Category: community

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Trump’s Desperation: Oil, Power Games, and War – or: Against a Strong International Community

Four pictures, showing the US-flag on a background of dried, cracking earth, a picture of oil rigs, dollar bills in front, and a picture of a Greenland and Iran map, respectively.
Images licensed via Adobe CC, my arrangement

It’s obvious: Greenland didn’t ‘work’… now it’s back to Iran, again? How in the world do you sleep at night and look into the mirror in the morning, Mr Trump?

Again the scare tactics to get people to succumb to your type of deal conditions? ‘What the he…l?’ This is not your earth, not your and your followers’ planet.

Simply and truly. It’s obvious too that in view of the internal affairs you deign to handle in your usual cruel manner; Minnesota comes to mind; promises you probably have made to the large industries in the US, especially those producing weapons. You need any distraction from those affairs, come hell or high water.

In German for people like you there is a fine term: This urge is called “Großmannssucht”: The dire need to feel tall and important. “Craving for status”. It would be ridiculous if it wasn’t so shameful.

For years you have tortured half the world (at least) with your threats, bullying and tantrums. We all know that you literally stop at nothing.

A criminal ruled guilty on 34 counts.

Once more Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray” comes to mind:  a young and sweet-faced man who starts a promising career and then just commits about every crime in the book, because he believes that such a life could make him happy. Which it doesn’t.

After a sort of magical transformation, so for many years his appearance does not change from that young, innocent face, the story ends with him one day looking into that special mirror once more; after many years he sees his face in the actual state nature intended for such people:
The horror strikes him so suddenly that he dies on the spot.

The staff and neighbours running in to help are horror stricken too and do not recognize him for quite some time.

Mr Trump, be aware the international community is strong and they are more. Get your act together and stop these charades.

Author’s Note: Politics around oil for over two centuries now are at the top of all policies that countries and their leaders observe since the need for fuels made from fossils arose ever more strongly.
One prominent centre of attention since that time was – and still is – Iran: The world’s largest industry for mining and marketing oil, it’s been part of the US’s foreign strategic policies for more than a century as well.
The last shah of Iran was put there by their support. He was made to leave when he became unable to control the starving people.
The government after that, cruel and dreadful as far as internal affairs go, has been able so far to resist the attempts at bullying them into subservience.
Iran has a culture that reaches thousands of years into the past, far beyond any more recent religious ideas.
That culture and its strongholds deserve saving. And the people of Iran to be in their own right and possession of the natural resources. Instead of under the order of a government headed by someone like the current US-president.

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“Smile and the World Will Smile With You” – or: The Smile of Asia

Four pictures of smiling people
Image by Sasin Tipchai, Yogendra Singh, Hữu Thanh Cái and Tri Le from Pixabay, my arrangement

The smile of Asia as a phrase has been used in advertising – too. But the actual fact is also that in many countries around the world, especially in the Near or Far East, as they are called, smiling at others you never even met before is a custom.

People from other parts of the world often feel charmed and after a while even puzzled by these smiles. Aren’t we friends, when we smile? Or at least close?

There’s another fine line that Rudyard Kipling, English ‘poet laureate’ and award-winning writer, used in his book “Kim”:

“The indifference of native crowds he was used to.
But this strong loneliness among white men preyed on him.”

If you have once encountered and actually felt that atmosphere and met people from those parts, you will come to realize that he was right. It feels exactly that way. That sense of community and friendliness, acceptance of others as human beings can be heart-warming.

I am not originally from anywhere close to those parts. But I have lived with and learned from the Persian culture for the better part of my comparatively long live.

I have come to appreciate that feeling. It is based on the idea, that we of course would need to really meet, get to know the other person in order to be friends. But that as human beings we can be close, because we are similar in our needs and wishes and sorrows and joys; we need each other, in troubled times as well as in joyful times.

According to that nice saying too:
“Sorrow shared is sorrow halfed. Joy shared is doubled joy.”

It can help also to (again) understand that in spite of the advantages the individualism in Western countries has brought, it can make people lonely. The pandemic has increased and sharpened that.

Perhaps the ideas we see daily actually ‘thrown’ at us all around the clock (if we don’t filter them), online that is, about being ever more optimized, the ‘perfect person’, make it more difficult.

