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Empathy – And the sharp side of means protecting it

/ stefanfeller / Leave a comment

On the featured image: Taken by the author – The never ending emergence of new from the old

“Die Menschlichkeit ist da, wo Du und ich und jeder sonst sie leben. Daher ist sie da, auch wenn sie grad weint und sich geschlagen und getreten und geprügelt in einer Ecke verkriecht. Wir pflegen sie, wir lieben sie, wir stehen ihr bei und für sie ein.”

I wrote this to a dearest friend. She currently works in New York, as part of a national mechanism constituting the overarching work of the U.N. Security Council. The mandate of this national mechanism in this collective endeavor comes to an end by the end of this year, by natural rotation to another Member State. Over the past two years, this dearest friend of mine has invested her work into upholding, maintaining, extending, deepening the awareness for gender issues. For the promotion of female rights. For the promotion of protecting women against domestic and gender-specific violence. For the context between this work and the work on protecting the rights of children. Often enough, inextricably intertwined with the work on protecting minorities.

Two years of her life she invested into this high-power exercise. She wrote about her exhaustion at the end, taking the never-ending frustration into account which roots in the ability of some of the members of the Security Council to block everything by a Veto. These five permanent members of the Security Council, of course, established the possibility of vetoing each and any proposed decision of the Council both for reasons of national interests of the most powerful States post World War II, but also for other reasons, such as being able to maintain an orderly course of this highest body of the World with responsibility for Peace and Security, in light of the rotation of non-permanent Members in and out, which always includes great opportunities combined with some risks, and equally important in light of that those who constitute the P5 are not a uniform quintuplet. May be it was the combination of a will to trust with keeping a system of checks and balances running which motivated those founders, too.

Some of these risks we see these days: As the U.N. Charta promotes fundamental rights, including the universal requirement to adhere to respecting Human Rights, and also fundamental safeguards, including the prohibition of a War of Aggression, and the adherence to International Law such as the Law on Armed Conflicts protecting civilians, a violation of these laws and principles by the Council’s very own members becomes a stress test for the principles on which the U.N. is founded. It becomes an existential threat when some of the most powerful members of the Security Council, the “Permanent Five or P5” both violate the principles which they are upholding, and when they permanently exercise their right to veto for no other reasons than pure national selfishness.

This process is not new, it has a long history, and no member of the Security Council could safely say that they NEVER exercised their veto rights as a consequence of national deliberations. I also believe in that the world is not black and white, so in each of these cases vetoing parties will also often quote reasons which made them exercising their veto, reasons which somewhat can be understood on a more political level.

Anyhow, this history partly also is a shameful history. And beyond that, in each case where the Council failed, and fails, to address core interests of humanity and humankind, the constituting principles get eroded. I have personal exposure to that during my time in New York. In several prominent cases this incapacitated our joint desire to help, when help was most needed by people in the middle of a storm. I won’t shame and blame, therefore I’ll keep it with a general statement like this.

Next, I would point to that the use of vetoing for national and selfish reasons has proliferated over the last years to an extent one can only label as “endemic”, in ways which paralyse the work of the U.N. Security Council. As all self-fulfilling prophecies go, the inability to act collectively, as Security Council and as all depending bodies of the United Nations, being it the Secretariat, or it’s Agencies, the incapacitation leads to a progressive disregard of their very own raison d’etre. Which may be, I can not help but saying, part of the strategy of some which are represented in the Council: “Use it, don’t make it strong except when you can control it, otherwise weaken it.”

So my friend experiences this exhaustion, and it was against the background of what I wrote in “Shutting Down” that we had this conversation in which she asked the rhetorical question where “Menschlichkeit”, or “humanity” has lost, along that trajectory.

Here my answer again, translated into English:

“Humanity can be found where you and I and everyone else is living it. Humanity exists, therefore, even at times like right now, when she cries and feels beaten-up and bruised, cowering in a corner. We take care of her, we love her, and we stand in for her.”

Between my writing “Shutting down” and today I got news about some more people who I know who have shut down, have allowed to go astray, broken by the onslaught. I had conversations about it. We stay positive. We emphasize empathy.

And we exercise no-tolerance. Meaning we do not condone people in public functions, public officials or people exercising functions which are funded with public money, veering off course, embarking on bias and intolerance. We nurture messages of compassion and empathy. And we do not become complicit to messages of hate. It has consequences.

Which is reminding me that I still have not managed to continue my next instalment on “Integrity” within the “essays on policing”.

Shutting Down – On Disassociation, Feeling Overwhelmed and Powerless, Retreating, and Denial

/ stefanfeller / 1 Comment

On the featured picture: The Class of 76 of my High School. I’m in there, too. Almost invisible in the background.

I grew up with Peter Gabriel’s towering work, whether in “Genesis”, or with Gabriel’s later solo phases of artistic development. One of my all-time favourites songs is “Signal To Noise”. Here are the lyrics:

“You know the way that things go

When what you fight for starts to fall

And in that fuzzy picture

The writing stands out on the wall

So clearly on the wall

Send out the signals, deep and loud

And in this place can you reassure me

With a touch, a smile while the cradle’s burning

All the while the world is turning to noise

Oh, the more that it’s surrounding us

The more that it destroys

Turn up the signal

Wipe out the noise

Send out the signals, deep and loud

Man, I’m losing sound and sight

Of all those who can tell me wrong from right

When all things beautiful and bright sink in the night

Yet there’s still there’s something in my heart

That can find a way to make a start

To turn up the signal

Wipe out the noise

Wipe out the noise

Wipe out the noise

You know that’s it

You know that’s it

You know that’s it

Receive and transmit

Receive and transmit

Receive and transmit

No receive and transmit

No receive

Receive and transmit

Receive and transmit

Receive and transmit

Receive and transmit”

Let the lyrics sink in first and consider whether, and how, you relate. Then take in the soundscape of the song. Here is a reference to the epic musical performance in it’s original version: Peter Gabriel – Signal To Noise – 2003 Original via Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zM7QaPiwqE. And here a live version featuring the combination of Gabriel’s rock band, combined with the great Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan surrounded by his fellow performers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5KcEy3y23w. Consider how you feel, against your own memories of the time growing up with his music. Or against the background of your memories of the early 2000’s. Or against your cultural positions or affinities. Or against your current mood, whether you are depressed and feeling hopeless, or feeling hopeful. Or not knowing how you are feeling at all.

 In all cases you will come to own specific contexts of how you relate to the lyrics, the soundscape, and the combination of a rock ballad with arabic tunes and sounds, and visuals.

As always on my blog, I am after something like common patterns. In this case, I am trying to wrap my mind around an impression which I have: That there is a rapidly increasing and all-pervasive desire of shutting down which I come across in many personal conversations, and which I suspect, with some personal heuristical indication, appears to be increasingly endemic at least in those societal contexts in which I live and move around.

Since a very long time, I am no stranger to feelings as they are expressed in these lines, the way I personally relate to them. This song is part of a playlist on my devices which I continue to listen to all over again, since many years. Like with any piece of art, my emotional relationship to it is based on the context of my personal memories, the way I grew up, the way I relate to the iconic music of my defining young years, the Rock music of the late Sixties and early Seventies which later made me select which performers I would follow, and what kind of new music I would let in, and where I simply wasn’t interested at all, and how I come back to my defining Classic Rock music as I grow older. Yes, of course, this is how nostalgic feelings develop, too. A friend for many years, who is considerably younger than I am, shares some favorite music with me every day during these weeks advancing the Christmas Holidays. That music is so different, and I relate so differently.

But I am also putting this masterpiece into my personal and professional context of history and experiences which include many severely traumatising events which I have had to process, and continue to do so. I do know a great many people who struggle with that they have gotten stuck in this trauma process, so I will offer an important word of optimism from the outset on. Because if you read the lyrics, they end with an impression that there is no way forward. Yet, there is one. It is a long and arduous process, but a promising one, always requiring outside help. I do strongly recommend professional help being part of it. I am not suffering from my trauma past. Not any longer. As far as I can tell. My processing work continues. But there is hope, and there is a way. I have integrated my past, welcome it, do not regret it, am not stuck in it. But I relate very much to the feeling of utter hopelessness which I listen to in conversations with an increasing amount of people who appear to have been on a different trajectory of lifetime developments than I have been and who seemed to have led lifes with much less trauma-induced self-harming behavior than I have. Until relatively recently that is.

And I feel much has begun with the Covid-19 pandemic.

In most simple terms, trauma is a consequence of harmful events. A trauma literally is a wound. Trauma is not the triggering event, but its consequence. Physical wounds, emotional wounds, cognitive wounds, spiritual wounds. That is why medical doctors describe wounds using the word “trauma”, like in the case of “concussion trauma”. In the very same way events create wounds in the brain.

The body-brain-relationship on cognitive level includes that physical wounds, trauma in the body, creates mirroring wounds in the neurophysiological setup of the brain. The brain reflects the sensoric input through constant neuronal change. Like every part of our body, for example, has a mirroring section in the neuronal setup of our brains, changes to this body, even temporary changes like through wounds will be reflected in the neuronal setup of our brains, and in a way that you can see on an MRI scanner or using other devices.

But it also goes the other way round. Not only that physical injuries create their mirror-representations in the brain, cognitive injuries will also become visible in the body. Traumatising events can leave the body seemingly unharmed, but not the mind, and then as a consequence of the complex reaction to trauma, the wound in the mind becomes visible on the “outside”, through behavior, or also through somatic consequences. We even name them “psychosomatic”. Think headaches, ulcer, strokes, cardiac arrests, and myriads of other forms of the mind-body-interrelationship which constitutes us. If I go any deeper, I will already have to be selective in describing the many interrelated consequences of trauma. If you think deeply, you will recognize that any border between “body” and “mind” is artificial. It literally is All One.

That is why it is so wrong, and so dangerous, to perhaps minimize, or belittle, psychosomatic illnesses. Like as if “just being stronger” would be a remedy. Using the same “logic”, less educated people will belittle traumatisation as a “desease of the weak”. Nothing could be more wrong.

Harmful events creating trauma can be “one-of-a-kind” but severe. Or cumulative by constant, but may be with less severe events forming a chain. Or in its most extreme forms, trauma can be the consequence of a repetition of severe events, each of which in itself would already constitute heavy traumatization but where the repetition creates devastating results. Like as if you would use a hammer and constantly bang on the concussion which you already got from the first time when the hammer hit your hand incidentially, and not the nail which your hand was holding against the wood. 

You would never do that, would you? Hammering on the same wound all over again which you received in the first place? Pretty unheard of? Not really. Think of cases of severe mental illness, where people can’t keep themselves from banging their head against a wall, for example. Or take self-abusive sexual behavior re-enacting severe trauma from earlier abuse. The Internet is chock-full with videos of it, simple Google-searches show. In addition, many browser histories will be filled with such searches.

The conduit especially visible in the last example which I use in the previous paragraph is: In cases of mental trauma the mind often goes into re-enactment-mode, meaning that people with an initial trauma for example in early childhood will develop a life pattern of seeking situations in which they unknowingly or knowingly expose themselves to trauma, over and over again. I only began to understand that at the age of 55 years. I was not aware of this pattern, and it took quite a while until I reached an initial position from which I began to appreciate the consequences of my patterns on a cognitive level. That includes, importantly, people whose depression is masked to the extent that they even don’t know they suffer from it.

