‘Democracy’ is not an absolute

April 1, 2009 — xanthippa

I never thought this would have to state this so specifically:  rape is not acceptable, ever, ever, ever – not even within marriage!

Yet, not everyone seems to understand that!

Let me explain:  the new law proposed in Afghanistan would make rape within marriage perfectly legal – at least among its Shi’a minority. In addition, it would strip mothers and grandmothers of all parental rights, and deny the women freedom of movement (they could only leave their houses with their husband’s permission).

That is bad – very bad.  It is a law that contravenes human rights – obviously – and it contravenes the treaties to uphold these human rights which the Afgahni government has entered into.

What is even worse is how so many people here, in ‘The West’, have reacted to this proposal.  From radio call-in shows to all kinds of other fora where people express their opinions, the reaction I hear is rather frightening!

So many of ‘us’ are saying things along the lines of:

‘Well, it is their democratically elected government which is passing this law, so we must not interfere!’

‘It’s their culture, and if they democratically decide to make these rules, it would be wrong for us to stop them.’

‘We must not criticize this law.  We brought them democracy, and they are democratically choosing to do this, so to criticize this law would be hypocritical of us.’

These sentiments are SO outrageous, I don’t know where to start…

Fist and foremost, let me start with ‘democracy’, as it was originally concieved of by the ancient Greeks:

Brought to us by Athenians in the 4-5th century BCE (though there were earlier proto-democracies as far back as perhaps 2000 BCE), democracy was a straight ‘rule of majority’.  Only free males were considered citizens (women and slaves were excluded), and could vote.  This was a major advance over the previous systems, but…

The problem with this type of democracy is that majority opinion rules.  It can easily become a ‘tyranny of the majority‘ – and tyranny in any form is a bad thing. (Sad that I have to even state that…but, it seems, in today’s world, I do.)

Let me give an example:

Imagine there is a small village of only 5 farmsteads.  They have an ‘absolute democracy’ – meaning, whatever the majority votes, goes.  On one of these farmsteads, there live 4 beautiful, very intelligent young women – their father has saved and scrimped, and is proudly planning to send them off to the big city to get a University education.

This is not to the liking of the other 4 farmers, each of whom has a son – and each of whom would like to see his son marry one of these beautiful, intelligent women.  So, they hold a vote:  unsurprisingly, the vote is 1 for letting the girls go to school, and 4 for letting the 4 young men marry them instead.

Majority rules!!!  Instead of buying textbooks, the funds are used to celebrate 4 weddings…

That WAS democracy in action!

Or, let’s consider another example:

A country has ‘absolute democracy’.  Most of the people in this country are Christian.  About 40% of the population belongs to other religions:  Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Budhism, Sikhism, or some other religion.  Some of this 40% may practice no religion at all.

Still, 60% of the population is Christian.  One day, a radical preacher introduces a bill which would force the conversion of every one of those 40% of the population to become Christian – no more Mosques, Synagogues, or any other temples.  No more questioning of the Christian dogma – by anyone, anywhere!

It’s put to the vote:  and, surprisingly enough, 59% of the population votes to pass this bill into law!  Now, everyone is forced to become a practicing Christian.

Again, majority rules!!!  This was decided democraticly!

I sincerely hope that you found both of these outcomes unacceptable!

Why?

Because they oppress a part of the populace!

That is why we do not practice ‘absolute democracy’.  Instead, we have improved on this ancient concept in some very, very important ways.  I suppose it started with the Magna Carta…  (Or, if you are a history buff, with Cyrus the Great!)

Cyrus the Great (even more than King John – who was forced into it) recognized and stated a really important principle – later paraphrased by my favourite philosopher, Theodor Seuss Geisel:

‘A person’s a person, no matter how small!’

In other words, Cyrus brought us the idea that there are some rights which are inherrent to each individual – and which no ruler – monarch or democrat or anyone else – has the right to strip from him or her.  Considering that at that time, Cyrus was an absolute monarch, that is a rather enlightened thing to say.

Yet, Cyrus did not just say it – he codified it.  We have ‘the cylinder’ which was Cyrus’s constitution:  individual rights are inherent to the individual, and nobody can strip one of them!!!  Oh, how we need ‘a Cyrus’ now!!!  It was in the very area where Afghanistan and Iran is now, that this cradle of democracy and human rights was located.  So, please, do not let anyone tell you that recognition of and respect for inherrent human rights is not part of the Afghani cultural heritage:  it originates there!!!

From the first declaration of human rights by Cyrus the Great, to the US constitution, to the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Freedoms – we all recognize that while we may be ruled by a democracy, it is a constitutional democracy:  it is only allowed to pass laws which do not violate basic human rights!!!

If you are up on the UN’s document, you will see that my first example violates Article 16.2 of the UN’s declaration, while my second example violates Article 18.  That is what makes these scenarios unacceptable to us – and rightly so!

Now, the proposed Afghan law also violates a few of these – specifically, it violates Article 1, Article 2, Article 3, Article 4, Article 5, Article 6, Article 7, Article 13, Articles 16.1 and 16.2, Article 18, Article 20.1, all 3 sections of Article 21, perhaps Article 22, Article 23.1 and 23.4, perhaps Articles 25 and 26, Article 27.1 and 27.2, and, finally, Article 28.

