Declaration of War

 We're at war and we don't know it. 

 For a long while now we've been at war. And it's a world war. And we're losing it. It's a war with casualties from mostly one side only, but it's a very civic war. In this war, most of the time, it's not like someone will come to us and shoot us, oh no. That's not polite. In this war we lose little by little, our lives and our time. Although in some areas you do get shot, where the fight is in its worse shape. It's an asymetrical war, both sides are rather different in numbers and power. But it's a war nonetheless. 

This war has been raging for all our history. Sometimes there's calm periods and truces. Sometimes there's small victories. But lately it's going worse for us, after a period where it seemed we could achieve some level of victory, or at least a reasonable truce. 

 We've had recent battles in plenty of places. In Brazil, we lost to ignorance and stupidity, and because of its current culture it may take some time before any victories can be achieved. In Chile there was a recent stand off that gives us hope after a long period of darkness, but it needs to be developed and to grow into a victory, and it may not be one just yet. In Bolivia we won after almost losing an important battle. Hong Kong seems lost, the battle continues but the enemy is too brutal in there. In USA we were defeated so long ago nobody remembers our side, but lately there's been some movements towards a change, although it's still in its infancy, and the latest results are not really a victory. Poland was never in our side but maybe after the latest abuse some reaction will be triggered. I'm not informed enough to talk about countries in Africa but it seems there's been an ongoing change in there too, little by little, in some of them small victories for us. Turkey has been conquered after a period of hope, and we need to recover it but won't be easy. Russia had some chances but the opportunity was not taken. Most religious-based countries mark a huge defeat for us.

Spain was lost since 1939, and is still lost to this day. Catalunya has a chance to be a small win, but Spain will fight us to the death. 

One side is always the same: Fascism, dictatorships, unchecked corruption, economic power, religious power. The other is just the average person. 

The war is simple: Average people want to have nice lives. Lives where you do work, but you also have free time, health, friends, and where you can work with what you like. Lives where you can allow yourself presents, for you and your friends and family. Where you can have vacations and visit places. Where you can have moments of rest and calmness. Where you can believe whatever you want and no one imposes their views on you. Where you can retire and you don't need to die right away. Where people help each other. and where we can collectively decide things for ourselves. Then we have internal struggles about how to achieve these objectives, but that's the idea.

The other side wants to have these things only for a few of themselves, the chosen ones, and everyone else should suffer and die slowly to provide these things to them, It's a simple as that.

 Maybe this seems simplistic or evident. But what I want to remark, is that this is WAR. When people get kicked out of their houses, people DIE. When factories are closed down, people DIE. When hospitals are privatized and medicine is not affordable, people DIE. Those are casualties. When some rich or powerful bastard takes a decision to withheld resources for the common people, this person is PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE for the impoverishment, misery and death of these people. Same way I would be accused of not helping someone that was bleeding to death in my house if I ignored them and didn't call an ambulance nor did anything at all.

All this was to explain a few things regarding the current struggles:

 1-This war is all the same war. Catalan people wanting to vote and getting beaten by police is the same war as Hong Kong people wanting to decide for themselves and getting beaten by police. It's the same war as BLM in USA. Its the same war as medical professionals asking for more resources. It's the same war as workers asking for better conditions. It's the same war. So, support all of them and don't be blinded.

2-A lot of idiots are supporting the wrong side because in their little evil minds, they think they're part of the powerful side and that they will get better lives through it. The reality is that they will be squashed and discarded with all the rest, but since they will not be the first ones and the first ones are a group they don't like, they think this is good and later they'll be spared. 

3-Being neutral or equidistant, or "centrist" here means support to the powerful. As they say in Germany, a table with 1 Nazi and 9 people that let them be there is a table with 10 Nazis. And thinking the one doing the beating is the same as the one being beaten is morally abhorrent. 

4-Civility is not an option when it results in one side always winning because they're the only ones that can be nasty and violent and brutal while the other side is expected to put the other cheek and accept their fate and "be nice". Doing a "smart" economic operation that can force a building full of people to be kicked out to the streets should be responded with the same rage and pain that it has caused and the person responsible should suffer horrible consequences for it.