So, the first half if my interpretation of that song is one in which Peter Gabriel expresses the feeling that hope is drowning, then he expresses a glimpse of hope: Man, I’m losing sound and sight Of all those who can tell me wrong from right When all things beautiful and bright sink in the night Yet there’s still there’s something in my heart That can find a way to make a start.

Was I too early offering a glimpse of hope for instances in which all things bright seem to disappear, when even pain relief doesn’t work any longer? Because Gabriel’s lyrics include that, towards the end, hope seems to disappear. “No receive“. The signal seems to be lost, drowned in the noise of things falling apart. People who do not have personal experience with depression will have a hard time to even relate on a cognitive level.

Without a deeper investigation, my feeling is that an increasing number of people is experiencing what Peter Gabriel is expressing. A word of academic caution: Even if I can give testimony that in the overwhelming number of conversations which I have, people confirm that they feel numb, angry, depressed, helpless, just wanting to shut off communication and retreating to a beautiful peaceful place, it still is nothing else than my selective subjective experience. 

But I travel a lot, I talk with friends, colleagues, and random people in societies all over the world. What I hear is often the same: It feels like a tendency to increased and enduring depressed feelings. Conversations communicate a struggle with hopelessness, feeling overhwelmed, feeling helpless, feeling exasperation and desperation. And there is anger, all over these conversations. Sometimes visible. Sometimes repressed and masked. Just listen long enough and deeply, you will see the repressed hidden anger.

It is not that I’m stuck in something myself and therefore selectively only talk to people who feel “like me”. My recovery from trauma and it’s life-long consequences, including systematic re-enactment of trauma by exposing myself to more of it, it is based on experiential wisdom which is confirmed by cutting edge science, whether psychology, psychotherapy, trauma-treatment, or the vast knowledge coming from neuroscience. It includes that I always remind myself to remember the codeword H.A.L.T.: Never get too Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired. 

In this context, emphasis on “angry”, and on “lonely”.

Living my time- and science-tested recovery way-of-life I work very hard on practicing positive attitudes and principles of living. I deeply know what anger, resentment, fear, and the feeling of helplessness can do and to which dark places it can get lead. 

Do people who have never had to recognize severe trauma know how much they have been traumatized? The word “traumatised” may often be used in superficial conversations, without a deeper understanding. It mainstreamed into conversations, before, during, and after the Covid-19-pandemic. Does the intellectual knowledge of the fact that one received severe trauma help, on deeper levels? My personal experience is confirmed by science: No, intellectual knowledge does not necessarily help. A typical response is: “I can fix it myself. I just have to change the circumstances. I don’t have to change myself. I’ll just fix it”. Of course this will prove wrong with no exception. The path from intellectual acknowledgement of own traumatisation towards a deeper understanding creating the willingness to seek and to receive help, it usually is a long-winded path with many injuries to oneself and to loved ones until one is able to recognize this fact. Until then, even those who try to be helpful will stand in the way when they will not submit to the victim’s expectation to be helped in fixing the environment, instead of helping to address the real roots of what individuals have to change within themselves, in order to embark on a path of healing. Witnessing the path down to rock bottom, not being able to help someone to avoid it, especially in the case of people one loves dearly, it can be heartbreaking. Being pushed aside as a consequence of the paranoid level of self-protection which has arisen in a traumatised person using every survival strategy under the sun in order to find relief from a pain too big to be acknowledged by oneself, it is a tough experience. Giving in, meeting the expectations of a suffering trauma survivor to stay stuck, or to believe that it is the circumstances, and not oneself who has to change, it moves any supporting person from the side of solutions to the side of problems. It is called co-dependence.

How many of us have experienced radical trauma during the pandemic? Each of us has own memories which we have neatly put into a mental closet. How many of us remember the traumatic isolation? Sure, I also know people who will report that they enjoyed the solitude. But many suffered from a deprivation of social contacts on an unprecedented level. Others suffered from trauma through the stress which Covid-19 brought into their private lifes, locking them up in one place, amplifying the catastrophic way of interaction in unhealthy relationships and abusive situations with no means to escape. Domestic violence increased. Cases of suicide and attempted suicide increased. The impact on children during a period of their lifes requiring social contact to peers has been catastrophic, and there is ample scientific research on this, whilst long-term impact studies necessarily are only in their infancy. Our lifes only started to normalize less than two years ago. Few people remind us of these times by still wearing masks in public. It seems like we have muted our traumatic memories to the maximum. For now. Just think how societies would react if a new serious wave of a pandemic would lead to a medical recommendation to repeat the containment measures which we applied from 2020 onwards. Literally everyone whom I present with this hypothetical scenario responds with “Unthinkable”.

Now, the next conduit: Remember how we witnessed the escalative proliferation of conspiracy theories at the same time, and fueled by the pandemic, and with some politicians and a bunch of crazy people pouring gasoline on the wildfire?

Talking about the meaninglessness of “truth” has become the new normal. Who would have not said you’re crazy if one would have described today’s reality to you just, say, less than ten years ago? Since 2014, this blog alone carries many examples of developments which always “upped the ante”. Until now with no peak in sight. We live in societies in which the deterioration of mannered attitude and bi-partisan discussion culture progressed into something where people will roll their eyes and say “Again? Please give me a break!” Or where people have taken sides and can’t talk to the other side any longer. Or where they have a hard time even acknowledging that the other side has a point, or can at least sense the shoes the other side is wearing.

Which is a another pointer towards a human attitude which also is a typical consequence of trauma reflected in earlier paragraphs of this writing: Denial.

Another one is Anger. Anger in it’s repressed forms as a consequence of trauma. Anger as a strong emotion used for control and manipulation. Anger as one of the key emotions exploited in social media and through algorhythms on basis of Artificial Intelligence. Remember what I wrote about H.A.L.T.?

Cypher: You know, I know this steak doesn’t exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize?

[Takes a bite of steak]

Cypher: Ignorance is bliss.

Cypher in the iconic movie “The Matrix” about the Grace of Ignorance 

Can anyone relate to pure figures of suffering?

The scene with Cypher as quoted above is the most incredible way how to bite into a piece of juicy steak I have ever seen in any movie. Watch it.

Remember the statistics and figures with daily, sometimes hourly global development of how the Covid-19-virus rampaged through the World? The figures of infections, the figures of infection-related deaths, and then a year later on the figures of vaccinations, and how we struggled to see a relationship between vaccinations and a downward trend in infection-related deaths? Remember the denial, and how our societies were ripped into vaccination-supporters and vaccination-deniers, and how militant this discussion was, partly? How the fact whether someone was supporting or refusing vaccinations ripped through families? I remember a conversation where someone in my family spoke about a vaccination-denier who got severely sick, almost dying, from Covid-19. I could hear a subdued element of “Schadenfreude”. And remember how we needed to exemplify suffering through singling out individual stories of suffering in order to grasp the extent of what was happening, on a massive, global scale?

That was 2020 and 2021. Remember the numbers blowing your mind related to the suffering of people in Afghanistan after the implosion of all international activities there in 2021? An implosion and withdrawal which came, at least for many, without clear signs. And in any case, notwithstanding how premeditated it was, in its execution it happened fast, not in steps allowing to adjust policy of withdrawal. And then there was the highly unanticipated progress of the Taliban, taking over large swaths of Afghanistan, and then Kabul, much to their own surprise even. Do you remember the figures of casualties on the side of civilians? Or do you, more than that, remember the pictures from Kabul airport, and the individual stories of people. Do you remember the stories of Afghan women? How often do you read about the suffering of Afghan women, these days? Are you aware of the refusal of the Taleban, but not only them, related to the figures, and the facts of human rights violations? Have you been exposed to stories of denial, like it was the case with Covid-19? Stories of distortion and manipulation of facts, and conspiracy theories, and blaming the respective other side, singling out and protecting own decisions in a collaborative catastrophy with many factors needed to be taken into account, whilst people were looking for simple answers to yet another shocking and traumatising chain of events?

That was 2020 and 2021. Remember the numbers blowing your mind, of the suffering of people in the Ukraine, following the ongoing onslaught and the suffering through displacement, deportation of children, forced adoption, the war crimes and the crimes against humanity in occupied territory of the Ukraine, in 2022, whilst people in late 2021 would still dispute the intentions of an autocratic leader, Vladimir Putin? Who was helped in his disinformation campaign not only by denial and wishful thinking on the side of the West, but also through people like Nr 45 in the U.S., who until today sings songs of praise related to him, and to the dictatorial killer in North Korea, and an autocratic leader in China? Do you remember the statistics, and how we needed to create empathy which can not be reflected in numbers, by flooding the news with individual stories of suffering, and heroism, of the Ukrainian people?

Were you, at that time in 2022, still able to pay attention to Afghanistan? Were you, by then, able to also take in the sheer numbers of suffering of people in other parts of the World, less relevant to your own local and regional neighourhood? Like in Africa, just as an example?

That was 2020 and 2021 and 2022. What does the figure “1.200” do to you, on a level of empathic relating to suffering, when Hamas unleashed unimaginable terror, atrocities, murder, maiming, raping, mutilating Isaeli citizens October 07, 2023? The international news were only able to create understanding through individual stories, bordering, sometimes overstepping the limits of what can be put into press and TV by responsible media. Very much unlike the video streaming and glorification undertaken by Hamas. Almost immediately, despite the fact that I am almost not present at all on social media, I received messages from friends who had friends in Israel who, in their outrage and unimaginable pain even justified thinking about retaliation, and corporate responsibility of the Palestinian people. Reasonable words of caution against such holding a people responsible on a collective level drowned in the anger, fury, despair, pain. And in a specific German context which is visible in previous articles on this blog, it also began to deeply affect the German society, both related to how we deal with our Holocaust past and our collective responsibility to protect the Israeli State and its citizens, and how we experienced the consequences within our own multi-cultural setup which includes citizens and residents and temporary residents and people granted asylum who live in Germany, constituting parts of the German society.

What does the figure “18.000” do to you, related to the rough and daily increasing estimation of death tolls of Palestinian civilians? Except, that the collective figure of “1.200” and “18.000” defies any reference model which you had from previous news, where the decrying of massive suffering was already stressing your tolerance. Again, you are confronted with unimaginable suffering as reported in individual stories which are needed in any reporting, in order to make you being able to relate on an empathy level. Do you belong to those who have already forgotten the Covid-19-casualties and the suffering in Afghanistan and who barely think about the numbers as we digested them from the Ukraine just a year earlier?

In this section of my long writing, I want to make the point how deeply this collective development, taken together, has been traumatising us on a societal level. Pandemic, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Israel and Palestine, I often hear “What will come next?”. Almost no capacity left for appreciating suffering in other parts of the World. We take this in within an onslaught of news which still includes more, including climate change and natural catastrophes, including worrying political developments. And each of these news stories scare the hell out of us.

And please remember what I wrote earlier: Brains are highly social organs, and in addition to what trauma on an individual level does to us on a neurophysiological level, the same is true when we mourn the loss of a relative, or a loved one, or experience heart-break. And the same is true with our societal connections.

Each of the developments above has led to individual and societal traumatisation on a level which I have not witnessed in my personal lifetime, in this life. Can’t remember what happened in my previous lifes. Maybe I am blessed.

Leading to my final part of dealing with typical reactions to trauma, beyond being wounded, becoming numb, becoming angry, entering into denial: Another important effect of trauma, because of the way the survival mechanisms in our brains work, is shutting down.

