of large-scale organization goes like this: the greater the spryness of a massive enterprise, the more internal communication it takes to support the teamwork of the parts. For example, in all but the simplest plants and animals only 5% of DNA is dedicated to DNA's "real job," manufacturing proteins. The remaining 95% is preoccupied with organization and administration, supervising the maintenance of bodily procedures, or even merely interpreting the corporate rule book "printed" in a string of genes.
In an effective learning machine, the connections between internal elements far outnumber windows to the outside world. Take the cerebral cortex, roughly 80% of whose nerves connect with each other, not with sensory input from the eyes or ears. No wonder in human society individuals spend most of their time communicating with each other, not exploring beasts and plants which could make an untraditional dish. This cabling for "bureaucratic maintenance" has a far greater impact on what we "see" and "hear" than most psychological researchers suspect. For it puts us in the hands of a conformity enforcer whose power and subtlety are almost beyond belief.
In our previous episode we mentioned that the brain's emotional center — the limbic system — decides which swatches of experience to "notice" and store in memory. Memory is the core of what we call reality. Think about it for a second. What do you actually hear and see right now? This article. The walls and furnishings of the room in which you sit. Perhaps some music or some background noise. Yet you know sure as you were born that there's a broader world outside those walls. You are certain that your home, if you are away from it, is still there. You can sense each room, remember where most of your things are placed. You know the building where you work — its colors, layout, and the feel of it. Then there are the companions who enrich your life — family, the folks at the office, neighbors, friends, and even people you are fond of whom you haven't talked to in a year or more — few of whom, if any, are in the room with you. You also know we sit on a planet called the earth, circling an incandescent ball of sun, buried in one of many galaxies. At this instant, reading by yourself, where do these realities reside? Inside your mind. Memory in a very real sense is reality. What the limbic system decides to "see" and store away becomes an interior universe pretending to stretch so far outside that it can brush the edges of infinity.
We are accustomed to use our eyes only with the memory of what other people before us have thought about the object we are looking at. Guy de Maupassant
The limbic system is more than an emotive sifter of the relevant from the inconsequent. It is an intense monitor of others, using its social fixations to retool your perceptions and your memories. In short, the limbic system makes each of us a plug-in of the crowd.
Elizabeth Loftus, one of the world's premier memory researchers, is among the few who know how powerfully the group shapes what we think we know. In the late 1970s, Loftus performed a series of key experiments. In a typical example, she showed college students a moving picture of a traffic accident, then asked after the film, "How fast was the white sports car going when it passed the barn while traveling along the country road." Several days later when witnesses to the film were quizzed about what they'd seen, 17% were sure they'd spied a barn, though there weren't any buildings in the film at all. In a related experiment subjects were shown a collision between a bicycle and an auto driven by a brunette, then afterwards heard questions about the "blond" at the steering wheel. Not only did they remember the non-existent blond vividly, but when they were shown the sequence a second time, they had a hard time believing that it was the same incident they now recalled so graphically. One subject said, "It's really strange because I still have the blond girl's face in my mind and it doesn't correspond to her [pointing to the woman on the videotape]...It was really weird." In visual memory, Loftus concluded that hints leaked to us by fellow humans are more important than the scene whose details actually reach our eyes.
Though it got little public attention until the debates about "recovered" memories of sexual abuse in the early and mid 1990s, this avenue of research had begun at least two generations ago. It was 1956 when Solomon Asch published a classic series of experiments in which he and his colleagues showed cards with lines of different lengths to clusters of their students. Two lines were exactly the same size and two were clearly not — the mavericks stuck out like basketball players at a convention for the vertically handicapped. During a typical experimental run, the researchers asked nine volunteers to claim that two badly mismatched lines were actually the same, and that the actual twin was a total misfit. Now came the nefarious part. The researchers ushered a naive student into the room with the collaborators and gave him the impression that the crowd already there knew just as little as he did about what was going on. Then a white-coated psychologist passed the cards around. One by one he asked the pre-drilled shills to announce out loud which lines were alike. Each dutifully declared that two terribly unlike lines were perfect twins. By the time the scientist prodded the unsuspecting newcomer to pronounce judgement, he usually went along with the bogus acclamation of the crowd. Asch ran the experiment over and over again. When he quizzed his victims of peer pressure, it turned out that many had done far more than simply go along to get along. They had actually shaped their perceptions to agree, not with the reality in front of them, but with the consensus of the multitude.
To polish off the mass delusion, many of those whose perception had NOT been skewed became collaborators in the praise of the emperor's new clothes. Some did it out of self-doubt. They were convinced that the facts their eyes reported were wrong, the herd was right, and that an optical illusion had tricked them into seeing things. Still others realized with total clarity which lines were duplicates, but lacked the nerve to utter an unpopular opinion. Conformity enforcers had rearranged everything from visual processing to open speech, and had revealed a mechanism which can wrap and seal a crowd into a false belief.
Another experiment indicates just how deeply social suggestion can penetrate the neural mesh through which we think we see hard-and-solid facts. Students with normal color vision were shown blue slides. But one stooge in the room declared the slides were green. Only 32% of the students ended up going along with the vocal but misguided proponent of green vision. Later, however, the subjects were taken aside, shown blue-green slides and asked to rate them for blueness or greenness. Even the students who had refused to see green where there was none in the original experiment showed that the insistent greenies in the room had colored their perceptions. They rated the new slides more green than they would have otherwise. More to the point, when asked to describe the color of the afterimage they saw, the subjects often reported it was red-purple — the hue of an afterimage left by the color green. The words of one determined speaker had penetrated the most intimate sanctums of the eye and brain.
But this is just the iceberg's tip. Social experience literally shapes cerebral morphology. It guides the wiring of the brain through the most intensely formative years of human life, determining, among other things, which of the thinking organ's sections will be enlarged, and which will shrink.
An infant's brain is sculpted by the culture into which the child is born. Six-month olds can distinguish or produce every sound in virtually every human language. But within a mere four months, nearly two thirds of this capacity has been sliced away. The slashing of ability is accompanied by ruthless alterations in cerebral tissue. Brain cells are measured against the requirements of the physical and interpersonal environment. The 50% of neurons found useful thrive. The 50% which remain unexercised are literally forced to die. Thus the floor plan underlying the mind is crafted on-site to fit an existing framework of community.
When barely out of the womb, babies are already riveted on a major source of social cues. Newborns to four-month-olds would rather look at faces than at almost anything else. Rensselaer Polytechnic's Linnda Caporael points out what she calls "micro-coordination", in which a baby imitates its mother's facial expression, and the mother, in turn, imitates the baby's. Since psychologist Paul Ekman, as we'll see later in more detail, has demonstrated that the faces we make recast our moods, the baby is learning how to yoke its emotions to those of a social team. Emotions, as we've already seen, craft our vision of reality. There are other signs that babies synchronize their feelings to those of others around them at an astonishingly early age. Empathy — one of those things which bind us together intimately — comes to us early. Children less than a year old who see another child hurt show all the signs of undergoing the same pain.
After all, what is reality anyway? Nothin' but a collective hunch. Lily Tomlin
Cramming themselves further into a common perceptual mold, animal and human infants entrain themselves to see what others see. A four-month old human will swivel to look at an object his parent is staring at. A baby chimp will do the same. By their first birthday, infants have extended their input-gathering to their peers. When they notice that another child's eyes have fixated on an object, they swivel around to focus on that thing themselves. If they don't see what's so interesting, they look back to check the direction of the other child's gaze and make sure they've got it right. When one of the babies points to an item that has caught her fancy, other children look to see just what it is.
One year olds show other ways in which they soak up social pressure. Put a cup and something unfamiliar in front of them and their natural tendency will be to check out the novel object. But repeat the word "cup" and the infant will dutifully rivet its gaze on the drinking vessel. Children go along with the herd even in their tastes in food. when researchers put two-to-five-year olds at a table for several days with other kids who loved the edibles they loathed, the children with the dislike did a 180 degree turn and became zestful eaters of the item they'd formerly disdained. The preference was still going strong weeks after the peer pressure had stopped.
At six, children are obsessed with being accepted by the group and become incredibly sensitive to violations of group norms. They've been gripped by yet another conformity enforcer which structures their perceptions to coincide with those around them.
Even rhythm draws humans together in the subtlest of ways. William Condon of Pennsylvania's Western State Psychiatric Institute analyzed films of adult conversations and noticed a peculiar process at work. Unconsciously, the conversationalists began to coordinate their finger movements, eye blinks and nods. Electroencephalography showed something even more astonishing — their brain waves were moving together. Newborn babies already show this synchrony — in fact, an American infant still fresh from the womb will just as happily match its body movements to the speech of someone speaking Chinese as to someone speaking English. As time proceeds, these unnoticed synchronies draw larger and larger groups together. A student working under the direction of anthropologist Edward T. Hall hid in an abandoned car and filmed children romping in a school playground at lunch hour. Screaming, laughing, running and jumping, each seemed superficially to be doing his or her own thing. But careful analysis revealed that the group was moving to a unified rhythm. One little girl, far more active than the rest, covered the entire schoolyard in her play. Hall and his student realized that without knowing it, she was "the director" and "the orchestrator." Eventually, the researchers found a tune that fit the silent cadence. When they played it and rolled the film, it looked exactly as if each kid were dancing to the melody. But there had been no music playing in the schoolyard. Said Hall, "Without knowing it, they were all moving to a beat they generated themselves." William Condon was led to conclude that it doesn't make sense to view humans as "isolated entities." And Edward Hall took this inference a step further: "an unconscious undercurrent of synchronized movement tied the group together" into what he called a "shared organizational form."
No wonder input from the herd so strongly colors the ways in which we see our world. Students at MIT were given a bio of a guest lecturer. One group's background sheet described the speaker as cold, the other group's handout praised him for his warmth. Both groups sat together as they watched the lecturer give his presentation. But those who'd read the bio saying he was cold treated him as distant and aloof. Those who'd been tipped off that he was warm, rated him as friendly and approachable. In judging a fellow human being, students replaced external fact with input they'd been given socially.
The cues rerouting herd perception come in many forms. Sociologists Janet Lynne Enke and Donna Eder discovered that in gossip, one person opens with a negative comment on someone outside the group. How the rest of the gang goes on the issue depends entirely on the second opinion expressed. If the second prattler agrees that the outsider is disgusting, virtually everyone will chime in with a sound-alike opinion. If, on the other hand, the second commentator objects that the outsider has positive qualities, the group is far less likely to descend like a flock of harpies tearing the stranger's reputation limb from limb.
Crowds of silent voices whisper in our ears, transforming the nature of what we see and hear. The strangest come from choruses of the dead — cultural predecessors whose legacy has a dramatic effect on our vision of reality. Take the impact of gender stereotypes — notions developed over hundreds of generations, contributed to, embellished and passed on by literally billions of people during the long human march through time. In one study, parents were asked to give their impression of their brand new babies. Infant boys and girls are completely indistinguishable aside from the buds of reproductive equipment between their legs. Their size, texture, and the way in which newborns of opposite sex act are the same. Yet parents consistently described girls as softer, smaller and less attentive than boys. The crowds within us resculpt our gender verdicts over and over again. Two groups of experimental subjects were asked to grade the same paper. One was told the author was John McKay. The other was told the paper's writer was Joan McKay. Even female students evaluating the paper gave it higher marks if they thought was from a male.
The ultimate repository of herd influence is language — a device that not only condenses the influence of those with whom we share a common vocabulary, but sums up the perceptual approach of swarms who have passed on. Every word we use carries within it the experience of generation after generation of men, families, tribes, and nations, including their insights, value judgements, ignorance, and spiritual beliefs.
Experiments show that people from all cultures can see subtle differences between colors placed next to each other. But only those societies equipped with names for numerous shades can spot the difference when the two swatches of color are apart. At the turn of the century, The Chukchee had very few terms for visual hues. If you asked them to sort colored yarns, they did a poor job of it. But they had over 24 terms for patterns of reindeer hide, and could classify reindeer far better than the average European scientist, whose vocabulary didn't supply him with appropriate tools.
Physiologist/ornithologist Jared Diamond, in New Guinea, saw to his dismay that despite all his university studies of nature, the natives were far better at distinguishing bird species than he was. Diamond had a set of scientific criteria taught in the zoology classes back home. The natives possessed something better: names for each animal variety, and a set of associations describing characteristics Diamond had never been taught to differentiate — everything from a bird's peculiarities of deportment to its taste when grilled over a flame. Diamond had binoculars and state-of-the-art taxonomy. But the New Guineans laughed at his incompetence. They were equipped with a vocabulary each word of which compacted the experience of armies of bird-hunting ancestors.
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Linnda Caporael points out that even when we see someone perform an action in an unusual way, we rapidly forget the unaccustomed subtleties and reshape our recalled vision so that it corresponds to the patterns dictated by language-borne conventionality. A perfect example comes from 19th century America, where sibling rivalry was present in fact, but according to theory didn't exist. The experts were blind to its presence, as shown by its utter absence from family manuals. In the expert and popular view, all that existed between brothers and sisters was love. But letters from middle class girls exposed unacknowledged cattiness and jealousy.
Sibling rivalry didn't begin to creep from the darkness of perceptual invisibility until 1893, when future Columbia University professor of political and social ethics Felix Adler hinted at the nameless notion in his manual for the Moral Instruction of Children. During the 1920s, the concept of jealousy between boys and girls finally shouldered its way robustly into the repertoire of conscious concepts, appearing in two widely quoted government publications and becoming the focus of a 1926 Child Study Association of America crusade. It was only at this point that experts finally coined the term "sibling rivalry." The formerly non-existent demon was blamed for adult misery, failing marriages, crime, homosexuality, and God knows what all else. By the 1940s, nearly every child-raising guide had extensive sections on this ex-nonentity. Parents writing to major magazines spotted the previously unseeable emotion almost everywhere.
The stored experience language carries can tweak the difference between life and death. It's been reported that one unnamed tribe used to lose starving mothers, fathers and children by the droves each time famine struck, despite the fact that a river flowed near them filled with fish. The problem: they didn't define fish as food. We could easily suffer the same fate if stranded in their wilderness, simply because our culture tells us that a rich source of nutrients is inedible too — insects.
The influence of the mob of those who've gone before and those who stand around us now can be mind-boggling. During the middle ages when universities first arose, a local barber/surgeon was called into the lecture chamber year after year to dissect a corpse for medical students gathered from the width and breadth of Europe. A scholar on a raised platform discoursed about the revelations unfolding before the students' eyes. The learned doctor would invariably describe a network of cranial blood vessels that were nowhere to be found. He'd report a shape for the liver radically different from the form of the organ sliding around on the surgeon's blood-stained hands. He'd verbally portray jaw joints which had no relation to those being displayed on the trestle below him. But he never changed his narrative to fit the actualities. Nor did the students or the surgeon ever stop to correct the book-steeped authority. Why? The scholar was reciting the "facts" as found in volumes over 1,000 years old — the works of the Roman master Galen, founder of "modern" medicine.
Alas, Galen had drawn his conclusions, not from dissecting humans, but from probing the bodies of pigs and monkeys. Pigs and monkeys do have the strange features Galen described. Humans, however, do not. But that didn't stop the medieval professors from seeing what wasn't there. For no more were they ruggedly individualistic observers than are you and I. Their sensory pathways echoed with voices gathered for a millennium, the murmurings of a mob composed of both the living and the dead. The world experts of those days and ours conjured up assemblies of mirage. Like ours, their perceptual faculties were unrecognized extensions of a collective brain.
