DISCIPLINE THAT SEEKS TO UNIFY THE SEVERAL EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATIONS OF HUMAN NATURE IN AN EFFORT TO UNDERSTAND INDIVIDUALS AS BOTH CREATURES OF THEIR ENVIRONMENT AND CREATORS OF THEIR OWN VALUES
THE WORLD ALWAYS INVISIBLY AND DANGEROUSLY REVOLVES AROUND PHILOSOPHERS
THE USE OF KNOWLEDGE IS POWER
OLDER IS THE PLEASURE IN THE HERD THAN THE PLEASURE IN THE EGO: AND AS LONG AS THE GOOD CONSCIENCE IS FOR THE HERD, THE BAD CONSCIENCE ONLY SAITH: EGO.
VERILY, THE CRAFTY EGO, THE LOVELESS ONE, THAT SEEKETH ITS ADVANTAGE IN THE ADVANTAGE OF MANY — IT IS NOT THE ORIGIN OF THE HERD, BUT ITS RUIN.
LOVING ONES, WAS IT ALWAYS, AND CREATING ONES, THAT CREATED GOOD AND BAD. FIRE OF LOVE GLOWETH IN THE NAMES OF ALL THE VIRTUES, AND FIRE OF WRATH.
Billed as "a political thriller on GMOs and freedom of speech", this film by the German film-maker Bertram Verhaag tells the stories of two scientists, Dr Arpad Pusztai and Dr Ignacio Chapela, whose research showed negative findings on GM foods and crops.
Both suffered the fate of those who challenge the powerful vested interests that dominate agribusiness and scientific research. They were vilified and intimidated, attempts were made to suppress and discredit their research, and their careers were derailed.
Pusztai found that the internal organs of rats fed GM insecticidal potatoes either increased in size or did not develop properly compared with controls. His experiments turned up no less than 36 significant differences between GM-fed and non-GM-fed animals. Pusztai, encouraged by his research institute, gave a 150-second interview on British TV in which he summarized his findings and said it was unfair to use our fellow citizens as guinea pigs for GM foods.
For two days, Pusztai was treated as a hero by his institute. But following a phone call from UK prime minister Tony Blair to the institute's head, Pusztai was fired and gagged under threat of a lawsuit. His research team was disbanded and his data were confiscated.
Lies were circulated about his research that he could not counter due to the gagging order, lifted only later when he was due to appear before a Parliamentary Committee.
For Pusztai’s co-researchers, the gagging order remains in place for life.
Pusztai's results threatened the GM industry because they showed that it wasn't the insecticide engineered into the potatoes that damaged the rats, but the genetic engineering process itself. So the problem wasn't just with these GM potatoes but potentially with all GM foods on the market. The only solution for the industry and its friends in government was to shoot the messenger.
Traumatic though this was for Pusztai, it wasn't the biggest shock he had to face regarding GM foods.
That came when he was asked to review safety submissions from the GM industry for crops we were already eating - and found that they were scientifically flimsy.
"That was a turning point in my life," said Pusztai.
"I was doing safety studies; they were doing as little as possible [in terms of safety testing] to get their foods on the market as quickly as they could."
Another scientist whose run-in with the GM industry is featured in the film is Ignacio Chapela, a molecular geneticist at UC Berkeley.
His research, co-authored with David Quist and published in the journal Nature, revealed that Mexican maize had been contaminated with GM genes. The finding was explosive because Mexico is the centre of origin for maize and the planting of GM maize there was illegal.
Chapela found himself the target of a vicious internet campaign condemning him as more of an activist than a scientist and claiming that his paper was false. Nature's editor published a partial retraction of the paper.
As Chapela points out in the film, the editor's action flew in the face of scientific method. In the normal way of things, a journal editor publishes a study that he and peer reviewers judge to be sound. It is for subsequent published studies to confirm or correct the findings. It is not for the editor to state that he would not have published a study had he known then what he knows now - without the benefit of further peer reviewed scientific input.
