Politics

At the recent UN general assembly, speakers of the aligned group of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger accused Ukraine of supporting terrorism.  Burkina Faso said Ukraine ”has confessed to supporting international terrorism – particularly in the Sahel” (western
sub Sahara Africa).  Another speaker said that Ukraine “admitted supporting terrorism”.  And further that the UN has become disrespected and powerless because they tolerate such behavior as Ukraine’s.  This bit of info would be classified somewhere between disinformation and a crock of shit.

Here is the real picture.  Political analysts widely  classify the Mali gov as an authoritarian military regime, or junta, as of a coup 6 years ago. All political parties and public associations were suspended. The ethnic group in the North, the Tuaregs, forever marginalized, are fighting for their independence from the Mali junta composed of ethnic Bambara.  After the fiasco of South Sudan, I would never suggest which group has God or justice on their side.  But here are undeniable facts.

Alongside the Mali forces and against the rebels is fighting the Russian military militia called the Wagner Group. It has been  written that they are a ” Russian independent military group”. Nothing could be farther from the truth. They are funded wholly by the Russian state treasury.  The only thing they are independent of are the rules of command, standard punishment of soldiers, and ethical conduct on the battlefield.  Where the UN has taken a dim view of the military takeovers in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger,  Russia has stepped into the vacuum, shipping tons of free grain as well as military aid to the juntas, with an eye on Sahel resouces, especially mining.

In 2024, Ukraine said they gave intelligence to the Tuareg rebels, likely about the military of their enemy, Russia and the Wagner group, which invaded their country in 2022, and killed thousands.  No one has accused them of sending troops, weapons, or ammuntion to any fighting force outside Ukraine. And the Ukrainians certainly do not consider themselves “supporters of international terrorism”. ussia on the other hand has fighting forces in the Sahel, fighting for the favor of the side they consider beneficial to them, with the most unethical band of mercenaries on earth.

genius in one endeavor,  and so completely naive in another.
genious in planetary science, naive in social science.
nominated by trump to oversee the cutting of jobs about which he knew nothing. Nominated because Trump wanted to ally himself with the richest person in the world.
x fired with  a -lined email ……   x though a, their job was very important b they were doing a good job and were appreciate…. many had commendations…….. now found they had no means to pay their mortgage, or their children’s needs, no medical coverage,

ONE  40,000 years ago a young man goes out to look for food. He sees animal A.   He succeeds in killing it, taking it home and eating it. The need is for nutrition,  the drive or motivation is hunger, and the gratification is eating.  The next day he sees another animal A.  The same thing happens and he is gratified. Now learning takes place.  The next day he finds a different species, animal B.  He tries to kill it but it is too fierce. It injures him and he goes home to recover. Again learning takes place.  He has learned that the door is open to gratifiction when he encounters an animal A, and that the door to gratification is closed when he sees an animal B.

Humans learn gratification from many things.  Some find gratification in helping others.  Some find gratification in killing others.  Verbal expression is gratifying.  Some find gratification in telling others how highly they think of their writing or their piano recital or their apple pie.  Others take gratification in expressing hatred and anger.  Yelling at someone in traffick or cursing someone on social media is gratifying.

Status by becoming an agent of gratification is common.  If one says, group X are bad or inferior for some reason he is offering gratification  by expressing hate and fear. The agent is trying to create a group over which he has power – a power base. After the Civil War, there was a great dislocation of status when the slaves were freed.  plantation owners were stripped of much of their means of production and wealth.   Non slave owners who were the vast majority………….. George Wallace was elected 4 times as governor of Alabama his advocacy of segregation, and his belief that fro-Americans should not be admitted

Percieved status and power are gratifying.  It is gratifying knowing you are mayor of a city or leader of  gang.  It is gratifying to become a member of an exclusive country club or become a member of those worth a billion dollars.

Gratification through identification is virtually universal. Gratification of being American or Polish and seeing your country win a gold metal. Gratification as a fan of a college or professional sport. Often fans use the pronoun ”we” when referring to their team.  We play Chicago next week. Gratification of seeing another black man elected president of the United States.  Gratification of your spouse or family member’s accomplishment.  ‘My son graduated first in his class at Tufts this year.’
‘Wilbur Wright was my great-grandfather.’