The daily live in Asia has developed over thousands of years, climate and living conditions as well as ancient philosophy and customs are part of it. We can learn that:

Smile – and the world will smile with you.

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All the Same…? – or: Views and Perspectives – or: Thinking Outside the Box

Majorities seem to be the thing… they are many, they are often loud (not always) and they seem to be everywhere… Really? With a little closer look, taking a different view – taking a step back and looking from the outside we may see more.

A crucial matter is that ‘thing’ humans have: They need to be part of something, of a group, a club, a family, a tribe; people, in short, they fit in with. At least to some extent.

But, since the dawn of time we were not all the same: Some people are gardeners, you might say, some are philosophers, some are mathematicians. Some are … you name it.

Another thing can be that at times people tend to feel irritated or self-conscious or intimidated when faced with new ideas and strange people.

So, belonging is a central aspect. It can become complex and sometimes even painful, when there seems a larger group of gardeners and a small group of philosophers, to stay with the examples. Both sides may feel challenged: One side because philosophers seem ‘strange’. The other because they ‘fit’ differently, elsewhere.

When we know about these facts – the idea that we cannot be all the same, that changing perspectives and recalling what is important in life, is crucial too, we may become able (again) to accept the new or strange idea.

Because we feel grounded in our own world view and still are able to integrate something else, something different. New.

That’s where joy can be found: Combine the old and the new into something fruitful and inspiring.

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The IoT: Internet of Things — or: Listening in — or: the (Non)-Smart Home — or: Never Assume

Woman in kitchen holding mobile phone looking at devices with drawn blue highlighted connectors towards her phone
(Image licensed via Adobe CC)

In this world of digital devices and internet connections, faster every day, basically, the so-called IoT, the Internet of Things, for some time now has made a sad appearance and fashion of sorts: The devices connecting to the internet through integrated hardware, such as your Smart-TV, your ‘smart mobile’ — or simply the Smart Home devices such as Siri or Alexa, listen in…

Indeed, it’s a fact: If not switched off deliberately, such devices will record and transfer spoken words, in many cases. Just like that…

What is particularly interesting, is the ‘eavesdroppers’ paradise: People who for the sake of curiosity — or simply to gather information — listen and start assuming…

I have seen it time and again: People observe or hear certain words or situations – and start assuming… Based on a few facts — and a lot of ‘reasoning’, which in fact is just your basic assumption.

These assumptions can be wrong. A nice example is the clip below from the movie “Desk Set”, with Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. It makes it clear too, how easily we can be wrong when trying to interpret.

I always think, should you overhear somebody in anger, swearing, letting off steam, as it were — and would assume general views of that person, you might come to sadly wrong conclusions…

I’d like to create more awareness of these things: It’s sooo easy to be mistaken. And can lead to such sad results, depending on the situations…

In other words: Never assume.

Author’s Note: Post reused earlier content

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“One Swallow Does Not Make a Summer” – Or: How To Judge – or Not…?

A table in a laboratory sowing several tubes, small glass bottles and testing equipment for chemical substances.
Image free via freepik.com (no AI involved)

In science you make a rule from thousands of occurrences of the same phenomenon… if it is the same. There are strict rules for creating new or even corrected rules in science. The same is true for the law, legislation and courts of law: In order to be sure of what you do or say, you have to be very careful of your facts, and your witnesses, if any.

That’s why in everyday life you meet so many people who judge often based on – almost nothing: One day, one situation, one occurrence, even a chance correlation of two events – and ‘lo and behold’ they make up a story about people, a place – or they pass judgement.

It’s easy that way: Passing judgement, on others. It makes you feel fine(r) about yourself. And you can stop worrying about your own shortcomings…

Well, it depends, of course. Because not everybody is the same.

Even the bible, a book full of wisdom, if you know how to read it, has that, already, Matthew, 7, 3:

“3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?” (King James Version)

“3 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” (New International Version)

There’s the idea that two events occurring at the same time can be made into a story… such as a stork flying across the sky while a baby is born… Makes it – what?

“Storks bring babies…?”

Are you quite sure…?