That is quite a score – for a single law!!!

Please, I invite you to follow the link to the UN’s declaration of Universal Human Rights and Freedoms, and verify that I have indeed listed the breeches of the UN’s declaration accurately:  if anything, I erred on the side of not listing an Article or two which might also be breeched!

And, the fledling Afghani government HAD signed a treaty, which binds it to respect and not breech these human rights!  Therefore, any laws it DEMOCRATICALLY passes MUST NOT BREECH these basic human rights and freedoms.

This is not a question of denying the Afghanis the right to rule themselves democratically.  This is a question of demanding that they only pass laws which respect the basic rights and freedoms of its citizens – something the Afghani government has legally bound itself to do!

Hiding behind the word ‘democracy’ does not permit ‘tyranny of the majority’ – yet, that is what those who would accept this Afghani law which strips its Shi’a female citizens of their fundamental rights and freedoms are willing to accept.  People in our own culture lack the ability to differentiate between ‘tyranny of the majority’ and a ‘constitutional democracy’!

Shame on us all!!!

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What is ‘Cultural Marxism’?

March 31, 2009 — xanthippa

One of the best things about life is that as long as we are breathing, we can continue to learn!

One of the best things about blogging is that the comments I receive are often insightful, well thought out and I can learn from them.  Usually, these just point out the ‘holes’ in my education/knowledge base:  something I appreciate because it points me in the direction of things I need to learn.

Yet, every now and then, there are comments which are an education in themselves!  Below is an excerpt (!) from one such comment:  I thought it so important and informative that I wanted to share it with everyone.  And, having received permission from the author, here is the answer to my question ‘What is ‘Cultural Marxism’?’:

CodeSlinger says:

Cultural Marxism is not Marxism-Leninism (which we usually just call Communism).

Marxism-Leninism is a system of political economics, which results from applying the so-called Marxist dialectic, developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, in a process called critical analysis, which uses it to deconstruct Western democracy and capitalism, and to rewrite history in terms of economic class struggle (and we all saw how that turned out).

In the 1920’s, Antonio Gramsci and György Lukács adapted the methods of the Marxist dialectic and critical analysis to the cultural sphere and applied it to the task of undermining Western science, philosophy, religion, art, education, and so on. The result is called the quiet revolution, the revolution from within, the revolution that cannot be resisted by force. This is cultural Marxism.

Now, that was quite bad enough, but then along came a group of sociologists and psychologists — chief among whom being Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, and Jürgen Habermas — and they combined the Marxist dialectic with Freudian psychology to produce an exceptionally corrosive concoction called Critical Theory, which they use to deconstruct Western culture and values, and to rewrite history in terms of sexual and racial power struggles (and we can all see how that is turning out).

Collectively, these guys are called the Frankfurt School, because they originally got together under Horkheimer at the Institute for Social Research (Institut für Sozialforschung), which was domiciled in a little brick building belonging to the University of Frankfurt am Main in the early 1930’s. They all published their work in the Journal for Social Research (Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung), edited by none other than Horkheimer himself.

Then Hitler consolidated his control of Nazi Germany, so, seeing as they were all Jewish, they fled to the USA, more or less as a group, in 1934. In America, they affiliated themselves with Columbia and Princeton Universities. The Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung was renamed Studies in Philosophy and Social Science, and they really got down to business.

Horkheimer’s key idea was that Critical Theory could be used actively, to change society, in contrast to the traditionally passive role of sociology, which had been merely to understand society. These guys were not your typical academics, whose main interest is the pursuit of knowledge. On the contrary, these guys pursued an agenda: they wanted to find out why the Marxist revolution had failed in the West, and they wanted to remedy that situation. To that end, the group’s research addressed what to attack, how to structure the attack, how to deliver the attack, and how to measure the results of the attack.

Thus, for example, Adorno joined up with Paul Lazarsfeld, founder of the Bureau for Applied Social Research at Columbia, and began studying the effect of mass media on the population, and how to measure it. Starting in 1937, they collaborated on the Radio Project (bankrolled by the Rockefeller Foundation) which, among other things, produced the 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast so they could measure its effects, and the Little Annie Project, which pioneered methods that quickly evolved into the Nielsen Ratings and the Gallup Polls.

Another example is the concept of intersubjective rationality, developed by Habermas, which replaces the individual process of reaching a conclusion based on the objective criterion that it follows from valid reasoning and known facts, on the one hand, with the social process of establishing a consensus supported by the subjective criterion that the group feels good about it, on the other hand. In today’s schools, those who do the former are maligned for being judgmental and demanding, while those who do the latter are praised for being good team players.