This, I believe, I personally witness more recently, and especially since October 07, 2023. Remember the following lines from Peter Gabriel’s song: ” Man, I’m losing sound and sight Of all those who can tell me wrong from right When all things beautiful and bright sink in the night“.

I feel we are ripped into pieces because we loose orientation. We can not compare 1.200 and 18.000, since every single life is invaluable. Where is the guidance on a question like “How many civilian casualties compose a violation of the responsibility of a Party to a War to protect the civilian population?” How do we stomach numbers according to which more than 70% of the Palestinian population are internally displaced, mostly having no shelter, no food, no water, at the brink of starvation, with almost no medical provisions?

In many discussions which I am part of, I can feel how this rips us into pieces. Not only in a specific German context. You can read about it in great detail and masterfully written in this essay in the “New Yorker“, which was sent to me by my nephew (the one who wrote a response to my blog article). Please, if you can, follow the link. But this rupture includes all of us, including the United Nations, for example. Please, also read the OpEd by Michelle Nunn, Tjada D’Oyen McKenna, Jan Egeland, Abby Maxman, Jeremy Konyndyk and Janti Soeripto, titled “Why the U.S. Must Change Course on Gaza Today“.

Ms. Nunn is president and chief executive of CARE USA. Ms. McKenna is chief executive of Mercy Corps. Mr. Egeland is secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council. Ms. Maxman is president and chief executive of Oxfam America. Mr. Konyndyk is president of Refugees International. Ms. Soeripto is president and chief executive of Save the Children U.S. – How much higher can you get in the international humanitarian community?

This OpEd is heartbreaking in it’s own right. Because it struggles with some of the questions which are part of this long essay of mine.

I need to conclude on “Shutting Down”, being part of my title for this blog entry, too: I am increasingly confronted with statements like “I can’t bear this any more”, or “I don’t want to hear about it any more”, or “I want to leave to an island where I can just live a simple life, leaving all this behind”.

I can understand this reaction.

I also note reactions like regressing into familiar local contexts. In these cases people shut their eyes and ears, because they can’t bear the emotional pain any longer, and regress into a combination of denial, and self-serving domestic points. Like, “See, I understand all this, but is anyone talking about what is happening in my neighborhood?”.

I also can understand this, though I am fiercely calling for remaining compassionate and understanding for a global interconnection of events. No domestic problem can be solved without taking the global interconnection into account.

Finally, I note denial, regression, fake news, conspiracy theories, and radicalisation as a pattern which emerges also from the desire to find simplified answers to seemingly intractable problems. This is mixed with pure selfishness, egotism, and malice.

Whilst I appreciate the mechanics behind it, I can not even begin to understand this, nor tolerate it. Also this extremism, on the left and the right, narrowing the focus of observing problems to the point of almost becoming deaf and blind for anything outside the own area of interest, it both is a consequence of the long story on trauma which I have written down here, and at the same time it acts like an escalating agent. It puts gasoline on the wildfire which has become a global storm.

That is why shutting down must be fought with all individual and collective means. Without empathy, compassion, and the attempt to lovingly understand and to support collective values, we are literally doomed.

Does Compassion Know Boundaries?

/ stefanfeller / Leave a comment

On the featured picture: Art by Eva-Maria Horstick, arteve.de. Part of a series created by using AI-tools. Eva was in the final preparations for an exposition in Israel when the Hamas attack October 07 created mass casualties, suffering, despair, trauma, and the grounds for even more suffering. Her project in Israel is on hold with no certainty whether it has a future, or not.

I am fascinated by the train of thought stemming from the recent reaction to the blog post “The Attack on Humanity by Terrorism: Blinding and manipulating through inciting hatred and fear on an unimaginable scale – The monster hides in plain sight” from my nephew Nils: “Never again” must signify “never again for anyone”, regardless of your ethnicity, religion or constructed social identities – A letter from my nephew“. It also makes sense to read the blog entry which is, so to speak, sitting between these two posts: “Bits and Pieces – November Thoughts – Some Book and Video Recommendations“.

Why is that?

If one reads these posts in a sequential manner, the complexity of the topics at hand becomes apparent. May be even overwhelming. Sometimes I feel they can become confusing. After all, we all try to make sense of our environment.

Making sense of information is what brains do for a living. Here is a book recommendation: “Livewired: The Inside Story of the Ever-Changing Brain” by David Eagleman (Canongate Books; Main edition – 1 July 2021). It is fascinating. I may have my own difficulties to accept the comparison of animal brains (including our own) with all-purpose-computing devices, but on a neurophysiological level it is correct for sensory and at least some higher cognitive functions. Whether this includes what we name “awareness” is subject to research, but we don’t know this yet. Which could make me getting lost in talking about Artificial Intelligence, but I won’t, except for using a blog picture which has been created using AI-Tools. Look at more of it here: arteve.de. Sometimes I think awareness is holding a key stitching so many confusing topics together.

Brains do constantly work on making sense of any sensory input, and I think the same is true for any sort of cognitive input by means of abstract forms of information, beyond what we process through our five senses. To operate in this world requires an ability to conclude on what is happening “around us”. Like we make sense of optical input through our eyes, we are also wired to interpret the information which is reaching us through communication, through news, chatter, gossip.

Meaning: We construct a representation of the world around us. If you read David Eagleman”s newest book, or the one I have been referring to in other blog entries, “The Brain”, you will appreciate that what we perceive as “the outer world” in reality is a construct inside our brain. Using this comparison, it is easy to accept that, for example, our visual representation of the world around us is limited to that part of the electromagnetic spectrum which we call “visible light” (telling, that name, isn’t it?). Same with acoustic input: We don’t hear what bats hear, or cats, or dogs, (ultra high frequencies) or elephants (ultra low frequencies). We construct our inner representation of what we call the “outer world” through the possibilities and limitations of our sensory input. The brain is agnostic where this input comes from. Throw input data on a brain, it will automatically work on making sense of it. Eagleman’s book offers fascinating insight into how this can lead to replacement or even enhancement of capabilities to create an inner world which we mistakenly equal with the outer world.

The same is true for processing information about the world as we have created it with our constructs which hold larger groups or societies together. We try to make sense of all sorts of data, and information. With that, we establish something which we then may call “truth”. Which is a treacherous word. In the realm of the fabrics for societal cohesion there is no space for “objective truth”. Rather it is about concepts which compete with each other. Terms used in social media such as “influencer” and “follower” are bluntly revealing this. Donald Trump’s choice of “Truth Social” as a brand name for his own bullhorn social media platform is telling: It’s about my truth, not your truth. Which renders any coherent use of the term “truth” very fragile, at least.

The interpretation of, say, visual information on physical objects in our environment is relatively stable: As long as the light gets reflected from an apple, even different lighting conditions will usually make me “see” an apple. Not a peach, not a shoe, not a snake, but an apple. Information encoded in light reflected from physical objects is less prone to manipulation, though it is possible. By contrast, the interpretation of data about our highly complex individual, social and political relationships, the interpretation of concepts which have no physical representation in the world (for example law, human rights, cultural norms, spiritual or religious or secular beliefs) is highly dependent on a great number of factors manipulating the result about what we believe to understand. There seems not to be one reality which could be universally accepted by all. There seem to be many competing “realities”. For one, thirty years ago I decided to prefer Apple computers and to ridicule Windows computers. It sticks, until today. Once you’re locked into one explanation of reality, it is very hard to stay open-minded enough to look at information which appears to go against the foundations of what you have decided to “follow”. Which is where “influencing” comes in: It is meant to get you into this select perception, and preferably to keep you there.

What do people make with this fact? How do I live with the recognition that my interpretation of my environment is fundamentally different from anybody else’s interpretation, but that none is holding a universal truth?

The brain is a highly social organ: It can not survive without other brains. It needs connections, it needs proximity to and synchronicity with other brains, it constantly does one thing: Establishing a framework of reference which does make sense within a shared reality with others. The hermit in a mountain cave who lives a solitary life and is able to come to autonomous attitudes and conclusions through “deep thinking” is a highly idealised concept, appealing only to very rare individuals. And even a hermit had to grow up in a social context before deciding to choose solitary self-confinement. The reality is: We depend on belonging to groups, for the sanity of our own mind depends on it. We can’t do without “influencing“ and “following”, all of us. That is also why I believe the pandemic created a global mental depression through massive deprivation of brains from what they need, and why I put the pandemic into the row of destabilising developments of the current world order: The effects contribute to our global development until today.

And again, why am I asking this question against the context I started with above?

It has to do with what is stressing our societal cohesion, in many different societies: Can I empathise with suffering of people without having to be on “one side, or the other side”? Can I acknowledge, as my nephew and I suggest from different vantage points, that we acknowledge suffering equally, and not limited to the fate of one group? Look at hashtags on Tic Toc: #istandwithisrael, and #istandwithpalestine appear to be mutually exclusive. Just one example for an attitude leading to “If you’re not with me, you’re against me.” Why do people follow such a foolish logic?

How do I make sense of data, information, conclusions, interpretations, efforts to manipulate, by reducing complexity and establishing an explanatory pattern? Are there any principles which can help guiding me on a higher plane of consciousness?

In attempting to avoid a futile and not-so-competent academic discourse, I am sure, however, that one crucial factor in how we interpret the world around us is what I would call “simplification”, or “categorization”, or “reduction”. Brains are highly specialised in identifiying patterns in incoming data or information, and that has been useful since the emergence of the pre-frontal cortex many millennia ago. What is setting Homo Sapiens apart from our ancestors may also be what is haunting us most: Any categorization reduces complexity, but also limits our appreciation about what happens. Whilst we have achieved an outstanding and evolutionary unique ability creating mental concepts which allow for cohesion of larger groups and societies, we still use the same hardware (our brains) for reducing complexity, and establishing peer connections with others. From there, competition arises, which is a good concept. But also intolerance arises. And conflict. And yes, we have developed fancy tools far more powerful than sticks and stones for successfully killing other fellow human beings. Have we missed out on developing commensurate tools allowing for empathy and compassion beyond the peer groups we have been born into, drawn into, chosen to belong to?

I don’t think so. Wisdom traditions hold these values since thousands of years. Which, against the evolutionary context of our brain development, still is a drop in the bucket. Meaning: The development and cultivation of compassion and empathy in a contemporary context is subject to evolution, too.

We have to work on this. Hard. Otherwise we will be history ourselves.

Addendum on Cyber Warfare

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Yesterday I published a piece on the need to better comprehend, and possibly to regulate, the implications which come from the use of new and highly sophisticated systems in the field of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.). New applications with abilities to understand, and to respond, in natural language, or in the form of complex visual compositions are crossing a boundary line where it becomes very difficult for an unknowing observer to identify that the communication partner is an A.I. system. Their capabilities are scarily powerful, ranging from natural conversations through writing poems, articles or other complex pieces of writing, or even computer code, just based on natural language input.

I mentioned the possibility for such systems to be abused in malicious contexts. Like any modern piece of software, their inner workings are almost impossible to understand for people who do not take their time for an in-depth learning curve. At the same time, their capacities are fascinating. Meaning that they and their results are looking so good, and the dangers coming from their unregulated use appear so abstract, that they permeate into the real word with a speed which makes curbing unwanted effects a gigantic mission (almost) impossible.