Behavior is shaped by learning which doors are open to gratification. And to control man’s behavior, for better or for worse, men have attempted to control the doors of other men. Hammurabi created one of the first codes of law nearly 4000 yeas ago.  The purpose was to close the doors to gratification from doing things that were harmful to the society.  Laws against murder and stealing and many others.

TWO  Social science in practice

Not a simple yes/no question.  No

1  All humans wake up in the morning with motivations (drives) to acquire gratification.  need-drive-gratification-drive, necessary to survive.  First drive in the morning is often to eat breakfast, gratification of satiating hunger.
2  Humans see the same food at the same time.  They fight.  Winner gets food and another gratification – defeating opponent.
3  Loser in 2 makes grunting sound or scream. (tennis player whacks his racket on the ground) expressing disdain, disgust, anger, hate is gratifying
4    2 humans, maybe brothers, work together to kill an animal.  They share the food.  gratification from working together, teamwork and friendship.
5  humans go to tavern not ot drink but to drink together. commaraderie is gratification.
6  expressing anger or hate is a gratification.

7. THe repertoir of gratification of anyone is greatly affected in the developemental years.  Caregivers model. But is altered all of life.

8.  Role models are people who have something that others want. Bad guys have money or status, thus x wants to act like him.  Also role models are people whom x loves and respects thus respects the way they act.
9 A person’s perception of whether a door to grat is open or not is acquired by trial and error. expectation of grat results in negrat.
10    repertoire of grat may be good, neutral, or bad for general welfare. goal is to mold behavior by rewarding good behavior, extinguish bad behavior by neg reinforcement.
11  racism may be a result of an agent telling you that x or xx is bad, and opening the door to gratification by disparaging a class of people. But class racism useful to put a whole catagory of people below you like was quite easy to do under slavery. Same with women. For milenium man has agreed on the cultural value that women, because they have less physical power, they have less of any power.

12  Gratification by association or identifiction.  Yankee fan, Democrat, Christian, Swede, New Yorker.   All categories we may identify with, and derive gratification from.  We can also identify the “other” categories we are in competiton for – black, jew, Muslim, Red Sox fan.  Those who get less grat from positive activity -work, family, sports or identification by positive groups – fan, Democrat, relgion are attracted by the grat offered by negative activity- violence,  expressing hatred or anger  or identification with negative soc  groups – nazis, white supremacy, gang activity.

13 Crusades were based on grat both to defeat an individual with a sword and victory of group-identified  Christianity.  same as sport. An athlete’s good individual performance and the team victory.

I had a wonderful dream.  A dream about how people would never have to work long hours again.. Most people labor 30, 40 or 50 hours a week. In my dream AI put an end to all the drudgery.

The  stringed instrument makers were relieved. It takes months to make a great violin, viola, cello or bass.  The finest Norwegian spruce, maple and willow must be obtained. The wood must be aged. Then it must be slowly shaped, sanded, manipulated into 71 differnt pieces for a violin by a team of craftsmen. Then carefully oiled and varnished till finally the non wooden pieces are applied.  In my dream, all that labor was avoided by wonderful AI-created instruments,that were cheaper and that produced sounds so near to the traditional instruments that even some experts couldn’t tell the difference. The instrument makers were freed to enjoy the casual life usually reserved for royalty.  And amazingly the new AI instruments played themselves!!!!  Musicians, who spend countless hours a day practicing, were no longer required!!!

The best basketball players must start very early, at 5 or 6 years old and practice for 15 years almost daily to make the NBA.  But in my dream  magnificent physical robots were created for basketball.
The best were allowed to try out for the NBA!!!  Several made the teams!!  The next year only 6 humans were playing for NBA teams because the robots had elevated the art of basketball so wonderfully. The thousands of hours saved from constant running, dribbling shooting released teens to enjoy Tic Toc like normal kids.

Doctors have to spend 8 long years at college and several more as interns before they can become surgeons.  But in my dream AI had  elevated surgery with precision operations that emancipated young men and women from the exhausting 24 hour shifts and allowed them to enjoy the  pleasantries that normal people enjoy.