But, rather than go into pages and pages of detail right here and now, I’ll just list the titles of some of the major works of the Frankfurt School. Given the context, this combination of titles will make the hair stand up on the back of your neck:

Authority and the Family, Horkheimer, 1936
Escape from Freedom&amp, Fromm, 1941
Sex and Character, Fromm, 1943
The Authoritarian Personality, Adorno et al., 1950
Eros and Civilization, Marcuse, 1955
Repressive Tolerance, Marcuse, 1965
Communication and the Evolution of Society, Habermas, 1976

These are just a few of the core works; some are papers, some are books. The total volume of work by these guys, and their followers, is huge. The combined result, as I outlined in my very first post on this blog*, is something like the following:

It includes not only censorship of various kinds, but also the erosion of privacy, the debasement of the schools and the neutralization of the church. It includes the destruction of the family by setting wives against husbands and children against parents. It includes the disarmament of the public, the invalidation of self-defence and the incitement of fear. It includes the promulgation of the culture of victimhood, the promotion of immaturity and the reduction of society to a mob of narcissistic adult children. It includes the dogmatization of the universities. It includes the concentration of wealth, the concentration of ownership of corporations and the concentration of control of the media.

In sum, your description of all this as a descent into a new dark age** is exactly correct. And since you put it in those terms, I highly recommend an article by Michael J. Minnicino, called The New Dark Age: The Frankfurt School and Political Correctness. It speaks your language, and it will make the big picture very much clearer! Another good place to start is The Origins of Political Correctness, which is a transcript of a talk given by Bill Lind at the Accuracy in Academia Conference in 2000.

Update: The reference list above has been updated to also include the following: Escape from Freedom, Fromm, 1941

Xanthippa’s  footnotes:

*  ‘first post on this blog’= ‘first comment’… on my post  ‘Limiting our freedoms – making sense of the ‘big picture’‘

** reference to my post:  ‘Fight the ‘Forces of Darkness’!‘

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Posted in education, freedoms, language, opression, philosophy, politics, religion, science, society, technology. Tags: , , , , , , , , . 13 Comments »

Existing laws may already allow ‘Thought Police’

March 23, 2009 — xanthippa

Over the last little while, I have been ranting about the ever-increasing legislation to censor our communication.

Let’s not kid ourselves:  governments today are opposed to information being freely available to their citizens.  ‘Regulating’ things gives governments power over its citizens and collecting fees for ‘regulating’ is an important source of revenue for them.  From UN on, the aim of governments is to ‘regulate’:  it gives them both power and money.

It is only when we, the ‘unwashed masses’, show up – wielding pitchforks – and threaten to our legislators with defenestration* that they will unwillingly and grudgingly step back and allow us to keep some of our inherent rights and freedoms!

Still, when we do, we can make a difference:  the New Zealand government is backing off implementing its controversial ‘Section 92A’ of their copyright law, which would force all ISPs to cut off internet access to anyone even accused of copyright violation!  It looks like the internet petition, protests from all sides (except the movie and music industry) and the loud, loud outcry which echoed worldwide did have some effect:  the government will send that section ‘back to committee’ for re-drafting!  But, the fact that they are re-considering it does not mean they will come to a different conclusion… and passing it quietly, once the fuss had died down.

The fact of the matter is that governments will censor and restrict (sorry, they prefer the term ‘regulate’) as much as we, the citizens, will allow them to!  Once something becomes ‘accepted practice’,  there is grounds for it to become part of our laws, whether we like it or not.

What I’m about to write next is a little bit of ‘reductio ad absurdum’ argument, and I freely admit that.  Yet, it does illustrate what I think is an important principle which we ought not loose sight of…

All around the world, we have accepted that governments have the right to regulate ‘the airwaves’.  Of course, the word ‘airwaves’ is a misnomer:  what is mean by this is the transmission of information using electromagnetic radiation (waves) which travel through the air.  Whether it is the US FCC, Canada’s CRTC, Ofcom in Britain,  ARCEP in France or any other nation’s body – the common thread here is that EVERY governments has established that IT has the RIGHT to regulate the transmission of information vie EM waves through the air.

It is on this basis that it licenses – and censors – radio and television stations. It regulates who is allowed to access which wavelengths, and when, and how.

Most of us have come to accept this as their ‘right’ – if not their outright role, and therefore DUTY.

We seem to have simply ‘accepted’ the premise that governments HAVE the right to regulate the transmission of information using EM radiation.  And, undoing such an assumption will be difficult!

Now, I would like to remind everyone of my first law of human-dynamics:  if a law can be abused, it will be!

How often have our legislators (or the bureaucrats who actually control the implementation of any government policy) passed a law, only to later expand its application in ways the populace never dreamed of – and would not have approved, had they understood just how twisted this law can be?  (If you can’t remember, here is an example from Australia…)

Back to my main point:  how does fMRI work?

Well, in layman’s terms, it is a medical imaging device which measures the EM transmissions of our brain as we think.

As in,when we think, our brain actually converts our thoughts (or, perhaps, makes our thoughts) as a form of EM radiation, which it then transmits these waves outside our brain… where this nifty machine can detect them.

But, did we not just accept that our governments have the right to regulate these???


Please, think about it!

