Dead end

"You never need an argument against the use of violence, you need an argument for it."

Noam Chomsky

After the killing of a 15 year old boy by the police we are all reminded once again that we are living in a society that is violent. At the moment, some people are throwing Molotov bombs, some are destroying property and some are stealing goods from the stores.Some people are demonstrating peacefully, some are driven by a destructive rage and others take advantage of the incidence.I am against violence and t I believe that the individuals that are destroying blindly have no ideology. They merely take advantage of the upheaval that was created by the demonstrations that are not only justified; but long delayed. It is obvious that the political system is sick and peoples quality of life is worsening every day. So instead of trying to find people to blame (hooligans, thieves, anarchists )we should try to investigate the reasons behind their rage and violence. When people are violent the society is violent and our political, economical system in this country is offering to them just a dead end.

The positive aspect for me was seeing adolescents participating into demonstrations and the older generations getting up from their comfortable sofas. Young people are demonstrating on their own without belonging necessarily into a political party, with no organization just rage against the murder, the corruption and the economical crisis.They observe the dead end and are scattered across the streets; and surprisingly organized numerous demonstrations.So the next time that you say that the younger generations are more apathetic, that they only care about their comfort and that we were more rebellious; do think again and remember these days.And also do reflect on why it feels so comfortable for you to always say that our generation was better.

The trap of Liberalism

Beliefs define the core of our existence and are enabling us to evolve as human beings. These liberal beliefs that are meant to free us frequently become an obstacle. They narrow our thinking and dictate our daily lives.

People that have liberal ideologies have stopped evolving, something that is contrary to what they advocate to believe. Their ideologies are only liberal on the surface and are trapped inside a vicious circle that their own beliefs have created. Their mentality is full of rules on what they should or shouldn’t do. This happens to the extent that they often create their own dictatorship inside their head. Rules that define what a free thinking individual should think, do or avoid.

I was always opposed to the labels that define our principles and beliefs. I think that this is a narrow minded attitude that enhances the separation amongst people. Belonging in a category always gave people a sense of belonging in a group. What I feel though is this need for belonging places our existence in categories. This separates us from ourselves and the world we live in. For me a liberal mind is the one that deconstructs categories. I don’t prefer to be liberal I prefer to be me.

art by inky

A bug...

Psychosis is a state when one can not distinguish what is real and what is not.During a psychotic episode individuals experience a state where they hear , smell or experience things that are not happening.Psychosis can be so scary for the person that experiences those episodes as it affects cognition, perception, mood, behaviour and movement. Genetics and environmental factors define the onset and prognosis of any type of psychosis.As I have said many times those individuals with the appropriate help can be functional and learn to control the psychotic episodes.Of course psychotic episodes can also be drug induced or brief psychotic episodes that appear in a stressful period of ones life and leave as sudden as they appeared.

Last week I watched on the theater a play called "bug". The whole story is unveiled in a motel room where Agnes is leaving in fear as she finds out that her ex husband is on parole. Then her friend comes to visit her and they stay drinking and snorting cocaine in her room.Her friend introduces Agnes to Peter a person that she recently met.They are left alone and start falling in love.After they make love Peter starts observing bugs inside the sheets.Agnes can not see them but Peter says that they are really small and feed of our skin.Then Agnes finds a secret.Peter said that he was in the army where they experimented on him and things start to get worse.More bugs and an interplay of fantasy and reality.

Throughout out the play are mentioned many conspiracy theories.Conspiracy theories can leave people living in fear, in agony, in terror in an almost psychotic states sometimes.Can actually conspiracy theories induce psychosis?Can they make people even more vulnerable to any government and media demands?So many thoughts on psychosis....

(art by krecha)

Piracy may save music...

