Posts Tagged ‘sociology’
Updating supervisory structure for term papers and thesis (May 14, 2010)
There is a fast growing trend among students to relying mostly on the internet for information and data. These pieces of intelligence are fraught with inaccuracies and flawed experimental designs. Thus, personal responsibility to exercising proper reflection is inevitable: A process that requires proper educational training in tender age, and adequate monitoring and control systems during university and higher educational stages.
A culture is the process of acquiring proper education and following it up with continuing education for updated knowledge in global problems and global alternative resolutions. The proper process is getting trained for individual responsibilities in learning various perspectives to approaching challenges.
Comparing the sources of differences in cultures and civilization is a great highway to grasping mankind alienations. We can no longer take it for granted that the written knowledge is necessarily accurate and valid as fundamental truths.
The mass of information and intelligence being quickly disseminated globally require higher level of individual training in reflection and synthesis.
Scientific reasoning is not necessarily accessible to common people who failed to learn the adequate and proper courses for experimenting ideas and hypothesis. Thus, accessible mass information and intelligence can become more confusing for scientific reasoning to those not initiated to proper reasoning and reflection.
Since global resolutions require the participation of the general public into contributing opinions and pressuring multinational institutions and companies into considering viable directions, and schooling should focus on the proper individual reflecting processes and comprehending the differences among variable and importance of interactions among variables.
I suggest three phases to improving the new intelligence power of the new generation; the phases can be implemented concomitantly.
The first phase is that accredited universities invest on independent supervisors in order to updating supervisory structure for term papers and thesis. The independent supervisor will have a job description of monitoring accuracy in the references mentioned in term papers and thesis. These professional supervisors in the fields would have several tasks:
First, until there are sufficient supervisors supporting and assisting mentors, advisors, and professors, they can start by sampling term papers and thesis for internet references and check the accuracy of the articles and the validity of the sources.
Thus, the next step would be to report to the respective departments the inaccurate internet references and articles according to a process that would alert the internet providers to what are published that do not satisfy scientific standards in validity and accuracy. This would be a first step into filtering information and knowledge that are at best inaccurate and that are frequently referred to or read by students. It is difficult to rectify inaccurate information acquired once read and impressed upon our memory.
Second, the independent supervisor should be professional in navigating the net and scientifically accredited in the field. You might wonder whether the newer generation of professors are not that proficient in surfing efficiently the net and thus, cannot do this task instead of supervisors.
I claim that surfing the net need specialization because new languages and processes are frequently updated and upgraded that regular professors never find the energy or time to follow-up on these time-consuming re-learning of languages that are not necessarily compatible with previously acquired skills.
The second phase or another more efficient alternative, in addition to surfing supervisors, is to demand of students to summarize the references listed on term papers. If this method cannot guarantee that students have effectively read the reference source, at least it will impress upon them to reducing the reference list to the most reliable and relevant sources. The advisor would have leverage to ask for detailed summaries if he suspected that the student was slack in focused reading and analysis.
I find it very useful to encouraging students to taking seriously their term papers by demanding that the first draft be handwritten. Nothing like the tested traditional support system of paper and pencil to enhancing focus and analytical reasoning; this is another method to encouraging visiting libraries for hard copy sources and taking notes.
The third and most important phase is offering the proper educational formation in tender age as to the procedures of conducting experiments. This method is the best training for the brain to asking the correct questions and formulating critical problems in reports and research publications.
Proper understanding of the protocols and rationale of conducting term papers should receive high priority from accredited institutions in order to disseminate valid control and administration of educational programs.
This current generation was submitted to frequent new languages to learn and assimilate within a few years that it is proficient in comprehending the many interactions among the audio-visual field. Education and training in comprehending the interactions among variables in other fields of studies should be easier to assimilate for this new generation: it already acquired a new powerful form of intelligence that previous generations had not the opportunity, but to work within paper and pencil support system.
In the beginning…Or the beginning of the end?
Posted by: adonis49 on: April 22, 2010
In the beginning…Or the beginning of the end? (Apr. 22, 2010)
Current theory of science is telling the story of creation. Actually, science is telling the processes of creation assuming that in the beginning, 13.7 billions years ago, the Universe was very hot and very dense. Then, after a monster Big Bang, the Universe started to expand and to cool down. First, matter overpowered anti-matters and then the most elemental particles of Quarks and Guons formed neutrons and protons.
The real story begins when atoms of hydrogen are formed, created monster stars, and sustained nuclear fusion combustion and lighted the universe. As the “stock” of hydrogen depleted in a star then the star shrank a notch due to “gravity” and the heavier helium was created. The process follows the same boring trend: helium depletes, star shrinks some more, gravity create a heavier chemical element such as carbon, then neon, then oxygen, silica, phosphorous until the stable chemical iron is created. The star at this phase has not enough energy to burn and raise temperature to make iron burn in chain reaction.