5-The current health crisis is making everything on hold, but we should not forget that we're at war, and you can see whose lives have been the most affected and who's reaping benefits from all this, and understand then who needs to be defeated. 

Any approach that doesn't take this into consideration, that doesn't understand this is a war, that doesn't understand that we're all going to suffer and die unless we turn the tide strongly to the other side will not succeed. To go back to USA, the current election results will not achieve anything at all, things will just get worse a bit more slowly in there, the important defeat there was in the democratic primaries and after that one the end result would be bad or horrible, but never good.

The "agree to disagree" and moderation is for cake, not for the worth of human lives. And Nazi Germany was not defeated with hugs and good intentions.

Intolerance is the way

Lately I keep seeing posts and comments,  especially on facebook, about respecting all ideas and positions.

Fuck that.

Let me elaborate: Karl Poppe indicated that there is a paradox on tolerance. The idea is that a society that is tolerant of intolerance has the risk of becoming intolerant, since the intolerants can become majority and destroy this tolerance.

I'm not an expert on all the nuances here, but I agree with the general principle. The idea is that there are positions that are not defensible, and that if there's people that won't consider rationality at all, their positions should not be allowed as viable.

The thing here is about extremes of course, and I would say that a good indication  is any position that ask for repression, internment or death of any group of innocent people.

So,for example, in lots of areas of the world there's this growth of extreme right wing supporters. Bolsonario in Brazil, Trump and the Alt right in USA, lots of different parties in Europe, etc. (Spain doesn't count, the 2 main right wing parties are directly fascists, so extremism didn't grow, it just never left after the dictatorship. Fascists won and conquered Spain and until it is taken from their hands and they're properly defeated, we'll have this issue).

These parties and people are the type that, for example, defend that LGTBs cannot marry, makes laws that are bad for them and allows discrimination as a "right" they have of not liking them. They are also very anti-immigrant and racist, anti-women and anti-cultures that are not the state-approved ones. They´re very conservative and plenty of times religious, but only of their religion of course.

So in these cases, the "I don't agree with you but will defend your right to say it" does not apply. There's no "need to accept all different opinions". It´s not a matter of "subjectivity". It´s not about "agree to disagree" and leave it at that.

Nazism and fascism needs just one answer, which is brutal repression, intolerance to such ideas and no apology for hating extreme right bastards. In Germany, for example,  doing the nazi salute gets you arrested. I fully agree with this.

What some people that try to be moderate and reasonable fail to see is two main points in here. The first one is that this is a tactic from the extreme right. When establishing your position, if you know most people that consider themselves moderate will try a compromise, if you´re inflexible and extreme, the middle ground will become a lot more to the right than what should be allowed. If your standard position is "kill all gays", for example, a moderate might feel that a balanced outcome is to allow not hiring gay people at work or not providing services to gay people. The extreme right, and the right in general actually, have been moving the extreme more and more to the right for years. The result is that "moderate" ideas now are actually clearly from the right. So the right answer when someone says "kill or imprison all gays" (or something to that effect), after maybe spending a few seconds trying to reason and double-checking the mental sanity, is to ban the bastard from participating in politics and conversations, and arresting them for good measure.

The second point that "moderates" fail to see is that the two positions are not equal. When a politician says that "women should stay at home and in the kitchen", to put another example, being against this is not "subjective". You see, in this point you can agree, or don´t. The thing is agreeing to this limits the freedom of women and represses them, so if women call the person on their misogynistic bullshit, you cannot say it´s just another point of view: This will directly harm women. Therefore, it is perfectly valid to not allow this type of ideas in political discourse, any party that defends this should be just banned and be done with it. Again, it's not a matter of opinion, one side gets harmed with this position while the other does not: when this happens, the side not harmed has no right to defend this opinion. And this is in no way the same as some religious bastard saying that it "harms" their idea of religion. It´s the basic difference between victim and oppressor, between attacking a person or defending yourself. A person defending themselves does not share the same level of guilt as the person attacking, doesn't matter the outcome. And it's impossible to be moderate and reach a middle ground when one side wants to exist and the other side wants to basically kill you or deny the fact that you exist.

