The Shock Doctrine

I had forgotten I had watched this - how frustrated I get with my memory. ML watched it nd it was mentioned the other day. So I revisited some of the main points and noting here for future reference.

And it is also so relelvant to what is happening here in the UK. Using shock tactics to streamline the introduction of  Capitalism (it's only my very humble and uneducated opinion). I agree with people being more responsible and the move away from the "nanny state" I think Brown was creating. BUT responsibility needs to be developed and I think that societies need a secure footing to be able to develop and grow. A little like parenting. I also belileve in nurturing altruism. We are very self-centred I think. Grrrrrr -

Milton Friedman said
"Only a crisis, actual or perceived, produces real change.

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism


In THE SHOCK DOCTRINE, Naomi Klein explodes the myth that the global free market triumphed democratically. Exposing the thinking, the money trail and the puppet strings behind the world-changing crises and wars of the last four decades, The Shock Doctrine is the gripping story of how America’s “free market” policies have come to dominate the world-- through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries.



At the most chaotic juncture in Iraq’s civil war, a new law is unveiled that would allow Shell and BP to claim the country’s vast oil reserves…. Immediately following September 11, the Bush Administration quietly out-sources the running of the “War on Terror” to Halliburton and Blackwater…. After a tsunami wipes out the coasts of Southeast Asia, the pristine beaches are auctioned off to tourist resorts.... New Orleans’s residents, scattered from Hurricane Katrina, discover that their public housing, hospitals and schools will never be reopened…. These events are examples of “the shock doctrine”: using the public’s disorientation following massive collective shocks – wars, terrorist attacks, or natural disasters -- to achieve control by imposing economic shock therapy. Sometimes, when the first two shocks don’t succeed in wiping out resistance, a third shock is employed: the electrode in the prison cell or the Taser gun on the streets.



Based on breakthrough historical research and four years of on-the-ground reporting in disaster zones, The Shock Doctrine vividly shows how disaster capitalism – the rapid-fire corporate reengineering of societies still reeling from shock – did not begin with September 11, 2001. The book traces its origins back fifty years, to the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman, which produced many of the leading neo-conservative and neo-liberal thinkers whose influence is still profound in Washington today. New, surprising connections are drawn between economic policy, “shock and awe” warfare and covert CIA-funded experiments in electroshock and sensory deprivation in the 1950s, research that helped write the torture manuals used today in Guantanamo Bay.



The Shock Doctrine follows the application of these ideas through our contemporary history, showing in riveting detail how well-known events of the recent past have been deliberate, active theatres for the shock doctrine, among them: Pinochet’s coup in Chile in 1973, the Falklands War in 1982, the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Asian Financial crisis in 1997 and Hurricane Mitch in 1998. .

Philosophers

Socrates (ca 470–399B.C.E.)
Socrates firmly believed that, before humans can understand the world, they first need to understand themselves; the only way to accomplish that is with rational thought. To understand what this means, one must first appreciate the Greek understanding of the world. Man is composed of two parts, a body and a soul. The soul itself has two principal parts, an Irrational part, which is the emotions and desires, and a Rational part, which is our true self. In our everyday experience, the irrational soul is drawn down into the physical body by its desires and merged with it, so that our perception of the world is limited to that delivered by the physical senses. The rational soul is beyond our conscious knowledge, but sometimes communicates via images, dreams, and other means.

The task of the philosopher is to refine and eventually extract the irrational soul from its bondage, hence the need for moral development, and then to connect with the rational soul, and so become a complete person, manifesting the higher spiritual essence of the person whilst in the physical. True rationalism is therefore not simply an intellectual process, but a shift in perception and a shift in the qualitative nature of the person. The rational soul perceives the world in a spiritual manner - it sees the Platonic Forms - the essence of what things are. To know the world in this way requires that one first know oneself as a soul, hence the requirement to 'know thyself', i.e. to know who you truly are.

Socrates did not publish or write any of his thoughts, but he was constantly in discussion with others. He would usually start by asking a rhetorical (seemingly answerable) question, to which the other would give an answer. Socrates would then continue to ask questions until all conflicts were resolved, or until the other could do nothing else but admit to not knowing the answer (which was what most of his discussions ended with). Socrates did not claim to know the answers, but that did not take away the ability to critically and rationally approach problems. His goal was to show that, ultimately, our intellectual approach to the world is flawed, and we must transcend this to obtain true knowledge of what things are.