Fra Howard Bloom's "Reality is a shared hallucination"
Den oprindelig tekst med kildehenvisninger
tirsdag den 8. januar 2008
Statsministerens virkelighedsforvrængende sprogbrug
Statsministerens manipulerende retorik under nytårstalen fortjener et nærmere eftersyn, og en ting jeg specielt bed mærke i, var hans henvisning til den såkaldte aktivistiske udenrigspolitik som havende en udbredelse af frihed som egentlig bagvedliggende rationale. Men hvilken frihed er det mere præcist der er tale om og for hvem? Den postulerede frihedsorienterede udenrigspolitik er nemlig interessant nok sammenfaldende med en lang række tiltag indenrigspolitik, som i stik modsætning til dette, har haft en meget omfattende indskrænkning af den personlige frihed, hvis ikke til formål og så i hvert fald som konsekvens.
Først og fremmest bør man selvfølgelig nævne anti-terrorlovgivningen som giver mulighed for meget vidtgående misbrug med ganske voldsomme konsekvenser. For eksempel kan det nævnes at antiterrorlovgivningen muliggjorde at Dagbladet Arbejderen fik beslaglagt deres it-udstyr af PET fordi man på avisens sider havde dokumenteret foreningen Oprørs appel til at støtte PFLP og FARC , hvilket alt sammen interessant nok foregik efter at statsministeren under karikaturkrisen havde givet udtryk for, at ytringsfriheden var en samfundsbærende søjle, hvorfor medierne selvfølgelig skulle have lov til at virke frit. Dette gjaldt åbenbart ikke Arbejderen.
Dernæst skal det nævnes at logningsbekendtgørelsen ligeledes betyder ganske omfattende kontrol og indskrænkning af individets frihed, idet man ikke længere kan have en privat telefonsamtale eller email-korrespondence i fred, da alle telefonsamtaler, sms’er og emails i dag beslaglægges i et år, bare sådan for en sikkerheds skyld.
Sidst men ikke mindst er det under Fogh-regeringerne lykkedes for statsministeren og hans følgesvende, at etablere en de facto politistat i staten, med præventive anholdelser, vilkårlige registreringer, visitationszoner samt chikane af såvel indbyggere som besøgende, på det der engang var fristaden Christiania, men i dag mere end noget andet, forekommer den besøgende at være blevet forvandlet til en eksercitsplads for styrker af intimiderende, og kampuniformerede ti-mands patruljer.
Denne knusende jernhandske er egentlig ideologisk funderet, men dette tilsløres ved, at man får det til at fremstå som om, at krænkelserne af christianitterne og deres besøgende, er foranlediget af et ønske om at ville bekæmpe indtagelse af cannabis, hvilket udfra indsatsen at dømme, vel nærmest af regeringen betragtes som værende farligt for den herskende orden på linje med terrorisme.
Hvad der nok snarere er den egentlige motivation for denne tingenes tilstand er, at man fra de borgerlige regeringspartiers side ikke tåler den ideologiske torn i øjet, som dette, for en stor dels vedkommende, ganske vellykkede kollektivistiske eksperiment repræsenterer. Det er da heller ikke svært at komme i tvivl om, hvorvidt den lovgivning regeringen gemmer sig bag, er i befolkningens eller magthavernes favør, når den af disse benyttes til at drive en uhyggelig og ganske omfattende undertrykkelse af lokalbefolkningen og deres gæster på Christiania. Noget der derfor også bør nævnes i sammenhæng med dette er, at det lovgivningsmæssige grundlag i hvilket hele denne unødvendige indsats finder sin legitimitet, er yderst tvivlsomt, idet ulovliggørelsen af cannabis ikke kom istand på baggrund af fornuftbåren argumentation eller på baggrund af nogen egentlig problemstilling, men blot i 1929 vedtoges som led i en ratifikation af en Opiumskonvention, selvom man ovenikøbet i lovgivningsmaterialet tilkendegiver at:
"uanset at indisk Hamp og Præparater, der udvindes af denne, ikke spiller nogen Rolle her i Landet, har man dog i overstemmelse med Opiumskonventionens Artikel 4 og 11 medtaget denne Substans i paragraffen."
AKTIVISTISK UDENRIGSPOLITIK
I det hele taget er det også interessant at man kalder det aktivistisk udenrigspolitisk, i hvad der vel er et forsøg på at udglatte det forhold, at deltagelsen i irak-krigen var en deltagelse i en uprovokeret angrebskrig, om hvilket Nürnberg tribunalet ganske utvetydigt konkluderede: “To initiate a war of aggression... is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime.”
Andre på den militaristiske højrefløj har været mere letgennemskuelige mht. deres motiver for deltagelse i massemord. Søren Krarup melder for eksempel klart ud, idet han tydeligt tilkendegiver at formålet med Irak-krigen var at statuere et eksempel overfor det han betragter som den fjendtligt indstillede og ekspansionistiske islamiske religion, og så kunne man jo ligeså godt angribe Irak som et hvilket som helst andet land, og det var derfor ikke af videre betydning, at landet ikke havde taget del i angrebene den ellevte september.
Spørgsmålet består. Hvilken frihed er det der tales om, for såvidt jeg kan se er de eneste der har fået en større grad af frihed som konsekvens af den såkaldt aktivistiske udenrigspolitik, de store firmaer der landede kontrakter med Bush-administrationen og scorede kassen på dette, uden samtidig at være nødsaget til at bekymre sig om indgribende tiltag og reguleringer i den liberaliserede irakiske økonomi under den amerikanske okkupation, hvilket selvfølgelig alt sammen skete for næsen af irakerne, som i stort omfang blev snydt for selv at tjene på genopbygningen af deres sønderbombede land.
Først og fremmest bør man selvfølgelig nævne anti-terrorlovgivningen som giver mulighed for meget vidtgående misbrug med ganske voldsomme konsekvenser. For eksempel kan det nævnes at antiterrorlovgivningen muliggjorde at Dagbladet Arbejderen fik beslaglagt deres it-udstyr af PET fordi man på avisens sider havde dokumenteret foreningen Oprørs appel til at støtte PFLP og FARC , hvilket alt sammen interessant nok foregik efter at statsministeren under karikaturkrisen havde givet udtryk for, at ytringsfriheden var en samfundsbærende søjle, hvorfor medierne selvfølgelig skulle have lov til at virke frit. Dette gjaldt åbenbart ikke Arbejderen.
Dernæst skal det nævnes at logningsbekendtgørelsen ligeledes betyder ganske omfattende kontrol og indskrænkning af individets frihed, idet man ikke længere kan have en privat telefonsamtale eller email-korrespondence i fred, da alle telefonsamtaler, sms’er og emails i dag beslaglægges i et år, bare sådan for en sikkerheds skyld.
Sidst men ikke mindst er det under Fogh-regeringerne lykkedes for statsministeren og hans følgesvende, at etablere en de facto politistat i staten, med præventive anholdelser, vilkårlige registreringer, visitationszoner samt chikane af såvel indbyggere som besøgende, på det der engang var fristaden Christiania, men i dag mere end noget andet, forekommer den besøgende at være blevet forvandlet til en eksercitsplads for styrker af intimiderende, og kampuniformerede ti-mands patruljer.
Denne knusende jernhandske er egentlig ideologisk funderet, men dette tilsløres ved, at man får det til at fremstå som om, at krænkelserne af christianitterne og deres besøgende, er foranlediget af et ønske om at ville bekæmpe indtagelse af cannabis, hvilket udfra indsatsen at dømme, vel nærmest af regeringen betragtes som værende farligt for den herskende orden på linje med terrorisme.
Hvad der nok snarere er den egentlige motivation for denne tingenes tilstand er, at man fra de borgerlige regeringspartiers side ikke tåler den ideologiske torn i øjet, som dette, for en stor dels vedkommende, ganske vellykkede kollektivistiske eksperiment repræsenterer. Det er da heller ikke svært at komme i tvivl om, hvorvidt den lovgivning regeringen gemmer sig bag, er i befolkningens eller magthavernes favør, når den af disse benyttes til at drive en uhyggelig og ganske omfattende undertrykkelse af lokalbefolkningen og deres gæster på Christiania. Noget der derfor også bør nævnes i sammenhæng med dette er, at det lovgivningsmæssige grundlag i hvilket hele denne unødvendige indsats finder sin legitimitet, er yderst tvivlsomt, idet ulovliggørelsen af cannabis ikke kom istand på baggrund af fornuftbåren argumentation eller på baggrund af nogen egentlig problemstilling, men blot i 1929 vedtoges som led i en ratifikation af en Opiumskonvention, selvom man ovenikøbet i lovgivningsmaterialet tilkendegiver at:
"uanset at indisk Hamp og Præparater, der udvindes af denne, ikke spiller nogen Rolle her i Landet, har man dog i overstemmelse med Opiumskonventionens Artikel 4 og 11 medtaget denne Substans i paragraffen."
AKTIVISTISK UDENRIGSPOLITIK
I det hele taget er det også interessant at man kalder det aktivistisk udenrigspolitisk, i hvad der vel er et forsøg på at udglatte det forhold, at deltagelsen i irak-krigen var en deltagelse i en uprovokeret angrebskrig, om hvilket Nürnberg tribunalet ganske utvetydigt konkluderede: “To initiate a war of aggression... is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime.”
Andre på den militaristiske højrefløj har været mere letgennemskuelige mht. deres motiver for deltagelse i massemord. Søren Krarup melder for eksempel klart ud, idet han tydeligt tilkendegiver at formålet med Irak-krigen var at statuere et eksempel overfor det han betragter som den fjendtligt indstillede og ekspansionistiske islamiske religion, og så kunne man jo ligeså godt angribe Irak som et hvilket som helst andet land, og det var derfor ikke af videre betydning, at landet ikke havde taget del i angrebene den ellevte september.
Spørgsmålet består. Hvilken frihed er det der tales om, for såvidt jeg kan se er de eneste der har fået en større grad af frihed som konsekvens af den såkaldt aktivistiske udenrigspolitik, de store firmaer der landede kontrakter med Bush-administrationen og scorede kassen på dette, uden samtidig at være nødsaget til at bekymre sig om indgribende tiltag og reguleringer i den liberaliserede irakiske økonomi under den amerikanske okkupation, hvilket selvfølgelig alt sammen skete for næsen af irakerne, som i stort omfang blev snydt for selv at tjene på genopbygningen af deres sønderbombede land.
Schrödingers kosmiske Kat
Erwin Schröedinger er på mange måder et interessant bekendtskab. Han modtog nobelprisen i fysik i 1933 for hans arbejde med bølgemekanikken som fik stor betydning for kvantemekanikken, men han er måske mest kendt som manden der lagde navn til et tankeeksperiment indenfor denne del af fysikke kaldet Schrödingers Cat. Han var endvidere en af grundlæggerne af molekylærbiologien, men orindeligt uddannet i botanik og kemi.
Men hvad der derudover er særdeles interessant ved Erwin Schrödinger, var hans stærke optagethed af mystik generelt, og af den non-dualistiske indiske advaita vedanta tradition i særdeleshed. Han fandt tilsyneladende ikke, at denne gamle mystiske tradition stod i et uforsonligt modsætningsforhold til den videnskab han bidrog ganske betydeligt til. Han mente nok snarere at mystikken og videnskaben stod i et komplementaritetsforhold, hvilket forårsagede at han var en smule ydmyg med hensyn til logikkens potentiale for fuldt ud at kunne forstå altings værensgrundlag. I det følgende er det i hvert fald lettere at spore mystikeren end videnskabsmanden.
The Mystical Vision
For philosophy the real difficulty lies in the spatial and temporal multiplicity of observing and thinking individuals. If all events took place in one consciousness, the whole situation would be extremely simple. There would be something given, a simple datum, and this, however otherwise constituted, could scarcely present us with a difficulty of such magnitude as the one we do, in fact, have on our hands.
I do not think that this difficulty can be logically resolved, by consistent thought, within our intellects. But it is quite easy to express the solution in words: the plurality we perceive is only an appearance; it is not real. Vedantic philosophy, in which this is a fundamental dogma, has sought to clarify it by a number of analogies, on e of the most attractive being the many-faceted crystal which, while showing hundreds of little pictures of what is in reality a single existent object, does not multiply that object. We intellectuals of today are not accustomed to admit a pictorial analogy as a philosophical insight; we insist on logical deduction. But, as against this, it may perhaps be possible for logical deduction to disclose at least this much: that to grasp the basis of phenomena through logical thought may, in all probability, be impossible since logical thought is itself a part of phenomena and wholly involved in them; we may ask ourselves whether, in that case, we are obliged to deny ourselves the use of an allegoric picture of the situation, merely on the grounds that isr fitness cannot be strictly proved. In a considerable number of cases, logical thinking brings us up to a certain point and then leaves us in the lurch. Faced with an area not directly accessible to these lines of thought, but one into which they seem to lead, we may manage to fill it in such way that the lines do not simply peter out, but converge on some central point in that area; this may amount to an extremely valuable rounding-out of our picture of the world, and its worth is not to be judged by those standards of rigorous, unecquivocal inescapability from which we started out. There are hundreds of cases in which science uses this procedure, and it has long been recognized as justified.
Later on, we shall try to adduce some support for the basic Vedantic vision, chiefly by pointing out particular lies in modern thought which converge upon it. Let us first be permitted to sketch a concrete picture of an experience which may lead toward it. In what follows, the particular situation described at the beginning could be replaced, equally fitting, by any other; it is merely meant as a reminder that this is something that needs to be experienced, not simply given a notional acknowledgement.
Suppose you are sitting on a bench beside a path in high mountain country. There are grassy slopes all around, with rocks thrusting through them; on the opposite slope of the valley there is a stretch of scree with a low growth of alder bushes. Woods climb steeply on both sides of the valley, up to the line of treeless pasture; facing you, soaring up from the depths of the valley, is the mighty, glacier-tipped peak, its smooth snowfields and hard-edged rock faces touched at this moment with soft rose colour by the last rays of the departing sun
According to our usual way of looking at it, everything that you are seeing has, apart from small changes, been there for thousands of years before you. After a while – not long – you will no longer exist, and the woods and rocks and sky will continue, unchanged, for thousands of years after you.
What is it that has called you so suddenly out of nothingness to enjoy for a brief while a spectacle which remains quite indifferent to you? The condition for your existence is almost as old as the rocks. For thousands of years men have striven and suffered and begotten and women have brought forth in pain. A hundred years ago, perhaps, another man sat on this spot; like, he gazed with awe and yearning in his heart at the dying light on the glaciers. Like you, he was begotten of man and born of woman. He felt pain and brief joy as you do. Was he someone else? Was it not you yourself? What is this Self of yours? What was the necessary condition for making the thing conceived this time into you, just you, and not someone else? What clearly intelligible scientific meaning can this “someone else” really have? If she who is now your mother had cohabited with someone else and had a son by him, and your father had done likewise, would you have come to be? Or were you living in them, and in your father’s father, thousands of years ago? And even if this is so, why are you not your brother, why is your brother not you, why are you not one of your distant cousins? What justifies you in obstinately discovering this difference – the difference between you and someone – when objectively what is there is the same?