Now, on the general dangers from this cyberworld, here a very comprehensive and meticulous documentation which the English version of the German news magazine DER SPIEGEL put online yesterday: “The “Vulkan Files”: A Look Inside Putin’s Secret Plans for Cyber-Warfare. I just want to recommend reading it. The full scale of Russia’s integral user of cyber weapons into regular warfare and State sponsored terrorism becomes very obvious. The report is based on comprehensive research including insider information which DER SPIEGEL conducted together with investigative partner organisations.

Looking at it, the strategic range of hostile activities, in and way beyond the current war of aggression raging against the Ukraine, becomes clear. Those hostile cyber activities are an integral part in larger operations, and they target the West, as well as any people posing a threat to Putin’s control regime. Which does not come at a surprise. Recent public discussions have made it very difficult to qualify what we collectiviely are finding ourselves in. People with authorized public voices have to tread their words very carefully, simply because any language of war can escalate a situation which is meant to be escalated by those in Russia who wage a war against the Ukraine, and who, that would be safe to say, are extremely hostile against the West, and do not hesitate to lure the West into a larger scale conflict of some kind. Oh, no, wrong: We are already in a larger scale conflict, and we try to defend ourselves, and to de-escalate that situation back into the realm of international diplomacy.

Subject to attacks in the cyber-realm are any people, organisations, or infrastructure deemed worthy to be attacked in gaining influence, information, control, manipulate through desinformation, influence public opinion, or just to exercise visible destructive power. It does not matter whether it is you, a civilian or a military or a political target, or an industrial or government target. Depending on the malicious intent, literally everyone is subject to these attacks, like, influencing your opinion and framework of perception of Russia’s war activities, and Putin and his collaborators committing crimes against humanity, and war crimes.

DER SPIEGEL is able to exhibit the contours of the full scale of it, and only by one of those actors who try to use this cyber-power. A lot has been written about others, such as in Iran, in North Korea, or in China. But the Russian side of things becomes more and more obvious, partly because, as DER SPIEGEL states, these activities are not even meant to be covert to a full extent any more. But make no mistake, the cutting edge use of state of the art tools will always be kept in the dark.

Stating what we all should know. But in this context, new A.I. tools such as language based models, are already being used, and are increasingly being used. They may become the new “power tool”.

Few things are more important than systematic cyber security strategies, including police and military defense and deterrence. In countries of the European Union, in countries aspiring to join the E.U., and generally within countries who contribute the upholding of principles including Human Rights, a rule of law, and democracy as a means of basing the power on the will expressed by the people, not by dictators, oligarchs, autocrats, or, I may add, any people who put their own power beyond the limits of a rule of law. Those inlude Organized Crime.

In some countries I work in, these vulnerabilties take the form of wide open barn doors. There is a need to collectively close these doors. Yes, the Internet is about freedom of communication and information exchange, for the prosper of All. But exactly this is under attack. Often invisible. Until massive cyber attacks bring governance to a screeching halt. Which is what we have witnessed in some countries not mentioned in DER SPIEGEL, between 2019 and 2022.

Would You Trust an Alien Without Knowing Anything About That Alien?

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We are at the brink of exactly doing that.

Like many others, I have poked around a little bit into the topic of A.I. driven computerized models, whether language models which make the news all over the place, such as GPT-4, “a state-of-the-art language model that makes it feel like you are communicating with a person rather than a machine“, or the amazing capabilities of A.I. such as DALL-E 2, an “AI system that can create realistic images and art from a description in natural language.“

In both cases, I quote from the respective websites where these systems are hosted. GPT- 4 is introduced as a system that literally makes me feel like I converse with a human being. Or, in the case of DALL-E 2, it does not only talk about realistic images, but also about “art”.

So I asked GPT-4 “What is art?”. I got the following response: “Hello! “Art” is a term that refers to various creative and expressive activities that involve the production of visual, auditory, or performance-based works that are valued for their aesthetic or emotional appeal. It can include various forms of media, such as painting, sculpture, music, literature, film, photography, and dance. Art can be created for a variety of reasons, including personal expression, communication, cultural or political commentary, or simply for the sake of beauty or entertainment. The definition of art is subjective and can vary depending on cultural and historical context, as well as individual interpretation.”

Please note that GPT-4 does not give me any sources of reference for this definition. This definition is a product of the language model itself, which has been trained against an immense data set retrieved from public sources on the Internet, and which has compiled its own answer from those many sources without explaining its path from parsing the dataset towards providing me with the definition that you can read above.

If I google “What is art?”, I get many responses for which the Wikipedia definition is just an example: “Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas.” The process of reading through all different sources with definitions of art is my own intellectual process, and if I adhere to some proper standards, I refer to several sources and then explain why I have come up with a select definition.

This is missing in GPT-4’s answer to my question.

Now: Is this deliberate, or just an ommission? The problem is that nobody can reproduce how GPT-4 has come to an answer of the above, by parsing its vast knowlege database. A.I. language models are highly complex “neuronal network models”. There is no way to read these neuronal networks out, like that you can trace and reproduce the process in a classical linear piece of software code performing iterations on an algorythm. Too much technological speak? Sorry for that, this is important here.

So, next step: I am asking GPT-4 “Is art a human feature?“. Long story short, GPT-4 gives me an explanation about a dispute in science whether creating art is a uniqely human capability, or whether animals, or some animals, share this. I note that GPT-4 is only talking about humans and other animals, not about machines.

Which leaves me with the impression that the creators of the website which is introducing DALL-E 2 have an understanding of “art” that would include the assumption that A.I. can create art. Otherwise they wouldn’t have said that, or?

Except, hold on, here I came up with a seemingly weird thought: What if the creators of DALL-E 2’s website would ask GPT-4 to generate a website template for them? For the non-initiated: GPT-4 has vast abilities which go lightyears beyond my little example above. You can use GPT-4 for writing poems, articles, essays, or to write complex EXCEL-formulae, or highly sophisticated computer code. Meaning, you can ask (and many do) GPT-4 to create a template for a website, too. Then you would have a situation in which one A.I-system describes another A.I.-system, and no external visitor of that website would have any means to identify which language is coming from humans, and which language is coming from the use of GPT-4. This is, as I will try to explain, the core of the problem.

And that is, for the purpose of screwing up your mind at whichever time of the day you are reading this, enough to find an entry point into a mind-boggling discussion and a development in industry which appears to be unprecedented in terms of speed. We do not talk years, we do not even talk several months, the news about further developments and implementations of A.I. language systems into anything from social media into faking your PHD-thesis paper, or decisionmaking, or the inclusion of GPT-4 into renowned web browsers such as Microsoft’s BLING, these news hammer the streets in a battle rhythm defined by weeks, or days.

And the point I want to make is that we have no clue about the consequences. Many people won’t understand, or just being fascinated, or not knowing about the ever more pervasive use of these models in any daily errand we undertake, at all.

Yet, we are at the brink of a revolution of which some of the most renowned experts on this globe say that it might eat up it’s own children.

What? Why? Because language creates our reality which we perceive. In a sane environment, if I listen to language, something called “trust” is involved, since I allow myself to listen to something which creates, or shapes, my reality. If I don’t trust, or trust the wrong people, the result is that, for example, social media is messing around with my sanity. But in all these cases, I listen to, and perhaps trust, real people.

If I don’t know whether the information I get is originating from people, or from an A.I., and if I combine the creative power of A.I. with the cpability of generating complex constructs such as a website in my little example above, an article, or a book, leaving the impression that these products are human-made, I simply render my trust to an Artificial Intelligence, which I have to trust, in case I know about its participation, or where I am left in the dark in case the use of such A.I. is not made known to me. Because of this possible use of such A.I. based language models creating entirely non-human-made realities, indistinguishable from human information and manipulation, this is giving the creeps to a large body of well-minded scientists, and to interested laymen.

Confused? Well, imagine you are giving GPT-4 the task to overhaul Wikipedia. Wikipedia is based on common contributions by millions of people, and a quality mechanism. Now, if GPT-4 enters this crowd in disguise, what if, all of a sudden, the “human” feature in defining “art” is not part of the definition of art any longer? Which simply means that we allow A.I. to shape how we perceive the world. And the question is: “Do we know what we are doing, and do we have enough checks and balances built in?”

Simply because it won’t only be the well-meaning people who explore the fascinating abilities of new forms of A.I. like this. Anyone with a creative malicious mind will explore the power of these models, as well. Some already have. These models have already been used to generate malicious computer code meant to crack systems wide open. Just the beginning.

We begin to trust Aliens in creating our reality in which we live. Here is what people with a renowned academic background have to say on this matter:

I have written about the work of Yuval Noah Harari on several occasions. Quoting from a Guest Essay in the New York Times, “Yuval Noah Harari is a historian; the author of “Sapiens,” “Homo Deus” and “Unstoppable Us”; and a founder of the social impact company Sapienship. Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin are founders of the Center for Humane Technology and co-hosts of the podcast “Your Undivided Attention.””

March 24, 2023, Yuval Harari, Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin wrote a Guest Essay in the New York Times titled “You Can Have the Blue Pill or the Red Pill, and We’re Out of Blue Pills“. I have read quite some of Yuval’s fascinating books, starting with “Sapiens”, which opened my eyes in many ways. In other books, he is describing advances in genetic technology and advances in Artificial Intelligence as some of the most future-defining developments of our times. He does so since many years, so the alarm bells rung by Harari, Harris, and Raskin are not a sign of panicking, but of profound research on these issues.

They are not alone. “WIRED” is one of many news outlets reporting about an open letter signed by hundreds of prominent A.I. experts, including Elon Musk. Frankly, that name does not necessarily lend too much credibility to me, but I am biased there, for many reasons including an unhinged narcissistic attitude towards the power of capitalism. Yet, it does not mean he is wrong in joining, for whichever motivation. The fact that hundreds of the World’s best of the best warn “In Sudden Alarm, Tech Doyens Call for a Pause on ChatGPT“, it gives important weight to this discussion which requires so much of a technological and societal understanding which is not necessarily a part of the common toolbox of people who allow this sort of technology creeping into the foundations of how our societies and ourselves as individuals “function”.

What is it about?
The use of Artificial Intelligence is not new, and it is, in many ways, already pervading into all corners of our daily lifes. I will explain, in order to work out the profound difference which GPT-4 and other such models make.

Cybernetics and computer technology are a field of interest for me since many decades. Pretty much for the same time, I have read of attempts to replicate the inner workings of the brain, through its neuronal networks, within computing systems. Those early mathematical and computational models attempting to replicate neuronal functions of living brains, they existed in universities and laboratories for a long time. They translated into computer code, much of which was leading to little demonstrations only. Then, these neuronal networks were hosted in ever more powerful computational environments. At the same time, processing power of chips made so incredible advances that any drone, any smartphone, any robotic vacuum cleaner has enough computing power to host software that has neuronal network simulations built in as a vital part.

The same goes for the vast computing networks driving internet-wide applications. Whether for the purpose of global logistics, whether complex predictive systems used to forecast the weather, whether military applications, medical applications, predictive policing software, or, notoriously, social media, they all use A.I. in the form of applications which can learn, are able to identify patterns, and to produce predictive results.

The key, in layman’s terms, sits with the way how these digital neuronal networks store information. They do not store that information in a form which would allow us to retrieve it from a harddisk, look at it, and understand it. Very much like in biological brains, the network itself stores the information as an “inner state”. You put some information through the entry sensors of such a network, the “inner state” will compute, the output side of the system will produce a result, and you can even feed this result back to the sensor side with added information about whether the prediction was correct, or not precise enough. Subsequently, the system will learn.