The editor's move showed how the GM industry is rewriting the rules of science for its own ends.
To add insult to injury, the internet campaign against Chapela turned out not to have been initiated and fuelled not by his scientific peers but by fake citizens, "sockpuppets" invented by the Bivings Group, a public relations firm contracted by Monsanto.
Scientists Under Attack goes on to show how the GM industry has blocked the evolution of scientific knowledge.
When Russian scientist Irina Ermakova's study found high mortality rates and low body weight in rats fed GM soy, and when Austrian government research found that decreased fertility in mice fed GM maize, the industry carried out its usual campaign of vilification. If the industry were interested in scientific truth, it would push for studies to be repeated with the alleged "flaws" corrected. But this never happens.
Instead, GM companies use their patent-based ownership of GM crops to deny scientists access to research materials - the GM crop and the non-GM parent line control. So the original research showing problems with GM crops is buried under a deluge of smears and follow up studies are not done.
For the public, the difficulty and expense involved in accessing full research papers makes it hard to find where the truth lies.
The film also highlights an extreme example of the corporate takeover of science - at University of California, Berkeley (UCB), where Chapela is a professor.
In 1998, UCB entered into a $25 million research partnership with biotech company Novartis (now Syngenta). The deal provoked angry debate on campus and was criticized by a number of faculty members, including Chapela.
Then in 2007, UCB entered into a $500 million research deal with oil giant BP. The partnership was negotiated in secret, without consultation even within the university. In return for its money, BP gained access to UCB’s researchers, control over the research agenda, and co-ownership of commercial rights over inventions.
Chapela says of BP,
"They decide what is called science."
The partnership was later spun as one of BP's "beyond petroleum" projects that would take us out of the age of dirty oil and into the new age of solar and renewable energy.
But the small print makes clear that the deal focuses on genetic engineering for biofuels-proprietary technologies that will be patented and owned by BP.
Most of us think of the enclosure of knowledge by industry interests in the abstract - as figures on a balance sheet, and conflicts of interest lurking in the darker corners of scientists' psyches. But as Scientists Under Attack memorably shows, at UCB it's played out on the physical level.
UCBis a divided campus, reminiscent of Berlin before the Wall came down. There is the public area, which looks like everyone’s idea of a pleasant university campus. Then, enclosed in high-security fencing and ringed with “no entry” signs, there is the privatized area, the part of the university that’s been co-opted by BP.
No amount of reading about the UCB-BP deal can prepare you for the sight of what was once a great public university being turned into something resembling a top-secret military installation.
Seemingly, the culture of the university has changed along with its alignment.
Once a celebrated centre of free speech and academic debate, UCB has become a place where tree-sitting students peacefully protesting against the felling of old oaks on campus are caged inside three rows of high-security fencing. In contrast, the university's colony of (not very dangerous) hyenas are judged only to need two.
UCB has dealt harshly with critics of its deals with industry. In 2003, five years after Chapela's protest against the Novartis deal and two years after publication of his Mexican maize findings, he was denied tenure. The university only backed down after Chapela threatened to sue.
In Scientists Under Attack, he says:
"In genetic engineering, one question means one career. You ask one question, you get the answer. You might or might not be able to publish it. That's the end of your career. What's unique in my case is that I survived."
Chapela adds that the most powerful censorship does not come directly from the GM industry but from closer to home:
"It's in the consciousness of the scientist. You censor yourself."
In other words, it's not so much that the GM industry has taken away our power, but rather that we've given it away.
While some sectors of the scientific community remain silent in the face of GM industry dominance, nature is proving a tougher opponent. GM monocultures worldwide are threatened by the rapid spread of glyphosate-resistant superweeds. Here again, no amount of reading about the issue can match the visual impact of weeds effortlessly smothering a field of GM soy plants in Brazil.
Only a few years previously, as part of the marketing drive for GM soy, farmers had been invited to a party with free booze. They were told to arrange their hoes in a circle and ritually burn them. The idea was that hoes were redundant because weeds could be controlled with glyphosate.