Looking and thinking in that manner you may suddenly come to see in a flash, the profound rightness of the basic conviction in Vedanta: it is not possible that this unity of knowledge, feeling and choice which you call your own should have sprung into being from nothingness at a given moment not so long ago; rather this knowledge, feeling, and choice are essentially eternal and unchangeable and numerically one in all men, nay in all sensitive beings. But not in this sense – that you are a part, a piece, of an eternal infinite being, an aspect or modification of it, as in Spinoza’s pantheism. For we should then have the same baffling question: which part, which aspects are you? What, objectively, differentiates it from the others? No, but, inconceivable as it seems to ordinary reason, you – and all other conscious beings as such – are all in all. Hence this life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of the existence, but is, in a certain sense, the whole; only this whole is not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one single glance. This, as we know, is what the Brahmins express in that sacred, mystic formula which is yet really so smiple and so clear: Tat twam asi, that is you. Or, again, in such words as “I am in the east and in the west, I am below and above, I am this whole world.”
Thus you can throw yourself flat on the ground, stretched out upon Mother Earth, with the certain conviction that you are one with her and she with you. You are as firmly established, as invulnerable, as she – indeed a thousand times firmer and more invulnerable. As surely as she will engulf you tomorrow, so surely will she bring you forth anew to new striving and suffering. And not merely “some day”: now, today, every day she is bringing you forth, not once, but thousands upon thousands of times over. For eternally and always there is only now, one and the same now; the present is the only thing that has no end.
Men hvad der derudover er særdeles interessant ved Erwin Schrödinger, var hans stærke optagethed af mystik generelt, og af den non-dualistiske indiske advaita vedanta tradition i særdeleshed. Han fandt tilsyneladende ikke, at denne gamle mystiske tradition stod i et uforsonligt modsætningsforhold til den videnskab han bidrog ganske betydeligt til. Han mente nok snarere at mystikken og videnskaben stod i et komplementaritetsforhold, hvilket forårsagede at han var en smule ydmyg med hensyn til logikkens potentiale for fuldt ud at kunne forstå altings værensgrundlag. I det følgende er det i hvert fald lettere at spore mystikeren end videnskabsmanden.
The Mystical Vision
For philosophy the real difficulty lies in the spatial and temporal multiplicity of observing and thinking individuals. If all events took place in one consciousness, the whole situation would be extremely simple. There would be something given, a simple datum, and this, however otherwise constituted, could scarcely present us with a difficulty of such magnitude as the one we do, in fact, have on our hands.
I do not think that this difficulty can be logically resolved, by consistent thought, within our intellects. But it is quite easy to express the solution in words: the plurality we perceive is only an appearance; it is not real. Vedantic philosophy, in which this is a fundamental dogma, has sought to clarify it by a number of analogies, on e of the most attractive being the many-faceted crystal which, while showing hundreds of little pictures of what is in reality a single existent object, does not multiply that object. We intellectuals of today are not accustomed to admit a pictorial analogy as a philosophical insight; we insist on logical deduction. But, as against this, it may perhaps be possible for logical deduction to disclose at least this much: that to grasp the basis of phenomena through logical thought may, in all probability, be impossible since logical thought is itself a part of phenomena and wholly involved in them; we may ask ourselves whether, in that case, we are obliged to deny ourselves the use of an allegoric picture of the situation, merely on the grounds that isr fitness cannot be strictly proved. In a considerable number of cases, logical thinking brings us up to a certain point and then leaves us in the lurch. Faced with an area not directly accessible to these lines of thought, but one into which they seem to lead, we may manage to fill it in such way that the lines do not simply peter out, but converge on some central point in that area; this may amount to an extremely valuable rounding-out of our picture of the world, and its worth is not to be judged by those standards of rigorous, unecquivocal inescapability from which we started out. There are hundreds of cases in which science uses this procedure, and it has long been recognized as justified.
Later on, we shall try to adduce some support for the basic Vedantic vision, chiefly by pointing out particular lies in modern thought which converge upon it. Let us first be permitted to sketch a concrete picture of an experience which may lead toward it. In what follows, the particular situation described at the beginning could be replaced, equally fitting, by any other; it is merely meant as a reminder that this is something that needs to be experienced, not simply given a notional acknowledgement.
Suppose you are sitting on a bench beside a path in high mountain country. There are grassy slopes all around, with rocks thrusting through them; on the opposite slope of the valley there is a stretch of scree with a low growth of alder bushes. Woods climb steeply on both sides of the valley, up to the line of treeless pasture; facing you, soaring up from the depths of the valley, is the mighty, glacier-tipped peak, its smooth snowfields and hard-edged rock faces touched at this moment with soft rose colour by the last rays of the departing sun
According to our usual way of looking at it, everything that you are seeing has, apart from small changes, been there for thousands of years before you. After a while – not long – you will no longer exist, and the woods and rocks and sky will continue, unchanged, for thousands of years after you.
What is it that has called you so suddenly out of nothingness to enjoy for a brief while a spectacle which remains quite indifferent to you? The condition for your existence is almost as old as the rocks. For thousands of years men have striven and suffered and begotten and women have brought forth in pain. A hundred years ago, perhaps, another man sat on this spot; like, he gazed with awe and yearning in his heart at the dying light on the glaciers. Like you, he was begotten of man and born of woman. He felt pain and brief joy as you do. Was he someone else? Was it not you yourself? What is this Self of yours? What was the necessary condition for making the thing conceived this time into you, just you, and not someone else? What clearly intelligible scientific meaning can this “someone else” really have? If she who is now your mother had cohabited with someone else and had a son by him, and your father had done likewise, would you have come to be? Or were you living in them, and in your father’s father, thousands of years ago? And even if this is so, why are you not your brother, why is your brother not you, why are you not one of your distant cousins? What justifies you in obstinately discovering this difference – the difference between you and someone – when objectively what is there is the same?
Looking and thinking in that manner you may suddenly come to see in a flash, the profound rightness of the basic conviction in Vedanta: it is not possible that this unity of knowledge, feeling and choice which you call your own should have sprung into being from nothingness at a given moment not so long ago; rather this knowledge, feeling, and choice are essentially eternal and unchangeable and numerically one in all men, nay in all sensitive beings. But not in this sense – that you are a part, a piece, of an eternal infinite being, an aspect or modification of it, as in Spinoza’s pantheism. For we should then have the same baffling question: which part, which aspects are you? What, objectively, differentiates it from the others? No, but, inconceivable as it seems to ordinary reason, you – and all other conscious beings as such – are all in all. Hence this life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of the existence, but is, in a certain sense, the whole; only this whole is not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one single glance. This, as we know, is what the Brahmins express in that sacred, mystic formula which is yet really so smiple and so clear: Tat twam asi, that is you. Or, again, in such words as “I am in the east and in the west, I am below and above, I am this whole world.”
Thus you can throw yourself flat on the ground, stretched out upon Mother Earth, with the certain conviction that you are one with her and she with you. You are as firmly established, as invulnerable, as she – indeed a thousand times firmer and more invulnerable. As surely as she will engulf you tomorrow, so surely will she bring you forth anew to new striving and suffering. And not merely “some day”: now, today, every day she is bringing you forth, not once, but thousands upon thousands of times over. For eternally and always there is only now, one and the same now; the present is the only thing that has no end.
Lidt Rocker Citater
“A powerful state mechanism is the greatest hindrance to any higher cultural
development. Where the state has been attacked by internal decay, where the
influence of political power on the creative forces of society is reduced to a
minimum, there culture thrives best, for political rulership always strives for
uniformity and tends to subject every aspect of social life to its guardianship.
And in this it finds itself in inescapable contradiction to the creative
aspirations of cultural development, which is always on the quest after new
forms and fields of social activity, and for which freedom of expression, the
manysidedness and the kaleidoscopic changes of things, are just as vitally
necessary as rigid forms, dead rules and the forcible suppression of every
manifestation of social life which are in contradiction to it.
Every culture, if its natural development is not too much affected by political
restrictions, experiences a perpetual renewal of the formative urge, and out of
that comes an ever growing diversity of creative activity. Every successful
piece of work stirs the desire for greater perfection and deeper inspiration;
each new form becomes the herald of new possibilities of development. But the
state creates no culture, as is so often thoughtlessly asserted; it only tries
to keep things as they are, safely anchored to stereotypes. That has been the
reason for all revolutions in history.”
“Power operates only destructively, bent always on forcing every manifestation of
life into the straitjacket of its laws. Its intellectual form of expression is
dead dogma, its physical form brute force. And this unintelligence of its
objectives sets its stamp on its supporters also and renders them stupid and
brutal, even when they were originally endowed with the best of talents. One who
is constantly striving to force everything into a mechanical order at last
becomes a machine himself and loses all human feeling.”
“Only freedom can inspire men to great things and bring about social and political transformations. The art of ruling men has never been the art of educating men and inspiring them to a new shaping of their lives.”
“Every new social structure makes organs for itself in the body of the
old organism. Without this preliminary any social evolution is unthinkable. Even
revolutions can only develop and mature the germs which already exist and have
made their way into the consciousness of men; they cannot themselves create
these germs or create new worlds out of nothing. It therefore concerns us to
plant these germs while there is still yet time and bring them to the strongest
possible development, so as to make the task of the coming social revolution
easier and to ensure its permanence.”
Alle citater stammer fra Rudolf Rockers bog 'Anarcho-syndicalism'
development. Where the state has been attacked by internal decay, where the
influence of political power on the creative forces of society is reduced to a
minimum, there culture thrives best, for political rulership always strives for
uniformity and tends to subject every aspect of social life to its guardianship.
And in this it finds itself in inescapable contradiction to the creative
aspirations of cultural development, which is always on the quest after new
forms and fields of social activity, and for which freedom of expression, the
manysidedness and the kaleidoscopic changes of things, are just as vitally
necessary as rigid forms, dead rules and the forcible suppression of every
manifestation of social life which are in contradiction to it.
Every culture, if its natural development is not too much affected by political
restrictions, experiences a perpetual renewal of the formative urge, and out of
that comes an ever growing diversity of creative activity. Every successful
piece of work stirs the desire for greater perfection and deeper inspiration;
each new form becomes the herald of new possibilities of development. But the
state creates no culture, as is so often thoughtlessly asserted; it only tries
to keep things as they are, safely anchored to stereotypes. That has been the
reason for all revolutions in history.”
“Power operates only destructively, bent always on forcing every manifestation of
life into the straitjacket of its laws. Its intellectual form of expression is
dead dogma, its physical form brute force. And this unintelligence of its
objectives sets its stamp on its supporters also and renders them stupid and
brutal, even when they were originally endowed with the best of talents. One who
is constantly striving to force everything into a mechanical order at last
becomes a machine himself and loses all human feeling.”
“Only freedom can inspire men to great things and bring about social and political transformations. The art of ruling men has never been the art of educating men and inspiring them to a new shaping of their lives.”
“Every new social structure makes organs for itself in the body of the
old organism. Without this preliminary any social evolution is unthinkable. Even
revolutions can only develop and mature the germs which already exist and have
made their way into the consciousness of men; they cannot themselves create
these germs or create new worlds out of nothing. It therefore concerns us to
plant these germs while there is still yet time and bring them to the strongest
possible development, so as to make the task of the coming social revolution
easier and to ensure its permanence.”
Alle citater stammer fra Rudolf Rockers bog 'Anarcho-syndicalism'
Folkestyre?
Som de fleste nok allerede er klar over, er ordet ‘demokrati’ sammensat af de to græske ord ‘demos’ og ‘kratos’ som betyder henholdsvis ‘folk’ og ‘styre’, men som jeg i det følgende vil forsøge at redegøre for, mener jeg ikke at vi i Danmark ikke kan siges at have egentligt folkestyre, men måske snarere bør betegne vores styreform som et elektivt fåmandsvælde.
Da Grundloven siges at være fundamentet for vores styreform er det måske godt at starte med den. Sidste gang Grundloven revideredes var i 1953. Da det dengang kun var personer med danske statsborgerskab og med en alder på 25 eller derover der måtte stemme, betyder dette at ingen danskere født efter 1928 har haft noget at skulle have sagt vedrørende selve grundlaget for den magtudøvelse som alle borgerne i den danske stat er underlagt. Den omtalte grundlovrevision handlede imidlertid kun om tronfølgen og alderskriteriet for stemmeafgivelse, der dengang ændredes til 23 år. Intet af alt det der derudover er nedfældet i Grundloven, har nogen nulevende indbygger i landet haft nogen indflydelse på. Hele grundlaget for vort demokrati har altså status af at være blevet mejslet i sten af højere magter, eller sagt på en anden måde, folkestyrets grundlag er af uudtalte grunde undtaget fra at være underlagt egentlig folkelig styring.
I Danmark har alle der er fyldt 18 år og som har en opholdstilladelse, medindflydelse ifa. stemmeret ved kommunalvalg, men ved folketingsvalg er det kun personer med dansk statsborgerskab der må deltage, og det selvom disse danske statsborgere ikke til dagligt omgås de øvrige indbyggere i landet idet de er bosiddende udenlands. Vores folkestyre er altså nogle gange defineret ved én folkemængde, og nogle gange ved en anden, men hvorfor er mennesker med opholdstilladelse kun tilladt at stemme ved kommunale valg, mens deres stemme underkendes ved nationale valg? Hvorfor er befolkningen og folket to forskellige størrelser? Udfaldene af valgene påvirker vel i ligeså høj udstrækning de opholdstilladte indbyggere uden statsborgerskab som den øvrige del af der indenfor staten bosatte befolkning, og det påvirker vel disse i endnu højere grad end det påvirker stemmeberettigede mennesker der bor udenfor landets grænser. Derudover er den indflydelsesafskårede del af befolkningen ovenikøbet, til forskel fra eksildanskerne, tvunget til finansiere statsdriften.
Dernæst er der det forhold, at man frasorterer en del af befolkning udelukkende fordi de ikke har opnået en høj nok alder. Her er det nok fornuftigt at indvende hvorfor det lige præcis er alder der er det udslagsgivende? Det kunne vel ligeså godt være andre faktorer, såsom f.eks. interesse, intelligens eller viden om styreformens præmisser. Det forekommer i hvert fald mig en smule besynderligt, at den 16-årige der netop har fået et trettental på B-niveau i samfundsfag, ikke er kvalificeret til at deltage i folkestyret, mens den 37-årige, der ikke har nogen politisk interesse eller indsigt overhovedet, er kvalificeret.
Politikerne repræsenterer ikke borgerne, de repræsenterer de af de respektive partier – oftest af partitoppen - præfabrikerede programmer og søger via disse at få indflydelse på statsdriften. Partierne repræsenterer på mange områder perciperede klasseinteresser, som der kan være mere eller mindre gode grunde til at holde for sande, men denne tingenes tilstand har ikke stort med folkestyre at skaffe, idet folket ikke kan gøre deres stemmer gældende ved væsentlige spørgsmål, men må forlade sig på et naivt håb om at politikerme - hvis partiprogram i størst omfang repræsenterer det den individuelle vælger anser for det mindste onde - vil handle konsistent med partiprogrammets ordlyd såfremt de vælges ind.
Dette synes måske ikke umiddelbart at være forbundet med nogle særlige vanskeligheder, for et flertal der i så høj grad har vænnet sig til denne styreform, at de ikke finder nogen videre grund til at stille spørgmålstegn ved om dette kan siges at være en retfærddig måde at forvalte en stat på, men som jeg vil forsøge at redegøre for i det følgende, kan der med denne styreform følge nogle ganske alvorlige problemer. Det største af disse problemer må siges at være den latente eller i nogle tilfælde de facto undertrykkelse denne styreform kan foranledigede.