These systems have amazing capacities. The lenses of your smartphone will compute the picture which you are taking by using A.I. This software will detect “things”, and optimize the photo-shooting. Then, go into the photo app and ask for pictures including mountains, or clouds, or cats, or “Stefan Feller”. In case there are pictures with such features, chances are high the app will present a considerable number of findings. The robotic vacuum will learn how to navigate in your mess. The medical system will become better in diagnosing your desease, or ailment. FaceBook will learn how to push ads, depending on things including your mood, or anything else. In my line of professional work, the forensic software which is comparing shell casings of bullets will come up with similar pictures if they are in its database. Examples are literally countless.

Yet, all these systems operate with very limited language communication. You type in “cat” and you get a set of cat pictures. Alexa, Siri and others are not based (not currently) on GPT-4 – technology, their ability to understand you and to respond in plain language is very limited. GPT-4 is different.

Within a rapid development where new versions are put out in days, or weeks, language based models are able to communicate in natural language and they give you results in complex sentences, paragraphs, or even spoken, which can include the generation of a computer programme, a website, an article, or a casual conversation about love. The fact that you are talking to a machine is almost invisible for those who don’t know. The complexity of the answer, based of vast data retrieved from the Internet, does hide the source and any wrong or biased dataset can add to the learning mistakes which GPT-4 may be making in the act of communicating. There is a growing body of evidence that provocative language, cursing, provocation or many other examples (including that a language model used by Microsoft professed it’s love, or pretended to be a visually impaired human, but not a computer software) is based on the quantity of profane or emotionalised language retreived from bilions of social media entries.

Amongst all these funny stories, and all the amazing benefits which the uncounted avenues of human ingenuity offer, the danger zone gets drowned. Drowned like earlier, when we only realized the damage inflicted by social media when it was too late. Or, when scientists warned about the dangers of nuclear fission and fusion, calling for self-restraint and not to harness this power militarily.

Here a link to warnings about the potential criminal implications, in a warning from EUROPOL.

The most recent news: This article in the German tech magazine “Heise” explains how to install a local GPT-Clone on local “bread-and-butter”-hardware. Meaning that one can use the power of this software without leaving traces in external server-logs. So, buy your own little server park, install such a system, embed it into some computer code, and let it hammer out fake and manipulative news on social media and blogging sites with a speed which is not limited through the number of persons writing fake articles, but by the raw processing power of your computer setup.

Or, to quote Harari et. al. again: “By 2028, the U.S. presidential race might no longer be run by humans.“

So, on one hand we have a body of experts which truly says that we may be in a situation where we have not enough knowledge about what we are unleashing onto society. In Harari et. al. words: “We have summoned an alien intelligence. We don’t know much about it, except that it is extremely powerful and offers us bedazzling gifts but could also hack the foundations of our civilization. We call upon world leaders to respond to this moment at the level of challenge it presents.“

On the other hand, the chance of a responsible proactive discussion may be slim, taking into account how we collectively stumbled into any new world offered by technology. Remember the warnings on the potentially devastating consequences of nuclear fission, and nuclear fusion? But I agree we need to have such a discussion.

I don’t find better words than Harari et.al.:

“A.I. indeed has the potential to help us defeat cancer, discover lifesaving drugs and invent solutions for our climate and energy crises. There are innumerable other benefits we cannot begin to imagine. But it doesn’t matter how high the skyscraper of benefits A.I. assembles if the foundation collapses.

The time to reckon with A.I. is before our politics, our economy and our daily life become dependent on it. Democracy is a conversation, conversation relies on language, and when language itself is hacked, the conversation breaks down, and democracy becomes untenable. If we wait for the chaos to ensue, it will be too late to remedy it.”

Dopamine Nation – About A Book – Or More?

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Introduction

Unlike some of the recent blog entries here, including the previous, this is about the world within. Or is it?

“OMG, he is getting philosophical again.” I will do my best to limit it. But I need a conduit into why I want to write about a book which I read recently: Dopamine Nation (Dopamine nation: finding balance in the age of indulgence / Anna Lembke, M.D., 2021, ISBN 9781524746728 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781524746735 (ebook)).

Neurophysiology is part of science. Neuroscience is scientific research aiming to understand the inner workings of the brain. That includes the human brain, the most complex entity that we know about in the Universe. No superstition here: There may be, and I believe there are, more complex entities in the Universe, whatever the Universe is. But our knowledge about the Universe is extremely local, and extremely limited along the temporal dimension as well. In this corner of this Universe, and now, our own brain is the most complex composite physical entity that we know about. Its complexity pales everything else. I highly recommend, as I have done before, David Eagleman’s popular science book “The Brain“. I love it, my children loved it, and the TV series “The Brain” (PBS Documentary, 2015, available on Apple TV) with which David Eagleman stunningly transformed his book into a highly enjoyable visual companion to the book is still relevant, and thoroughly enlightening.

The brain is made from neurons and from other matter. The uniqueness of the human brain sits with that a stunning number of, give or take, 100 billion neurons are forming a highly complex neuronal network. Connected with sophisticated sensory input devices, having a plethora of means to communicate, and being able to steer the body and to contribute to regulate the inner functions of this larger entity we call “our body”, the combined result is much more than a walking and talking biological robot: Self-awareness and the emergence of a persona, in my case “Stefan Feller”, are amongst the results of these inner workings.

Describing it this way allows me to stay away from the philosophical, or spiritual, part. Whilst this part is extremely important to me personally, I can draw a line excluding the question whether this emerging persona is all there is. I will leave it with one thought by pointing to what some refer to as a “soul”, others may name it a “consciousness”, and as to which extent this is only specific for humans, or also true for other living beings, or even beyond, for everything there is. That’s where belief plays a role, inner perception and introspection kicks in, and a whole bunch of belief systems and dogmatic approaches may include deterministic, agnostic, spiritual, or religious explanations for “what there is”. I’m sorry to say, but fanatism starts in this realm, too. That’s part of my other blog entries.

Notwithstanding whether this “walking and talking biological robot” has only a persona, or is also a temporary seat for a soul, one fact is part of neuroscience: That physical processes govern this brain, and that chemical substances are key in not only how the brain works on a biological level, but also how this “resulting persona” is composed, how this persona is able to contribute to the complex equilibrium making this a healthy body, hosting a healthy mind, being part of a healthy “super structure”, meaning a community, a society, a culture, a nation (as the title of the book suggests).

What I want to say: The brain plays an important role by, so to speak, being the “home base” for my identity. Therefore,“Stefan Feller” and how this construct perceives, interprets, acts, reacts, thinks, or not, feels, and how, all that is highly dependent on chemistry. Dopamine is a chemical substance.

Neuroscience increasingly contributes to understanding how human beings perceive, regulate, act, react, are motivated, are functional, less functional, dysfunctional, are mentally sane, sometimes not, or less, and so much more. Neuroscience is able to contribute to important questions such as how to achieve happiness. On an individual level, and on a societal level.

And that is where I wanted to arrive, after so many times re-phrasing my writing, at the end of this introduction: The way how chemical substances produced by, and used by, the body and the brain, and how they are part of complex inner regulative systems ensuring stability, sanity, healthiness, and happiness, of body and mind, by extension they have a profound impact on the health and sanity of a society at large. Dopamine, and how we regulate the inner systems in our brain which are using Dopamine, affects not only the condition in which an individual, but also societies find themselves in.

That’s what Anna Lembke’s book is about. That’s why it has the title “Dopamine Nation”.

The Chemistry – And Neuroscience for Dummies

Dopamine is a chemical substance. In human beings, Dopamine is produced by the body itself, in the brain, and in the kidneys. The use of Dopamine for functions in living organisms is pretty widespread, it appears to be synthesized in plants and most animals.

Dopamine is also a member of a family of chemical substances which we call “hormones”. Which are, according to, for example, “MedLine Plus”, “your body’s chemical messengers“. As far as I want to take this explanation here, Dopamine appears to serve several of such uses in the body, but for the context of this book review only one is relevant: Dopamine is part of a family of substances called “neurotransmitters“. Dopamine is released by neurons in order to send signals to other neurons. From a chemical perspective, it is enough to appreciate that Dopamine is produced in specific areas of the brain, whilst the use of Dopamine by neurons in the brain is affecting many regions.

There are more than 100 substances which are currently identified as being neurotransmitters, the list appears to be open-ended. Neurotransmitters serve a vast array of functions which we increasingly understand, and as far as I would know, the ability of neurons to establish regulative systems in the brain without neurotransmitters is non-existent. Think about the brain without neurotransmitters: If I understand it correctly, you’re annihilated. Take away neurotransmitters, and not only a few functions break down. Simply put, the processes which also lead to the establishment of your persona, they are gone.

Including that which we describe as a free will, or as an illusion of free will. Whether we have one, or not, the jury is out and in this discussion philosophers, neurophysicists, even quantum-physicists, other scientists engage with people of faith, and even with people who have no idea what they are talking about. So, this is not more than a side-remark to make you smile, but also to think deeply about whether you have a “free will”, and what it means.

However, at minimum the workings of regulative systems in the brain which require neurotransmitters have a heavy impact on the ability of you to “freely” decide. If these regulative systems run off kilter, life as you know it changes. If the systems using Dopamine run haywire, your life becomes unmanageable.

Anna Lembke‘s book “Dopamine Nation” is dealing with regulative systems in the brain, or more specifically, with a subset of them. Broadly speaking, Lembke talks about the reward pathways in the brain. The brain, including these so-called reward pathways, is a product of millions of years of evolution, adding new layers, new parts, new features, to systems which we share with many other beings. All these, including what we sometimes call the “lizard brain”, contribute to the complex entity that we call “our brain”. More recently, in evolutionary terms, brain parts such as the frontal temporal lobe have been added. Added, not replaced something evolutionary older. Everything, including the “lizard parts” of the brain, contributes to what makes “us” the entities we are, how we perceive ourselves, how we are driven, consciously, or mostly without even knowing it. Ask specialists in the advertising industry about the latter. I should perhaps ask ChatGPT. But that’s for another blog entry.

But Anna Lembke’s book is not an academic piece relevant for students of neuroscience. She is covering vast territory of consequences that happen when the regulative balance within the reward pathways of the brain is triggered. There are parts of the book where she explains in layman’s language what happens when this system in the brain is allowed to work as it is supposed to work since millions of years.

Her focus, however, sits with what happens when it is put out of homoestasis for longer periods of time.

The Relevance

I am not lazy by saying that I won’t attempt to summarize the workings of this regulative process in the brain, and what happens when the delicate balance is lost.

On one hand, I want to encourage you to read the book, and/or other literature on these findings. On another note, though I feel very qualified in personally appreciating the consequences of the reward pathways entering a runaway process, I don’t feel qualified to summarize what already has been simplifed and summarized by Anna Lembke. But I will say that Annal Lembke and I share a deep-seated personal understanding, from different perspectives of professional qualification, about the consequences of the reward pathways not working any longer in a healthy way. In additon, we also share a personal experience about what happens then. So, I am not superstitious by elevating my own experience to the one of a distinguished scientific expert. Rather, as Anna Lembke describes her own experiences with addiction, I feel that I can safely say that I have my own experiences as well.