Related to that, being indifferent to such behaviour and ideas is also not acceptable. If someone is an abuser, an homophobe, a violent person, supporting them means that even if you're not these things actively, you think it's fine or not a big deal. So accepting an homophobe as a candidate or voting for them makes you one too,even if you would not directly do something else homophobic. Again, fascism was, and is,a problem not becasue of the minority that is directly violent, but because there was a silent majority that accepted those things and considered it the new normal. 

So, summarizing, fuck that. Fuck fascists, and fuck dictators. It is perfectly reasonable to try and not allow such options to even exists in politics,and to confront anyone defending such ideas and trying to be moderate or defending it as "just another opinion". To put it bluntly so it gets into the skull of some people , would you consider it just "another opinion" if i'd vote for the party that wants to straight-up murder your family? 

So no, not all opinions should be tolerated.

Looking at you, Brazil.

Democracy in Egypt

Last days we've had a hell of a lot of work at the office, and I'm not very aware of what's going on around the world, but I do have read about the fact that in Egypt there was a military coup that removed the president (or prime minister, or whatever was his title) and put another guy in charge, to prepare new elections.

Since the guy who was in charge before was proposing some changes to make Egypt law follow islamist, I believe that lots of people and reporters from the right approved this action. Meanwhile, I've heard some people from the left (not many people were talking about it but I've heard some) saying that the guy had been elected with a democratic vote, and therefore removing him with a military coup is bad for the democracy.

In this case, I find myself agreeing with anyone thinking that this was a good thing. First of all, violence against the people of a country is always bad, and therefore if the army starts killing pacific islamist supporters of the ex-president, that is clearly bad. However, the problem here was that the ex-president tried to made laws that would turn Egypt into another Saudi Arabia, another Yemen....

Basically, I believe that religion and politics should never ever be together. One thing is how a country is governed, and another thing is what you may or may not believe when it come to religion, which I believe can be categorised as "Morals". I think I read some time ago about the difference between "Moral" and "Ethical". I'm still unclear about the differences in some specific cases, but I believe that an ethical behaviour tries to be fair with everybody and tries to give everybody as much freedom as possible without denying freedom to someone else. By difference, a moral behaviour tries to establish a number of things that are considered right and wrong, and then delimitate the freedom of the people based on these categories.

The most clear and easy example would be the topic of marriage. Marriages that go against ethical principles, in my opinion, are done between parts where one of them does not want or cannot have their saying while getting married. For example, the famous argument of marrying dogs would be unethical, because dogs cannot express their opinion on the matter. The same happens with arranged marriages, if families force a marriage, this is unethical. Any other marriage done between two adult people that are consensual and wanted to do so are ethical. Meanwhile, if we use moral to decide what is a correct marriage, we may get to the conclusion that the only possible marriage is between a man and a woman, or that forcing a daughter to marry a man is morally correct.

I am of the opinion that all laws should try to be as ethical as possible. Governments actions should also be as ethical as possible. And I believe that people, as a whole, should not have anything to say about it. Let me clarify that....

In Egypt, the guy who got elected wanted to use the Islamic law as the basis of the laws. Islamic law, as any religious-based law, uses morals. Some things are moral, some things are immoral, and the immoral ones are legally punished. I believe this is wrong. However, you may say that it was something democratically chosen by the people, right? Well, first thing here is that, even with lots of supporters, I believe that the percentage of people that voted for this guy was around 25%. It may be more than any other option, but this still leaves 75% out.

But even ignoring that....by applying a moral code of laws, you're forcing your morals into lots of people that may not share them and may not agree with them. Even if a huge majority, 90% wanted this, there's that 10% of people who basically were forced to "convert" to these unshared morals. Therefore, I believe this is clearly wrong and should not be done. Instead, if you make ethical laws, everybody keeps their morals. Then, if 90% of the people have certain morals, they can still apply these morals with themselves, and avoid immoral things. They're free to do so, while leaving the people with different morals free to act differently. Ethics gives you freedom, even the freedom to have the morals you want.

Therefore, whatever the votes, whatever the support, the guy who got elected was doing something wrong in my opinion. Sometimes it may be hard to differentiate between something ethical and something moral, but basing all your laws on religion is quite clear a moral thing. Religion is not the only thing that can add morals to laws, though, and one needs to be always careful and try to stay on ethical grounds when making rules for everybody.