Drawing of a smiling stork flying past carrying a baby inside a folded cloth in his beak.
Image free via Ecosia filtered search, Creative commons
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Peeping Toms – and Marys? – ‘Devices and Desires’…

Two pictures, an eye peeping from behind a hole in a wallpaper and the photo of a nightclub sign advertising a peep show
Images by Kev and Tumisu from Pixabay, my graphics

The ‘peeping Tom’ for generations has described aptly what I am about to deal with here: The secretly watching male, who’s too dumb for a vivid imagination and too cheap for spending money on the ‘real thing’:
The male (and female?) person who watches others using any kind of device, in the analogue days telescopes or binoculars, to catch at least glimpses of those others in ‘private states’:
Any stage of undress, close encounters of the private and loving kind they miss out on themselves so sadly…

Perhaps it is no coincidence that ‘a Tom’ is also short for a roving male cat…

It is sometimes sad, sometimes rather annoying, when you realize them being about – and often just plain ridiculous and proof of very small minds.

They are not using the – especially these days – ample means and opportunities that often are even sold cheap online; not using the human imagination based perhaps on tales or books or even movies to make their own ‘reality’…

Woody Allen let one of his characters put it nicely in his comedy “Bullets over Broadway”: ‘reality is for those who cannot make their own.’

These days I presume, with so-called – in this respect – equality of the sexes around – women might be ‘peeping’ too; but that is a guess.

Just as in former centuries (married) men used to boast about their ‘adventures’, the nice term ‘swaggering’ makes it even clearer; while women were the ‘true gentlemen’, who relished in silence, even though from necessity rather than want…

To this day, the statistics in these matters especially are hard to determine and not easily published. Not all that is loudest is the most of any kind – nor right….

The right to privacy is a human right and apart from an invasion into the privacy of those that are watched, it’s a punishable offence…

Still, to put not too fine a point to it… all those who read this and start thinking: Perhaps new ways can be found, anyway:
There are those that seem to be the natural counterpart of peeping Toms or Marys: the exhibitionists…

So, inhibited masses, unite!

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“More of the Same”: The Non-solution is Human… or: War is not an Option – Neither are Threats

Photo of peacock's feathers presented like a pattern of a cloth
Image by Alexa from Pixabay

Anyone watching the scenes that are public and published can state it that way: “More of the same.” It’s interesting to see that people behave the same way everywhere, just as Paul Watzlawick in his famous book called it:
“More of the same.”

He is a leading figure in communication science and has written standard works for the field.
The well-known, bestselling “The Situation is Hopeless but not Serious – The Pursuit of Unhappiness” was written with tongue in cheek, so it is the reverse of what you would expect. A tutorial how to do it right…to be happier. It’s revealing the patterns people repeat making themselves unhappy that way.

The patterns are there, not just in the book but in life – and in politics. Especially surprising it might seem as regards the war in Ukraine and the situation in Gaza.

Hellooo?

We do not need to repeat the ideas, statements and threats of the past 2 and 7 decades, respectively.

It is about dropping the ‘attitude’:
“Me (us) – always right.” and getting down to brass tacks. To the real thing. To negotiating instead of making a lot of noise. Or expecting the other, the person across from us to change just as by magic – because we suddenly decided that it would be the best way:
Just ‘let’ them give in…

It’s indeed almost as if people had taken some of the bad movies and fairy stories too seriously – and forgotten to consider the other person.

When you meet people in life they don’t behave according to your wishes – just because you tell them so.

No king will get that – and no dictator.

What you can do is: Learn!

Learn about humans, about the universal truths and the actual real things that make life fine – not bragging and boasting and ‘making it an act’.

But about community and the bigger picture, peace and – eventually kindness of hearts.

Because: That’s what real happiness is about. Sense of community – and kindness.

The great kings of the past still considered to be great were not the ones to make a lot of noise and war.
They were the ones to understand about people, that is, their subjects – and about life’s essentials.

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When Politicians Start Behaving Like Immature Boys in a Sandbox: USA, Ukraine, Russia and the ‘Pride’ of Males

When men start ‘impressing’… (Images licensed via Adobe CC)

When you look at children playing they already repeat the sometimes age-old patterns of the patriarchal societies we live in: “When you start touching my sandcastle, I’ll kick yours…!”

“Why? Because…!”

It’s that thing about boasting, bragging and hitting the chest, just as apes do…

Whenever in history was it helpful or really effective to use threats of war? Usually it will just end in war!