And in my own case, I am successfully adressing those since now ten years, by arresting the runaway process, and experiencing a lifestyle which is beyond my wildest dreams. Insofar, that my life has not only become more manageable, but that it also makes sense beyond what was the situation before: I was extremely successful in my work life, but my private life accumulated more and more damage, to myself, and to people I held, and hold, closest to my heart.

Anna Lembke’s book, beyond the neuroscientific explanation of how the parts of the brain which regulate reward, and pain, includes an impressive compilation of personal stories from her work as a therapist. Some of these you will find shocking. You should read all of them.

This is because Anna Lembke’s book does not start with explaining neuroscience, and then entering into the field of treatment of compulsive self-rewarding behavior which turns, over time, slowly and surely, the life of a human being and the lifes of persons around that person into one or another of the many forms of nightmare. If you happen to think about compulsive and addictive forms of self-abuse in a limited way, associating mainly alcohol or substance abuse with it, if you think that the plethora of possible behavioral forms of self-abuse are for the morally weak, you are in for a ride.

I hope this book would open your eyes, in that case.

But even there, the book does not end. Anna Lembke makes it abundantly clear that the consequences of runaway processes in the reward pathways of the human brain are going far beyond what we would want to see, and what we don’t want to see. In my view, she makes a very convincing argument for the pervasiveness of an attitude within our societies which she labels “the age of indulgence”. She clearly demonstrates the myriad forms by which we have gotten used to, and are exposed to, instant gratification. From where I sit, with my own experience, and with the heuristic and vast knowledge stemming from my own work on myself within a network of uncounted individuals who have found one of probably several ways how to re-establish a healthy form of living, allowing self-moderation, wholeness, and happiness, I can only testify for that what Anna Lembke is describing in those parts of her book is very relevant.

Yet, I am not done with praising this book:

Anna Lembke does not only explain that the dysfunctional processes within the reward pathways of the brain affect those who then have to experience a rock-bottom before being ready to acknowledge defeat, and being open to real recovery, and then healing. She goes beyond, by saying that this dysfunctionality has increasingly become the new normal. Like, any parent talking about the effects of Tic Toc on their children will immediately agree. Just mentioning this as one example. I don’t want to become too narrow in my focus here, the opportunities for constant, easy and immediate gratification go so far beyond any limited or exemplary explanation that I don’t feel qualified to eleborate here on it. Because, I even don’t know whether you have made it until here, or if you have given up already, thinking “What the hell is he now talking about?“

“What the hell I am talking about? I am talking about something which experts in the advertisement industry have understood since long. Something which those who design social media applications have brought to the next level. And using Artificial Intelligence for those computer algorhythms has brought the incorporation of neuroscientific understanding of how one can become addicted into perfection. May be you want to watch “The Social Dilemma” on Netflix. There you will hear it from those who admit that they have designed their products exactly this way.

And that, using and re-phrasing a catchphrase of one of my favorite Youtube personae, Sabine Hossenfelder, “That’s what Anna Lembke is talking about”.

Perhaps my little own personal disclosure has made it interesting for you to get until here. My blog is addressing topics of trauma and reconciliation for a reason which includes my own experiences with that. But if you have never thought about this topic, you may have a long way to go, both in appreciating the sheer width and depth of this societal problem, and especially because, as long as you are suffering from the consequences of this dysfunction yourself, you are literally unable to see it, in your own case.

Lastly, I join Anna Lembke in her thoughts about how the collective wisdom of the recovery community, especialy those known as Twelve Step Groups, could be beneficial way beyond recovery, as it is commonly understood. Again, from my own and very specific experience, I can testify that the number of people who are increasingly asking this question, is growing. I am meeting a lot of them on an almost daily basis.

Zoom is a blessing. I am still working on less long-winded sentences. Apologies, I wanted to be precise.

And love from Tigger and me. His reward pathways are a little out of control as well, I have been too permissive in giving him treats. But we are working on that…

The Reason For Storytelling: If You and I Don’t, Only Others Do – On Gaslighting Taken To a Global Level

/ stefanfeller / 2 Comments

“Around 1 percent of U.S. veterans of World War II remain alive to tell their stories. It is estimated that by the end of this decade, fewer than 10,000 will be left. The vast majority of Americans today are unused to enduring hardship for foreign policy choices, let alone the loss of life and wealth that direct conflict with China or Russia would bring.”

In a Guest Essay in the New York Times, titled “World War III Begins With Forgetting”, Stephen Wertheim made this point. I can relate.

Like: The fewer people remember, and talk about, the Holocaust and the horrifying evil done to the world by the Nazis and Adolf Hitler, the more it becomes, at least, possible to mystify and to glorify it, and using the most ridiculous of all arguments. Like Kanye West, who now goes by the name Ye. “The Hill” is just bearer of one of countless reports about an interview which he, accompanied by Nick Fuentes, one of the most atrocious racists of recent times, managed to place in a show hosted by the likewise awful racist and xenophobist Alex Jones. Old stuff. Except that the use of social media bullhorns and supporting media is taking it to new levels. Because, whether it is ridiculous or not to praise the architect of the Holocaust wrongly as the guy who invented highways, or the microphone, it does not matter. I have heard arguments like that from my late father in law of my second marriage, more than thirty years ago. There were no Social Media by then. Today, the matter is to get a radical message out, upping the ante, on a path to mainstreaming a “truth” which is not only unsupported by any evidence, but also suppressing any historical truth about what happened. My stomach would turn upside down when I would even quote what Ye said. But wherever on whichever dubious platform, such as Alex Jones’, such outrageous comments are made, within hours the message is also spread through any mainstream media. One side of them glorifying it, the other side vilifying it. For those intents and purposes behind the message itself, both work out very well.

Before I get to the gaslighting argument, upping even this ante, two other examples for why storytelling is so necessary, and which danger sits with when witnesses of horrifying events pass away in numbers: The older the Mothers of Srebenica get, the less can be done against the minimising narrative related to the horror of the Srebrenica genocide. I met the Mothers often, and I truly admire their relentless sticking to telling their stories of a genocide. This is not a function of their healing when they repeat to tell their stories. It is a sacrifice, for the good of keeping a memory alive as a cautionary tale. One day I took my visiting father with me. They are so kind, they offered him coffee and spoke with him just because he was an interested human being. No other intent, no benefit for them. My father cried and cried. Until today, more than twenty years later, he talks about the deep impact of his visiting them.

The same holds true for the genocide in Rwanda, and in uncounted other situations. The more people grow up who have no direct memory of what happened in Germany, in Bosnia&Hercegovina, in Rwanda, in Cambodia, in Stalin’s Russia, during the brutal McCarthyism and under Jim Crow in the United States, or in the Armenian genocide, or else, the less the voices of those can be mitigated who minimise, refute, deny. If context is not there, nothing describes the extent of atrocious behavior against the Uighurs, the suffering of minorities in Myanmar, and I need to end with “and and and”, because the list is so long.

Storytelling is a social function which can not be replaced by the noise on Social Media. Quite to the contrary, storytelling is one of the needed antidotes against the devastating effect which unhinged Social Media has. Because even the function of Social Media is subject to a gaslighting narrative, putting an unrestrained version of Twitter, for example, into a manipulative context of an alleged support of free speech, whilst the ulterior motive only is to make profit, and to increase own control.

By the way, I believe that there is a reason for why Number 45, since his account got reinstated by Elon, has not used this account ever since: Not only that this would take away from his own bullhorn (Truth Social), he does not need to use his old Twitter account, and can chose smartly when that time would be there. Simply because the message that his account got reinstated is already enough for gaining even more “followers”. These “followers” likely rise in numbers directly on “Truth Social”, and on connected accounts including on Twitter, as a direct consequence of the reinstatement.

When I grew up, “Followers” was used as a term for people following a certain religious or spiritual belief system. I still object against the manipulative use of terms such as “Friend” or “Follower” on social media. That’s why, in this tiny world of “Durabile”, my blog, I don’t care about how few people “follow” my blog here. What I care about is that the day before yesterday this blog surpassed the threshold of 10.000 reads within those 120 posts since 2014. It just tells me that my storytelling is a tiny contribution to the overall need of telling stories.

Because there is no absolute truth, and no objective truth, as I pointed out here. Now, I am quoting myself from that blog post: QUOTE “Truth as a means of control. Number 45 did this on countless occasions, and more recently he is hard-pressed by people who are attempting to establish even more radical forms of white supremacy, xenophobia, racism, and anti-semitism. Read in The Rolling Stone: “How Trump Got Trolled by a Couple of Fascists“. UNQUOTE

I wrote this post December 01. Four days before writing this post. At that time, I found the analysis relevant which is reflected in the article in “The Rollingstone”. Meaning, that Ye, Fuentes and likeminded people were on a path pressing Nr 45 into even more radical messages.

What happened since? In a few statements including on Truth Social, Nr. 45 did what we saw on many occasions when there was an uproar: He minimised. Distracted. Sold ambigous messages. Allowed messages that he wasn’t aware. That he did not know Fuentes.

I have no personal doubt that all this is part of the MO. Because, as always, the next attack is even more extreme. Meanwhile, inasmuch as I love Jimmy Kimmel, he and other well-minded Late Night Comedy hosts find themselves in the trap that each of their shows ridiculing Nr 45 helps him.

Which is what I want to end with here, today: I just read a story in the British BBC: Under the headline “Trump’s call for ‘end’ of constitution condemned by Democrats“, BBC is reporting on a message from Number 45 on his platform “Truth Social”. According to this report, the White House condemned former President Trump after he called for the termination of the U.S. constitution. I quote from BBC: QUOTE In the post, Mr Trump referred to vague allegations of “massive & widespread fraud and deception” and asked whether he should be immediately returned to power. “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!” he said. UNQUOTE Setting parts of the text in bold letters is done by me, not by BBC.

I can’t wait watching Jimmy Kimmel ridiculing Nr 45, but I mourn those months when he and others managed to find comedy topics which would not contribute to antagonism, by condemning it. May be I’ll write Jimmy’s staff an email.

This is unprecedented in contemporary history as I remember it. Since 2016 there is a history of statements in this blog concluding that it is getting worse before it gets better. But a former President of the United States fighting an accuse, possibly an indictment, for inciting sedition by establishing a narrative that is ripping down the foundations of the U.S. Constitution, this is unheard of.

There is a clause in the German Constitution sometimes named the “Stauffenberg clause“: “Gegen Jeden, der es unternimmt, diese Ordnung zu beseitigen, haben alle Deutschen das Recht auf Widerstand”. Or, in my translation: “Against anyone who is undertaking to remove this constitutional order, all Germans have the right to resist.” It can be found in Article 20, I grew up with, it’s part of my DNA and part of my pride. It’s one of the defining differences between today’s German Constitution and it’s predecessor before the Nazis demolished it: The Weimar Constitution. It is meant as a pillar, albeit, perhaps symbolic, in efforts to robustly protect a constitution from enemies within. Sometimes during 2016 I referred to it in discussions with friends on the U.S. Constitution. Then, with tears in my eyes, I played the song “Kristallnaach”, by the famous German Rockband BAP.

So, one of my hypothetical thoughts is about whether there will be people on the far-right in Germany who think about how to establish a narrative that the German constitutional order is subject to removal from within, by justifying their resistance in saying that the government and the establishment is the enemy of what the Forefathers, the Founders of our Constitution, meant. This is not far-fetched, and it is the same logic.