Thus, if the star is over six times the mass of our sun then the star literally disintegrates; temperature reaches the billion degrees and heavier elements than iron are created and are spewed in the atmosphere. If the star is less than six times the mass of the sun then one of two alternatives may occur: either the gazes are attracted by nearby stars or it will be projected toward other stars.
Now all the chemical elements are created and many unstable elements can be created in laboratories. The universe is thus explained by its processes and its dynamic mechanism of evolution. Rational minds demand answer to basic questions; first, “If nothing can come from nothing then how quarks and gluon were first created?” Second, how the universe was made to be so hot and so dense? Third, if collisions among basic elements create heat then how these elements were made to move? Fourth, if heavy elements are created after the disintegration of heavy stars then how come they are found on earth? Have the chemical elements been deposited on earth? How they clustered in distinct areas to be mined by mankind? How long did it take these elements to reach earth from far away dead stars and then be deposited? How come the myriads of other stars and bigger planets failed to attract the coming elements?
My lucubration is not meant to bring up metaphysical or religious assumptions or myths. It is a call for the scientific community to focus on upgrading their first assumptions that the universe was initially too hot and too dense to prior assumptions as to how basic particles were created and how they were made to get moving.
What we know is that universe is expanding at a hallucinating speed you cannot believe it. Toward what is this crazy universe expanding to? Is it toward the universe of anti-matter? Is it sort of Genkis Khan leading his hordes of Moguls to his anti-matter enemy? The most tangible alternative to figuring out the beginning of the universe is to extrapolate how this universe will end. The Big Bang theory was not the beginning of the universe: it was the story of the beginning of the end.
Note: The giant galaxy Andromeda will inexorably swallows our galaxy. Thus, why explore our Milky Way? Let us explore Andromeda for curiosity sake since we tend to love siding with the winner!
Global Capital defines Time
Posted by: adonis49 on: April 20, 2010
New Capitalism redefines Time
The dividing line between present and future is invisible for the capitalist spirit: the past is passive and inefficacious to revert to and the future is mobile and evolving. I saw an old American movie a couple of days ago: a customer is checking a Cadillac and asks the salesman: “Is it this year’s model?” and the dealer to reply: “This is next year model you are sitting in”
Capitalism captured the western cultural guiding rod in the last century: Time was no longer the enemy to mankind and time should be considered as the main dependent factor when studying nature, life, evolution, and development. Space, temperature, climate, and the multitude of other independent factors were meant to explaining time. Time (and what correspond to time such as speed, rate, and turnover) is a directive God, the one notion that essentially defines all the other phenomena in the universe. Time and timeline are the measuring guideline to all human activities: work, distances, history, space, production, marketing, investment, liquidity, and budget. All other societies had to keep up with capitalism rhythm of what became the standard terminology and behavioral routines.
Power is no longer essentially related to borders, raw materials, size of a nation, or even larger armies. Power is rate of return, turnover rate, and quickness in planning and starting production; power is quickness in distribution and consumption, quickness in gathering information and timely intelligence, quickness in analyzing and interpreting data, and quickness in relaying and disseminating information and intelligence. Power is how Time is tamed and used as the most potent ally and tool. Power is how to discover the best method to control and manage Time.
Oil, as a raw material, is no longer an intrinsic power; the value of oil is how quickly reserves are located, excavated, drilled, produced, refined, distributed, and consumed. Geopolitics, as a political power status, has changed its laws into chrono-politics for the flow of signals, dissemination of intelligence, and turnover of fundamental research into applied sciences.
Multinationals that represent the spirit of capitalism have tamed the most potent power tool: Time. Multinationals have set the rules of the game on how to compute, evaluate, account, and transform liquidity into ready investment; on how to change the concept of interest to periods of computing it; on how profit is defined as turnover rate of products and services. Multinationals have set the rules of how to do business, how to think business, and how to dominate with other people’s money and raw materials.
You cannot fight and win an enemy who adopted and tamed Time as its ultimate potent God while your arsenal is still limited to inert space and your notion of time is reversed toward the dead past, a past that is incorrectly read and synthesized.
It does not mean that capitalism cannot be defeated the way it is practiced as rules of the game, but in the first phase you need to get trained to capitalism efficacious arsenal and then insert other dimensions to reform and transform the current ideology of capitalism. The new civilization capable to counter the enemy has to work toward a more viable quality of life such as earth sustainable ethics, eco-ethics, quality time to knowing yourself, quality time to listen intently to your communicator, quality time to focus on reading books relevant to man emotional development, and respect of the ancestors.
Most important to countering the enemy is learning to reserve peaceful time to reading the past without the need to superimpose your current obsessions and difficulties in order to interpret the past correctly; it means not to tend to finding mythical solutions in the past that do not correspond to current realities: the fainting fits in reviewing the past is one of the magical behaviors because we mostly fail to read correctly our traditions and history.