Lately more bands are giving the opportunity to their fans to download their songs for free or to buy their cd at a smaller price like Radiohead and Charlatans.The past years the record labels and the media have struggled against piracy by using the motto " piracy kills music". As they watch the record sales dropping, they have adopted an aggressive policy towards those who download or distribute music for free.In that battle even bands participated like that would actually go to court with their fans (Lars Ulrich vs Napster).

I believe that piracy does not kill but actually saves music.The record sales have been reduced over the past years but for me the cause is not the free exchange of music.The record labels exploit their artists and the price of the cd's its really unnecessarily high. Moreover, artists due to the pressure of the record labels have started to release records that are not worth buying. They have one or two hits on their album and then the rest of the album is of a bad quality.Why then would someone want to buy their record? If a record is good then through free downloading a wider audience can listen to their music.Don't forget that its impossible to buy every cd that we like. Then if their work is decent many people will buy their record regardless if they can get it for free. They will buy it to see the artwork, to read the lyrics, to have a good quality sound and mostly to support the artist or band.

When a band is worth people will buy their album and support it. Their music will be listened by a wider audience and in that sense piracy saves music.The only thing that a band or an artist needs to do to sell is to respect their audience.

(art by honeychick)

A political dead end....

"Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary"

The coming elections have stirred an upheaval in the country.The TV channels are constantly broadcasting shows that concern the coming elections and cast the politicians at their panels. They are all loud, they talk simultaneously and none of them has a clear political stance. All the politicians no matter if they belong to the center, right or left are all the same because what it is important for them is to maintain their prosperity and cultivate amongst us the need to be governed. Its so funny to see so many politicians that appear on television panels just before the elections that soon after will disappear from the news. They will not only disappear because the elections would be over so there is no need to persuade the voters anymore but also because they don't care for the common good. Politicians vanish from the face of the earth as easy as they appear and to me they all look like salesmen.They knock on your door only to sell something.

Personally non of the parties satisfy me;to me they are all the same. At the same time a stateless state is completely Utopian at this age and time ;so I find my self in a political dead end. No one really cares other than him self in order to offer something new for the greater good.However, just for a philosophical reflection I would like to end this article with a quote by Proudhon and only hope that who gets elected causes the least damage.I would be interested in your ideas concerning what could release us from this political dead end...If you think that is that there is a dead end.

"To be governed is to be watched over, inspected, spied on, directed, legislated, regimented, closed in, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, assessed, evaluated, censored, commanded; all by creatures that have neither the right, nor wisdom, nor virtue... To be governed means that at every move, operation, or transaction one is noted, registered, entered in a census, taxed, stamped, priced, assessed, patented, licensed, authorized, recommended, admonished, prevented, reformed, set right, corrected. Government means to be subjected to tribute, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized, extorted, pressured, mystified, robbed; all in the name of public utility and the general good. Then, at the first sign of resistance or word of complaint, one is repressed, fined, despised, vexed, pursued, hustled, beaten up, garroted, imprisoned, shot, machine-gunned, judged, sentenced, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed, and to cap all, ridiculed, mocked, outraged and dishonored. That is government, that is its justice and its morality! ...O human personality! How can it be that you have cowered in such subjection for sixty centuries?"

The country that we deserve...

Greece and in particularly Athens faces a variety of socio-economical problems. There is a growing number of unemployment amongst people that are educated in their most productive age. Many from those that work are forced to have more than one occupation in order to survive. The income of people is very low compared to the work they produce and the market where we observe the prices augmenting. The educational system is static and outdated and offers knowledge that is many times sterilized and unimportant. There is a lack of an ecological consciousness amongst its habitants and the threat of growing pollution is eminent. There is a lack of a comfortable and efficient national transportation and there is a chaos on the roads as the numbers of cars increase daily.