Now, glyphosate no longer works and farmers are being forced back to hoeing.
The message about who is really in charge is underlined by public interest attorney and activist Andrew Kimbrell, who is interviewed fishing for trout in a river. He points out that trout eat caddis-flies, which can be killed by Bt maize toxin leaching into rivers. Kimbrell says the GM industry follows a linear economic model based on a drive towards more and more production, regardless of the cost to nature and ourselves.
He says this model of progress is a delusion:
"Everything is made from the earth - these clothes, this camera, this fly rod. There is only one economy - the one that we see around us right now. The other economy, of capital and technology and the stock market, is all made up in our heads."
Kimbrell concludes the film by saying that industry hasn't grasped that we need to evolve into a stable economy enmeshed in ecology:
"We are going to have to follow the laws of nature and not the artificial laws of any technology. The salmon come back to where they were born to spawn and die, and then the young come out. It's not linear, it's a life-giving circle."
In face of a world of 'modern ideas' which would like to banish everyone into a corner and 'specialty', a philosopher, assuming there could be philosophers today, would be compelled to see the greatness of man, the concept "greatness", precisely in his spaciousness and multiplicity, in his wholeness and diversity: he would even determine value and rank according to how much and how many things one could endure and take upon oneself, how 'far' one could extend one's responsibility. (Nietzsche)
How the Nazis Hijacked Nietzsche, and How It Can Happen to Anybody
Just as American politicians like to reference the ideas of dead American heroes like Washington and Jefferson, the Nazis sought great Germans to reference when justifying their new regime. Nietzsche, with the tweaks made to his philosophy by his sister, became the primary thinker for those Nazis looking to justify their beliefs with philosophy.
It's shame that philosophical ideals don't always match up to pragmatic reality. We live in an analog world, not a digital one, so binary black-and-white choices and reflexive adherence to absolutes are rarely useful or applicable. Deal with it!
HUMAN BEINGS ARE BORN SOLITARY, BUT EVERYWHERE THEY ARE IN CHAINS - DAISY CHAINS - OF INTERACTIVITY. (Andy Warhol)
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ABORIGINAL WISDOM
The frightening nature of knowledge leaves one no alternative but to become a warrior.
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
War and Warriors
By our best enemies we do not want to be spared, nor by those either whom we love from the very heart. So let me tell you the truth!
I know the hatred and envy of your hearts. Ye are not great enough not to know of hatred and envy. Then be great enough not to be ashamed of them!
And if ye cannot be saints of knowledge, then, I pray you, be at least its warriors. They are the companions and forerunners of such saintship.
I see many soldiers; could I but see many warriors! "Uniform" one calleth what they wear; may it not be uniform what they therewith hide!
One can only be silent and sit peacefully when one hath arrow and bow; otherwise one prateth and quarrelleth. Let your peace be a victory!
War and courage have done more great things than charity. Not your sympathy, but your bravery hath hitherto saved the victims.
Ye shall only have enemies to be hated, but not enemies to be despised. Ye must be proud of your enemies; then, the successes of your enemies are also your successes.
Resistance—that is the distinction of the slave. Let your distinction be obedience. Let your commanding itself be obeying!
To the good warrior soundeth "thou shalt" pleasanter than "I will." And all that is dear unto you, ye shall first have it commanded unto you.
Let your love to life be love to your highest hope; and let your highest hope be the highest thought of life!
Your highest thought, however, ye shall have it commanded unto you by me—and it is this: man is something that is to be surpassed.
So live your life of obedience and of war! What matter about long life! What warrior wisheth to be spared!
I spare you not, I love you from my very heart, my brethren in war!—
Thus spake Zarathustra.
He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster.