In order to endeavor reading the past we first must feel comfortable and well rooted in our present. It is important to read the past as a hobby in hours of distractions; otherwise, we end up projecting our current problems on ancient texts which distort proper focus on the initial content and context of the texts. I am reminded of a saying by Teddy Goldsmith (1928-2009): “We can destroy Earth without violating a single law: it is illegal to protect nature!” I wonder how a volcano in Iceland can disturb global economy; can finance remedy to the real economical problems?
Note 1: An article issued in April 1st, forecasted that time is going decimal; the day will be of 10 hours, the hour 100 minutes, and the minutes 100 seconds. It might be a lie today but multinationals are very interested that an hour be of 100 minutes and, especially, a minute be of 100 seconds.
Note 2: The Moroccan author, Mohammad Jaberi’s “We and our heritage” criticized Moslem societies and imputed to the Western civilization the potent usage of time as its directive for modernization. Fatema Mernissi, in her French book “The political Harem”, relied on the Mohammad Jaberi’s concept. I thought to redirect the topic to a more specific ideological/economics concept that is more adequate to describing the trend in the last century: Western nations were very much attached to nationalism and still are in many instances.
European Union higher education system
Posted by: adonis49 on: March 14, 2010
EU higher education system; (Mar. 15, 2010)
There are currently hot discussions on what kind of university system students in the European Union want.
For example, Vienna is welcoming 46 education ministers of Europe on March 11 and 12, 2010 to celebrate the anniversary of 10 years of the Bologna (in Italy) accord.
In 1999, 29 European States adopted a common declaration for the creation of a “European higher education space” to be applicable in 2010, so that any university student can transfer to other universities within Europe.
For this objective, there was the need to agree on:
1. Compatible diplomas and curriculum. The first diploma or cycle (bachelor degree) was to be of 3 years and obtained within the Nation-State of the student; the second cycle or masters was to be of 2 years and the PhD degree could be obtained at any university selected by the student across borders.
2. This accord was to encourage mobility and promote professional formation. Universities agreeing to compatible standards were evaluated twice a year. Although this accord was not initiated by the EU it benefited from the active support in investment by the European Investment Bank for modernizing university programs and infrastructure toward research/development and innovation/competitiveness.
While the ministers of education are celebrating, a counter movement is actively demonstrating in Vienna. The movement is denouncing the non-democratic accord (non participation in reforms by the people) and worrying that universities are being transformed into centers for market oriented products (students) instead of graduating well-rounded conversant graduating students in world challenges and problems that require global resolutions.
Ulrich Beck, a German sociology emeritus professor who regularly teaches at Harvard, is worried that the first cycle of 3 years is inevitably dropping general knowledge courses and pressuring students to attend 60 hours of courses per week. He claims that universities are still educating within the Nation-State concept.
For example, the notion of Nation is transformed into Nation-State, society in general into national society, and history into the national history in order to strengthen national unity and cohesion. These programs inevitably translated into imperialism tendencies in mentality and practices.
Thus, modern general knowledge in Europe should no longer be exclusively focused on national education (this should be the job in secondary schools), but emphasis should be on modern international understanding of challenges and problems.
Global resolution is the job of the educated masses as well as the elite classes.
General knowledge should be intended into forming international citizens ready to participate in solidarity with developing states
I suggest that the accord of Bologna restructures the academic first cycle program as follows:
First, the first cycle needs to be split into two qualifications or degrees and extended to 3 and a half-year.
Second, Qualification (A) of 18 months should be related to world challenges such as environment, poverty, health, deforestation, decimation of species, solidarity associations, NGO, the European Union organization, policy making procedures, and so forth.
This general knowledge on world challenges and global resolution program can be selected by the student among the universities across borders that have excellent current general knowledge programs; anyway, most subtends would love to spend time away from their nation-state for a change as they graduate from high school.
Third, Qualification (B) of 2 years will focus on the fields of interest for market demands or job carrier. This cycle will be done within the nation-state universities.
Otherwise, many universities will experience harsh competition from heavy weight more famous and solidly grounded universities in the more developed States in Europe and be forced to close down.
This suggestion combines the need for global general education and encourages universities to upgrade their programs related to global challenges and resolutions.
This reformatting of the first cycle is a pragmatic solution that transforms universities into centers of equality among classes differing in financial means and privileges.
It is imperative to bridge the chasm between inter-connected cosmopolitan elite and the medium and lower classes in matters relevant to decisions on global resolution.
Otherwise, middle classes people will be forced to think and work locally; thus, unable to compete globally and reduced to frequent upheavals in a fast internationally changing environment.
Black integration or autonomy?