I would add a comment about democracy. Democracy is not voting every 4-5 years and letting the elected government do as they please. Democracy is not governing for your supporters only. Democracy is not denying rights, even when a majority of people actually wants to deny those rights. True democracy is to let everybody have a voice, an opinion. And true democracy is deciding all together what to do next, hearing at least every side of an opinion, and letting each side influence the outcome, while at the same time never imposing subjective things even when a majority would like to do so. I don't believe it is democratic to, for example, ban dancing, even if a majority of people agrees. If the action is not limiting another's person freedom (basically, not hurting anyone), even a  majority of people should have nothing to say about it.

When this does not happen, it doesn't matter how it is done, but the government needs to be kicked out (and kicked hard).

And kicking out the government is always going to be a good action in this case.

Logical fallacies and religions

Today i read a post in facebook that made me angry. I will proceed to copy the text here, so you know what i'm talking about:

"True story.

An atheist was seated next to a little girl on an airplane and he turned to her and said, "Do you want to talk? Flights go quicker if you strike up a conversation with your fellow passenger."

The little girl, who had just started to read her book, replied to the total stranger, "What would you want to talk about?"

"Oh, I don't know," said the atheist. "How about why there is no God, or no Heaven or Hell, or no life after death?" as he smiled smugly.

"Okay," she said. "Those could be interesting topics but let me ask you a question first. A horse, a cow, and a deer all eat the same stuff - grass. Yet a deer excretes little pellets, while a cow turns out a flat patty, but a horse produces clumps. Why do you suppose that is?"

The atheist, visibly surprised by the little girl's intelligence, thinks about it and says, "Hmmm, I have no idea." To which the little girl replies, "Do you really feel qualified to discuss God, Heaven and Hell, or life after death, when you don't know shit?"

And then she went back to reading her book."

That's the text. You may consider it a harmless joke, but I find it very annoying.

It reminds me of another text that went around some time ago, where there was an atheist teacher and a student discussing spiritual things, where the student made the teacher sound foolish. At the end, the text claimed this was also a true story, and that the student was Albert Einstein.

Where to begin? I'll start with the logic side.

When argumenting things, you need to use logic if you want to make a good point. I will say that sometimes arguments have convinced people without using logic, but thats because we people are all idiots and easy to manipulate. Lets ignore the idiot factor and agree that you would need logic.

When trying to argument something, you would need then to use arguments that make sense. Eventually, you may realize that in a discussion, there is a core principle, from which all logical arguments are created, that is different in each side of the discussion. With good arguments, you can agree to disagree on the core principle, or correct the other's logical process, in which the core principle is the same but one of the steps was logically incorrect.

Anyway, that's usually too much trouble, so the solution is to center your attention to we the idiotic people. To do so, you can use logical fallacies, things that seem like arguments, but aren't.

The post I copied here uses a very nice logical fallacy, the "strawman". The strawman fallacy consists on creating a character that defends the position contrary to yours. Optionally, you can add other characters with your position. Once you have this, you make this character explain the opposing argument, or defend it in some way.

Once you have done so, you can argue against that argument. Since you control the strawman, you can make him unable to respond, or answer foolishly. If this was a real person, the outcome would probably be different. With the strawman, you can shamefully make them unable to respond.

As an example, let's imagine the same story, with two differences: the man smugly(another trick, to show he's stupid) asks to talk about the one true god that we all should follow and about heaven and hell(let's say christian god). The girl answers in the same way. The man shouts "shut up, heretic!" and detonates a bomb he had strapped on him, blowing up the plane.

You see? All religius people are ignorant (they dont know about shit), smug and condescending (trying to teach a little girl), and violent fanatics (shouting angrily and resorting to bombs). It's very essy to "prove", because they're my characters and I can make them do whatever I want.

Of course, the story I just explained sounds stupid. That was its point. This techniche is widely used by lots of sides in different types of arguments. It provides examples of other point of views wihtout letting them defend themselves or while making them stupid, thus making the wanted point more reasonable to the reader, or listener.