Et meget påfaldende eksempel på hvordan ovenstående undertrykkelse kan tage form og blive et de facto flertalsdemokratur, er når magthavere vælger at tage i krig på hele befolkningens vegne og for hele befolkningens økonomiske donationer til staten. Hvis man ikke i det partiprogram man op til valget profilerede sig på, tydeligt gav til kende at man, i tilfælde af at komme til magten, havde til hensigt at støtte USA's udenrigspolitiske virke militært og dermed økonomisk, og det selv i tilfælde af at hegemonen skulle vælge at føre en uprovokeret angrebskrig uden om FN, kan man da hævde at have ageret i overenstemmelse med vælgernes interesser, når disse ikke har vidst, at denne brug eller måske snarere misbrug af embedet, lå implicit i deres stemmeafgivelse?
Et andet meget væsentligt spørgsmål at fremføre i diskussioner omhandlende en flertalsfunderet styreforms berettigelse, er spørgsmålet om hvorvidt nogen undertrykkelse af et nok så småt mindretal, skulle blive mindre undertrykkende af at være konsekvensen af en magtudøvelse funderet på et flertals vilkårlige normsæt? Hvorfor kan det eksempelvis siges at være okay, at det ikke står folk frit for at gøre med deres kroppe som de lyster, så længe de ikke forvolder skade på andre af enten fysisk eller materiel karakter? Men har vi da ikke ret til det, vil nogle måske spørge, hvortil svaret selvfølgelig er et rungende nej, for det står os ikke frit for at gøre hvad der passer os med vores kroppe, da visse former for offerløse handlinger enten søges voldeligt straffet med frihedsberøvelse eller med indgreb i individets økonomi ifa. bødestraf, som det som bekendt er tilfældet med lovgivning om euforiserende stoffer. Hvorfor skulle denne krænkelse af individets suverænitet blive mindre krænkende af, at et flertal støtter op om det? Hvem er flertallet eller deres rerpæsentanter til at definere sådanne adfærdspreferencer for mennesker de aldrig har mødt og som de intet forhold har til? Hvordan kan politikere, der vel ikke kan siges at repræsentere alles intereser, men derimod blot den interesserepræsentation man går til valg på, nogensinde retfærdiggøre at udføre sådanne krænkende indgreb i den personlige frihed, der måske mestendels går ud over folk vis interesser de ikke repræsenterer? Er vores kroppe da ikke længere vore egne, men i stedet, på en eller anden dubiøs måde blevet statens ejendom?
For at opsummere: Grundloven står ikke til diskussion og eksisterer ikke på bekostning af en folkevalgt overenskomst, men istedet på for længst afdøde menneskers historiske overenskomst. En væsentlig del af befolkningen har ikke lov til at stemme enten ved folketingsvalg eller valg overhovedet. Politikere kan agere krigsmagere uden at deres vælgere har kunnet vide at dette lå implicit i deres stemmeafgivelse, og uden at dette har videre konsekvenser for deres embede. Til sammen mener jeg at disse tre forhold gør det vanskeligt at tale om egentligt folkestyre hertillands. Og da lovgivningen bruges som dække for meget omfattende krænkelser af den personlige frihed hvad angår nogle offerløse handlinger, mener jeg ikke vi har en retfærdig styreform, da ingen undertrykkelse
Da Grundloven siges at være fundamentet for vores styreform er det måske godt at starte med den. Sidste gang Grundloven revideredes var i 1953. Da det dengang kun var personer med danske statsborgerskab og med en alder på 25 eller derover der måtte stemme, betyder dette at ingen danskere født efter 1928 har haft noget at skulle have sagt vedrørende selve grundlaget for den magtudøvelse som alle borgerne i den danske stat er underlagt. Den omtalte grundlovrevision handlede imidlertid kun om tronfølgen og alderskriteriet for stemmeafgivelse, der dengang ændredes til 23 år. Intet af alt det der derudover er nedfældet i Grundloven, har nogen nulevende indbygger i landet haft nogen indflydelse på. Hele grundlaget for vort demokrati har altså status af at være blevet mejslet i sten af højere magter, eller sagt på en anden måde, folkestyrets grundlag er af uudtalte grunde undtaget fra at være underlagt egentlig folkelig styring.
I Danmark har alle der er fyldt 18 år og som har en opholdstilladelse, medindflydelse ifa. stemmeret ved kommunalvalg, men ved folketingsvalg er det kun personer med dansk statsborgerskab der må deltage, og det selvom disse danske statsborgere ikke til dagligt omgås de øvrige indbyggere i landet idet de er bosiddende udenlands. Vores folkestyre er altså nogle gange defineret ved én folkemængde, og nogle gange ved en anden, men hvorfor er mennesker med opholdstilladelse kun tilladt at stemme ved kommunale valg, mens deres stemme underkendes ved nationale valg? Hvorfor er befolkningen og folket to forskellige størrelser? Udfaldene af valgene påvirker vel i ligeså høj udstrækning de opholdstilladte indbyggere uden statsborgerskab som den øvrige del af der indenfor staten bosatte befolkning, og det påvirker vel disse i endnu højere grad end det påvirker stemmeberettigede mennesker der bor udenfor landets grænser. Derudover er den indflydelsesafskårede del af befolkningen ovenikøbet, til forskel fra eksildanskerne, tvunget til finansiere statsdriften.
Dernæst er der det forhold, at man frasorterer en del af befolkning udelukkende fordi de ikke har opnået en høj nok alder. Her er det nok fornuftigt at indvende hvorfor det lige præcis er alder der er det udslagsgivende? Det kunne vel ligeså godt være andre faktorer, såsom f.eks. interesse, intelligens eller viden om styreformens præmisser. Det forekommer i hvert fald mig en smule besynderligt, at den 16-årige der netop har fået et trettental på B-niveau i samfundsfag, ikke er kvalificeret til at deltage i folkestyret, mens den 37-årige, der ikke har nogen politisk interesse eller indsigt overhovedet, er kvalificeret.
Politikerne repræsenterer ikke borgerne, de repræsenterer de af de respektive partier – oftest af partitoppen - præfabrikerede programmer og søger via disse at få indflydelse på statsdriften. Partierne repræsenterer på mange områder perciperede klasseinteresser, som der kan være mere eller mindre gode grunde til at holde for sande, men denne tingenes tilstand har ikke stort med folkestyre at skaffe, idet folket ikke kan gøre deres stemmer gældende ved væsentlige spørgsmål, men må forlade sig på et naivt håb om at politikerme - hvis partiprogram i størst omfang repræsenterer det den individuelle vælger anser for det mindste onde - vil handle konsistent med partiprogrammets ordlyd såfremt de vælges ind.
Dette synes måske ikke umiddelbart at være forbundet med nogle særlige vanskeligheder, for et flertal der i så høj grad har vænnet sig til denne styreform, at de ikke finder nogen videre grund til at stille spørgmålstegn ved om dette kan siges at være en retfærddig måde at forvalte en stat på, men som jeg vil forsøge at redegøre for i det følgende, kan der med denne styreform følge nogle ganske alvorlige problemer. Det største af disse problemer må siges at være den latente eller i nogle tilfælde de facto undertrykkelse denne styreform kan foranledigede.
Et meget påfaldende eksempel på hvordan ovenstående undertrykkelse kan tage form og blive et de facto flertalsdemokratur, er når magthavere vælger at tage i krig på hele befolkningens vegne og for hele befolkningens økonomiske donationer til staten. Hvis man ikke i det partiprogram man op til valget profilerede sig på, tydeligt gav til kende at man, i tilfælde af at komme til magten, havde til hensigt at støtte USA's udenrigspolitiske virke militært og dermed økonomisk, og det selv i tilfælde af at hegemonen skulle vælge at føre en uprovokeret angrebskrig uden om FN, kan man da hævde at have ageret i overenstemmelse med vælgernes interesser, når disse ikke har vidst, at denne brug eller måske snarere misbrug af embedet, lå implicit i deres stemmeafgivelse?
Et andet meget væsentligt spørgsmål at fremføre i diskussioner omhandlende en flertalsfunderet styreforms berettigelse, er spørgsmålet om hvorvidt nogen undertrykkelse af et nok så småt mindretal, skulle blive mindre undertrykkende af at være konsekvensen af en magtudøvelse funderet på et flertals vilkårlige normsæt? Hvorfor kan det eksempelvis siges at være okay, at det ikke står folk frit for at gøre med deres kroppe som de lyster, så længe de ikke forvolder skade på andre af enten fysisk eller materiel karakter? Men har vi da ikke ret til det, vil nogle måske spørge, hvortil svaret selvfølgelig er et rungende nej, for det står os ikke frit for at gøre hvad der passer os med vores kroppe, da visse former for offerløse handlinger enten søges voldeligt straffet med frihedsberøvelse eller med indgreb i individets økonomi ifa. bødestraf, som det som bekendt er tilfældet med lovgivning om euforiserende stoffer. Hvorfor skulle denne krænkelse af individets suverænitet blive mindre krænkende af, at et flertal støtter op om det? Hvem er flertallet eller deres rerpæsentanter til at definere sådanne adfærdspreferencer for mennesker de aldrig har mødt og som de intet forhold har til? Hvordan kan politikere, der vel ikke kan siges at repræsentere alles intereser, men derimod blot den interesserepræsentation man går til valg på, nogensinde retfærdiggøre at udføre sådanne krænkende indgreb i den personlige frihed, der måske mestendels går ud over folk vis interesser de ikke repræsenterer? Er vores kroppe da ikke længere vore egne, men i stedet, på en eller anden dubiøs måde blevet statens ejendom?
For at opsummere: Grundloven står ikke til diskussion og eksisterer ikke på bekostning af en folkevalgt overenskomst, men istedet på for længst afdøde menneskers historiske overenskomst. En væsentlig del af befolkningen har ikke lov til at stemme enten ved folketingsvalg eller valg overhovedet. Politikere kan agere krigsmagere uden at deres vælgere har kunnet vide at dette lå implicit i deres stemmeafgivelse, og uden at dette har videre konsekvenser for deres embede. Til sammen mener jeg at disse tre forhold gør det vanskeligt at tale om egentligt folkestyre hertillands. Og da lovgivningen bruges som dække for meget omfattende krænkelser af den personlige frihed hvad angår nogle offerløse handlinger, mener jeg ikke vi har en retfærdig styreform, da ingen undertrykkelse
fredag den 4. januar 2008
Syntesens Tidsalder?
Som jeg forsøgte at forklare i det tidligere indlæg 'Den Ydre Verden' er alle vores konceptualisationer af verdens beskaffenhed delvis illusoriske dvs. at de er delvise sandheder, idet de ikke er sandheden om det værendes beskaffenhed, men istedet blotte forklaringsforsøg som med nødvendighed må finde sig begrænsede af de begrænsninger som enhver model må bevæge sig indenfor, idet den udtrykkes i et sprog der altid er begrænset. Dette betyder imidlertid ikke, at de forskellige forklaringsforsøg og modeller for anskuelse ikke hver især fortæller os noget (forklaringsværdifuldt) om verden, men blot at ingen model alene kan forklare os alt om verden.
Denne modelagnosticisme hævdes af den integrale tænker Ken Wilber at være karakterisk for et hastigt voksende paradigme han kalder syntesens tidsalder (The Age of Synthesis). Kendetegnende for dette nye integrale paradigme er, at man søger at inddrage erfaringer fra mange forskellige erfaringsfelter. Denne voksende interdisciplinaritet er altså med et andet ord kendetegnet ved at være multiperspektivistisk, og vi ser i denne tid mange eksempler på forsøg på at syntetisere viden fra en lang række forskellige traditioner og discipliners erfaringer, i undertiden ganske omfattende forsøg på vha. denne multiperspektivisme, at skabe nye modeller for verdensanskuelse.
Den danske forfatter Erwin Neutszky-Wulff har gennem sit forfatterskab skabt en sådan multiperspektivistisk verdensanskuelse, idet han i sin syntese inddrager en lang række vidensdiscpliner, såsom neurologi, psykiatri, kvantemekanik, erkendelsesteori og religionsfænomenologi. Vinkler på den menneskelige tilstand der alle tages i brug, i et forsøg på at gøre rede for menneskets kapacitet for transcendens og religiøs erfaring.
Noget lignende gør sig gældende for den allerede nævnte integrale tænker Ken Wilber der ligeledes søger at inddrage utallige vidensfelter i et forsøg på at skabe en overordentligt inklusiv integral anskuelsesmodel, ligesom det ligeledes er kendetegnende for akademiske studier af den menneskelige bevidsthed, at man søger at tage en lang række vidensfelters erfaringer i brug i forsøget på at skabe en omfattende model af den menneskelige bevidstheds konstitution og mangfoldighed. Dette er tilfældet i antologien “The Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness” fra 2007, hvori der indhentes og sammenlignes data fra så forskellige felter som filosofi (østlig og vestlig), datalogi, kognitiv psykologi, udviklingspsykologi, psykodynamik, antropologi, neurologi, kvantetilgange til studiet af bevidsthed samt empiriske studier af de såkaldt anormale bevidsthedstilstande der kan opnås med hypnose og meditation.
Derudover kan nævnes at den danske videnskabsmand Jesper Hoffmeyer (cand.scient, dr.phil)har skrevet en doktorafhandling om det han kalder Biosemiotik, som er studiet af levende systemer fra et tegn-teoretisk (semiotisk) perspektiv, hvilket altså med andre ord er en blanding af humaniora og naturvidenskab.
Anti-reduktionisme
Det er kendetegnende for integralistiske eller syntetiserende tænkere at man tager afstand fra reduktionistiske naturvidenskabelige udlægninger af verdens værensgrundlag.
Problemet med nogle videnskabsmænds tendens til at ville reducere alt til materielle årsager, bliver da også overordentlig klart når opmærksomheden ledes hen på hvorledes den menneskelige bevidsthed er konstitueret. Vi kan nemlig ikke måle mentale processer såsom tænkningens kontemplative og/eller visuelt associative sekvenser, hvad vi derimod kan måle er neurale processor der kan siges at korrelere med visse bevidsthedstilstande. Eller med andre ord: vi kan måle hvilke synapser der fyrer og hvilke signalstoffer der udskilles når en tibetansk munk befinder sig i en tilstand af dyb meditation, men vi har ingen mulighed for empirisk at måle hvad han rent faktisk oplever i denne tilstand. Den eneste bevidsthed på planeten der kan bevidne disse oplevelser, denne sindslige erfaring, hvor subjektet er dets eget objekt for opmærksomhed, er selvfølgelig kun munkens egen, og disse oplevelser kan vanskeligt sprogliggøres indenfor rammerne af nogen materialistisk funderet videnskabelig diskurs, men det betyder bestemt ikke, at man ikke bør tage en forklaringsmodel alvorligt, som af tibetanske adepter er blevet raffineret gennem århundreder med det formål at beskrive sådanne bevidsthedstilstande, og malke denne model fra de interessante input der måtte være af finde i den.
B. Allan Wallace skriver i sin bog “Contemplative Science: Where Buddhism and Neuroscience converge”, følgende om denne såkaldte videnskabelig materialisme:
“By adhering to the principle of reductionism, with physics underlying biology and biology underlying psychology, scientific materialists have long assumed that the physical sciences have nothing to learn from the life sciences, the life sciences have nothing to learn from psychology and psychology has nothing to learn from religion […] it may be time apply for a healthy dose of scientific scepticism to this metaphysical claim.”
“Great advances have been made recently in discovering the neural correlates of an increasing range of mental processes. But none of these explain the so-called “hard problem” of how these physical events give rise to subjective experience. Scientific materialists confidently declare that eventually, the time-tested methods of physics and biology will unravel the mystery of consciousness […] but there are compelling reasons for scepticism about the neurobiological reduction of the mind to the brain.