Posted by: adonis49 on: February 24, 2010
Black integration or autonomy? (Feb. 24, 20120)
Booker T. Washington was born in 1856 of a “white” father; he founded “Tuskegee Institute” in Alabama in 1881. Booker was the first black leader to be invited to the White House during Theodore Roosevelt in 1901. In 1895, Booker presented a program at the Atlanta International Trade Fair that focused on three issues for the duration of a period:
First, accepting to decline any demands relative to political civil rights;
Second, accepting segregation with the white society; thus agreeing on a lower status for the black citizens;
Third, agreeing not to have Federal financial aids for black formation at universities.
The rationales for Booker was that blacks had to focus on technical skills, contribute to internal market trade, and accumulate wealth in the process before demanding equality in civil rights. Booker believed that there were phases to progress; when blacks reach adequate proper means then demanding political rights will be reasonable. It happened that in that period the northern States were investing heavily in the southern States and blacks were reaping a good part of that investment and jobs. Thus, Booker’s program finally enjoyed the majority acceptance of the southern blacks.
William Du Bois begged to differ: “B.T. Washington represents the old black attitude of submission. Is it admissible and feasible for millions of blacks to accomplish effective progress if they are deprived of their basic political civil rights? Can the blacks ever dream of any real progress if they are treated as slave caste and denied quality opportunities to moving ahead? It has been proven, again and again, that when blacks submit then prejudices increase. When racism is on the rise then blacks react vehemently and demand political rights and power as equal citizens under the laws. Blacks discover that it is more valuable to preserving self-esteem than acquiring tainted wealth that can be robbed from them in due time. It is not possible to civilize a people who have relinquished his value for self-esteem and the natural rights to struggle as free men.”
This dichotomy is almost identical in apartheid Israel. Moderate and so called “democratic forces” among the Israelis and Palestinians demand integration of the two people within one State. The radical factions among the two people demand two separate States. It is the right of the Palestinian people of all religious sects, after 60 years of racial discrimination, to demand a separate, self-sufficient, and autonomous State. The Palestinians need to re-gain self-esteem in planning and running a State; the Israelis need a period of decolonization to mentally re-gain humanity and abidance by the UN charter.
“Women stand; always standing”
Posted by: adonis49 on: February 23, 2010
“Women stand; always standing” (Feb. 21, 2010)
“Our women are standing up in holds, in cabins, in kitchen, on the bridge, facing the wind, the sun, and standing in the blood: Always standing but free. Life is not a spectacle. A suffering shouting man is not a bear dancing. My “negritude” is not a stone, a tower, or a cathedral: It plunges in the red flesh of soil. We did not invent or explore the moon but earth would not be earth without us. ”
Aime Cesaire (1913-2008) was born in the French Martinique Island. Brilliant student, he received a grant to attend the university of Louis-le-Grand in Paris in 1931. Aime met the future and late President of Senegal Sedar Senghor in this school.
“Black Paris” of the 30’s was an opportunity and an eye opener to black transcontinental. He befriended Leon-Gontran Damas and founded in 1934 “The Black Student”, encouraging black students to revise the effects of white dominated culture on the “Negritude” or Negro culture. His “Notebook of a return to mother land” was the work of a life time and propelled Cesaire into politics.
Cesaire wrote:
“Europe in the last 3 centuries was very lucky in one aspect: It became the crossroad for all kinds of philosophies, cultures, ideas, feelings, and the distributor of human energy. The question remains: has colonization actually got divergent cultures in contact? I think not.
Not a single human value was a success among all the colonial procedures and elaborates plans. The colonizer ended up a degraded man; he got in touch with his base deepest vile emotions and instincts.
The colonizer resurfaced his racial hatred, endemic violence, and picked and chose moral values that suited the vanquisher.
Two sets of values were adopted relative to rape, violence, human dignity, and human rights: one set befitting the European and another applicable and accepted for the colonized people.
Europe wallows in statistics of infrastructure achievements. I am interested in the human dimensions. It is in the sacrifices in health, safety, and miseries of the colonized that did the infrastructure work to facilitate trade and commerce for the colonizers.
I am interested in the millions who learned to fear, to feel helpless, to kneel down, and to developing inferiority complexes. I am interested in how tribalism was deepened and expanded to accelerate the divide and rule strategies.
It is such a shame that only finance and mass industrialization prompted Europeans to come in contact with Africa. Colonizing Europe replaced archaic injustices with modern abuses; it confused old inequalities with the odious racism. Colonization has definitely de-civilized the colonizer.”
Einstein speaks on theoretical physics
Posted by: adonis49 on: February 16, 2010
Einstein speaks on theoretical physics; (Nov. 18, 2009)
The creative character of theoretical physicist is that the products of his imagination are so indispensably and naturally impressed upon him that they are no longer images of the spirit but evident realities. Theoretical physics includes a set of concepts and logical propositions that can be deduced normally. Those deductive propositions are assumed to correspond exactly to our individual experiences. That is why in theoretical book the deduction exercises represent the entire work.