In my dream, a wide variety of people and professions were given respite from their tedious 9 to 5.  However some problems still existed. The number of drug addicts and overdose dealths quadrupled and were creating quite a nuissance to communities. And domestic violence was up.  I woke up at about this point, considering what had just happened.  Everything was utopian in the dream except for the drugs and homes.  I came to understand that the dream simply hadn’t finished.  I’m quite sure AI would have come up with  a wonderful solution to the problem of drug addiction and home squabbles had I slept a little longer.

Instrument makers

Basketball Players

Master Builders and Architects

Medical Researchers

On Nicole Wallace’s podcast,  Ken Burns, the great historian said that when racists found that blacks were going to be on their favorite baseball team, the higher quality individuals embraced the fact, came to accept it.  Not that simple. What makes higher quality?  It rather should be looked at as the decisions made  based on doors of opportunity to attain gratitification.

Hammurabi wrote a code  of laws for Babylon 4000 years ago, it was with the wisdom that the society as a whole would be much more productive, predictable, and happy if laws and enforcement curtailed some of the violent, unfair, and disruptive behavior.

But now we have to go deeper.  We know that men can aspire and conspire to circumvent, change, and rewrite laws to gain power and influence that is beneficicial to a small group but harmful to the greater number of people in a society.  To make  long principle short, the problem is that man, as a species,  community, or nation  has not yet engineered a way to control the small minority of humans who seek unfair, disproportionate wealth, power, or other advantage over the society, at the expense of the majority of the members, and sometimes even to the demise of the society.  Some members simply don’t care if their actions will lead to the destruction of the society as long as it is after their lifetime. “What do I care.  l’m not going to be around in 30 years.” (an actual quote from Donald Trump)

So the initial question is – how do we as a society control those few who are hypermotivated to gain huge personal power to the detriment of society. There wust be new institutions, attitudes, stated moral principles.   This question is more theoretical.  More practical is How do we reverse the present situation where the top 1% owns 32% of the wealth and the bottom 50% own 2 per cent of it? .   slavery was an institution that was overwhelmingly accepted in the North s well as the South in the US in the 18th century. Back then the idea that black and white children would be educated in the same schools, the same universities. was simply not in the dreams of anyone of any color. So maybe we can take solace that it is possible to reverse the tides of the political economy that dictate the hegemony of the financilly elite.

I saw a clip where an excited man was saying that humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time. The reporter dismissed the man’s thesis, but the man insisted.  “No, no, there is new evidence.  They have pictures.”  I’m not sure what he meant by that but anyone with a formal education, and most people who do not, understand the lack of credence of the idea.  The earliest humans evolved 200,000 years ago.  The dinosaurs became extinct 65 million years ago.  This is not a theory.  Paleantologists, paleozoologists, archeologists, anthropologists, and other scientists who have studied the prehistoric biosphere are quite in agreement.

Elon Musk, on the Joe Rogan show,  related his rather goofy  ideas about finding civilizations in outer space on other planets in other solar systems, etc, etc.  then Rogan excited replied that, hell, there may have been an advanced civilization here on earth 10 million years ago.  To this Musk joyfully agreed.  But to the above mentioned scientists, this is just as bananas as the moron who claimed proof that man was on earth together with dinosaurs. They above named scientists have determined when the first life forms appeared, the first vertebrates appeared, first mammals, and most other life forms appeared. They have developed a massive taxonomy of plants and animals all over the earth and when, where, and how they lived.

If there had been a civiliztion ten million years ago unknown to today’s scientific community,  not only would all remains of the civilization have to have been lost but hundrds of thousands of years of the peoples predessessors’  traces would also have to have been lost –  artifacts and fossils.

Joe Rogan prooved congruent in ignorance to the first dinosaur-excited character in his lack of sophistication of  evolutionary development.

People saying China  1-child policy  was a mistake.  The proof of that is that now there re too many old people, not enough young people.
But the populaion has grown from 1 billion to 1.4 billion in 20 yers.
Invasive species.  expansion of man’s numbers has caused extinction of 100’s of speies per year.   fellow invertebrates, many fellow mammals and most fellow primates. …  New short sighted or selfish declaration that more babies will make a country better. 1001 ways to solve the societal economic dislocations – any are good – EXCEPT ENCOURAGING INCREASING THE POPULATION!!!!!!!!