Despite centuries of modern philosophical thought and scientific research into the nature of the mind, at present there is no technology that can detect the presence and absence of any kind of consciousness [i.e. states of consciousness], for scientists do not even know what is to be measured. Strictly speaking, at present there is no objective, scientific evidence for the existence of subjective experience! All the direct evidence we have is based on introspection, but this mode of observation has yet to be developed into a rigorous means of scientific inquiry. The root of the problem is more than a temporary lack of the technology. It is rather that modern science does not even have the theoretical framework within which to conduct experimental investigations.”
Problemet med den videnskabelig reduktionisme er endvidere at det der ultimativt nås frem til ikke er videre interessante konklusioner. Jo, jo selvfølgelig kan man da vælge at reducere et religiøst ritual ned til kemiske processer i de involverede individers hjerner, men det forklarer ungefær det samme som at forklare, at formålet med alle middagsritualer gennem historien, udelukkende har været det ene, at stille den enkeltes appetit. Eller med andre ord, det forklarer ganske lidt omkring bevæggrunden for den religiøses handling, for selvom et ritual kan virke stimulerende på visse neurotransmittersubstanser som så igen kan virke transcendensbefordrende kan man vanskeligt tale om dette som et sigte blandt udøvere som ingen kendskab har til sådanne neurale processer, ligesom det er ikke giver meget mening at bortviske ritualets sociale funktioner.
Konklusionen må vel være at de to overordnede forklaringsmodeller, den interpretive og den empiriske, ikke er gensidigt udelukkende men bør ses som komplementære modeller der begge belyser forskellige aspekter af samme sag.
Denne modelagnosticisme hævdes af den integrale tænker Ken Wilber at være karakterisk for et hastigt voksende paradigme han kalder syntesens tidsalder (The Age of Synthesis). Kendetegnende for dette nye integrale paradigme er, at man søger at inddrage erfaringer fra mange forskellige erfaringsfelter. Denne voksende interdisciplinaritet er altså med et andet ord kendetegnet ved at være multiperspektivistisk, og vi ser i denne tid mange eksempler på forsøg på at syntetisere viden fra en lang række forskellige traditioner og discipliners erfaringer, i undertiden ganske omfattende forsøg på vha. denne multiperspektivisme, at skabe nye modeller for verdensanskuelse.
Den danske forfatter Erwin Neutszky-Wulff har gennem sit forfatterskab skabt en sådan multiperspektivistisk verdensanskuelse, idet han i sin syntese inddrager en lang række vidensdiscpliner, såsom neurologi, psykiatri, kvantemekanik, erkendelsesteori og religionsfænomenologi. Vinkler på den menneskelige tilstand der alle tages i brug, i et forsøg på at gøre rede for menneskets kapacitet for transcendens og religiøs erfaring.
Noget lignende gør sig gældende for den allerede nævnte integrale tænker Ken Wilber der ligeledes søger at inddrage utallige vidensfelter i et forsøg på at skabe en overordentligt inklusiv integral anskuelsesmodel, ligesom det ligeledes er kendetegnende for akademiske studier af den menneskelige bevidsthed, at man søger at tage en lang række vidensfelters erfaringer i brug i forsøget på at skabe en omfattende model af den menneskelige bevidstheds konstitution og mangfoldighed. Dette er tilfældet i antologien “The Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness” fra 2007, hvori der indhentes og sammenlignes data fra så forskellige felter som filosofi (østlig og vestlig), datalogi, kognitiv psykologi, udviklingspsykologi, psykodynamik, antropologi, neurologi, kvantetilgange til studiet af bevidsthed samt empiriske studier af de såkaldt anormale bevidsthedstilstande der kan opnås med hypnose og meditation.
Derudover kan nævnes at den danske videnskabsmand Jesper Hoffmeyer (cand.scient, dr.phil)har skrevet en doktorafhandling om det han kalder Biosemiotik, som er studiet af levende systemer fra et tegn-teoretisk (semiotisk) perspektiv, hvilket altså med andre ord er en blanding af humaniora og naturvidenskab.
Anti-reduktionisme
Det er kendetegnende for integralistiske eller syntetiserende tænkere at man tager afstand fra reduktionistiske naturvidenskabelige udlægninger af verdens værensgrundlag.
Problemet med nogle videnskabsmænds tendens til at ville reducere alt til materielle årsager, bliver da også overordentlig klart når opmærksomheden ledes hen på hvorledes den menneskelige bevidsthed er konstitueret. Vi kan nemlig ikke måle mentale processer såsom tænkningens kontemplative og/eller visuelt associative sekvenser, hvad vi derimod kan måle er neurale processor der kan siges at korrelere med visse bevidsthedstilstande. Eller med andre ord: vi kan måle hvilke synapser der fyrer og hvilke signalstoffer der udskilles når en tibetansk munk befinder sig i en tilstand af dyb meditation, men vi har ingen mulighed for empirisk at måle hvad han rent faktisk oplever i denne tilstand. Den eneste bevidsthed på planeten der kan bevidne disse oplevelser, denne sindslige erfaring, hvor subjektet er dets eget objekt for opmærksomhed, er selvfølgelig kun munkens egen, og disse oplevelser kan vanskeligt sprogliggøres indenfor rammerne af nogen materialistisk funderet videnskabelig diskurs, men det betyder bestemt ikke, at man ikke bør tage en forklaringsmodel alvorligt, som af tibetanske adepter er blevet raffineret gennem århundreder med det formål at beskrive sådanne bevidsthedstilstande, og malke denne model fra de interessante input der måtte være af finde i den.
B. Allan Wallace skriver i sin bog “Contemplative Science: Where Buddhism and Neuroscience converge”, følgende om denne såkaldte videnskabelig materialisme:
“By adhering to the principle of reductionism, with physics underlying biology and biology underlying psychology, scientific materialists have long assumed that the physical sciences have nothing to learn from the life sciences, the life sciences have nothing to learn from psychology and psychology has nothing to learn from religion […] it may be time apply for a healthy dose of scientific scepticism to this metaphysical claim.”
“Great advances have been made recently in discovering the neural correlates of an increasing range of mental processes. But none of these explain the so-called “hard problem” of how these physical events give rise to subjective experience. Scientific materialists confidently declare that eventually, the time-tested methods of physics and biology will unravel the mystery of consciousness […] but there are compelling reasons for scepticism about the neurobiological reduction of the mind to the brain.
Despite centuries of modern philosophical thought and scientific research into the nature of the mind, at present there is no technology that can detect the presence and absence of any kind of consciousness [i.e. states of consciousness], for scientists do not even know what is to be measured. Strictly speaking, at present there is no objective, scientific evidence for the existence of subjective experience! All the direct evidence we have is based on introspection, but this mode of observation has yet to be developed into a rigorous means of scientific inquiry. The root of the problem is more than a temporary lack of the technology. It is rather that modern science does not even have the theoretical framework within which to conduct experimental investigations.”
Problemet med den videnskabelig reduktionisme er endvidere at det der ultimativt nås frem til ikke er videre interessante konklusioner. Jo, jo selvfølgelig kan man da vælge at reducere et religiøst ritual ned til kemiske processer i de involverede individers hjerner, men det forklarer ungefær det samme som at forklare, at formålet med alle middagsritualer gennem historien, udelukkende har været det ene, at stille den enkeltes appetit. Eller med andre ord, det forklarer ganske lidt omkring bevæggrunden for den religiøses handling, for selvom et ritual kan virke stimulerende på visse neurotransmittersubstanser som så igen kan virke transcendensbefordrende kan man vanskeligt tale om dette som et sigte blandt udøvere som ingen kendskab har til sådanne neurale processer, ligesom det er ikke giver meget mening at bortviske ritualets sociale funktioner.
Konklusionen må vel være at de to overordnede forklaringsmodeller, den interpretive og den empiriske, ikke er gensidigt udelukkende men bør ses som komplementære modeller der begge belyser forskellige aspekter af samme sag.
torsdag den 3. januar 2008
TrackMeNot software
Hvis du er træt af at søgetjenester såsom Yahoo, Google o.lign. tracker din internet-trafik kan du benytte dette lille stykke software som er udviklet af nogle privacy-entusiatser på NYU.
læs mere her
http://mrl.nyu.edu/~dhowe/trackmenot/
læs mere her
http://mrl.nyu.edu/~dhowe/trackmenot/
onsdag den 2. januar 2008
Søren Gade's besynderlige logik
Jeg har hørt ham sige det før men nu siger han det igen, så han er åbenbart ikke blevet klogere.
I P1's Orientering hævdede han forsat mellem Jul og Nytår at den væsentligste grund til vores tilstedeværelse i Afghanistan, er at modvirke terroranslag i Europa, men hvorfor skulle hærens tilstedeværelse dog kunne forhindre noget sådant, når nu det forholder sig sådan, at hverken London eller Madrid-angrebene synes at kunne spores tilbage til Afghanistan idet Madrid-bombningerne blev sporet til en islamistisk gruppering i Nordafrika, mens London-bombningerne antages at være blevet udført af selvstændige individer uden nogen påviselig affinitet til et større netværk.
Gade's logik er besynderlig.
I P1's Orientering hævdede han forsat mellem Jul og Nytår at den væsentligste grund til vores tilstedeværelse i Afghanistan, er at modvirke terroranslag i Europa, men hvorfor skulle hærens tilstedeværelse dog kunne forhindre noget sådant, når nu det forholder sig sådan, at hverken London eller Madrid-angrebene synes at kunne spores tilbage til Afghanistan idet Madrid-bombningerne blev sporet til en islamistisk gruppering i Nordafrika, mens London-bombningerne antages at være blevet udført af selvstændige individer uden nogen påviselig affinitet til et større netværk.
Gade's logik er besynderlig.
Den ydre verden.
“Jeg har flere gange hørt dig sige, at den ydre verden i ne hvis forstand ikke eksisterer. Hvad mener du egentlig med det?”
“Ideen om den ydre verden hviler på en række fordomme. Den ydre verden eksisterer ikke, i den forstand, at vi kan tale om en ydre verden adskilt fra vore modeller af hvorledes denne ydre verden er beskaffen. Vi kan ikke tale om en ydre verden løsrevet fra vore modeller af den, og disse modeller er ikke verden, men derimod forsøg på at repræsentere egenskaber ved verden som den forekommer for os. Kortet er ikke landskabet og menuen ikke retterne den beskriver. En vase kan for mig synes at have en fast form, men formens fasthed er ikke en egenskab ved vasen, men derimod et produkt af hvorledes mit nervesystem er konstitueret.”
“Det er simpelthen for langt ude, for det du siger er, at hvis jeg stikker dig en lussing, vil den smerte du føler altså ikke være et produkt af fastheden af min håndflade, men udelukkende et produkt af din følesans?”
“Ja!”
“Det lyder ret underligt. Ville det ikke være mere meningsfuldt at sige, at smerten du føler efter at have fået en flad, er et produkt af dit nervesystems reaktion mod en udefrakommende belastning? Denne belastning er så heftig, at en advarsel fra dit nervesystem tilkendegiver, via en udskillelse af adrenalin, at du nu står i en situation, hvor dine to primale valgmuligheder er enten kamp eller flugt? For dig er min håndflades fasthed vel ganske virkelig idet du tydeligt mærker den smerte dens fasthed forårsager når den rammer din kind?”
“Det er netop pointen, smerten er virkelig for mig, da jeg er et subjekt med en velfungerende følesans. Havde jeg ikke været i besiddelse af en følesans grundet en lammelse i min kind, ville jeg ikke mærke nogen smerte, ej heller din hånds fasthed. Din håndflades fasthed er udelukkende en tolkning, om end en for nervesystemet praktisk tolkning, der, som du selv er inde på, kan betyde forskellen mellem kamp eller flugt, men det gør ikke, at min oplevelse af din håndflades fasthed er et produkt af en egenskab ved din håndflade. Den er derimod et produkt af mit nervesystems måde at fortolke udefrakommende stimuli på.”
“Jeg tror godt jeg ved hvor du forsøger at tage den hen, men det forekommer mig stadigvæk at være nonsens. Selvfølgelig besidder min håndflade ikke nogen fasthed anskuet gennem fysikerens briller, da den ikke besidder nogen fasthed på atomart niveau, men for dig er dens fasthed vel ganske virkelig idet du tydeligt mærker den smerter den forårsager.”
“Jeg er glad for at du bringer fysikken på banen her, for det jeg forsøger at forklare hænger sammen med de erfaringer man har gjort sig indenfor den del af fysikken der kaldes kvantemekanikken.”
“kvantemekanikken? Ja, undskyld, men fysik har aldrig været min stærke side, Hvad går det i korte træk ud på?”
“Til én med få forudsætninger kan man lidt simpelt sige, at det kvantemekanikken lærer os er, at verden som vi iagttager den er virkelig, men samtidig relativeres denne virkelighed af; 1) gennem hvilket instrument vi anskuer den, 2) hvor det instrument befinder sig i tid og rum, samt 3) hvem der iagttager gennem dette instrument. Det instrument vi i hverdagen bruger til at iagttage verden med er vores nervesystem, og derfor er vores iagttagelser af denne verden også begrænsede til den kapacitet for iagttagelse vores nervesystem rummer.”
“Men nu taler du om nervesystemet og dets fortolkninger af udefrakommende stimuli. Hvordan kan du tale om sådanne, såfremt den ydre verden ikke eksisterer.”
“Nu misforstår du vist hvad jeg prøvede at sige. Der er ikke tale om solipsisme, om end verden i nogle henseender med rette kan betegnes som værende af samme stof som vore drømme. Det vi må gøre os klart er hvad vi mener, når vi bruger ordet ‘verden’. For hvad er verden? Hvis vi siger at verden er summen af fænomener som de forekommer for os, dvs. som de kan repræsenteres af os gennem alle modeller vi på nuværende tidspunkt kan inddrage for at meddele os til hinanden, har vi så dermed sagt noget om verden som den er?”
“Det er jeg ikke sikker på at jeg forstår. Jeg antager at svaret på dit spørgsmål er ‘nej’, men jeg er ikke sikker på hvorfor. Kunne du prøve at uddybe?”
“Ja selvfølgelig. Pointen er, at hvis vi siger at ‘verden’ er summen af fænomener som de forekommer for os, og som vi meningsfuldt kan meddele hinanden om gennem de modeller vi gør brug af til at beskrive disse fænomener, så har vi selvfølgelig sagt noget om disse fænomener. Dette er ofte ekstremt fordelagtigt, idet disse beskrivelser og modeller af fænomenernes beskaffenhed ofte tillader os at prognosticere et givent resultat med stor nøjagtighed, men egentlig har vi ikke sagt så meget om verden, som vi har sagt om den menneskelige erkendelses præmisser. Den ydre verden som den forekommer for os, og som vi kan meddele hinanden om, er egentlig ikke nogen ydre verden, men derimod en projektion af vore forestillinger om hvad denne ydre ‘verden’ er.
“Så græsset er ikke grønt?”
