Month: September 2014

Why the Rotherham sex scandal is good evidence for the need for FIML

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

The Rotherham scandal was a terrible tragedy and a great crime, but it is also a very good example of how bad people are at communicating and thus thinking. It shows on the big screen of scandalous public life how weak the human mind can be and why it needs a technique like FIML to help it discover its many significant errors.

If you have not heard about Rotherham, here is an article on it: Rotherham: politics ‘imported from Pakistan’ fuelled sex abuse cover-up – MP.

There are many other stories on the scandal, but I chose that one because it is was at-hand and because it contains this gem, spoken by Denis MacShane, the former Labour MP for Rotherham, who said he shied away from the issue because he was a “Guardian reading liberal leftie.”

Essentially due to liberal beliefs, which included a PC deference to the Pakistani community, MacShane failed to investigate the rapes of some 1,400 British girls that had been ongoing for years and had been reported to the police many times. A single thought, idea, symbol, semiotic, call it what you like, prevented MacShane and many others from investigating and stopping the crimes.

From what I read, Rotherham is not alone. Similar gangs exist in other parts of Britain, in Sweden, Netherlands, Denmark, and elsewhere in Europe. The reason this is happening, it seems, is similar to Rotherham—people are so afraid to appear “racist”  they cannot or will not do anything to prevent the raping of their own children.

That is the power of ideas, of semiotics. You can see this power displayed in virtually any issue in the public sphere. Rather than think clearly and use reason, people fight over simple symbols or ignore issues entirely.

I would submit that what we can clearly see in the public sphere in Rotherham (and everywhere else to different degrees) also exists within the psychologies of all individuals. While as individuals we may not be susceptible to Rotherham-levels of blindness, we are all susceptible to serious blindness on individual levels. This blindness cannot be fully extirpated without doing FIML practice or something very much like it.

MacShane could not see his own blindness until he was confronted by an in-depth report and public outcry. This is a sworn  public official who was blind to a massive crime and was only awakened by overwhelming events.

As an individual, how do you propose to awaken yourself to idiosyncratic blindness within yourself? Idiosyncratic blindness is much the same as the shared blindness of the whole group of Rotherham officials who chose to look the other way. The only difference is it is unlikely the public or an official report will wake you up.

It is very difficult to see where we are wrong, often profoundly wrong, in both the public and private spheres. If you have a better way to monitor, analyze, and change wrong ideas, beliefs, and semiotics in your own mind than FIML practice, please let me know what it is. Errors in thinking and believing must be confronted as they manifest in semiotic output and perception. This is so because they slip away otherwise and are very hard to see when they are analyzed as generalities. You have to see examples within yourself of how they are actually functioning in real life. If MacShane and the many others who ignored the scandal had had experience with FIML practice, they would have acted much sooner, right away, as in hindsight anyone can see they should have.

Nationalism in Ukraine (and elsewhere)

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

I am so sick of hearing Ukrainian nationalists being called “nazis” or “fascists” that I was going to write something about it. While researching the subject, I came across an article by Anne Applebaum who says much of what I wanted to say and surely says much better.

Her essay, from May 12 of this year, can be found here: Nationalism Is Exactly What Ukraine Needs: Democracy fails when citizens don’t believe their country is worth fighting for.

Please read it as it may shake some of the horrid stereotypes of Ukrainian “nazis” and “fascists” out of your head.

Here is a short passage from her essay:

Ukrainians need more of this kind of inspiration, not less—moments like last New Year’s Eve, when more than 100,000 Ukrainians sang the national anthem at midnight on the Maidan. They need more occasions when they can shout, “Slava Ukraini—Heroyam Slava”—“Glory to Ukraine, Glory to its Heroes,” which was, yes, the slogan of the controversial Ukrainian Revolutionary Army in the 1940s, but has been adopted to a new context. And then of course they need to translate that emotion into laws, institutions, a decent court system, and police training academies. If they don’t, then their country will once again cease to exist.

I don’t mind adding that if European multiculturalism keeps going at its present heady pace, more of Europe will find itself in a Ukrainian limbo, controlled by others since all sense of self and tradition have been lost. In the USA I truly fear a continued erosion of fundamental American principles, rule of law, individual rights and responsibilities, individual freedom, etc.

I am not sure how the US can continue with our present form of government since almost none of it works as intended anymore. Most believe, rightly, that there is no point in voting as the will of the people is typically uninformed and, anyway, consistently ignored by those who pretend to represent us.

In Tibet and Taiwan, we see other examples of small nations being consumed by one large one. Check out the history of Inner Mongolia to see where that leads. Or Hong Kong: Hong Kong braces for protests as China rules out full democracy. That should read “any democracy.”

The world today is made up of huge powers (US-EU, Russia, China) that are controlled by small oligarchies. All of us would do well to have a stronger, more active sense of nationalism so we can preserve and further traditions that benefit our nations. If we leave it up to the oligarchs or allow them to continue fooling us, we will before long wake up in a vast, world-wide Ukrainian limbo.