How ridiculous can you get these days? Especially someone like Trump, who was raised in a place that calls itself a military school, not to say an academy, West Point…

I beg your pardon, ‘dude’, but if you didn’t get what tactics should have taught you, you are wrong for that job anyway!

Do you really and truly believe that you will get Putin to relent this way?

Or is this one step into yet another ‘deal’ to sell more weapons?

That is Putin and Trump, as per precedence (s.a. 2016 elections, where Putin had them manipulated in favour of Trump)* getting together behind the scenes – and having a ‘ball’ at our expense…?

Well, there’s a thought: Do not buy into their wars.
This strange entity called Trump is known for and even proud of making ‘deals’ that way: He creates a background of scares and fear and threats – and then tries to move in. But then, apparently he suffers from ADHD anyway…

Unfortunately Putin in Russia for reasons of his own would not be where he is today if he was ‘got’ that easily – assuming that what we see in front of cameras is not just a …

Big stage performance…

 

*Note: Since then the Washington Post has been acquired by Jeff Bezos, founder of amazon and has become completely unreliable.

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Thinking it Through from the End – Or: Where Do You Want to Go? – Or: Nothing in This Life Worth Having Comes Easy…

Collage of four images that show a person traveling, a finish and a start line and a pin pricked into a map someplace
Images licensed via Adobe CC

The principle is as old as mankind itself: When you want to get somewhere, you need to know two things, basically: Your finish line – and your starting point.

PEACE is some goal…

When it is a problem to be solved it is important to not just get a hazy idea of some problem or issue… a clear idea of the true problem is vital. Since, trying to find a solution without the clearly identified problem is pointless and a waste of time.

In other words: To get a clear picture of reasons for people doing something – or a system failing, you would look into history: Because it can help to find similar situations you can learn from.

And: Nothing in this life worth having comes easy…but that’s no reason to despair, but: “Keep at it – and remember about the breaks.”

We have come quite some way, in general!

In the past, people for centuries actually found it a great pastime to visit public torture and public hangings!
That has stopped.
In most countries around the world the death penalty has been abolished!

The most simple principle in that respect I have mentioned too, already:
Whatever you colour, creed, or conviction, you are not supposed to either kill, torture or bother other people. Period.

So, again, our goal as societies that have learned a thing or two about communities and responsibility – most, if not all of us yearn for peace: For peaceful coexistence. For more mutual understanding.

People in power these days once more seem, at the moment at least, have begun to realize that they are not just powerful for their own fun – or into the bargain; but that they carry the responsibility for exactly that kind of thing with them, each and every day:

    • Keep the goal, the ultimate finish line, in focus.
    • Start thinking it through from the end.
    • Get proper counselling.

Remember that you are not alone on this planet and that your ‘powerful’ existence as such would be pretty pointless without all the others around….

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Economy Slow… or: Desperately Seeking Sales… or: How Weapons for War Make Profit…

Image of stacks of coins, a small tank in the middle and a globe shape in the background
Image licensed via Adobe CC

Yes, of course: It’s past a pandemic. Look at times in history, when people died in heaps, literally: Bodies everywhere in the streets, literally — in heaps.

So, business is slow, because we saw inflation due to high costs of the pandemic’s health measures: Everywhere when it was declared to have stopped businesses and shops raised their prices. Certain businesses stagnated and smaller shops had to close in large numbers.

People in such times start saving their money instead of spending it. Since sales, profits, revenues, are central in this kind of system, the inflation rose again.

In other words: Supply and demand.
No demand, normal or high supply = no profits.

Businesses have to close, lay off personnel, result: Less spending and thus less sales…
Again, the supply and demand chain.

When markets stay low, and slow, what to do?

One of the very old and often and too soon used methods is: Make a war.
People get distracted. They start worrying about other things.
They may even attribute slow economy and loosing their jobs to the war — and the ‘enemy’.

Meanwhile, weapons have to be produced: They need personnel they will be sold, more people start spending again, and with ‘luck’, apparently the slump will be over…

Well, a few other people die — but — what the heck..? If the government and dictators keep their jobs a little longer.. and others finally get to spend their vacation at the seaside again… who cares?

Well, I do. And I know there are others out there, who do too.

This is to all of you wealthy and powerful: Think again.

Remember:

Whatever your creed, colour or conviction, you are not supposed to kill, torture or bother other people. Period.

 

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