“Både jo og nej, for græsset forekommer os at være grønt, men det at du og jeg kan blive enige om at græsset er grønt, beror på at vi begge har omfavnet en konsensus der gør, at vi sprogligt har vænnet os til, at kalde en bestemt farve for grøn. Denne konsensus beror ikke på en egenskab ved græsset, men på vores sproglige fællesgrund. I nogle kulturer ville det ikke være meningsfuldt at sige at græsset er grønt, ja det ville endda være umuligt, da ingen sådan farve eksisterer som begreb for denne kultur. Bellona-folket på øen Bellona opererer slet ikke med overkategorien farve på samme måde som mennesker i Danmark gør det, men skelner derimod kun mellem gul, rød og sort. Dette formulerede Robert Anton Wilson med spørgsmålet: “Who is the master who makes the grass green?”
“Ja ifølge dig ville denne mester vel være sproget, men det kan jeg ikke få til at passe, for hvis vore iagttagelser beror på vores sprog, ville det vel betyde, at jeg ikke kan iagttage noget jeg ikke har begreb om, som eksempelvis folkene på øen Bellona, der ikke ser farven grøn.”
“Nu er det jo ikke sådan at de intet ser fordi de ikke kender til en betegnelse for en gruppe farvenuancer som vi i vores kulturkreds har valgt at betegne grønne farver, men jeg forstår godt din vildfarelse og vil derfor prøve at illustrere min pointe yderligere.
Forestil dig at du er på vej ind i regnskoven i Amazonas. Du har selv intet kendskab til regnskovens dyr og planteliv, men du er sammen med en botaniker og en stifinder, der er den lokale indfødte stammes medicinmand. Du og botanikeren vil sandsynligvis se de samme træer og planter, formmæssigt, men botanikeren vil samtidig se langt mere end du, da han har et stort begrebsapparat som han kan gøre brug af. Hans model er simpelthen mere raffineret end din, hvorfor den giver plads til en lang række overvejelser omkring de fænomener i møder på jeres vej, som din mere begrænsede model ikke giver plads til. For den lokale medicinmand er i imidlertid begge børn, for han iagttager regnskovens dyr og planteliv gennem en mere omfattende model, da han eksempelvis ved hvilke plantesafter han skal tage i brug, hvis han ønsker at udvirke et givent medicinsk resultat. Hans model er altså bedre end både din og botanikerens i den forstand, at den inkluderer et bredere meningsspektrum. Præmisserne for hans erkendelse af regnskovens mangfoldige fænomener er langt bedre end jeres, da hele hans verdensanskuelse er blevet konceptualiseret i dette miljø.”
“Så den ydre verden eksisterer altså kun for os i det omfang vi kan begrebsliggøre den. Er det sådan det skal forstås?”
“Well, den ydre verden som den forekommer for os, og os er her det centrale ord, afhænger i høj grad af hvilken fællessproglig referenceramme vi har. Du og medicinmanden fra Amazonas har i mange henseender ingen ydre verden til fælles, idet han ikke meningsfuldt kan repræsentere hans model af verden til dig, da hans model beror på helt andre konsensi end din. I har begge fem sanser til fælles, men hans sanser er muligvis langt mere fintunede end dine, da disse har udviklet gennem talrige generationer for at optimere vilkårene for hans overlevelse. Endvidere har i ingen fælles kulturgrund overhovedet. Det Overnaturlige vil ikke for ham, som for dig, være noget fremmed, men derimod sandsynligvis være særdeles tilstedeværende, og det i en sådan grad, at det slet ikke ville være meningsfuldt for ham at differentiere mellem naturlige fænomener og overnaturlige fænomener. For ham vil regnskoven være besjælet”
“Ideen om den ydre verden hviler på en række fordomme. Den ydre verden eksisterer ikke, i den forstand, at vi kan tale om en ydre verden adskilt fra vore modeller af hvorledes denne ydre verden er beskaffen. Vi kan ikke tale om en ydre verden løsrevet fra vore modeller af den, og disse modeller er ikke verden, men derimod forsøg på at repræsentere egenskaber ved verden som den forekommer for os. Kortet er ikke landskabet og menuen ikke retterne den beskriver. En vase kan for mig synes at have en fast form, men formens fasthed er ikke en egenskab ved vasen, men derimod et produkt af hvorledes mit nervesystem er konstitueret.”
“Det er simpelthen for langt ude, for det du siger er, at hvis jeg stikker dig en lussing, vil den smerte du føler altså ikke være et produkt af fastheden af min håndflade, men udelukkende et produkt af din følesans?”
“Ja!”
“Det lyder ret underligt. Ville det ikke være mere meningsfuldt at sige, at smerten du føler efter at have fået en flad, er et produkt af dit nervesystems reaktion mod en udefrakommende belastning? Denne belastning er så heftig, at en advarsel fra dit nervesystem tilkendegiver, via en udskillelse af adrenalin, at du nu står i en situation, hvor dine to primale valgmuligheder er enten kamp eller flugt? For dig er min håndflades fasthed vel ganske virkelig idet du tydeligt mærker den smerte dens fasthed forårsager når den rammer din kind?”
“Det er netop pointen, smerten er virkelig for mig, da jeg er et subjekt med en velfungerende følesans. Havde jeg ikke været i besiddelse af en følesans grundet en lammelse i min kind, ville jeg ikke mærke nogen smerte, ej heller din hånds fasthed. Din håndflades fasthed er udelukkende en tolkning, om end en for nervesystemet praktisk tolkning, der, som du selv er inde på, kan betyde forskellen mellem kamp eller flugt, men det gør ikke, at min oplevelse af din håndflades fasthed er et produkt af en egenskab ved din håndflade. Den er derimod et produkt af mit nervesystems måde at fortolke udefrakommende stimuli på.”
“Jeg tror godt jeg ved hvor du forsøger at tage den hen, men det forekommer mig stadigvæk at være nonsens. Selvfølgelig besidder min håndflade ikke nogen fasthed anskuet gennem fysikerens briller, da den ikke besidder nogen fasthed på atomart niveau, men for dig er dens fasthed vel ganske virkelig idet du tydeligt mærker den smerter den forårsager.”
“Jeg er glad for at du bringer fysikken på banen her, for det jeg forsøger at forklare hænger sammen med de erfaringer man har gjort sig indenfor den del af fysikken der kaldes kvantemekanikken.”
“kvantemekanikken? Ja, undskyld, men fysik har aldrig været min stærke side, Hvad går det i korte træk ud på?”
“Til én med få forudsætninger kan man lidt simpelt sige, at det kvantemekanikken lærer os er, at verden som vi iagttager den er virkelig, men samtidig relativeres denne virkelighed af; 1) gennem hvilket instrument vi anskuer den, 2) hvor det instrument befinder sig i tid og rum, samt 3) hvem der iagttager gennem dette instrument. Det instrument vi i hverdagen bruger til at iagttage verden med er vores nervesystem, og derfor er vores iagttagelser af denne verden også begrænsede til den kapacitet for iagttagelse vores nervesystem rummer.”
“Men nu taler du om nervesystemet og dets fortolkninger af udefrakommende stimuli. Hvordan kan du tale om sådanne, såfremt den ydre verden ikke eksisterer.”
“Nu misforstår du vist hvad jeg prøvede at sige. Der er ikke tale om solipsisme, om end verden i nogle henseender med rette kan betegnes som værende af samme stof som vore drømme. Det vi må gøre os klart er hvad vi mener, når vi bruger ordet ‘verden’. For hvad er verden? Hvis vi siger at verden er summen af fænomener som de forekommer for os, dvs. som de kan repræsenteres af os gennem alle modeller vi på nuværende tidspunkt kan inddrage for at meddele os til hinanden, har vi så dermed sagt noget om verden som den er?”
“Det er jeg ikke sikker på at jeg forstår. Jeg antager at svaret på dit spørgsmål er ‘nej’, men jeg er ikke sikker på hvorfor. Kunne du prøve at uddybe?”
“Ja selvfølgelig. Pointen er, at hvis vi siger at ‘verden’ er summen af fænomener som de forekommer for os, og som vi meningsfuldt kan meddele hinanden om gennem de modeller vi gør brug af til at beskrive disse fænomener, så har vi selvfølgelig sagt noget om disse fænomener. Dette er ofte ekstremt fordelagtigt, idet disse beskrivelser og modeller af fænomenernes beskaffenhed ofte tillader os at prognosticere et givent resultat med stor nøjagtighed, men egentlig har vi ikke sagt så meget om verden, som vi har sagt om den menneskelige erkendelses præmisser. Den ydre verden som den forekommer for os, og som vi kan meddele hinanden om, er egentlig ikke nogen ydre verden, men derimod en projektion af vore forestillinger om hvad denne ydre ‘verden’ er.
“Så græsset er ikke grønt?”
“Både jo og nej, for græsset forekommer os at være grønt, men det at du og jeg kan blive enige om at græsset er grønt, beror på at vi begge har omfavnet en konsensus der gør, at vi sprogligt har vænnet os til, at kalde en bestemt farve for grøn. Denne konsensus beror ikke på en egenskab ved græsset, men på vores sproglige fællesgrund. I nogle kulturer ville det ikke være meningsfuldt at sige at græsset er grønt, ja det ville endda være umuligt, da ingen sådan farve eksisterer som begreb for denne kultur. Bellona-folket på øen Bellona opererer slet ikke med overkategorien farve på samme måde som mennesker i Danmark gør det, men skelner derimod kun mellem gul, rød og sort. Dette formulerede Robert Anton Wilson med spørgsmålet: “Who is the master who makes the grass green?”
“Ja ifølge dig ville denne mester vel være sproget, men det kan jeg ikke få til at passe, for hvis vore iagttagelser beror på vores sprog, ville det vel betyde, at jeg ikke kan iagttage noget jeg ikke har begreb om, som eksempelvis folkene på øen Bellona, der ikke ser farven grøn.”
“Nu er det jo ikke sådan at de intet ser fordi de ikke kender til en betegnelse for en gruppe farvenuancer som vi i vores kulturkreds har valgt at betegne grønne farver, men jeg forstår godt din vildfarelse og vil derfor prøve at illustrere min pointe yderligere.
Forestil dig at du er på vej ind i regnskoven i Amazonas. Du har selv intet kendskab til regnskovens dyr og planteliv, men du er sammen med en botaniker og en stifinder, der er den lokale indfødte stammes medicinmand. Du og botanikeren vil sandsynligvis se de samme træer og planter, formmæssigt, men botanikeren vil samtidig se langt mere end du, da han har et stort begrebsapparat som han kan gøre brug af. Hans model er simpelthen mere raffineret end din, hvorfor den giver plads til en lang række overvejelser omkring de fænomener i møder på jeres vej, som din mere begrænsede model ikke giver plads til. For den lokale medicinmand er i imidlertid begge børn, for han iagttager regnskovens dyr og planteliv gennem en mere omfattende model, da han eksempelvis ved hvilke plantesafter han skal tage i brug, hvis han ønsker at udvirke et givent medicinsk resultat. Hans model er altså bedre end både din og botanikerens i den forstand, at den inkluderer et bredere meningsspektrum. Præmisserne for hans erkendelse af regnskovens mangfoldige fænomener er langt bedre end jeres, da hele hans verdensanskuelse er blevet konceptualiseret i dette miljø.”
“Så den ydre verden eksisterer altså kun for os i det omfang vi kan begrebsliggøre den. Er det sådan det skal forstås?”
“Well, den ydre verden som den forekommer for os, og os er her det centrale ord, afhænger i høj grad af hvilken fællessproglig referenceramme vi har. Du og medicinmanden fra Amazonas har i mange henseender ingen ydre verden til fælles, idet han ikke meningsfuldt kan repræsentere hans model af verden til dig, da hans model beror på helt andre konsensi end din. I har begge fem sanser til fælles, men hans sanser er muligvis langt mere fintunede end dine, da disse har udviklet gennem talrige generationer for at optimere vilkårene for hans overlevelse. Endvidere har i ingen fælles kulturgrund overhovedet. Det Overnaturlige vil ikke for ham, som for dig, være noget fremmed, men derimod sandsynligvis være særdeles tilstedeværende, og det i en sådan grad, at det slet ikke ville være meningsfuldt for ham at differentiere mellem naturlige fænomener og overnaturlige fænomener. For ham vil regnskoven være besjælet”
tirsdag den 25. december 2007
Den moralske bevæggrund for straf i DK
Nedestående link henviser til et i mine øjne ganske interessant interview med Professor i kriminologi Flemming Balvig fra Københavns Universitet, om hvordan den tilgrundsliggende moral for hvorfor samfundet straffer, har ændret sig over årtierne fra at være en opfattet præventiv indsats, til at være en indsats som skal garantere at befolkningens retsopfattelse og retsbevidsthed opretholdes.
http://dr.dk/P1/Apropos/Udsendelser/2007/12/17132944.htm
http://dr.dk/P1/Apropos/Udsendelser/2007/12/17132944.htm
mandag den 24. december 2007
P1's Dokumentarzonen om Overvågningssamfundet og Angst
http://www.dr.dk/P1/Dokumentarzonen/Udsendelser/2007/12/20071212180146.htm
Linket henviser til en fin radiodokumentar om overvågningssamfundet og angst, med professor i psykiatri Tom Bolvig om angstens grundlag i krybdyrhjernens pirmitive kamp/flugt mekanisme, og juraprofessor Simon Davies der er leder for Privacy International om den Orwellske NewSpeak ift. Overvågningssamfundet i Storbrittanien, samt nogle enkelt forklarende skits om trinnene mod lignende tilstande i DK.
Linket henviser til en fin radiodokumentar om overvågningssamfundet og angst, med professor i psykiatri Tom Bolvig om angstens grundlag i krybdyrhjernens pirmitive kamp/flugt mekanisme, og juraprofessor Simon Davies der er leder for Privacy International om den Orwellske NewSpeak ift. Overvågningssamfundet i Storbrittanien, samt nogle enkelt forklarende skits om trinnene mod lignende tilstande i DK.
søndag den 23. december 2007
Hætter over hovedet på arrestanter
PET har i de to terrorsager valgt at putte hætter over hovedet på arrestanterne, i hvad ser synes at være ret vidtgående krænkelser af sigtede, som altså nu straffes i kraft af denne urimelige og unødvendige politivirksomhed, inden deres skyld er bevist. Følgende er et par citatet fra den sidste tids aviser. Klik på linkene for at lære mere om PETs usmagelige metoder.
"Det er mit indtryk, at PET er meget opmærksom på at planlægge og gennemføre større anholdelsesaktioner på en sådan måde, at de er til mindst mulig gene for de anholdte, og selvfølgelig også for de beboere og familiemedlemmer, der måtte opholde sig i nærheden af de anholdte,"
http://information.dk/151831
Professor dr. med. Bent Sørensen, der tidligere har været Danmarks udpegede medlem af Europarådets komité til forebyggelse af tortur og af FN's komité mod tortur, tager skarpt afstand fra politiets brug af hætter.
»Hætter over hovedet på anholdte er simpelthen forbudt og absolut uacceptabelt. Det er den entydige opfattelse i de to komitéer«, siger han til Information.
http://politiken.dk/indland/article448280.ece
FBI Prepares Vast Database Of Biometrics
$1 Billion Project to Include Images of Irises and Faces
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22366208/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22366208/
torsdag den 20. december 2007
Frygt vs. Fakta
Befolkningens udsathed for vold har ikke ændret sig: Cirka to procent er hvert år ofre for vold. Sådan har det været i over 20 år.
I 61 procent af tilfældene er gerningsmanden påvirket af alkohol eller stoffer - og 64 procent af dem sker fredag, lørdag eller søndag.