Note:  *defenestration – when talking about ‘open-source code’, the word ‘defenestration’ (meaning, ‘out of windows’) becomes a bit of a pun…
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Pat Condell: ‘Free speech is sacred’

March 20, 2009 — xanthippa

Posted in atheism, freedoms, ignosticism, opression, philosophy, politics, religion, society. Tags: , , , , , . 1 Comment »

Is it time to abolish the UN?

March 11, 2009 — xanthippa

This year, the UN plans to make its ‘Blasphemy Resolution’ BINDING on ALL ITS MEMBER STATES!!!!!!!!!

When the League of Nations became irrelevant, it was abolished.

For those of you cursed with a ‘recent’ North American education, here is a very brief explanation:

Following ‘The Great War’ (WWI), people decided that wars were a bad thing that should – and could – be prevented.  So, they set up this organization whose purpose was to do exactly that by providing a supranational governance structure and a forum for a negotiated conflict resolution.  They called it the League of Nations.

Promptly, the new ‘world government’ set about defining The Rights of Man, and other unarguably worthy things.  Collectivists of the world unite, and all that…

Yet, the League of Nations was singularly bad at actually accomplishing any of the things it had claimed it wanted to do.  For example, when the LoN tried to give a stern talking to the likes of Mussolini and Hitler, Mussolini told them that ‘human rights’ don’t apply to ‘Ethiopians’ because they are ‘not fully human’ (!) and Hitler told them they had no right to interfere in Germany’s internal policies (you know, the Holocaust).

It was at roughly this point in time that people realized that the League of Nations was not actually doing what it thought it was doing, and pulled the plug on it.

Following WWII, people decided that wars were a bad thing that should – and could – be prevented.  So, they set up this organization whose purpose was to do exactly that by providing a supranational governance structure and a forum for a negotiated conflict resolution.  They called it the United Nations.

Promptly, the new ‘world government’ set about making the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and other unarguably worthy things.  Collectivists of the world unite, and all that…

Sound familiar?

Except that, the UN was LoN.2:  an upgraded release, with much more functionality and much wider reaching ambitions.

Now, the UN does not only want to ‘prevent war’ by providing a supranational governance structure, or to resolve international conflicts peacefully.  Now, it had taken upon itself the role of a ‘World Busybody’:  from the environment to our internal laws, nothing is outside of the UN’s scope of interest.

Don’t believe me just how intrusive the UN plans to be into the economic and social development of sovereign states?  Read it yourself – and you WILL weep!

Look at something as simple as the ages-old concept:  freedom of the seas!

Contrary to some modern claims that this is a new idea, the concept that the seas were not anyone’s sovereign property and that all have the right to travel them freely was a concept that has been around since (at least) the time of Cicero.  Yet, the UN has – criminally, in my never-humble-opinion – chosen to abort the ‘Freedom of the Seas’ and replace it with ‘Law of the Seas’!

Now, in this post, I don’t intend to delve too deeply into the L.O.S.T.:  this would take at least 1000 words, and most of them expletive.  Let it suffice to point out that under this ‘law’, the UN would have to protect all the seas:  so, anything that might affect them would be under their jurisdiction – including all the watersheds!  Want to build a city?  Is it in a watershed that drains to some sea somewhere?  Then the UN has the right to say when and how you can do it:  it has to protect the waters, you see.

Yes:  L.O.S.T. gives the UN the power over all the water on Earth!!!  And, the right – nay, the DUTY – to regulate EVERYTHING which might ‘affect water’.

Am I exaggerating?  Check it out.  Please!  I would very much like to be wrong on this one.  I may be presenting the extreme to which the letter of this ‘convention’ may be applied – I will grant this easily.  Yet, when have humans who want power have ‘established’ something, history shows us that they WILL push things ALL THE WAY to the extremes.  Therefore, it is only prudent that we examine what COULD be permitted under a law – because, eventually, it WILL be.

You see, replacing ‘Freedom’ with ‘Law’ is something the UN loves to do.  And, gaining more and more power over its member nations – being more and more intrusive in their internal policies – well, that is part of the observable pattern of the UN behaviour.

Please, consider this latest little ‘drop in the bucket’.

We are all aware that for several years in a row, the UN has submitted to pressures from ‘religious groups’ and has declared that the human right to freedom of speech MUST be limited in order to protect religious sensibilities.  Most of us refer to this as ‘The Blasphemy Law’.

What this means – in practice – is the re-criminalization of blasphemy against any religion in general, and Islam in particular.

By – yet again submitting – the UN has turned the clock of our civilization to back before the time of the Renaissance!!!

IT GETS WORSE!!!

This year, the UN plans to make its ‘Blasphemy Resolution’ BINDING on ALL ITS MEMBER STATES!!!!!!!!!

HOW DARE THEY!!!

Frankly, I don’t care WHICH religion:  I WILL BLASPHEME THEM ALL!!!

I suppose I am an ‘equalist’ when it comes to BLASPHEMY!

Why?

Because while I respect each person’s individual spirituality, I regard EACH and EVERY religion to be a manipulation of this very human spiritual dimension, sub-verted into the hands of powerhungry individuals in order to coerce obedience from the rest of us.

If THIS is what the UN wants to impose, I say it is time to abolish it!

What do YOU say?