AND IF THOU GAZE LONG INTO AN ABYSS, THE ABYSS WILL ALSO GAZE INTO THEE. (Nietzsche)
We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark;
THE REAL TRAGEDY OF LIFE IS WHEN MEN ARE AFRAID OF THE LIGHT. (Plato)
UNTIL YOU MAKE THE UNCONSCIOUS CONSCIOUS, IT WILL DIRECT YOUR LIFE AND YOU WILL CALL IT FATE. (Carl Jung)
BEING HUMAN?
MUCH UNHAPPINESS HAS COME INTO THE WORLD BECAUSE OF BEWILDERMENT AND THINGS LEFT UNSAID. (Dostoyevsky)
LONG LIVE HUMANITY
PHILOSOPHERS HITHERTO SERVED SECRET ESTABLISHMENTS WHICH ENSLAVED PEOPLE. BUT THE THING IS TO REDEEM 'HUMANITY'. SATHYA
THE STATE
“The State is the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it lies, too; and this lie creeps from its mouth: `I, the State, am the People.’… Everything about it is false; it bites with stolen teeth.” Thus Spake Zarathustra
SATYAMEVA JAYATE
NON-COOPERATION WITH EVIL IS AS MUCH A DUTY AS IS COOPERATION WITH GOOD (Gandhi)
MORAL COURAGE
Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change. (Robert Kennedy)
CHEMISTRY OF CHANGE
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. MARGARET MEAD (Anthropologist)
THIS SITE IS NOT AFFILIATED WITH ANY ACADEMIC, RELIGIOUS, PHILOSOPHICAL, POLITICAL ORGANIZATION, IDEOLOGY, CULT OR OCCULT.
The Right To Believe
This site affirms the right to believe, not what we are told to believe, and not what we blindly consent to believe, but what we determine to be true and worth believing. It presents a way to undertake that “tedious and daunting task” by which we make ourselves accountable to truth itself.
EDUCATION CONSISTS MAINLY OF WHAT WE HAVE UNLEARNED. (Mark Twain)
Reproduction and dissemination of the information in this blog is actively encouraged!
DISCLAIMER
We do not necessarily agree with or endorse all of the views presented here. We are all, in a sense, investigators of our world. And while we, as individuals, may not agree with everything presented here, I fully support freedom of thought and speech as well as the Quest for truth.
NOBODY STANDS TALLER THAN THOSE WILLING TO STAND CORRECTED. (William Safire)
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Once hadst thou passions and calledst them evil. But now hast thou only thy virtues: they grew out of thy passions.
Thou implantedst thy highest aim into the heart of those passions: then became they thy virtues and joys.
And though thou wert of the race of the hot-tempered, or of the voluptuous, or of the fanatical, or the vindictive;
All thy passions in the end became virtues, and all thy devils angels.
Once hadst thou wild dogs in thy cellar: but they changed at last into birds and charming songstresses.
Out of thy poisons brewedst thou balsam for thyself; thy cow, affliction, milkedst thou—now drinketh thou the sweet milk of her udder.
And nothing evil groweth in thee any longer, unless it be the evil that groweth out of the conflict of thy virtues.
A moving point generates a line
A moving line generates a plane
A moving plane generates a volume
A moving volume generates a hypervolume
The threshold movement is attained at the speed of light
At the speed of light mass becomes infinite and time ceases to be
A timeless, mass-less entity can travel to any point in the universe instantly
A timeless, mass-less entity can manifest to all points in the universe instantly
The mysterious aspect of a human, electromagnetic-ethereal, travels at or beyond the speed of light
There is nothing more necessary than truth, and in comparison with it everything else has only secondary value.This absolute will to truth: what is it? Is it the will to not allow ourselves to be deceived? Is it the will not to deceive? One does not want to be deceived, under the supposition that it is injurious, dangerous, or fatal to be deceived. NIETZSCHE
WITHIN YOURSELF DELIVERANCE MUST BE SEARCHED FOR, BECAUSE EACH MAN MAKES HIS OWN PRISON. (Edwin Arnold)
ENLIGHTENMENT
Enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It's the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true. ~ Adyashanti
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