The above for me are real issues that interfere with our quality of life. Instead of addressing those issues and take our lives into control we wait for a government to be kind enough to address these issues instead of taking a few simple steps ourselves. We recently remembered the glory of 1821 and acted like barbarians in the match against Turkey. We recently became offended with the history book that claims that the secret school did not existed even though this is true. Even if it never existed I heard arguments that were saying that in the history book it should write that it existed because this is our tradition. We recently claimed that the movie 300 was propaganda of America that was written against Iran, a comic that was actually written many years before.

These are the problems of a nation that is brainwashed and the only thing that they try to preserve is their national pride. Our future and quality of life is what is important and as long as we don’t get that we get the country and life that we deserve.

(Art by krecha)

On the Press and Freedom

If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.

Noam Chomsky

I always considered the press to be the best way of acquiring information that was not as directed and controlled as the television. Since I was 14 I used to buy the newspaper that I thought was more independent from the others and read; something that I did especially on Sundays that I had free time.

Growing up I realized that the press was not as independent as it should be and that it did not offer the freedom of speech and structural pluralism that was suppose to (the extent to which the community has an open structure that permits minority voices and opinions to be heard). That was obvious as people who owned the largest newspapers also owed multinational companies, followed a political line something that created a bias and often lead to censorship. This of course is the case for the so called independent newspapers as the press imposes a limit and does not encourage independent writing. Nevertheless, this did not prevent me from reading and relying on the press for obtaining information.

Yesterday I started reading a newspaper and I really started questioning why I continue buying newspapers. Surely, inside newspapers we can read some nice articles but I have the impression that they get fewer as the years go by. On top of that they are filled with advertisements, cds, dvd’s and lack critique and diversity.

On the internet and inside blogs I have started realizing that I am reading more critical articles that are diverse and I also learn faster about the news that interest me as the internet does not select for me the topics that I should read but I make the selection. Of course the writers of the articles may also exhibit personal biases in their articles but on the internet one has the opportunity to discover pluralism. Different articles for the same topic can exhibit different opinions something that the press always lacked. The press could never successfully distance itself and present different views and opinions for the same incident.

I feel that the internet could be a tool that could empower people to express themselves. We can’t always rely on journalists to choose what could be interesting for us to learn. The news is made by people and can be distributed by the people whose opinions are not censored by their editor. I only fear that when governments realise this potential, they will start censoring internet pages as even though our constitution is based on the freedom of speech when the word freedom is mentioned there is always a person that tries to place a limit on what freedom represents.

(art by dorothy shoes)

The fallacy of political correctness…

“Political correctness is a term used to describe language, or behaviour, which is claimed to be calculated to provide a minimum of offense, particularly to the racial, cultural, or other identity groups being described.”

The belief for employing political correct language was derived by the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that aimed to bring to awareness biases that we make in our everyday speech. The term that was originally used by Marxists-Lenists in the early 80s was used by right-wing activists that wanted to challenge communists’ dogmatism. In the mid to late 80s the term was used by conservatives who thought that by using a politically correct vocabulary democracy would be protected. Will Hutton mentions that “"Political correctness is one of the brilliant tools that the American Right developed in the mid-1980s as part of its demolition of American liberalism...”
Today the term political correctness is been used widely and brought changes in the language that we use and brought the emergence of the politically correct dictionary and many revisions on the classic ones.

Politically correctness gave birth to a constant use of euphemisms. Euphemisms are words that describe something unpleasant in the most polite way often metaphorically so as not to disturb the listener. Politics and diplomacy are full of euphemisms. Moreover, the influence for the need to use language that is politically correct has given way to a wide and many times unconscious use of euphemisms. Of course euphemisms are not stable over time; they change as what is politically correct today might not be politically correct tomorrow. For example:
negro → colored → black → African-American→ People of Color
lame → crippled → handicapped → disabled → differently-abled
Shell shock (World War I) → battle fatigue (World War II)→ Operational exhaustion (Korean War) → Post-traumatic stress disorder (Vietnam War).Observe the extreme euphemisms of People of Color and differently-abled.