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Who will dominate the emerging cultural hegemony?

March 9, 2009 — xanthippa

Recently, I have been re-reading a book by Eduard Storch called ‘Minehava’: in it, the history teacher/anthropologist turned author explores how and why early European tribal peoples turned from matrilinear societies into patrilinear ones.  Since his books targeted about the same age-group as Lois Lowry’s ‘The Giver, the explanations are a ‘little simplified’.  But, the basics are there:  population growth leads to greater population density, more ‘intercultural contact’ leads to increased need for resources, assuring survival of the culture more willing to assert its dominance…

It got me started thinking about just how great a societal uphaval the change must have been.  The adjustment to the expectations of the new social order must have been significant.

Now, we are also going through a bit of ‘societal upheaval’.

Of course, things are more complex now:  the larger a human society is, the more complex ‘running it’ becomes.  And, the ‘societal upheaval’ we are undergoing now is also much more complex.  Yet, deep down we know that it is nothing less than the beginnings of the integration of all humans into one, global culture.

Let’s face it – that is what is happening.  Whether we jump on the bandwagon quickly and work towards an integrated political system (world government) or not, the ease and speed of communication and immigration means that human societies throughout the world are indeed in the early stages of global cultural integration.  (The economic bit had started quite a while ago…)

So, how will this play out?

Will the ‘best’ values and cultural practices ‘win’?

We could have a long and heated debate on what ARE the ‘best’ values and cultural practices – and not come to an agreement. (Actually, a brawl is a more likely outcome…over the internet, a vitrual brawl, but brawl none-the-less!)  Yet, that debate would be mute.  Because THAT is not the deciding factor for selecting the dominant factors in our emerging cultural hegemony…

Throughout human history, we have seen that it is not the ‘wise’ whose opinions are followed – perhaps for a little while, but not in the long run.  Nor is it the ‘numerous’. And, let’s not even raise ‘the voice of reason’:  it only alienates the ‘unreasonable majority’!

Instead, it is those who are the ‘loudest’ whose voices dictate the course of human history!

Those who are the most stubborn, uncompromising and who are willing to drown-out all competing voices (regardless of how ruthlessly) – THOSE are the voices which always (eventually) come to dominate any dialogue – and it is THEY who eventually succeed in having their own values and practices imposed on the whole of society as the cultural ‘norms’.  Just look around!

Can we do anything to ensure that our voice – the voice of those who espouse freedoms of thought and speech, the voice which respects each individual – can we do anything to make sure that THAT voice is not drowned out?  That it is not silenced forever, destined to be nothing more than a footnote in the histry about ‘extinct cultures’?

I don’t know.

It may be too late.

And even if it were NOT too late, I don’t know if this voice would even stand a chance.  After all, when one’s very principles require one to treat others as equals – only to be treated (according to thier principals) back as an inferior – that tends to limit one’s ability to achieve ‘things’ (like, say, the survival of one’s ideas and ideals).

(I know I am expressing this poorly, sorry – I just don’t know how to say it better!  What I mean is that just like a person who will not use violence, even in self-defense, does not stand a chance of survival against a gang of those intent to do violence to her, so the voice which will not silence others will have little chance to be heard over the noise raised by its opponents who have no such scruples.  And, losing these ‘scruples’ would be to stop being that voice…)

So, what CAN we do?

Very little.

Aside from shouting as loudly as we can, without inhibbiting anyone else’s ability to shout, the only thing we can – and MUST – do is to teach people, especially young people, to question.

To question EVERYTHING.

Yes, it is not much.  And, it can be trying (yes, I AM raising a teenager!).  But teaching people to question everything:  from political correctness to their own views – secular, religious or whatever… from science to cultural practices, from teachers and parents to their friends – that is what will teach them to evaluate for themselves which ideas and ideals are worthy of keeping, and which are not.

And THAT is teaching them to exercise the freedom of thought!

I cannot think of any weapon that would be more powerful.

Which brings me to my last question:  can we arm enough young people with this weapon to make a difference?

I don’t know….  But, I’ll die trying!

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“All depressions are caused by government interference.”

March 1, 2009 — xanthippa

A piece of pie to everyone who knows who said this!

Here is a clue:  she called for the separation of The State and The Economy.

And, her words – spoken in 1959 – are applicable today.  Please, sit back and enjoy this Mike Wallace interview with Ayn Rand:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

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Marijuana-smoking athlete should be stripped of medals

February 5, 2009 — xanthippa

Over the last little while, I have been amused at the discussions generated by an admission from an athlete that he smoked cannabis.

This, in a nutshell, is the situation as I see it:

  1. Michael Phelps, an athlete with 8 Olympic blood medals, is photographed inhaling from a marijuana pipe.
  2. Following the publication of the photo, he admits to cannabis use.
  3. This creates negative publicity:  from dismay over an again-tainted role model (he faced a drunk-driving charge earlier), to the discussion of ‘recreational use of cannabis’, to calls that he be stripped of his medals.
  4. The athlete issues an apology.
  5. Public debate continues – but not only does it not look like the athlete will not be stripped of his medals, it looks like he will be eligible to continue to compete in athletics!

