Last night a legendary Russian rock group played in Vienna with a strong anti-war message. At the same time, I have been receiving desperate messages from the civilian victims of war.
Great post. Very good acoustics in the sound clip.
Many thought provoking discussion points. I live in the US but am from Canada so naturally I view everything in juxtaposition. And, I used to work in the energy sector and traveled extensively, and naturally I view everything in juxtaposition.
I was in Hungary for a few months shortly after the Soviet Union (SU) collapsed and I often heard the locals say if I wanted to understand how messed up things were in Hungary (during SU era) that I should visit Austria because Hungary was once part of the Austria-Hungary empire. I will be honest, back then what I noticed is that almost all the European states I visited were extremely culturally chauvinistic to the point where I was almost glad that I was raised where "culture" seemed to be a handicap rather than an asset. I recall hearing a statement where somebody wished Beethoven was Austrian and Hitler was born a German. Such sentiments might sound clever, but they border on being nationalistic and where I am from we view nationalism as the pathway to war. So naturally, I view everything in juxtaposition and truly believed that the engine of western civilization was North America.
When one is raised in a multicultural melting pot, one sees culture like slices of cheesecake where each piece of the cake has utility and meaning that depends on its context. But, now I realize I was wrong. I literally never saw culture as something akin to a psychic clue which does not speak well of me.
Canada has a very large Ukrainian population. My first true love was a Ukrainian woman, and while she charmed me with her old world sensibilities I never really understood the depth of the angst that permeated her demeanor. I remember very vividly the day when I understood the depth of my feelings I had for her was when she related her experiences of having visited Auschwitz. I remember walking away from that conversation trance like, going home and absentmindedly turning on the radio and hearing for the first time Ravel's Pavane for a Dead Princess. It was then that the "L" word flashed into my mind and just as quickly realized that it could never happen. I was too proud to explain anything to her, and I never realized that what had happened to me might've happened to her but by that time it was too late. But, I never forgot cause I never really understood the humanity that arises when one is part of a history and a culture that is hundreds or thousands of years old.
In North America, the name of the game is profit and to that end, even the structure of our workday is based on maximizing profit. Our public school systems were created to produce a work force conditioned to being conditioned, and for many generations pragmatism trumped everything, especially in fiscal matters. That's the Canadian in me speaking. In the US, the situation is almost the same except vestiges of the Hamiltonian idea that all societies need to accommodate their (fiscal) elites has been broken for the checks that contained their excesses have been broken by the age old problem of the benefits of a society becoming too concentrated. For example, web 2.0 was allowed to morph into becoming weapons of war e.g. Facebook because the elites were able with their wealth to lobby that the government needed to keep from regulating the sale of personal information for the Internet to morph into a virtual form of nirvana. It is happening again in North America with AI, those same elites are using their monopolistic/oligarchic economy of scale to get governments to look the other way so that they can vertically integrate AI technology into their corporate offerings which will further entrenched their control of all things, especially culture.
I watched a television interview with some Google exec who claimed that AI will be bigger than fire, and like fire AI will spawn a new golden era where people will have more time to be the best that they could be. What BS.
I often wonder how such BS can get such motivation in the US and my theory is that in reality there is no common cultural activity where common values can be visibly seen to be respected and reinforced. I am glad that I was raised in a country with socialized medicine. Not just for its utility, but for it to continue to be accepted it necessitates a cultural framework where its pro's and con's can be discussed. The US pharma's and insurance companies have been waging war on it for at least 40 years and each time a Canadian province followed the US mantra of letting the market dictate, the situation backfire. Once, a Canadian premier ordered the destruction of the largest hospital in the largest city in the province. One year later after the hospital was blown up, he was begging the population on the need to build a new hospital because of the lack of beds. The gig was up when it was discovered that the new hospital though built with public dollars would be administered by a private(for profit) entity. Without a cultural framework such experiences would entrophied into a form of ambient noise in the news media, which is constantly happening in the US with its proverbial "news cycle".
So, I don't know why people don't pay attention when it is obvious that seemingly remote current events will morph. I think in the U.S. part of the problem is that there is a certain amount of Ivy league elitisms that permeates the legacy media and public institutions (e.g. their "merit" system for accepting students at prestigious universities with limited seating). Compounding that is the reality that most politicians lean toward some form virtue signaling that favors appealing to a world where people have short attention spans rather than taking a stand that might cost them votes and thereby drawing more focused attention to an issue.
On Netflix (or was) a German TV series called Babylon Berlin. It seems like we are the characters in that series where we all know big shit is coming but circumstances and historical forces are too big to stop the trainwreck from happening.
What I find fascinating about Ukrainians is that they seem to value both pragmatism and culture. There was a news story yesterday about a fire fighter whose father, a fire fighter too, was killed during a double tap Russian missile strike. They were both responding. Anyhow, in the video I saw the son in shock kneeled down and as he took off his helmet one of his fellow firefighters knelt down and empathetically hugged him. It's ironic that so many Ukrainians look to the "west", but in truth we should looking more to Eastern Europe for how we can save ourselves in the west from ourselves.