Newton had no hesitation in believing that his fundamental laws were provided directly from experience. At that period the notion of space and time presented no difficulties: the concepts of mass, inertia, force, and their direct relationship seemed to be directly delivered by experience. Newton realized that no experience could correspond to his notion of absolute space which implicates absolute inertia and his reasoning of actions at distance; nevertheless, the success of the theory for over two centuries prevented scientists to realize that the base of this system is absolutely fictive.
Einstein said “the supreme task of a physician is to search for the most general elementary laws and then acquire an image of the world by pure deductive power. The world of perception determines rigorously the theoretical system though no logical route leads from perception to the principles of theory.” Mathematical concepts can be suggested by experience, the unique criteria of utilization of a mathematical construct, but never deducted. The fundamental creative principle resides in mathematics.
Logical deductions from experiments of the validity of the Newtonian system of mechanics were doomed to failures. Research by Faraday and Maxwell on the electro-magnetic fields initiated the rupture with classical mechanics. There was this interrogation “if light is constituted of material particles then where the matters disappear when light is absorbed?” Maxwell thus introduced partial differential equations to account for deformable bodies in the wave theory. Electrical and magnetic fields are considered as dependent variables; thus, physical reality didn’t have to be conceived as material particles but continuous partial differential fields; but Maxwell’s equations are still emulating the concepts of classical mechanics.
Max Plank had to introduce the hypothesis of quanta (for small particles moving at slow speed but with sufficient acceleration), which was later confirmed, in order to compute the results of thermal radiation that were incompatible with classical mechanics (still valid for situations at the limit). Max Born pronounced “Mathematical functions have to determine by computation the probabilities of discovering the atomic structure in one location or in movement”.
Louis de Broglie and Schrodinger demonstrated the fields’ theory operation with continuous functions. Since in the atomic model there are no ways of locating a particle exactly (Heisenberg) then we may conserve the entire electrical charge at the limit where density of the particle is considered nil. Dirac and Lorentz showed how the field and particles of electrons interact as of same value to reveal reality. Dirac observed that it would be illusory to theoretically describe a photon since we have no means of confirming if a photon passed through a polarizator placed obliquely on its path.
Einstein is persuaded that nature represents what we can imagine exclusively in mathematics as the simplest system in concepts and principles to comprehend nature’s phenomena. For example, if the metric of Riemann is applied to a continuum of four dimensions then the theory of relativity of gravity in a void space is the simplest. If I select fields of anti-symmetrical tensors that can be derived then the equations of Maxwell are the simplest in void space.
The “spins” that describe the properties of electrons can be related to the mathematical concept of “semi-vectors” in the 4-dimensional space which can describe two kinds of elementary different particles of equal charges but of different signs. Those semi-vectors describe the magnetic field of elements in the simplest way as well as the properties electrical particles. There is no need to localize rigorously any particle; we can just propose that in a portion of 3-dimensional space where at the limit the electrical density disappears but retains the total electrical charge represented by a whole number. The enigma of quanta can thus be entirely resolved if such a proposition is revealed to be exact.
Critique
Till the first quarter of the 20th century sciences were driven by shear mathematical constructs. This was a natural development since most experiments in natural sciences were done by varying one factor at a time; experimenters never used more than one independent variable and more than one dependent variable (objective measuring variable or the data). Although the theory of probability was very advanced the field of practical statistical analysis of data was not yet developed; it was real pain and very time consuming doing all the computations by hand for slightly complex experimental designs. Sophisticated and specialized statistical packages constructs for different fields of research evolved after the mass number crunchers of computers were invented.
Thus, early theoretical scientists refrained from complicating their constructs simply because the experimental scientists could not practically deal with complex mathematical constructs. Thus, the theoretical scientists promoted the concept or philosophy that theories should be the simplest with the least numbers of axioms (fundamental principles) and did their best to imagining one general causative factor that affected the behavior of natural phenomena or would be applicable to most natural phenomena.
This is no longer the case. The good news is that experiments are more complex and showing interactions among the factors. Nature is complex; no matter how you control an experiment to reducing the numbers of manipulated variables to a minimum there are always more than one causative factor that are interrelated and interacting to producing effects.
Consequently, the sophisticated experiments with their corresponding data are making the mathematician job more straightforward when pondering on a particular phenomenon. It is possible to synthesize two phenomena at a time before generalizing to a third one; mathematicians have no need to jump to general concepts in one step; they can consistently move forward on firm data basis. Mathematics will remain the best synthesis tool for comprehending nature and man behaviors.