THIS IS RIDICULOUS!!!  WRONG DEBATE!!!

While I have some very strong opinions (sic) about the use of illegal drugs – recreational or otherwise – this is not the post where I would like to explore them. I’ll be glad to oblige later.

The ‘legal status’ of cannabis should not be the main focus of public debate about any athlete admitting to smoking cannabis.  The debate should be about how to treat an athlete who admits to using a performance-enhancing drug, after the competition is over…

After all, cannabis is a performance-enhancing drug!

There are several active chemicals in cannabis which have medicinal effects. One of the two main ones is Beta-Caryophyllene, an anti-inflammatory which may be very useful in fighting immune system diseases.  Yet, I would like to focus here on the other one – cannabidiol, which turns into THC under some conditions and into quinine under others. THC is the ‘active’ ingredient in cannabis, which gives people the ‘high’ associated with its use.

THC, of course, is known to trigger the release of dopamine – the very word from which ‘doping’, as in ‘using performance-enhancing drugs’, comes!

In a very real way, by triggering the release of dopamine, THC affects the endorphins (natural pain-killers) and serotonin levels in the brain, both immediatelly and in the long term.  These two effects, in my never-humble-opinion, classify it as a ‘prformance-enhancing-drug’!

Cannabis creates a temporary high – that is true, and that is why it is illegal in many jurisdictions.  THC blocs pain-perceptions by causing the brain to produce too much dopamine, which numbs one to pain and causes a euphorea.

Even after the ‘high’ associated with cannabis use is gone, not all of this chemical is metabolized.  Some of the THC gets stored in a person’s fatty tissues, where it stays inactive for weeks – perhaps months.  When a person is in a situation of great pressure or stress, their body releases adrenalin (and related hormones).  This ‘under-stress-hormone coctail’ triggers a chemical reaction which causes the stored-up THC to be released into the body.  And, yes, this has the same physical effect on the body as if the person had just toked up!

In other words, cannabis can produce the immediate, ‘short-term’ effect of a ‘dopamine high’ even months after it was used.  It’s called a ‘marijuana flash’.

Also, it has been medically demonstrated that people with low serotonin levels feel pain much more easily and much more acutely.  (This is especially true of people suffering from depression.)  When the serotonin levels are increased, the person’s long-term pain threshold goes up significantly.

Cannabis effectively raises the serotonin levels in that brain.  That is why it has consistently been found effective in treating medical conditions involving dopamine-serotonin balance:  migraines, melancholia, loss of appetite, nausea, pain –  both topical and systemic, insomnia…and is used in treating very serious psychiatric conditions, like dementia and schizophrenia.  This very real, long-term effect is why cannabis has been prized since the times of ancient Egypt!

So, let us consider these effects on an athlete who had, in the past, used cannabis.

The athlete now has an overall higher tolerance to pain than is natural – so he can push himself harder during training than his peers.  This will necessarily result in achieving an artificially high physical condition, one the athlete could not have attained without the use of cannabis.  Even if there were no THC left in his body by the time of the competition, the athlete would still have used performance enhancing drugs to achieve his physical condition, making any competition unfair.

Perhaps even more importantly, if there are still even small amounts of THC in the athlete’s system, the stress of a high-level contest, the ‘competitive juices’ that flood an athlete’s body, will ‘flush them out’.  Now, this athlete has a flood of extra dopamines in his blood stream!

In a very real sense, the athlete’s own body released the ‘stored-up dope’!

Unless I am greatly mistaken, competing while ‘doped up’ is against the rules…

Now, back to Mr. Phelps:

Since he has admitted to cannabis use, he had – knowingly or unknowingly – used drugs to enhance his performance. Therefore, it would be unjust to other athletes if he were allowed to compete again.

The only question remains:  did he use cannabis BEFORE he won 14 Olympic medals?  If the answer is ‘YES’, then he must indeed be stripped of each and every one of them.  Even if unintentionally, he was ‘doping’…

It has nothing to do with ‘legal’ or ‘illegal’ drugs.  It has nothing to do with making ‘good’ or ‘bad’ choices.  It has everything to do with fair play!

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Groundhog Day – What does it mean?

February 2, 2009 — xanthippa

If you live in North America, you are likely ‘familiar’ with ‘Groundhog Day’:  on the 2nd of February, ‘The Groudhog wakes from winter slumber and sticks hear head out of her den.

If it is sunny enough for the groundhog to cast a shadow, the sleepy gal will get startled and run back into her den to continue napping.  This will cause the cold winter weather to continue for 6 more weeks.  If it is cloudy, there will be no shadow to startle her and she’ll wake up nice and slowly.  She will then stay awake, causing the winter weather to recede and the spring weather to come early.

So, what is this quaint little legend all about?

Perhaps there is a reversal of causality:  this could simply be a weather pattern observation, set into a quaint little story.  After all, during the coldest winter temperatures, the sky is cloud-free and sunny.  Clouds act like a blanket that traps heat, so cloudy winter days tend to be warmer.  That is why it never snows when the temperatures are cold.  (We are talking relative winter temperatures here….as in, -40 degrees (Celsius and Fahrenheit ‘meet’ this point) is ‘chilly’, -10 degrees Celsius is ‘warm’.  Remember, I am writing from Canada.)  When it gets that cold, one could not even drive a groundhog out of its den!