We have come this far in an approach of extremists in removing the foundations of contemporary democracies, and the rule of law. A few years ago, I would not have believed that one day I would read a report such as the one here on BBC. This has become the new normal, one and a half years before the next battle on presidential elections will begin, in 2024. So, my question is: What’s next, if this has already become the new normal now.

Of course, this question includes where those on the Republican side are, and which legal, ethical, and moral, responsibility they assume, by openly or tacitly condoning such a development. That, on one hand, is part of domestic politics in the U.S. in which I am only an external bystander. But over here, in Europe, we fight the same fight. And we are affected by what is happening “over there”. And vice versa.

We are in this together, only. There is no space for claiming “that’s not my business”, or for complacency. Each day, we are waking up with new worse news than before.

So, why all this under the headline “Storytelling”?

One of my next blog entries will talk about one of my recent books reads, “Dopamine Nation”, by Dr. Anna Lembke. Full quote of the book in my next article. But here is the connection: Within a universe of contemporary addictive sources of Dopamine release through substance and behavioral abuse, one key problem sits with Social Media. I will also refer to the challenges one of my children has with the addictive suffering using Tic Toc.

I believe we can not use Social Media for the kind of storytelling I mean in this blog. For many reasons which I will try to explain there. But for starters, Social Media does not support peaceful fact-based storytelling implicitly through it’s algorhythms. I have own examples, including this blog, or my Youtube channel. I stay away from inciting or upsetting messages and their promotion, as a consequence, nowhere in the suggestion lists of these sites any of my writing or my videos will come up.

There is a need not only to regulate Social Media, but also to devise strategies how storytelling remains a vital democratic and humble function of our societies and cultures. Storytelling is inherently local, or topological. It is unsensational, and personal. Peaceful, mindful, truthful, honest, personal storytelling. No rambling, no yelling involved.

I hope that I adhere to my own standards, here.

Truth Wars

/ stefanfeller / 4 Comments

From the Cambridge Dictionary:

“truth – the quality of being true”

“the truth – the real facts about a situation, event, or person“

“truth – a statement or principle that is generally considered to be true“

“truthfulness – the quality of being honest and not containing or telling any lies“

From Wikipedia:

Truth is the property of being in accord with fact or reality

I guess I could go on and use definitions or descriptors from many other sources, and still there would be a sort of ambiguity reflected in the term “truth” that can’t be dissolved. Words such as “quality“, “real“, “facts“, “generally considered“, “being honest“, “lies“, they are a far cry away from an axiomatic meaning which would establish something like “an absolute truth” which can not be disputed by anyone, or any argument.

Looking at the above, truth is a relative term, and it requires consent between those who state that a thing, an event, a statement, a concept “is true”.

So, truth is not only a label, but also a relationship between conscious entities, such as human beings (but not only!) through consent, or agreement, or unfortunately also by unchallenged imposition, or through joint perception. For any non-colorblind person, “red” is “red” and “blue” is “blue”, despite the fact that I cannot prove that what I see as “blue” is seen the very same way by another person agreeing with me on labeling the color of a thing as being “blue”. There are people who, just for example, perceive colors and sounds VERY differently from the majority of humans: “Chromesthesia or sound-to-color synesthesia is a type of synesthesia in which sound involuntarily evokes an experience of color, shape, and movement.” Those who have experience with substances such as LSD, or Psylocybin, will report about sound or especially music creating patterns and extremely detailed textures and colors, once one closes the eyes. It helps in understanding the relative truth of conventional perception, and the limitations coming from if I just assume that another person is assuming the same things being “true”.

If it is true for me that this color is “red”, it requires a consent with you to agree on labeling a perception the same way. In order to understand you, I need a certain degree of joint experiences, and languages being used in a similar or same way.

Is there something which is beyond a requirement to consent in order to be considered being “true”? Aren’t the facts from science undisputable? Isn’t mathematics something which is founded on axioms? So, looking up “Axiom” reveals the definition that “an axiom, postulate, or assumption is a statement that is taken to be true, to serve as a premise or starting point for further reasoning and arguments.“

Here we are again, using the term “true“, or “taken as true“, meaning that we have to consent on accepting some statement as being “true”. If I believe in a flat earth, my fellow flat-earthers and I will claim that it is true, and will not deviate, whichever scientific facts which I consider being true I throw at them.

I remember a science lesson at my high-school, probably around 1974. The teacher had invited two members of Jehova’s Witnesses into our class. We were invited to discuss their belief that the World has been created by their Creator roughly 6000 years ago (plus the almost fifty years between that discussion and today…). My friend Peter and I, who loved loved science, used every fact we knew about in our reasoning that, according to our knowledge, the Earth was roughly 4.5 billion years old, in a universe we nowadays believe has been evolved from a Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago. There was literally no way that we could penetrate their arguments and make them agreeing on some form of truth which would have established a consent between us and them. Neither could they convince us related to their version of Genesis, just mentioning.

So, as an intermediate thought: What does it mean if people in our current state of antagonisation say “Truth Matters”? What is the meaning behind a brand label created by Number 45, “Truth Social”?

It means nothing else than that consent on an unspecified number of qualities, beliefs, policies, worldviews, or else, is called upon. And at least “Truth Social” would be an example for a dogma such as “As long as you consent to my view, you are in line with my truth, and if you are not, I may even call you an Enemy of the State.” Truth as a means of control. Number 45 did this on countless occasions, and more recently he is hard-pressed by people who are attempting to establish even more radical forms of white supremacy, xenophobia, racism, and anti-semitism. Read in The Rolling Stone: “How Trump Got Trolled by a Couple of Fascists“.

So, when we talk about “Truth Matters”, is it about imposing my truth upon you, or finding a mutual platform of consent, through listening, empathising, understanding, agreeing, compromising, finding common denominators?

Before coming back to my last question, here another source of my personal belief system:

In the Buddhist teachings, there are Two Truths. …”there’s an idea that everything has two levels of truth, relative and absolute: how we experience life when we’re immersed in it, and how we experience it from a distance when we can get a vaster perspective” (Pema Chödrön – How We Live Is How We Die, 2022 Shambala Publications, Page 51).

Essentially, in my interpretation (sic! need of consent again…): Absolute truth is a concept from the spiritual realm, including, but not limited to, religious faith. Please note that in my view Buddhism is not a religion, but a spiritual source of wisdom. I don’t believe in a personalised God concept. But I am firmly rooted in a spiritual connection with Everything.

If you, the reader, would agree with me, then we would conclude that the world of phenomena has only relative truths, based on perceptions which are mutually held. The absolute is the realm of the spiritual world. However, if people claim they have understood the Absolute (Or claim God spoke to them), and they allow it to permeate into the world of phenomena, dogma is born: My truth is absolute. My God will protect my soldiers, and not your soldiers. My God says that women need to be veiled. My God allows me to fight a Holy War. Radical Muslim dogmatists have done that, radical Buddhist fundamentalists have done that, radical Hindu fundamentalists have done that, Christianity has its share of radical violent dogmatism and suppression and brutal violence, Judaism is not without such phenomena, no religion or spiritual belief framework is without shameful stains resulting from imposing an absolute truth on my fellow women and men, human beings of any sexual and gender identification, followers of a belief, and especially also children.

Where does this lead me to, here?

What I see is the widespread use of catchphrases such as “Truth Matters” with a reduced understanding as if there would be “one truth”, and that others fall victim to “untruthfulness”. That those who manipulate with lies do establish the opposite to truth. I don’t see it like that. I see it as the attempt of replacing “your truth” with “my truth”. I see it as an attempt to control the narrative, and through it, others.

That is why I continue to note that still, increasingly, and on a global level, we see antagonisation thriving, and collaboration and listening in an effort to understand the position of others diminishing.

When the Biden Administration took office, there was a refreshing silence for some time on Number 45. Nothing today is reminding of those few months. Everywhere I look, listen, watch, read, I see Trumps, Ye’s, Elons, Victors, Matteos, Björns, Vladimirs, and their copycats. And everywhere, the radicalisation leads to that the next copycat is more radical than the one before.

That’s why I choose “Truth Wars” as the title. Truth Wars do not require consent by argument, in such a violent scenario it matters that I succeed, by imposition and manipulation, not by accepting another person’s reality as equally relevant to mine.

What I see is that after a perceived “lull”, the Truth Wars have become even more radical. Racism, xenophobia, hate against transgender people, hate of and supremacy over women, anti-semitism, anti-muslim sentiments, they come closer to be part of the mainstream. As a part of a larger pattern of xenophobia, in the Western World the white hateful male lower middle-class and impoverished lower-class underdogs fall victim to pied pipers, some of them extremely privileged and dishonest.

What I also see is that we deploy force against force, loudness against loudness, control against the attempt to control. Literally every such concept is pouring gasoline on the firepit.

In my line of professional work, I support the consent between the six jurisdictions forming the Western Balkans, on the belief that fewer weapons, explosives, and ammunition, and more control over all licit aspects of them, and the fight against illicit aspects of using weapons, their ammunition, and explosives, is good for peace and security in these societies. As a consequence of this consent on a jointly held truth, these six jurisdictions (we name them jurisdictions, since Kosovo is not un-disputed amongst all of them and amongst others in relation to statehood, different to Albania, Bosnia &Hercegovina, Montenegro, North-Macedonia, and Serbia), these six jurisdictions communicate, collaborate, and cooperate highly joint in implementing policy and operations. They do this despite the fact that some of them have disputes on a political level, and that cultural, ethnical, and faith diversity creates this amazing and wonderful mix which has also seen violence, oppression, war and genocide when some considered their truth more supreme than the truth of others.

I am using this as a practical example for the opposite of what I have labeled “Truth Wars”. This is one of countless examples were people sit together and listen, and learn from each other, willing to do things jointly, whilst acknowledging that they do not agree on everything, for the sake of a higher objective, and advantages for all, instead of only for oneself.

Yet, the fundamental consent (sic: truth) on how to control Small Arms and Light Weapons could not be more different from, for example, the United States, where there is a widely held belief by many (don’t know whether they constitute a majority, and doubt it), that only the Second Amendment ensures the protection of the First Amendment. The accepted truth, and the consequences of it (exponentially more violence and unprecedented levels of mass shootings) are radically different, and this permeates literally into everything, including how for example policing concepts are being developed and implemented: It is not only about the need of police to protect themselves against an ubiquity of weapons; If citizens reject policing as something they want to give up their own weapons for, community oriented policing is VERY different in understanding, concept, and implementation.

If truth matters, it includes to accept that there are many different subjective truths. This allows for their coexistence, their learning from each other, their development, and ideally the growth of something that is more joint. So, very different to what we seem to nurture, or to fight, right now.

Let’s be a little more precise if we talk about “the people”, Mr. Elon Musk, shall we?

/ stefanfeller / Leave a comment

Until recently, I occcupied a tiny teeny microscopic corner in the Twitterverse. In any list of Twitter accounts I would have been placed rock-bottom. My Twitter-presence was just a means allowing me to click on external links which would require me to log in into Twitter.

Two weeks ago I announced on my Linkedin-Account that I am letting the bird go because I don’t want to be any part of a story of unhinged narcissism combined with pure capitalism disguised behind a concept of so-called long-termism.