It is time to account for all the possible causatives factors, especially those that are rare in probability of occurrence (at the very end tail of the probability graphs) or for their imagined little contributing effects: it is those rare events that have surprised man with catastrophic consequences.
Theoretical scientists of nature’s variability should acknowledge that nature is complex. Simple and beautiful general equations are out the window. Studying nature is worth a set of equations! (You may read my post “Nature is worth a set of equations”)
Charters of emancipations by black leaders
Posted by: adonis49 on: February 12, 2010
Charters of emancipations by black leaders; (Feb. 12, 2010)
Toussaint Louverture (1743-1803) revolted against the French troops in the island of Haiti/Dominican and sent Napoleon a respectful letter in 1801 declaring a new Constitution to Haiti and the wish to stay part of French protectorate. The constitution stated that first, “there cannot exist slaves on the territory of Haiti”; two, “slavery is abolished and all men, regardless of color of skin, are born, live, and die free men”; third, “Any man is admissible to all kinds of jobs and employment”; and fourth, “The constitution guarantees liberty and security to all citizens”.
Napoleon responded to the letter by dispatching an expeditionary force. Toussaint was made prisoner and died in France. In 1802, a lieutenant to Toussaint, Jean-Jacque Dessalines defeated the French troops in “La Verriere” and was appointed Emperor to the Haiti Empire. The new constitution of 1805 stated that first, “The people living in the island decided to live in a free State, sovereign, and independent of any foreign powers”; two, “Slavery is abolished and no white individual will be permitted to own properties as master”; and third, “Every citizen will be called Black regardless of the color of his skin and will enjoy the same equal citizenship rights”. That was the first time that Negro or “negritude” was advanced as a culture.
In 1801, local militants in Guadeloupe pressured the French General Lacross to return to France because he discriminated against colored officers in the army. Louis Delgres (1766-1802) led an insurrection in the island of Guadeloupe but refrained to go on the offensive to keep peace with France. The declaration of emancipation stated:
“Citizens of Guadeloupe; we are revolting as one people regardless of color of our skin. Resistance to oppression is a natural right. Even divinity cannot be offended that we are defending a rightful cause: justice and humanity to all. We will refrain to soil our cause by crimes. Our forces are to defend your life, properties, and children by all means. And you, posterity! Accord us a tear to our miseries and we will die satisfied”
Again, Napoleon sent an expeditionary force in 1802. Delgres and his 300 militants opted to blow themselves in the town of Matouba rather than fighting a hopeless outnumbered army. Napoleon re-instituted slavery that the French Revolution had abolished.
Nelson Mandela was sent to prison in 1955 for contributing to the “Freedom Chart” that stated in an abridged form:
All national groups and races will enjoy equal rights in the State’s organs, courts, and in school. Land will be distributed to who cultivates it regardless of race restrictions. Laws will guarantee to all rights to speak, organize, publish, preach, pray, and educate children. Workers will be free to create syndicates, elect their representatives, and negotiate salary with employers. All citizens will enjoy liberty to settle anywhere they choose to. Vacant apartments will be at the disposition of the needy. Man and woman will be granted equal rights to vote and be candidate to any function or post.
What! Savages and primitive tribes? Who is Claude Levi-Strauss (1908-2009)
Posted by: adonis49 on: February 10, 2010
What! Savages and primitive tribes? (Feb. 10, 2010)
The late famous ethnologist and anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss (1908-2009) said: “I gave up preserving primitive tribes; all that I am doing is recording their memory for later generations. Mankind is settling in mono-culture: Humanity is readying to producing mass civilization.”
Claude Levi-Strauss spent 5 years in the Amazon and Mato Grosso (1935-39) researching a few of their primitive tribes such as Caduveo, Bororo, Nambikwara, Munde, and Tupi-Kawahib.
Claude Levi-Strauss agrees with the prophetic remark of the physicist Neil Bohr who said in 1939:
“The traditional differences among cultures resemble the equivalent different manners of describing physical experiments”.
Claude gathered 3,000 photos and he needed 15 years of soul searching to gather enough courage and publish his first book “Sad Tropic, 1955” on his exploration missions.
Among the other masterpieces related to ethnology and anthropology we have “Structural Anthropology, 1958”; “The savage thinking, 1962”; “Mythology of the naked man, 1964”; “Seeing, listening, and reading, 1993”; and “Saudades of Sao Paulo, 1994”.
Primitive tribes are going extinct fast.
The trend is man-made expansion and exploitation that started by European colonial adventure in the 16th century, and particularly in the 19th century. A couple of decades ago, tribes in the Amazon Forest went extinct because Texaco polluted and ruined the ecological make-up for its oil-well extraction processes. Read note 2.