Great post. Very good acoustics in the sound clip.
Many thought provoking discussion points. I live in the US but am from Canada so naturally I view everything in juxtaposition. And, I used to work in the energy sector and traveled extensively, and naturally I view everything in juxtaposition.
I was in Hungary for a few months shortly after the Soviet Union (SU) collapsed and I often heard the locals say if I wanted to understand how messed up things were in Hungary (during SU era) that I should visit Austria because Hungary was once part of the Austria-Hungary empire. I will be honest, back then what I noticed is that almost all the European states I visited were extremely culturally chauvinistic to the point where I was almost glad that I was raised where "culture" seemed to be a handicap rather than an asset. I recall hearing a statement where somebody wished Beethoven was Austrian and Hitler was born a German. Such sentiments might sound clever, but they border on being nationalistic and where I am from we view nationalism as the pathway to war. So naturally, I view everything in juxtaposition and truly believed that the engine of western civilization was North America.
When one is raised in a multicultural melting pot, one sees culture like slices of cheesecake where each piece of the cake has utility and meaning that depends on its context. But, now I realize I was wrong. I literally never saw culture as something akin to a psychic clue which does not speak well of me.
Canada has a very large Ukrainian population. My first true love was a Ukrainian woman, and while she charmed me with her old world sensibilities I never really understood the depth of the angst that permeated her demeanor. I remember very vividly the day when I understood the depth of my feelings I had for her was when she related her experiences of having visited Auschwitz. I remember walking away from that conversation trance like, going home and absentmindedly turning on the radio and hearing for the first time Ravel's Pavane for a Dead Princess. It was then that the "L" word flashed into my mind and just as quickly realized that it could never happen. I was too proud to explain anything to her, and I never realized that what had happened to me might've happened to her but by that time it was too late. But, I never forgot cause I never really understood the humanity that arises when one is part of a history and a culture that is hundreds or thousands of years old.
In North America, the name of the game is profit and to that end, even the structure of our workday is based on maximizing profit. Our public school systems were created to produce a work force conditioned to being conditioned, and for many generations pragmatism trumped everything, especially in fiscal matters. That's the Canadian in me speaking. In the US, the situation is almost the same except vestiges of the Hamiltonian idea that all societies need to accommodate their (fiscal) elites has been broken for the checks that contained their excesses have been broken by the age old problem of the benefits of a society becoming too concentrated. For example, web 2.0 was allowed to morph into becoming weapons of war e.g. Facebook because the elites were able with their wealth to lobby that the government needed to keep from regulating the sale of personal information for the Internet to morph into a virtual form of nirvana. It is happening again in North America with AI, those same elites are using their monopolistic/oligarchic economy of scale to get governments to look the other way so that they can vertically integrate AI technology into their corporate offerings which will further entrenched their control of all things, especially culture.
I watched a television interview with some Google exec who claimed that AI will be bigger than fire, and like fire AI will spawn a new golden era where people will have more time to be the best that they could be. What BS.
I often wonder how such BS can get such motivation in the US and my theory is that in reality there is no common cultural activity where common values can be visibly seen to be respected and reinforced. I am glad that I was raised in a country with socialized medicine. Not just for its utility, but for it to continue to be accepted it necessitates a cultural framework where its pro's and con's can be discussed. The US pharma's and insurance companies have been waging war on it for at least 40 years and each time a Canadian province followed the US mantra of letting the market dictate, the situation backfire. Once, a Canadian premier ordered the destruction of the largest hospital in the largest city in the province. One year later after the hospital was blown up, he was begging the population on the need to build a new hospital because of the lack of beds. The gig was up when it was discovered that the new hospital though built with public dollars would be administered by a private(for profit) entity. Without a cultural framework such experiences would entrophied into a form of ambient noise in the news media, which is constantly happening in the US with its proverbial "news cycle".
So, I don't know why people don't pay attention when it is obvious that seemingly remote current events will morph. I think in the U.S. part of the problem is that there is a certain amount of Ivy league elitisms that permeates the legacy media and public institutions (e.g. their "merit" system for accepting students at prestigious universities with limited seating). Compounding that is the reality that most politicians lean toward some form virtue signaling that favors appealing to a world where people have short attention spans rather than taking a stand that might cost them votes and thereby drawing more focused attention to an issue.
On Netflix (or was) a German TV series called Babylon Berlin. It seems like we are the characters in that series where we all know big shit is coming but circumstances and historical forces are too big to stop the trainwreck from happening.
What I find fascinating about Ukrainians is that they seem to value both pragmatism and culture. There was a news story yesterday about a fire fighter whose father, a fire fighter too, was killed during a double tap Russian missile strike. They were both responding. Anyhow, in the video I saw the son in shock kneeled down and as he took off his helmet one of his fellow firefighters knelt down and empathetically hugged him. It's ironic that so many Ukrainians look to the "west", but in truth we should looking more to Eastern Europe for how we can save ourselves in the west from ourselves.