The two weeks since then have been, mildly put, interesting. The purposefully chaotic sledgehammer-approach of Mr. Musk ripping through Twitter has been all over the news. I had a hard time finding a way keeping myself updated about what was going on in relation to Twitter and its role in public discourse and communication, and at the same time to avoid being sucked in into endless replications of upsetting stories combined with the ubiquitous display of Mr. Musk’s face. I tried not to get emotionally touched by the topic, because there is an insidous purpose behind an approach that keeps people glued to emotionally upsetting stories, combined with the personalisation of messages connected to faces: If you don’t mind to combine your public persona with negative and upsetting antagonising news and opinions, chances are that your internet presence on social media is sky-rocketing.

It is an alternative to “sex sells”, or the smart way how some video-bloggers combine the display of female body parts with entirely unrelated blog-content in the same way as classic advertisement does. The means how to maximise gaining attention are very well understood within behavioral psychology. If you like to watch a very entertaining and honest and ethical video about clickbait, head over to one of my favorite Youtube-Channels: Veritasium.

Some may say that the dishonest use of social media as a bullhorn for highly antagonising and emotionalising content in order to achieve desired manipulative effects is high-risk gambling. Kanye West might be considered being an example for that this strategy can back-fire. Others may say the days of Nr. 45 are over and it is time to move on. But that doesn’t make it feel less dangerous to me, and I disagree with “moving on”. Because the damage is done on a structural level, notwithstanding whether a few narcissists became victim of their own high-risk gambling or not. All narcissists who are also sociopaths are high-risk gamblers. It is an inherent part of their personality. They are unable to do anything else.

The most upsetting issue with Twitter over the past two weeks is the inhumane and dictatorial approach to Twitter staff members. Rarely have I seen a worse example for treating staff members like disposable items. In his cold and arrogant attitude Mr. Musk clearly demonstrates an inability to empathise with other human beings. In this ego-centric worldview filled with hubris, only personal power, might and wealth exist. Neither staff members, nor users count in any other way than the impact they are having on profit: Staff costs money, users are meant to be milked. We can witness how unhinged capitalism works, and we all are having a hard time of not falling victim to the countless efforts of blurring our eyesight.

20 November, the news reported that Elon Musk reinstated Mr. Trump’s Twitter Account. Below the references in the U.S. New York Times, the British BBC, and the German Tagesschau. All three newsfeeds quoted Mr. Musk with “The people have spoken”.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-63692369?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=KARANGA

https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/trump-twitter-musk-usa-103.html

What happened?

January 08, 2021, Twitter blocked the account used by Nr. 45, following the insurrection events of January 06. After his takeover of Twitter, the richest man of the world initiated a poll on Twitter, just a few days ago, and for the duration of 24 hours. There has, to my knowledge, not been any external monitoring of this poll that would allow us to verify the results, so, according to Twitter itself (or better, Mr. Musk himself), 15 Million users of Twitter participated in the poll. The German Tagesschau estimates there is a current estimated total of 230 million accounts being used on Twitter on a daily basis. 51.5% of these 15 Million users were, according to Twitter, in favor for a return of the 45th President of the United States to Twitter.

Which led Mr. Musk to reinstating Nr 45’s account, and tweeting that “The people have spoken”, adding a sentence in Latin “Vox Populi, Vox Dei”, meaning that the voice of the people is the voice of God.

Excuse me???? The people have not spoken. A social media platform populated with user accounts does not constitute a people. An insanely rich billionaire buys a social media company, shredding staff, organisation, policy and procedures, moving the company towards business models where users do not only pay the price of extraction of their personal data for advertisement purposes, but are also encouraged to pay for services. These users, as far as they have decided to stay, are not a “people”.

The hubris of Mr. Musk, comparing a questionable polling process with the legitimising voice of a people, then even adding a divine context, borders insanity. Like in cases we have seen before, there is a cold-blooded purpose behind that. It is meant to make sure that the signal stays hidden in the noise.

Distinguish The Signal From The Noise – Also feat.: The Long Term Impact of the Pandemic, and of Conflict and War

/ stefanfeller / Leave a comment

Setting the stage: From a conversation with my son

Yesterday afternoon I chatted with my son on FaceTime. He lives in Toronto and is fourteen years old. For him it was morning, and I was amazed seeing him preparing his own breakfast potatoes with an omelette. It looked so good on my phone screen that I could smell and taste it, I wished I would have been there. He promised to make me such a breakfast when I’m in Toronto in a few weeks time.

At one point, the casual conversation about what’s up veered into the parental part: “How’s School Coming On?” – “Good good”. – “Any details to share?” – “No, not really, it’s just good.” – “Do you like your new school?” [The kids have entered high school education this summer] – “It’s okay, but have you ever heard somebody saying that school is a place you really enjoy?” – “I understand, fair enough. Wasn’t much different for me, when I was your age. But, just curious: Do you like what they teach you in physics? And what is it they teach you?” – “It’s okay, but I would love you to make more of your tiny explanatory pieces on physics, I always enjoy them.”

Guess what? I was flattered, felt these little pieces of work of mine make sense. I felt motivated to make more of them. Perhaps I will share some of this stuff on my Youtube channel “All Over The Place“. That’s the fun place in my writing and creating. Over here, at durabile.me, it’s more about the serious stuff I like to write about.

What everyone knows, including from own experience, and too often forgets: The importance of education for a society

Yes, school, as I told my son, is also something I remember in a similar way. Necessary, but not a place of daily rejoice, like, getting up and thinking “Yay, I can’t wait until being in class!“. Meeting my class mates always was a mixture of joy and anxiety, I was sort of like Charlie Brown, isolated in many ways, struggling to find friends and appreciation. Meeting my teachers, more often than not, was a mixed bag as well. The subject issues at school, mathematics, physics, chemistry, language, history, geography, some of the stuff I loved, some of the stuff I really struggled with. I could not shrug it off, like Calvin in the comic series “Calvin&Hobbes” does. I often strolled home with my head low between my shoulders, like Charlie Brown in the comic series “Peanuts”.

But it was necessary to learn, and I knew that. Necessary at the very least. Pleasant, preferably. Which is, certainly, part of the art of pedagogy: How to teach knowledge? Being effective in establishing knowledge also needs to mitigate unpleasant experiences. Not everyone of us has a Spartan mentality, like “what does not kill me makes me tougher”. The saying “School prepares for life”, often used and even more often abused, at it’s core it is, of course, true. What I learn at school, it becomes a defining part of everything thereafter. What I don’t learn defines my life in every aspect as well. And this is especially holding true for general skills which I acquire through education. I don’t have to be able to explain Richard Feynman’s quantum mathematics. But a general level of knowledge, combined with education in a general sense, it is setting the stage for anything to follow.

Enter Covid: Millions of children, and millions of their parents and caregivers were all of a sudden reminded of the educational role of schools, through their sudden absence as physical places to go. Places to gather. To socialise. To learn social skills. To be taught knowledge, and to become educated.

The continuing impact of Covid goes way beyond cases of long-Covid

October 24, 2022, the New York Times published an article “Math Scores Fell in Nearly Every State, and Reading Dipped on National Exam“. Here I am quoting the article’s beginning:

“U.S. students in most states and across almost all demographic groups have experienced troubling setbacks in both math and reading, according to an authoritative national exam released on Monday, offering the most definitive indictment yet of the pandemic’s impact on millions of schoolchildren. In math, the results were especially devastating, representing the steepest declines ever recorded on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the nation’s report card, which tests a broad sampling of fourth and eighth graders and dates to the early 1990s.“

So, here we are with scientific results demonstrating the devastating combined impact of the pandemic and of how we needed to protect ourselves, collectively: In order to reduce casualties, and to reduce suffering by attempting to keep the medical system operational, we took tolls. Mental tolls, physical tolls, emotional tolls, cognitive behavioural tolls, and educational tolls.

Heavy tolls, like that on average, the number of fourth graders and eighth graders being proficient in math and reading took an exceptionally deep plunge towards an abyss. And what is indicative in the U.S. system, from my personal experience it’s true also in Canada, and from what I hear and witnessed in Europe, I have no indication it would be different here. I am sure that there is not a single country which found a mitigation strategy through a form of protracted exclusive home-schooling similarly effective in knowledge transfer as classroom-teaching is.

It is also correct to conclude that what holds true for math and reading is also holding true for general levels of education, social skills, and a general toolset which allows to traverse our contemporary world knowingly: By having a proficient knowledge about our own environment, we go beyond a collective capacity to be economically competitive: Knowledge allows us to make informed decisions, opposed to either making uniformed decisions, or being the proverbial sheep in the herd of individuals being manipulated by those who do, for own and for controlling reasons.

I also happen to think that there is the educational equivalent to what we observe in relation to the distribution of wealth in our societies: Like ever fewer people are getting more wealthy, and ever more people fall into low-income and also poverty, with a shrinking middle-class, the same certainly is true for the distribution of knowledge. If good jobs require a CV with reference to an Ivy-League-College-Education, if creating what drives our economic progress is in the hands of ever fewer people who understand the underlying science, or engineering, it will inevitably also contribute to the growing size of parts of a society which do not hold many economic resources.

But the damage goes further:

Proficient knowledge establishes a general capacity to distinguish the signal from the noise

The less I know in a general understanding about how the world is functionining, the more I am vulnerable for “Scharlatanerie”, and for all the messy speculative stuff from people who believe to know, do actually not know, and create noise, inaccurate information, wrong information, and deliberate misinformation. The last one for a variety of reasons, including attempting to control, but also because sensational stuff simply sells. It always did, in magazines. It increasingly does, on the digital media platforms of this Brave New World.

I’ll use an example, on my topics of scientific interest: I need a basic knowledge about how the James Webb Space Telescope JWST works, in order to filter out those sensational channels where people attract viewers by suggesting JWST has found proof for alien existence. I need a sound knowledge to stay with those channels informing me about most recent discussions in Quantum Mechanics, just to grasp the profound impact of why the 2022 Nobel Price has been awarded to Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger. My mind “explodes” (or implodes) when I try to understand the rationale which can be found on the Nobel Prize Website. But my general knowledge allows me to appreciate why the entire physics community is abuzz of profound discoveries to come which may, again, make previous knowledge obsolete. Previous knowledge which already has successfully made my mind imploding, just saying.

This is anything but an esoteric discussion. It is, in my view, one of the most crucial and often unappreciated topics in relation to how we protect values in our societies: Through education. At the same time, the relevance goes much beyond the impact of the Covid-19-pandemic.

In literally every conflict- or post-conflict-environment I have been working in, the devastating impact of conflict, violence, hatred, and demolition of infrastructure on the educational system has been larger than life. Where educational capacities remained crippled, or absent, the respective society remained unable to recover as much as everyone hoped. Which, in turn, led to many effects which created the next round of frustration, such as through migrating away, accepting corruption and crime, and a general path towards becoming more prone to the rule of the powerful, instead of the rule of law.

Concluding this one with a view on the war of aggression by Russia raging in the Ukraine: We see systematic attacks on critical infrastructure in the Ukraine, and that includes the shelling of schools and kindergardens. It has a terrible invisible effect: Deploying strategic blows against a society and country by sowing fear includes to make it difficult to uphold a daily life allowing to transmit knowledge to children, very similar to the effects of the pandemic.

There has been a press conference the other day with Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, and Olaf Scholz, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, arguing for a “Marschall Plan” for the restoration of civilian capacities in the Ukraine. It is really important news. The longer a society is incapacitated, whether through a pandemic, or conflict, the less the value of general education can be upheld in any country. In turn, fragility becomes systemic.