I think that the use of politically correct speech is creating more problems than it is actually solving. The use of politically correct language in my opinion gave birth to a different form of conservatism that would attack anything that strays for what is proper. Also, it generates difficulties in communication and comprehension. Language is supposed to be a tool to aid communication and not to hinder it. This is what happens when you need to find the proper word in order to speak; not to mention that its also a way for the lawyers to get richer. Moreover, it is a wooden speech that is used mostly by politicians that as they speak instead of using one word they use a whole paragraph. Also for me it is a language of pretense and lie. You might call someone old because he is old, and I wonder what the big deal is. The politically correct word is chronologically gifted. For me chronologically gifted pays more attention to a persons age than old. Similarly, the term minority groups is not politically correct, the term Members of the World's Majorities now is.

I oppose to the use and evolution of politically correct vocabulary. Language should be a bridge to unite people and not to separate them by employing pretense language. My view is that one can be sensitive and polite towards ones view without using all this politically correct language that is adopted by a hypocritical society. I don’t think that is a mistake to name things as they are. I believe that it’s not the word that you use but the way you use that word.

(Art by hockeychick)

The illusion of voting

Lately when I go out I see many people outside their house sitting and talking with others. They left their house and start socializing and this is not because they decided to do something about the alienation in the big city. They are there with a cause: winning votes for the municipal elections that will occur.

Everyone is so social lately and nice. They come to you with their business cards and ask you to vote them. There are young candidates that have started talking with this wooden language as if they are in politics for years. They come and they promise so many things that they can not deliver to the point that it gets ridiculous. But somehow many people believe them. Maybe it’s the hope they have, their arrogance or their blind support to a political party.

The slogan lately in the advertisement campains is directed at youth and asks them to vote because their vote counts. Does it really count? I have never seen anybodies vote making a difference because all the candidates are the same. No matter what believes they say they have (right wing, social party, left wing, ecological parties) when they get elected they act in the same way. Greed for power, money becomes their only drive. They try to exploit their chance of gaining easy money, they get rich and then the next one that gets elected does the same.

In theory in the municipal elections a person that loves their town could make a difference by making a few things that are needed like making parks and reconstructing roads. However, the candidates of the municipal elections always have the support of a certain political party. Even those candidates that are supposed to be independent ask the support of both big political parties in order to get elected because they are clever. And they all pretend to strive for their town problems and say that they are ideologically flawless.

The illusion of voting for me at all kinds of elections is that your vote really counts. I believe that it only points which individual or party is going to get rich at the given time. Nothing else. Hypocritical people, empty words and promises and fancy suites are what elections is all about. They want you to think that you are actually having a freedom of choice when you actually only can choose the same thing. The illusion of living in a democracy.

Lebanon is burning...

And the circle of violence does not seem to end. When you think that times have changed; that war is something that can mark the black history of our ancestors and that lessons will be learned, another war begins.

Lebanon is burning and its innocent inhabitants are wondering why this is happening to them-they are humans too. They did not kill, they did not harm anyone but they lived they little lives like us, going to work, falling in love...Always in a war the biggest casualties are children but no one cares; war is business. The terrorists that they are looking are allover the country so of course they are going to drop bombs everywhere. Since the war in Iraq, I had started to realize that “terrorism” has become another excuse to start conquering countries. A small country like Israel but very powerful has started the war with the guidance of another more powerful country that wants to take control of the Middle East with the Israelis becoming the moderators.
Europe is silent; nonexistent; looking at the casualties that the war will leave behind.

Sometimes I feel so vulnerable and small. I can't believe that with such an excuse tomorrow someone can say that my country has terrorists and bomb us while the world remains silent. I can't imagine how it is living your life in the Middle East with the fear of everyday being bombed. It is sad, cruel and inhuman. But now I have started to feel fear seeing all these innocent people dying helpless. What has the world come to? How can we watch and do nothing? Enough is enough!

(image by Miftahur Rizka-a photographer)