Hvor det for ti år siden var ved 3 procent af voldstilfældene, der blev anvendt kniv, var det i 2005-2006 5 procent. En lignende udvikling ser man
ift. skydevåben: Tidligere var det slet ingen, i 2005-2006 2 procent.
http://www.justitsministeriet.dk/forskning/rapporter-fra-forskningsenheden/rapport-mappe/danskernes-udsathed-for-kriminalitet-20052006/
Danskerne har altså ingen grund til at føle sig specielt meget mere utrygge. Udviklingen er IKKE ved at løbe løbsk. Det er IKKE værre end nogensinde. Politiet er IKKE ved at miste kontrollen over situationen.
Og det vilde er, at danskerne heller ikke FØLER sig mere utrygge. En dugfrisk undersøgelse viser, at befolkningens bekymring for vold næsten er halveret på 15-20 år.
I årene 1985-1996 var det mellem 60 og 70 procent af befolkningen, der bekymrede sig meget om vold. Siden 2003 har det været 35-37 procent (sidste år var det endda helt nede på 30 procent).
http://www.justitsministeriet.dk/fileadmin/downloads/Forskning_og_dokumentation/Bekymring_2007.pdf
Hvad fanden vi så skal med endnu flere sanktioner og udvidede beføjelser til politiet, der hverken kan begrundes i den faktiske kriminalitetsudvikling eller i befolkningens opfattelse af den.
I 61 procent af tilfældene er gerningsmanden påvirket af alkohol eller stoffer - og 64 procent af dem sker fredag, lørdag eller søndag.
Hvor det for ti år siden var ved 3 procent af voldstilfældene, der blev anvendt kniv, var det i 2005-2006 5 procent. En lignende udvikling ser man
ift. skydevåben: Tidligere var det slet ingen, i 2005-2006 2 procent.
http://www.justitsministeriet.dk/forskning/rapporter-fra-forskningsenheden/rapport-mappe/danskernes-udsathed-for-kriminalitet-20052006/
Danskerne har altså ingen grund til at føle sig specielt meget mere utrygge. Udviklingen er IKKE ved at løbe løbsk. Det er IKKE værre end nogensinde. Politiet er IKKE ved at miste kontrollen over situationen.
Og det vilde er, at danskerne heller ikke FØLER sig mere utrygge. En dugfrisk undersøgelse viser, at befolkningens bekymring for vold næsten er halveret på 15-20 år.
I årene 1985-1996 var det mellem 60 og 70 procent af befolkningen, der bekymrede sig meget om vold. Siden 2003 har det været 35-37 procent (sidste år var det endda helt nede på 30 procent).
http://www.justitsministeriet.dk/fileadmin/downloads/Forskning_og_dokumentation/Bekymring_2007.pdf
Hvad fanden vi så skal med endnu flere sanktioner og udvidede beføjelser til politiet, der hverken kan begrundes i den faktiske kriminalitetsudvikling eller i befolkningens opfattelse af den.
tirsdag den 18. december 2007
Velkommen til Politistaten
Der skulle 13 skudepisoder på blot tre måneder til at få justitsminister Lene Espersen til at reagere. Hun vil nu skærpe straffene for våbenbesiddelse. Politiet skal have mulighed for at varetægtsfængsle folk, der bærer våben. Samtidig skal strafferammen forhøjes. Derudover opfordrer hun politiet til øget brug af visitationszoner, hvor man kan kropsvisitere alle i et område.
"Hvis de ved, at politiet visiterer bestemte områder, tror jeg trods alt, at de er mere forsigtige med at have maskinpistoler og andet med i bagagerummet, for de ryger direkte i fængsel og får en lang fængselsstraf. Hvis reglerne bliver strammet op, får vi dem i det mindste væk fra gaden, og så kan de sidde i fængslet og tænke over tingene." siger Lene Espersen. (Ekstra Bladet 14-12-2007)
"Oprettelsen af politiets omfattende visitationszoner i det centrale København kastede heller ikke i går de helt store våbenfund af sig. Natten til i går blev i alt 346 personers lommer endevendt af betjente, mens 133 bilister fik set deres handske- og bagagerum igennem, oplyser Københavns Politi. Resultatet var fire våbenlovsovertrædelser, heriblandt et sværd. Natten til lørdag blev omkring 200 personer og 70 biler visiteret. Også her var resultatet fire overtrædelser af våbenloven." (Ritzau 17/12 2007)
-------------------------------------
Det er meget sigende, at justitsministeren går ud og anbefaler politiet, at gøre brug af visitationszoner som et middel til at bekæmpe ulovlig våbenbesiddelse, for denne form for kollektiv afstraffelse og vilkårlige krænkelser af folk der bevæger sig indenfor for et givent afgrænset område, uden politiet har nogen begrundet mistanke for at foretage sådanne indgreb i den personlige frihed, er virkelig et skridt i en meget ubehagelig retning, og det kan vel næppe heller komme som nogen overraskelse at justitsministeren ydermere anbefaler strengere straffe, for det synes at være hendes løsningsmodel generelt. “så kan de sidde i fængslet og tænke over tingene." siger hun, men hvad skal man helt præcis ligge i dette? Mener hun dermed at det skulle have en præventiv virkning at smide folk i fængslernes kriminalitetsskoler for selv latterlige overstrædelser af våbenlovgivningen, såsom at have en større køkkenkniv liggende i handskerummet, uanset hvorfor den måtte befinde sig der?
Hendes videre argumentation er også ret interessant, for hun hævder at det har en præventiv virkning at politiet laver visitationszoner, da folk så vil tænke sig ekstra godt om før de tager en maskinpistol med i byen. Dette er muligvis rigtigt, men for at vise hvorledes dette ingenlunde gør brugen af visitationszoner til nogen god idé kunne man, for the sake of argument, tage den et skridt videre og sige, at det sandsynligvis ville have en præventiv virkning på antallet af kvinder der udsættes for vold i hjemmet, hvis politiet satte kameraer op i alle hjem og filmede alt i alle døgnets 24 timer, men det gør det da bestemt ikke til nogen god idé, for det gør at en masse uskyldige mennesker, ligesom med visitationszonerne, udsættes for unødigt grove krænkelser af den personlige frihed som for størstedelens vedkommende må siges at savne legitim begrundelse, ydermere gør det at samfundets borgere skal betale en masse penge for en politiindsats som i langt de fleste tilfælde er ineffektiv og unødvendig, og som vel bedst kan betegnes som at skyde gråspurve med kanoner.
Alt dette skal selvfølgelig ikke ses isoleret, men derimod som endnu et led i de meget omfattende lovgivningsfunderede krænkelser af den personlige frihed, såsom antiterror-pakken og logningsbekendtgørelsen, som den borgerlige regering har sat i værk under dens embede. Endnu engang viser justitsministeren med al ønskelig tydelighed at hun og den regering hun er en del af er frihedens fjende nummer et i Danmark.
"Hvis de ved, at politiet visiterer bestemte områder, tror jeg trods alt, at de er mere forsigtige med at have maskinpistoler og andet med i bagagerummet, for de ryger direkte i fængsel og får en lang fængselsstraf. Hvis reglerne bliver strammet op, får vi dem i det mindste væk fra gaden, og så kan de sidde i fængslet og tænke over tingene." siger Lene Espersen. (Ekstra Bladet 14-12-2007)
"Oprettelsen af politiets omfattende visitationszoner i det centrale København kastede heller ikke i går de helt store våbenfund af sig. Natten til i går blev i alt 346 personers lommer endevendt af betjente, mens 133 bilister fik set deres handske- og bagagerum igennem, oplyser Københavns Politi. Resultatet var fire våbenlovsovertrædelser, heriblandt et sværd. Natten til lørdag blev omkring 200 personer og 70 biler visiteret. Også her var resultatet fire overtrædelser af våbenloven." (Ritzau 17/12 2007)
-------------------------------------
Det er meget sigende, at justitsministeren går ud og anbefaler politiet, at gøre brug af visitationszoner som et middel til at bekæmpe ulovlig våbenbesiddelse, for denne form for kollektiv afstraffelse og vilkårlige krænkelser af folk der bevæger sig indenfor for et givent afgrænset område, uden politiet har nogen begrundet mistanke for at foretage sådanne indgreb i den personlige frihed, er virkelig et skridt i en meget ubehagelig retning, og det kan vel næppe heller komme som nogen overraskelse at justitsministeren ydermere anbefaler strengere straffe, for det synes at være hendes løsningsmodel generelt. “så kan de sidde i fængslet og tænke over tingene." siger hun, men hvad skal man helt præcis ligge i dette? Mener hun dermed at det skulle have en præventiv virkning at smide folk i fængslernes kriminalitetsskoler for selv latterlige overstrædelser af våbenlovgivningen, såsom at have en større køkkenkniv liggende i handskerummet, uanset hvorfor den måtte befinde sig der?
Hendes videre argumentation er også ret interessant, for hun hævder at det har en præventiv virkning at politiet laver visitationszoner, da folk så vil tænke sig ekstra godt om før de tager en maskinpistol med i byen. Dette er muligvis rigtigt, men for at vise hvorledes dette ingenlunde gør brugen af visitationszoner til nogen god idé kunne man, for the sake of argument, tage den et skridt videre og sige, at det sandsynligvis ville have en præventiv virkning på antallet af kvinder der udsættes for vold i hjemmet, hvis politiet satte kameraer op i alle hjem og filmede alt i alle døgnets 24 timer, men det gør det da bestemt ikke til nogen god idé, for det gør at en masse uskyldige mennesker, ligesom med visitationszonerne, udsættes for unødigt grove krænkelser af den personlige frihed som for størstedelens vedkommende må siges at savne legitim begrundelse, ydermere gør det at samfundets borgere skal betale en masse penge for en politiindsats som i langt de fleste tilfælde er ineffektiv og unødvendig, og som vel bedst kan betegnes som at skyde gråspurve med kanoner.
Alt dette skal selvfølgelig ikke ses isoleret, men derimod som endnu et led i de meget omfattende lovgivningsfunderede krænkelser af den personlige frihed, såsom antiterror-pakken og logningsbekendtgørelsen, som den borgerlige regering har sat i værk under dens embede. Endnu engang viser justitsministeren med al ønskelig tydelighed at hun og den regering hun er en del af er frihedens fjende nummer et i Danmark.
fredag den 9. november 2007
Cheney Tried to Stifle Dissent in Iran NIE
By Gareth Porter
A National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran has been held up for more than a year in an effort to force the intelligence community to remove dissenting judgments on the Iranian nuclear program, and thus make the document more supportive of US Vice President Dick Cheney's militarily aggressive policy toward Iran, according to accounts of the process provided by participants to two former Central Intelligence Agency officers.
But this pressure on intelligence analysts, obviously instigated by Cheney himself, has not produced a draft estimate without those dissenting views, these sources say. The White House has now apparently decided to release the unsatisfactory draft NIE, but without making its key findings public.
A former CIA intelligence officer who has asked not to be identified told IPS that an official involved in the NIE process says the Iran estimate was ready to be published a year ago but has been delayed because the director of national intelligence wanted a draft reflecting a consensus on key conclusions – particularly on Iran's nuclear program.
The NIE coordinates the judgments of 16 intelligence agencies on a specific country or issue.
There is a split in the intelligence community on how much of a threat the Iranian nuclear program poses, according to the intelligence official's account. Some analysts who are less independent are willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the alarmist view coming from Cheney's office, but others have rejected that view.
The draft NIE first completed a year ago, which had included the dissenting views, was not acceptable to the White House, according to the former intelligence officer. "They refused to come out with a version that had dissenting views in it," he says.
As recently as early October, the official involved in the process was said to be unclear about whether an NIE would be circulated and, if so, what it would say.
Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi provided a similar account, based on his own sources in the intelligence community. He told IPS that intelligence analysts have had to review and rewrite their findings three times, because of pressure from the White House.
"The White House wants a document that it can use as evidence for its Iran policy," says Giraldi. Despite pressures on them to change their dissenting conclusions, however, Giraldi says some analysts have refused to go along with conclusions that they believe are not supported by the evidence.
In February 2007, Giraldi wrote in The American Conservative that the NIE on Iran had already been completed, but that Cheney's office had objected to its findings on both the Iranian nuclear program. and Iran's role in Iraq. The draft NIE did not conclude that there was confirming evidence that Iran was arming the Shi'ite insurgents in Iraq, according to Giraldi.
Giraldi said the White House had decided to postpone any decision on the internal release of the NIE until after the November 2006 elections.
Cheney's desire for a "clean" NIE that could be used to support his aggressive policy toward Iran was apparently a major factor in the replacement of John Negroponte as director of national intelligence in early 2007.
Negroponte had angered the neoconservatives in the administration by telling the press in April 2006 that the intelligence community believed that it would still be "a number of years off" before Iran would be "likely to have enough fissile material to assemble into or to put into a nuclear weapon, perhaps into the next decade."
Neoconservatives immediately attacked Negroponte for the statement, which merely reflected the existing NIE on Iran issued in Spring 2005. Robert G. Joseph, the undersecretary of state for arms control and an ally of Cheney, contradicted Negroponte the following day. He suggested that Iran's nuclear program. was nearing the "point of no return" – an Israeli concept referring to the mastery of industrial-scale uranium enrichment.
Frank J. Gaffney, a protégé of neoconservative heavyweight Richard Perle, complained that Negroponte was "absurdly declaring the Iranian regime to be years away from having nuclear weapons."
On Jan. 5, 2007, Pres. George W. Bush announced the nomination of retired Vice Admiral John Michael "Mike" McConnell to be director of national intelligence. McConnell was approached by Cheney himself about accepting the position, according to Newsweek.
McConnell was far more amenable to White House influence than his predecessor. On Feb. 27, one week after his confirmation, he told the Senate Armed Services Committee he was "comfortable saying it's probable" that the alleged export of explosively formed penetrators to Shi'ite insurgents in Iraq was linked to the highest leadership in Iran.
Cheney had been making that charge, but Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, as well as Negroponte, had opposed it.
A public event last spring indicated that White House had ordered a reconsideration of the draft NIE's conclusion on how many years it would take Iran to produce a nuclear weapon. The previous Iran estimate completed in spring 2005 had estimated it as 2010 to 2015.
Two weeks after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced in mid-April that Iran would begin producing nuclear fuel on an industrial scale, the chairman of the National Intelligence Council, Thomas Fingar, said in an interview with National Public Radio that the completion of the NIE on Iran had been delayed while the intelligence community determined whether its judgment on the time frame within which Iran might produce a nuclear weapon needed to be amended.
Fingar said the estimate "might change," citing "new reporting" from the International Atomic Energy Agency as well as "some other new information we have." And then he added, "We are serious about reexamining old evidence."
That extraordinary revelation about the NIE process, which was obviously ordered by McConnell, was an unsubtle signal to the intelligence community that the White House was determined to obtain a more alarmist conclusion on the Iranian nuclear program.
A decision announced in late October indicated, however, that Cheney did not get the consensus findings on the nuclear program and Iran's role in Iraq that he had wanted. On Oct. 27, David Shedd, a deputy to McConnell, told a congressional briefing that McConnell had issued a directive making it more difficult to declassify the key judgments of national intelligence estimates.
That reversed a Bush administration practice of releasing summaries of "key judgments" in NIEs that began when the White House made public the key judgments from the controversial 2002 NIE on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction program in July 2003.
The decision to withhold key judgments on Iran from the public was apparently part of a White House strategy for reducing the potential damage of publishing the estimate with the inclusion of dissenting views.