In “Sad tropic”, Levi-Strauss was pretty candid and wrote:
“I hate to travel and to explore. Should I recount the insipid details of a servitude to weeks and months of traveling, of hunger, fatigue, and illnesses? Should I tell of the toils for daily maintenance and upkeep as in routine military service? The amounts of efforts expanded on ethnological research do not confer a price to the negative aspects of the job. Truth can be divulged after all the gangue are stripped off.”
In 1940, the Vichy government whisked Levi-Strauss with three other French scholars to the USA because “with such a name you are doomed in France.” Levi-Strauss said that “I have never felt Jewish even though my parents were Jews. I did experience the difficulties and problems of being Jew in schools and universities. I do not comprehend the inventions of the Catholic Church councils relative to Trinity, trans-substantiation, or communion of the Saints. I have no inclinations of trying to comprehend these abstract notions. Christianity exercises aesthetic seduction on me.”
Levi-Strauss stresses that “the longer we get attached to ethnology, the more we keep our distances of current societies: the essential and dramatic characteristics of the present will not count heavily in the perspectives of several centuries later. Individuality is more prevalent in primitive tribes than in modern civilization. Ethnology respects history, though it does not extend to it any privileged value. History is a complementary research that deploys human societies over time, while ethnology extends the research over space.”
Anthropology extends the impression of going to the extreme limits of what was the goal of philosophy in witnessing the totality of human experiences. A scholar does not offer real answers: his role is to formulate pertinent clear questions.
Symbols have no intrinsic or invariable significance: they have meaning only within the context. This significance is foremost of position.
Myth is started by an individual and then is taken over by the original group and fine tuned progressively. Levi-Strauss claims that the main characteristic in myths is the beauty emanating from the imaginative stories. There is this intelligent emotion that story of myth, painting, sculpture, or music strikes us head on and makes us feel that we comprehend the global configuration.
Levi-Strauss is known for establishing “structuralism” in the domain of human sciences. If you read what is structuralism from non-scientific critics, you will not be more intelligent than before.
Structuralism in human sciences is a procedure of untangling the invariant characteristics of societies (for example, primitive societies) within the fundamental constraints of geography and environment on their specific structures. Studying primitive tribes is an excellent venue to extrapolate results to other societies enjoying the same restrictive localities.
(There are many statistical packages specifically designed to sort out the main characteristics or dimensions that group the cluster of categorical data. You have discriminant analysis, cluster analysis, and factors analysis experimental designs that do not differentiate among variables, simply because the purpose is fundamentally to investigate the main factors that come into play, for later well designed experiment of cause and effects. See note 3)
Note 1: Claude Levi-Strauss was born in Belgium and studied philosophy. He was offered a teaching position of sociology in Sao Paulo (Brazil) in 1935. During the period (1935-39), Claude Levi-Strauss directed several missions in the Amazon and Mato Grosso to investigate primitive tribes. He taught at New School Social research in New York and then was appointed cultural attaché to the French Embassy in Washington DC in 1945. Levi-Strauss was nominated director of comparative religion of people with no written languages in Paris (1949). He was appointed professor of social anthropology at the “College de France” till 1982. He was elected to the French Academy in 1973.
Note 2: At the current rate of modernization and deforestation most of the aborigine tribes would disappear within a few decades. Many civilizations have vanished but a few have managed to survive precariously so far.
Currently we still have the ethnic Saamis (Norway and Finland), Inuits (Siberia, Alaska, and Canada), Ainous (Japan), Indians (USA and Canada), Zapotec (Mexico), Mosquitos (Nicaragua), Quiches (Guatemala), Cunas (Panama), Yanomamis and Guaranis (Brazil), Galibis and Akawaios (Guyana), Paez ans Guambianos (Colombia), Waoranis (Equator), Amueshas (Peru), Chimanes (Bolivia), Araucans (Chili), Touaregs and Bororos (Sahel in Northern Africa), Tigres (Ethiopia and Somalia), Dinkas (Sudan), Masais (Kenya and Tanzania), Pygmees (Zaire), Sans or Bushmen (Namibia and Botswana), Kalingas (Philippines), Kachins and Rohingas (Myanmar or Birmani), Hmongs (Laos), Santals and Gonds (India), Punans (Malaysia), Uzbeks and Tadjiks (Afghanistan), Aborigines (Australia), Maoris (New Zealand), Papous (New Guinea).
Note 3: Dimensions or factors are sorted out and data are forced to cluster along these dimensions and then the dimensions are given names (a kind of art). Once names are extended to dimensions then it becomes hard to change their connotations.
For example, quantitative psychology, marketing, and sociology use these structural analyses to find out complexity, customs, traditions, cooking specifications, and customer preferences, qualitative notions of beauty, parenting, or associations among the cluster of data.
Choose: Truth or conscious?