It is conceivable that, over generations, people observed that if this time period was particularly cold – it was likely to signal that the winter weather would drag on for a bit.  Conversely, if the temperature at this time was mild, it would be followed by more mild weather, bringing the spring in earlier.  So, the co-relation.

Plausible.  Or, the roots of ‘Groundhog Day’ may lie somewhere else….

There are several things which are significant:

  1. The date – 2nd of February (plus or minus a day or two)
  2. 6 more weeks of winter
  3. The Groundhog herself
  4. The Groundhog affects the weather

1.  The date:  2nd of February

It is the halfway point between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox:  this makes it a ‘cross-quarter day’.

From earliest historical records of human civilizations, we have seen that the solstices and equinoxes had been noted and celebrated by our ancestors.  These 4 ‘easy to define’ (through simple observation) markers of the Earth’s annual cycle are called ‘quarter days’.  The midpoints between them – when that season is most ‘intense’ – are also marked: these are called ‘cross-quarter days’.

Many cultures have described this ‘cycle’ as the ‘Wheel of the Year’:

http://www.midnightmoonchild.com/images/wheelx.gif

This image is from the names of the ‘marker days’ reflect the one of traditions descended from the British isles.  The ‘Pagan’ belief systems which accompany the annual cycles associate various Gods and Goddesses with specific parts of this cycle.

The 2nd of February is Candlemas, often also called Imbolc.  When considering the roots ‘Groundhog Day’, its date would suggest that we are not discussing simple long-term weather pattern observation.

2. ‘6 more weeks of winter’

This is also closely connected to the Wheel of the Year:  the period between each of the 8 ‘markers’ along the wheel is 6 weeks.

Let us consider the ‘season’ of ‘winter:

Astronomically, Winter Solstice marks the first day of winter and the darkest day of the year – after this point, daylight periods: begin to lengthen.   Astrologically, this marks the ‘Rebirth of the Sun’:  still too ‘young’ to bring warmth, but his strength is growing.

Even though the Sun had been ‘reborn’ and the days are now getting longer, the momentum of the ‘cooling’ takes 6 weeks to ‘ripen’.  That is why, 6 weeks after the beginning of a season, its’ ‘weather characteristics’ are the ‘strongest’.  And, winter is usually most bitter around the beginning of  February… just as we approach the ‘height of the season ‘holiday’:  Candlemas.

Accordingly, following Candlemas, winter begins to recede.  It is still there – but overall, the temperatures begin to warm, the sun is more visible and begins to slowly but surely melt the snow… and it will only be 6 weeks before the day is longer than the night!

Is it only co-incidence that the ‘Groundhog Day’ tradition cites this identical time period of 6 weeks?


3.  The ‘Groundhog’ herself

Spring is the time when things begin to grow.  Accordingly, Pagans associated growth and fecundity with spring and anthropomorphised the principle into the Goddess of Spring and Renewal:  Eostera (also spelled Ostara, and about 8 other ways, like ‘Easter’).

What is interesting about this goddess is that she is said to ‘awake’ on the winter cross-quarter day, Candlemas.  As she awakens, she adds her own magic to strengthen the growing Sun and because of her effort, the winter begins to recede.

Her power is greatest at the full moon following the Spring Equinox:  that is how we derive the timing of our Easter celebrations even today.  (Yes, there is a ‘detour’ through the Judeo-Christian tradition, but their ‘timimng’ of these festivals in Judaism and Christianity ultimately leads to the same archetype, even if through Ishtar and Isis.)

Since chickens only lay eggs when the day is longer than the night, the Spring Equinox marked the return of this cherished source of nutrition:  it became one of the symbols of the Goddess Eostera.  With their renown fecundity – and the timing of giving birth to their babies – rabbits also became symbols of Eostera.  And yes, that is why the ‘Easter Bunny brings eggs’.

Yet, there was another shape Eostera is said to take on when appearing to humans:  Groundhog.

So, is it co-incidence that it is Groundhog, as opposed to another hibernating animal, day?


4. The Groundhog affects the weather

Our little modern myth of Groundhog Day specifically states that it is the groundhog who changes the weather – not the other way around.  Why should the groundhogs ‘going back to sleep’ cause the weather to be colder, while ‘staying awake’ would cause it to warm up?

Curiously enough, it is when Eostera awakens and lends a helping hand to the Sun that the Pagan myths say winter begins to recede…  Co-incidence?  I think not!

In Conclusion

Today, ‘Groundhog Day’ is in no way a ‘religious celebration’.  Not in the least!  It is nothing more than a bit of fun to liven up chilly winter days.

Yes, it contains an echo of its roots in old Pagan traditions.  And that’s great!  Just as ‘inheriting your mother’s smile’ does not make one the same person as one’s mother, having fun with Groundhog Day does not mean one is inheriting its ancient religious significance.