The story with the student used the same fallacy, plus the appeal to authority. This one is also widely used. In the student story, it was claimed that Albert Einstein was that student. This is not even true, but it's irrelevant in this case. Let's cringe in horror and say he did say these things. So what? Albert Einstein was a great physicist, so I would listen to his opinion in physics. I would not care about his opinion in cooking, because he's not remembered as a cook. He is an authority, but an authority in some topic. Appeal to authority tries to prove something by simply saying someone important said it. The missing detail is to say that whoever said it has to be a respected expert on that topic for it to be considered useful. And even so, it's not enough if there's no solid proof behind the comment. I believe it was Aristoteles the one who thought that arrows without a pointy end would move faster. He was a great thinker, and he was very wrong in this.

Summing it up, to properly use an authority they have to be experts in the discussed field and have undisproved research defending that theory. Otherwise its as useful as proudly declaring your 3-year old son agrees with your idea and thinks you're awesome(good for you, but irrelevant in a discussion).

Since we're talking about religion and logic, I'd like to add a few comments about religion itself. As explained in Dogma, I'm fine with people having beliefs, or ideas. I'm less fine with organising such beliefs in a strict ruleset that needs to be obeyed and shared, accompanied by a big organisation with military-like structure to help its diffussion and power-gathering.

Anyway, it's ok to have beliefs, just be smart about them. Don't use fallacies, and use your brain. I'm more familiar with christianism, so I'll use it as an example:

1- Your sacred book is a list of guidelines, of moral and ethical stories, written by several people among the years and, sometimes, edited by people in power who had their own agendas. Don't take it literal, and don't take it as proof of something. Your book was not done when cars existed, and therefore it does not reflect some of the heavy changes society has gone through. Your book was not written by God, it was written by people, and usually religions agree on the fact that people make mistakes. Focus your attention to the morals, not the content. For example, Christ was trying to spread the message of loving each other, and not doing stuff to people that you would not do to yourself, and otherwise. He was also warning about greed, and about the corruption of money and power. Use logic to apply this message, if you want, and try to fit it in your life. You may realize that organized religions may have twisted some of the ideas for their own purposes, in the process...

2- As mentioned, your sacred book is a number of moral tales. Don't assume they happened for real, and concentrate on the meaning. Science will prove again and again that some of the stories do not fit in our world. It will not be an opinion, it will be proof. For example, evolution is not an opinion, it's a fact. To say otherwise is stupid. To let this shatter your believes, right now, is stupid as well (when it was discovered it was more normal that it impacted beliefs). If you really have beliefs, accept that you may not know how "God" created the world, or in which ways it was made to work, and think that science is just discovering these facts. There are lots of things still unclear, more than before, i'd say. If something as simple as evolution makes you doubt, your beliefs were not that strong on the first place...

3- Be tolerant. I don't know about all religions, but in general I believe that the idea behind most of them is to be nice to each other. If someone's actions are not insulting you directly or damaging someone, let them be. I believe most religions say that people not following them will be judged by God and be punished if they deserve it. Therefore, don't presume to know God's will, and let people do whatever they want. If you belief they're wrong, they will be judged anyway, right? If you're trying to "save" them, well, i'd say you may want to try, but you should know when this intromissions are not welcomed, and avoid them. Specially, avoid any intromissions that would start with you being angry. Remember the free will part, everyone should be able to apply it, don't reduce it in others. If someone is sinning in your eyes, that's their problem, not yours.

4- Religions are not (usually) being attacked by non-religious people. As mentioned, discovering how the world works and realising that your sacred books and ideas mention something different should not be considered an attack. People may react badly against religion when religion is telling them what to think and not allowing any flexibility whatsoever. Always remember the catholic church(even if you're not catholic) during the time of Galileo. The church did not like to have proof that earth was not the center of the universe, and denied it and attacked people who defended this idea. Whatever religion or believe you may follow, think if you're doing exactly the same, and try not to. Just use your brain, and adapt the core principles to this new data. What is more important, if humans evolved or not, or if humans should do good or not?

5- If you believe in the fact that there is a perfect being, and that we humans are far from perfect, accept that this can perfectly apply to you and all the people who created and/or are currently part of your religion. Question things if the messages and the actions do not fit, and always use your brain.

Some time ago I read a brutal sentence that sums up the point i'm trying to make. The sentence said more or less the following thing: "Religions are like dicks. You can have one and feel proud of having one, but it's wrong to try to put it in other people without their permission".