Posted by: adonis49 on: February 7, 2010
Choose: Truth or conscious? (Feb. 6, 2010)
In many moments in life we ask “what is the meaning of life?” and “what is the purpose in life?” Two questions that are not similar except for those who confuse meaning with definite purpose attached to it; sort of feeling obliged to act on life and the universe simply because mankind species is very particular. How about we start from the obvious?
We are a bunch of jumbled passions that we all share at different degrees of power and interest: they drive our life. We ache by reflection to re-order our passions and sort out the strongest passions that mean most to us. We want to be discriminated as an individual, not on physical traits, but as thinking people who have distinct set of strong passions. A few of us find time for introspective reflections: we want to manage their priority and hopefully focus on; we finally think that we know who we are and what passions drove our life. We want to be at peace with our soul and spirit.
When we claim that we are in an introspection phase then we are explicitly finding time to sort out the driving passions that we realized were predictive of our life path. We all have strong passions that no outside processes can change or transform unless we consciously act on them to redirect our focus and purpose in life. Introspections are highly useful conscious periods in our life to comprehend the strongest of our passions and set priority for future activities.
Basically, we are adopting a philosophy to life that is compatible with our strongest passions. That is what we constantly do: we are addicted to constructing models because we are spiritual designers. We want to categorize our passions intellectually, by our volition and labor of reflection.
Most religions have to erect an ideology and sometimes slightly update it to face changes; the sacerdotal castes main job is to pressure you to accept their set values and morals as the best that characterize you. In fact, religions do not want you to exercise introspection and learn your own characteristics; they want to “save you that hassle” and show you the proper way; they want you to be the man among all same men with preferred set of passions instead of realizing your individuality. Only those following the preferred “type” are selected in heaven as on earth; the black sheep of strong individuality are not recognized in heaven because only the mediocre, the humble, the naïve, the simple-minded can be saved.
That was a good starting lead to answering the meaning of life for religions. I have a question: if you were to choose between knowing the “truth” or safeguarding and preserving your conscious then what would you decide? I know that you will try to circumvent this basic query by returning a question with another one such as “Isn’t conscious linked to truth searching?” or “Isn’t knowledge an illusion?” Let’s not get sidetracked; knowledge of nature and human behaviors is necessary for the ultimate knowledge of knowing your own passions and trend in life: introspection requires some degree of factual knowledge and the ability to discriminate among concepts.
Scientific facts should be recognized as statistical facts because uncontrolled observations have the tendency to show up occasionally and need to be categorized, understood, and then modeled. If laws are voted on, by majority for a period of validity, then what is right and wrong in behavior is valid for particular period in human social development. If justice is fundamentally a consensus agreement among the jury then why do we cling so staunchly to truth or “absolute fact”?
If “truth” is not reachable, if we know that any predictive model can be altered by surprised “chance” observations; if it is proven at every moment in our life that uncertainty is king (it loves to convince you at the most critical catastrophic events) then, why fight for truth and spread disorder for an illusion? Our scientific and rational mind is fighting the good fight and is persistent in its endeavor because it refuses impositions of religious abstract notions that have no foundations or convincing premises. Our scientific mind is not fighting “faith” but fighting the sacerdotal castes’ value systems and ideologies.
What about conscious? We can define conscious by its consequences on our nerves, its wrenching battle through sleepless nights, and through nightmares. Conscious is the constant fighting between imposed religious set values and your strong valid passions that define your individuality. We are battling to preserve our rightful individuality in a manner that would not shock the community as “crazy behaviors”. Most of the time we define conscious as how the community expect us to act and decide because religious belief system is enduring and hard to conciliate with.
You always have to choose: truth or conscious? These two values are valid values and should not represent a value judgment on good or evil attitudes. They are not compatible: they are the two poles that define the limits of your struggle in life. No, it is not difference in opinions that drive people to fight one another: it is your choice of the moment of truth or conscience. In general, it is what society force upon you as the set of values that represents your association or the characteristics of your “Nation”.
Choosing is a necessary conscious decision to defining your personality of the moment. The selection is necessary for a free man but not sufficient for an “honorable” man. Did you decide to be the “idiot of the village” or the sane member of the community? Would you agree on piece-wise reforms or adopt intransigent attitudes? Would you go with tide or take a stand at the peril of your life?
This dichotomy is not to vanish any time soon and you will have to select differently at many moments. This critical choice is our daily battle and our constant struggle to find meaning to our life. You keep choosing and act on your decision and then die as a man. You fail to choose and you die a pet dog.
By God, I hope that the set values imposed on me is the correct one. I would hate after death to be condemned for laziness in the mind or condemned for not acting according to my own labor of reflection. Justice is ultimately an individual case and what the community believed is totally irrelevant and redundant for supporting clemency. Do you believe that the purpose of life is living? How to live life is the main problem.
Note: In a previous essay “Ideology: Not such a bad Concept before Ruling” I dealt with the notions of ideologies, philosophies, and religions: their purposes and structures.
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