Yet, just as looking at an old family photo album is fun, allowing one to trace certain characteristics they inherited from various ancestors, it is also fun to trace our today’s fun little customs, to see which echos of our ancestor’s traditions we have inherited!  It’s just a different kind of a ‘photo album’…

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The concept of ‘murder’ is not ‘universal’

January 30, 2009 — xanthippa

In the dawn of civilization, we lived in smaller groups – sometimes little more than extended families of 20-30 people.  The actual number depended on many factors, such as the environment, population density, how developed our societies were and what they depended on for sustenance, and so on.

For thousands of years, these earliest societies hardly ever grew to more 150 people – the Dunbar’s number – and formed our monkeysphere.  In these small communities, we could care about each person as an individual:  we knew them, their family, and we could relate to them on  an individual, personal level.  This group was what we related to as ‘we’ or ‘us’.  Everyone else was ‘them’, an outsider.

This is very important, because these concepts of ‘us’ and ‘them’ were key in the evolution of our concept of morality.

For example, the Yanomamo of the Amazon basin live in relatively isolated ‘traditional villages’.  They have a very specific understanding of the concept of  ‘murder’.  ‘Murder’, in their view, is killing someone or something ‘of the village’.  Killing a person who is ‘not of the village’ is ‘killing, not ‘murder’.  For the Yanomamo, killing a dog or a chicken that lives in the village is just as much ‘murder’ as killing a person who is ‘of the village’.

After all, everyone living ‘in the village’ forms a community which shares social bonds and therefore has an expectation of trust from the other members of the community.  It is killing a being with whom one shares social bonds that defines ‘murder’ for the Yanomamo.  The act of transgressing against the social bonds, the breaking of  trust which was built up through living together in one community, that constitutes ‘murder’.

This little example shows how a concept we consider universal can be thought just as universal, yet interpreted completely differently in other societies.

As we ‘scaled up’ our communities and instituded rules/laws – rather than direct resolution of specific actions – to govern our behaviour, we have moved from the early, Yanomamo-style concept of ‘murder’=’breaking social bonds of trust’ to the more general concept of ‘murder’=’killing a human’.

It is we, ‘The Westerners’, who have a shifted our moral concepts somewhere along our society’s development.  Instead ‘drawing the line’ based on ‘trust’ and ‘social bonds’, we have made them more abstract (emotionally) choice:  we base in to genetic similarity, belonging to the same species.

Yes, it is much more complex than just ‘genetic similarity’…  The strong and undeniable influence of Christian doctrines of ‘soul’ and their separation between ‘human’=’soul’ and ‘non-human’=’no soul’ probably has a lot to do with why our ancestors shifted their definition of ‘murder’ from ‘breaking the expectation of trust’ to ‘killing a member of our species’.  The root cause is not the point here – the fact that it happened is.

We can still see the ‘old morality’ hold true in some of our attitudes:  many of us struggle with the cultural understanding that killing an enemy soldier during war does not constitute ‘murder’, while killing a stranger on the street during peacetime does.  These ‘conflicting attitudes’ have been much remarked upon.  Still, most people who comment on it miss the true significance of this apparent contradiction:  this is a vestige of our original, ‘human’ concept of ‘murder’ – from before we drew an abstract line around ‘human’ and began to consider it to be ‘absolute’.

This is a clear and undeniable demonstration that it is our own cultural morals which have deviated from their original meanings.

There is nothing wrong with that – societies evolve and so do their ideas of morality.  Evolving our morals to keep pace with social evolution is usually a good thing – in my never-humble-opinion.  I am not criticizing that in the least. Yet, I am calling attention to the fact that most of us still have trouble even conceiving of the very idea that OUR understanding of what constitutes morality is not universal!

Hinduism, for example, has a much broader concept of what constitutes ‘murder’ than we, in ‘the West’ do.  While the very idea of ‘soul’ originated in the area of today’s India (and influenced certain mystic Jewish sects, like the Essenes – via whom Christianity acquired the concept of the divine soul), the Hindus do not limit the concept of ‘soul’ to just humans.  Therefore, their idea of ‘murder’ is also different from our ‘Western understanding’.  To pious Hindus, killing any living being constitutes ‘murder’.

And Islam teaches that all Muslims are members of the same greater family (Umma), or tribe: to be a Muslim is to be one of ‘us’ – non-Muslims are ‘they’.  Therefore,  killing a member of the Umma is ‘murder’….but killing someone who is not a Muslims (and therefore not a member of the Umma, not one of ‘us’) is not ‘murder’, it is just ‘killing’.  The ‘Umma’ may have grown beyond a single village, but the concept of ‘being of the Umma’ has not!

Understanding this is essential in order for people form different cultures to communicate effectively.  This is especially important as we are reaching the next stage of ‘scaling up of our communities‘ – this time on the global scale.

When negotiating how we integrate our cultures (because that is what is happening, like it or not), none of us (all sides) must fall into the error of considering our interpretation of deep concepts, of what constitutes ‘morality’, to be somehow ‘universal’.

Doing so would only lead to deep misunderstandings which lead to conflict and suffering.

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