As of early October, officials involved in the NIE were "throwing their hands up in frustration" over the refusal of the administration to allow the estimate to be released, according to the former intelligence officer. But the Iran NIE is now expected to be circulated within the administration in late November, says Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst and founder of the antiwar group Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
The release of the Iran NIE would certainly intensify the bureaucratic political struggle over Iran policy. If the NIE includes both dissenting views on key issues, a campaign of selective leaking to news media of language from the NIE that supports Cheney's line on Iran will soon follow, as well as leaks of the dissenting views by his opponents.
Both sides may be anticipating another effort by Cheney to win Bush's approval of a significant escalation of military pressure on Iran in early 2008.
(Inter Press Service)
A National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran has been held up for more than a year in an effort to force the intelligence community to remove dissenting judgments on the Iranian nuclear program, and thus make the document more supportive of US Vice President Dick Cheney's militarily aggressive policy toward Iran, according to accounts of the process provided by participants to two former Central Intelligence Agency officers.
But this pressure on intelligence analysts, obviously instigated by Cheney himself, has not produced a draft estimate without those dissenting views, these sources say. The White House has now apparently decided to release the unsatisfactory draft NIE, but without making its key findings public.
A former CIA intelligence officer who has asked not to be identified told IPS that an official involved in the NIE process says the Iran estimate was ready to be published a year ago but has been delayed because the director of national intelligence wanted a draft reflecting a consensus on key conclusions – particularly on Iran's nuclear program.
The NIE coordinates the judgments of 16 intelligence agencies on a specific country or issue.
There is a split in the intelligence community on how much of a threat the Iranian nuclear program poses, according to the intelligence official's account. Some analysts who are less independent are willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the alarmist view coming from Cheney's office, but others have rejected that view.
The draft NIE first completed a year ago, which had included the dissenting views, was not acceptable to the White House, according to the former intelligence officer. "They refused to come out with a version that had dissenting views in it," he says.
As recently as early October, the official involved in the process was said to be unclear about whether an NIE would be circulated and, if so, what it would say.
Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi provided a similar account, based on his own sources in the intelligence community. He told IPS that intelligence analysts have had to review and rewrite their findings three times, because of pressure from the White House.
"The White House wants a document that it can use as evidence for its Iran policy," says Giraldi. Despite pressures on them to change their dissenting conclusions, however, Giraldi says some analysts have refused to go along with conclusions that they believe are not supported by the evidence.
In February 2007, Giraldi wrote in The American Conservative that the NIE on Iran had already been completed, but that Cheney's office had objected to its findings on both the Iranian nuclear program. and Iran's role in Iraq. The draft NIE did not conclude that there was confirming evidence that Iran was arming the Shi'ite insurgents in Iraq, according to Giraldi.
Giraldi said the White House had decided to postpone any decision on the internal release of the NIE until after the November 2006 elections.
Cheney's desire for a "clean" NIE that could be used to support his aggressive policy toward Iran was apparently a major factor in the replacement of John Negroponte as director of national intelligence in early 2007.
Negroponte had angered the neoconservatives in the administration by telling the press in April 2006 that the intelligence community believed that it would still be "a number of years off" before Iran would be "likely to have enough fissile material to assemble into or to put into a nuclear weapon, perhaps into the next decade."
Neoconservatives immediately attacked Negroponte for the statement, which merely reflected the existing NIE on Iran issued in Spring 2005. Robert G. Joseph, the undersecretary of state for arms control and an ally of Cheney, contradicted Negroponte the following day. He suggested that Iran's nuclear program. was nearing the "point of no return" – an Israeli concept referring to the mastery of industrial-scale uranium enrichment.
Frank J. Gaffney, a protégé of neoconservative heavyweight Richard Perle, complained that Negroponte was "absurdly declaring the Iranian regime to be years away from having nuclear weapons."
On Jan. 5, 2007, Pres. George W. Bush announced the nomination of retired Vice Admiral John Michael "Mike" McConnell to be director of national intelligence. McConnell was approached by Cheney himself about accepting the position, according to Newsweek.
McConnell was far more amenable to White House influence than his predecessor. On Feb. 27, one week after his confirmation, he told the Senate Armed Services Committee he was "comfortable saying it's probable" that the alleged export of explosively formed penetrators to Shi'ite insurgents in Iraq was linked to the highest leadership in Iran.
Cheney had been making that charge, but Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, as well as Negroponte, had opposed it.
A public event last spring indicated that White House had ordered a reconsideration of the draft NIE's conclusion on how many years it would take Iran to produce a nuclear weapon. The previous Iran estimate completed in spring 2005 had estimated it as 2010 to 2015.
Two weeks after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced in mid-April that Iran would begin producing nuclear fuel on an industrial scale, the chairman of the National Intelligence Council, Thomas Fingar, said in an interview with National Public Radio that the completion of the NIE on Iran had been delayed while the intelligence community determined whether its judgment on the time frame within which Iran might produce a nuclear weapon needed to be amended.
Fingar said the estimate "might change," citing "new reporting" from the International Atomic Energy Agency as well as "some other new information we have." And then he added, "We are serious about reexamining old evidence."
That extraordinary revelation about the NIE process, which was obviously ordered by McConnell, was an unsubtle signal to the intelligence community that the White House was determined to obtain a more alarmist conclusion on the Iranian nuclear program.
A decision announced in late October indicated, however, that Cheney did not get the consensus findings on the nuclear program and Iran's role in Iraq that he had wanted. On Oct. 27, David Shedd, a deputy to McConnell, told a congressional briefing that McConnell had issued a directive making it more difficult to declassify the key judgments of national intelligence estimates.
That reversed a Bush administration practice of releasing summaries of "key judgments" in NIEs that began when the White House made public the key judgments from the controversial 2002 NIE on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction program in July 2003.
The decision to withhold key judgments on Iran from the public was apparently part of a White House strategy for reducing the potential damage of publishing the estimate with the inclusion of dissenting views.
As of early October, officials involved in the NIE were "throwing their hands up in frustration" over the refusal of the administration to allow the estimate to be released, according to the former intelligence officer. But the Iran NIE is now expected to be circulated within the administration in late November, says Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst and founder of the antiwar group Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
The release of the Iran NIE would certainly intensify the bureaucratic political struggle over Iran policy. If the NIE includes both dissenting views on key issues, a campaign of selective leaking to news media of language from the NIE that supports Cheney's line on Iran will soon follow, as well as leaks of the dissenting views by his opponents.
Both sides may be anticipating another effort by Cheney to win Bush's approval of a significant escalation of military pressure on Iran in early 2008.
(Inter Press Service)
The Impossibility of American Empire
By William Pfaff
Paris, October 30, 2007 – Since the return of democracy in Spain, Spain’s politica leaders and political society have demonstrated an extraordinary determination to star anew, after the crisis-afflicted 75 years that began with what the Spaniards have called “th catastrophe” – the collapse of the Spanish empire under blows from an exuberant an adolescent United States that believed it was coming of age as a world power. It’s evidenc that empires end, but nations don’t, and resurrection is possible
America’s transcontinental expansion following the Civil War and the garish joys of the Gilded Age gave Americans a taste for foreign adventure, whetted by the proximity and vulnerability of Cuba. And if Cuba, why not Puerto Rico, and the Philippines? Admiral Alfred Mahan, America’s prophet of naval power and of the economic necessity of colonialism, offered convincing economic reasons for American colonial expansion, and the failing Spanish empire was at hand.
A blow to it in the Caribbean, and another in Manila Bay, was enough for it to splinter and collapse. The Spanish Caribbean and the Philippines were ours.
Every empire has its day, and Spain’s phenomenal empire had its during the four centuries that followed the expeditions of Columbus, sailing westward. 1492, and the riches of South American gold, led eventually, and one can say inexorably, to failure in 1898. All things come to an end. You live to die, a principle unpopular among Americans.
The Empire of the United States was launched in 1898, and has since traversed a mere century, experiencing increasing ambition, and suffering increasing difficulties. Could it too last 406 years? The current evidence is not reassuring.
Take the capacity to rule. Take the current Republican party candidates for their party’s presidential nomination. The level of intelligence, emotional and intellectual maturity, and simple information about the subjects on which they discourse, would disqualify them from mainstream political rank in any other major democracy.
This is seriously distressing – although in principle a soluble problem, since there are plenty of intelligent people in the United States, as well as great universities and a rich culture. But elected U.S. government has been so debased by the national willingness to submit elections to the values and habits of a medium of entertainment, television, and to the corruptions of money, that it is hard to see that such a nation can indefinitely maintain representative government.
The Bush administration has demonstrated that major groups and forces in American society indeed do not wish that form of government to survive, and are deliberately engaged in destroying the constitutional order, undermining the powers of Congress and of the courts, so as to install unchecked executive power, rationalized by a novel and authoritarian legal ideology, and sustained by national security demagogy.
I have not spoken of the Democratic candidates for president in the same way because the party’s candidates and debate have not descended to quite the abysmal levels of the Republican pre-primary campaign. But the Democratic party is equally complicit in degrading and subverting the electoral debate and practice of the country, since its candidates are unwilling or unable to challenge the American imperial ideology that drives the country’s foreign policy, an ideology of permanent, unchallengeable global military supremacy.
This ideology is plainly written out in the American Defense Department’s periodical statements of U.S. National Security Strategy, in the latest of which the previously stated goal of “security” in space has now become “supremacy” in space (as everywhere else).
The most influential ground force doctrine foresees decades of American asymmetrical war against urban insurgents springing up in radicalized or “failed” states around the world (including Europe, which the authors of this ideology of an unending World War IV predict will soon be reduced to helotry in service to an “Islamofascist” Caliphate. This hysterical American dystopia feeds fantasies of conquest to its Islamic enemies that the enemies themselves could not imagine. Paranoia reigns in some American circles, close to leading Republican candidates.
All this might be taken as reason for American fear of what is to come. But the dystopic future thus described is impossible. What can come is a United States that burns itself out in the attempt to deal with its paranoid fantasies.
The United States already wages two wasting wars that make no sense. It will never, itself, dominate the disintegrative forces in Iraq today. In Afghanistan it will never succeed in defeating a Taliban radicalism that represents a real if obscurantist national affirmation by a 40-million strong Pathan ethnic community that has always been the dominant force in its historical homeland.
It is not a question of whether these American objectives should be done. That is irrelevant, since they can’t be done. They are impossibilities.
The United States government, in its effort to execute its national security strategy of dominating and defeating global radicalism and extremism, is currently directly attempting to manipulate and control the internal political processes of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon, the Palestinian Authority, Hamas and Hezbollah, Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan, Kenya; and indirectly it attempts to exercise decisive influence on the affairs of Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, Yemen, Libya, the Gulf Emirates, and a non-existent Kurdistan – and this is to take only a single zone of the world.
This is what the War on Terror has come to mean. It is an attempt to create a universal empire that exists only in the American imagination, by an effort that, because its aim is impossible to achieve, is unlimited in the damage it could do to Americans and others.
© Copyright 2007 by Tribune Media Services International. All Rights Reserved.
Paris, October 30, 2007 – Since the return of democracy in Spain, Spain’s politica leaders and political society have demonstrated an extraordinary determination to star anew, after the crisis-afflicted 75 years that began with what the Spaniards have called “th catastrophe” – the collapse of the Spanish empire under blows from an exuberant an adolescent United States that believed it was coming of age as a world power. It’s evidenc that empires end, but nations don’t, and resurrection is possible
America’s transcontinental expansion following the Civil War and the garish joys of the Gilded Age gave Americans a taste for foreign adventure, whetted by the proximity and vulnerability of Cuba. And if Cuba, why not Puerto Rico, and the Philippines? Admiral Alfred Mahan, America’s prophet of naval power and of the economic necessity of colonialism, offered convincing economic reasons for American colonial expansion, and the failing Spanish empire was at hand.
A blow to it in the Caribbean, and another in Manila Bay, was enough for it to splinter and collapse. The Spanish Caribbean and the Philippines were ours.
Every empire has its day, and Spain’s phenomenal empire had its during the four centuries that followed the expeditions of Columbus, sailing westward. 1492, and the riches of South American gold, led eventually, and one can say inexorably, to failure in 1898. All things come to an end. You live to die, a principle unpopular among Americans.
The Empire of the United States was launched in 1898, and has since traversed a mere century, experiencing increasing ambition, and suffering increasing difficulties. Could it too last 406 years? The current evidence is not reassuring.
Take the capacity to rule. Take the current Republican party candidates for their party’s presidential nomination. The level of intelligence, emotional and intellectual maturity, and simple information about the subjects on which they discourse, would disqualify them from mainstream political rank in any other major democracy.
This is seriously distressing – although in principle a soluble problem, since there are plenty of intelligent people in the United States, as well as great universities and a rich culture. But elected U.S. government has been so debased by the national willingness to submit elections to the values and habits of a medium of entertainment, television, and to the corruptions of money, that it is hard to see that such a nation can indefinitely maintain representative government.
The Bush administration has demonstrated that major groups and forces in American society indeed do not wish that form of government to survive, and are deliberately engaged in destroying the constitutional order, undermining the powers of Congress and of the courts, so as to install unchecked executive power, rationalized by a novel and authoritarian legal ideology, and sustained by national security demagogy.
I have not spoken of the Democratic candidates for president in the same way because the party’s candidates and debate have not descended to quite the abysmal levels of the Republican pre-primary campaign. But the Democratic party is equally complicit in degrading and subverting the electoral debate and practice of the country, since its candidates are unwilling or unable to challenge the American imperial ideology that drives the country’s foreign policy, an ideology of permanent, unchallengeable global military supremacy.
This ideology is plainly written out in the American Defense Department’s periodical statements of U.S. National Security Strategy, in the latest of which the previously stated goal of “security” in space has now become “supremacy” in space (as everywhere else).
The most influential ground force doctrine foresees decades of American asymmetrical war against urban insurgents springing up in radicalized or “failed” states around the world (including Europe, which the authors of this ideology of an unending World War IV predict will soon be reduced to helotry in service to an “Islamofascist” Caliphate. This hysterical American dystopia feeds fantasies of conquest to its Islamic enemies that the enemies themselves could not imagine. Paranoia reigns in some American circles, close to leading Republican candidates.
All this might be taken as reason for American fear of what is to come. But the dystopic future thus described is impossible. What can come is a United States that burns itself out in the attempt to deal with its paranoid fantasies.
The United States already wages two wasting wars that make no sense. It will never, itself, dominate the disintegrative forces in Iraq today. In Afghanistan it will never succeed in defeating a Taliban radicalism that represents a real if obscurantist national affirmation by a 40-million strong Pathan ethnic community that has always been the dominant force in its historical homeland.
It is not a question of whether these American objectives should be done. That is irrelevant, since they can’t be done. They are impossibilities.
The United States government, in its effort to execute its national security strategy of dominating and defeating global radicalism and extremism, is currently directly attempting to manipulate and control the internal political processes of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon, the Palestinian Authority, Hamas and Hezbollah, Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan, Kenya; and indirectly it attempts to exercise decisive influence on the affairs of Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, Yemen, Libya, the Gulf Emirates, and a non-existent Kurdistan – and this is to take only a single zone of the world.
This is what the War on Terror has come to mean. It is an attempt to create a universal empire that exists only in the American imagination, by an effort that, because its aim is impossible to achieve, is unlimited in the damage it could do to Americans and others.
© Copyright 2007 by Tribune Media Services International. All Rights Reserved.
7 Countries Considering Abandoning the US Dollar (and what it means)
http://www.currencytrading.net/2007/7-countries-considering-abandoning-the-us-dollar-and-what-it-means/
Revealed: Israel plans nuclear strike on Iran
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article1290331.ece
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