Sociological, psychological notes – Page 43 – Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord

A dent in Dystopia (U~, too)

One part missing with all sorts of Visions for our future: What happen, to the past ..? Since we seem to value the past of today, most rightly, and will do for some time to come – we’ll have to find a way to accommodate for it in our visions for our future.
Yes, that link is to libraries. As we value the old stuff called Books. As a squared example. Whereas all the utopian visions don’t have such artefacts as if at some point, we’d all be happy with a clean slate completely overhauled redesigned world. It would be utter poverty, of cherished stuff and of mind. Shallows.
And the same, for the dystopians; as if the sun wouldn’t shine anywhere.

amazing-libraries-3__880
’nuff said.

Or… ? If the picture will not be that perfect, either way, don’t we run the danger of sliding into such a nightmare vision (either way) without noticing it ..?

[Edited to add: A couple of years later, I’ve actually been there! It’s in Prague and somewhere on this blog but haven’t been able to garner enough time to find it… ]

Start the Told You So now you still can (?)

Against the trend to dismiss any dystopian view as unduly unoptimistic and hence invalid, that I so dislike..: This here piece by In the Knows.

The Told You So Boys Cried Wolf (lopping two memes into one, in this case appropriately) may better have started now, since they will not be heard (fact about the (near) future) and may not get another opportunity when all the others, the drones, have been subdued by the 0,1%, the AI singularity beast. To put it mildly ;-|

Or, … maybe this time around, some exponential counter force may have come off the ground – not yet into full above-the-radar-floor visibility but still… If ever in history there was a chance to get it (technology) right, it would be now, now that more people are in the middle class (that always takes the beating, apart from the continuous light flogging the underclasses have always got and will always get) and have just the right minimum levels of insight and might care for their future. Unprecedented as an opportunity but hardly assured it’s seized…

Anyway…, this:
DSCN6368
[Strasbourg, astronomical clock – yes, science within a cathedral]

Modernhaty

Some of you complained about hipsters’ “fedoras” (quod non). To help on your way to Initiated status, the following:

Which makes the choice easy, doesn’t it? Kindergarten beard plucks XOR being serious…:

Or, for an even more classical look:

Or even

After which this here overview may also help, in a less culturally biased way.

Ruled by the petty

When mores are sufficient, laws are unnecessary; when mores are insufficient, laws are unenforceable.

Durkheim, you recall. Only now. Only now that you’ve started the year all refreshed to this time around implement all the nitpicky petty rather childish, kindergarten-level rules to reign in all the misfits (i.e., about everyone except you) that don’t want to dance to your tunes (while you can’t dance, really; admit it. Not even to your own tune you don’t!). Which turns you into a petty fool, given the veracity of the above quote. If you don’t get it, just think it over once again. And again, until you do. Or quit, but then stay away. Like, at these nice locations just for you.

The big Question of 2015, or the decade, being: How to get the mores back

Part of the solution may be your admiration for:
[Some time ago, when photography was still allowed….]

To watch(ed)

Hmmm… We should all watch out for this here documentary (Yes. Really.), and then have a look back at the great many leads up to today that went before it, like here, here, since some five years ago by yours truly, and many other(s). But now, with this team on it, will it break through ..?

I have something to celebrate today; will leave you for now with:

[Heraclites: All is in transit or in DC]

Going out / in

A final note … was meant to have some celebratory spirit. But maybe it’s also a looking-back bit in a sense, if you read between the lines; of the mess we’ve made of the world.
But then, it is a view on the actual, concrete and very Urgent problems we face in the near future, from (?) the here-and-now. So… read, and revel in the prospects of real societal progress that is possible – if all of us chip in and do something. Go ahead!

[In Strasbourg, this part of a Solution was there long before the big part of the Problem was started there and in Burssels…]

Golden Oldie Pic of the Day

So, before leaving 2014 to its own devices and historians’ misinterpretations into all directions (un)thinkable, here’s this for you:

Shortie: Trickle Down

Most of you know I (dis)like Mandeville’s argument that the vices of the richest are what society lives on/off. Suddenly, the TD-effect (which may very well sound like an ugly STD) falls into place in my schemes:

Or, as in the original formulation:

Which of course at the other end looked like:

Careful times

This day and age, one cannot be too careful with one’s digital traces. To the point where normal functioning in modern society is impacted. And then, that’s not enough. Your mere existence may cause trouble by you not being the only one recording your life. As in this here piece…

Which, apart from its many manifest errors of thought on the side of the wannabe good guys that by being absolute n00b sorcerer’s apprentices at best, has this nugget of inhumanity: “The RMV itself was unsympathetic, claiming that it was the accused individual’s “burden” to clear his or her name in the event of any mistakes, and arguing that the pros of protecting the public far outweighed the inconvenience to the wrongly targeted few”. Well, if you think that, you might as well join terrorists in the Middle East; they think the same and wouldn’t be allowed to be at all, in any functioning society.

Well, I’ll stop now before suggesting the ones doing such erroneous thinking should be locked up safely in some asylum of the old kind, and leave you with a calming:
[On how life actually is]