René Descartes (1596–1650)

Descartes thought that only knowledge of eternal truths – including the truths of mathematics, and the epistemological and metaphysical foundations of the sciences – could be attained by reason alone; other knowledge, the knowledge of physics, required experience of the world, aided by the scientific method. He also argued that although dreams appear as real as sense experience, these dreams cannot provide persons with knowledge. Also, since conscious sense experience can be the cause of illusions, then sense experience itself can be doubtable. As a result, Descartes deduced that a rational pursuit of truth should doubt every belief about reality. He elaborated these beliefs in such works as Discourse on Method, Meditations on First Philosophy, and Principles of Philosophy. Descartes developed a method to attain truths according to which nothing that cannot be recognised by the intellect (or reason) can be classified as knowledge. These truths are gained "without any sensory experience", according to Descartes. Truths that are attained by reason are broken down into elements that intuition can grasp, which, through a purely deductive process, will result in clear truths about reality.

Descartes therefore argued, as a result of his method, that reason alone determined knowledge, and that this could be done independently of the senses. For instance, his famous dictum, cogito ergo sum, is a conclusion reached a priori and not through an inference from experience[citation needed]. This was, for Descartes, an irrefutable principle upon which to ground all forms of other knowledge. Descartes posited a metaphysical dualism, distinguishing between the substances of the human body ("res extensa") and the mind or soul ("res cogitans") . This crucial distinction would be left unresolved and lead to what is known as the mind-body problem, since the two substances in the Cartesian system are independent of each other and irreducible.

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677)

The philosophy of Baruch Spinoza is a systematic, logical, rational philosophy developed by him in the seventeenth century in Europe. It's a system of ideas built from basic building blocks with an internal consistency with which Spinoza tried to answer life's major questions and in which he proposed that "God exists only philosophically." He was heavily influenced by thinkers such as Descartes and Euclid and Thomas Hobbes as well as theologians in the Jewish philosophical tradition such as Maimonides, but his work was in many respects a departure from the Judeo-Christian tradition. Many of Spinoza's ideas continue to vex thinkers today and many of his principles, particularly regarding the emotions, have implications for modern approaches to psychology. Even top thinkers have found Spinoza's "geometrical method" difficult to comprehend: Goethe admitted that he "could not really understand what Spinoza was on about most of the time." His magnum opus, Ethics, contains unresolved obscurities and has a forbidding mathematical structure modeled on Euclid's geometry.Spinoza's philosophy attracted believers such as Albert Einstein and much intellectual attention.

Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716)
Leibniz was the last of the great Rationalists, who contributed heavily to other fields such as mathematics. His system however was not developed independently of these advances. Leibniz rejected Cartesian dualism, and denied the existence of a material world. In Leibniz's view there are infinitely many simple substances, which he called "monads" (possibly taking the term from the work of Anne Conway).

Leibniz developed his theory of monads in response to both Descartes and Spinoza. In rejecting this response he was forced to arrive at his own solution. Monads are the fundamental unit of reality, according to Leibniz, constituting both inanimate and animate things. These units of reality represent the universe, though they are not subject to the laws of causality or space (which he called "well-founded phenomena"). Leibniz, therefore, introduced his principle of pre-established harmony to account for apparent causality in the world.

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804)
Immanuel Kant started as a traditional rationalist, having studied the rationalists Leibniz and Wolff, but after studying David Hume's works, which "awoke him from his dogmatic slumbers", he developed a distinctive and very influential rationalism of his own, which attempted to synthesise the traditional rationalist and empiricist traditions.

Kant named his branch of epistemology Transcendental Idealism, and he first laid out these views in his famous work The Critique of Pure Reason. In it he argued that there were fundamental problems with both rationalist and empiricist dogma. To the rationalists he argued, broadly, that pure reason is flawed when it goes beyond its limits and claims to know those things that are necessarily beyond the realm of all possible experience: the existence of God, free will, and the immortality of the human soul. Kant referred to these objects as "The Thing in Itself" and goes on to argue that their status as objects beyond all possible experience by definition means we cannot know them. To the empiricist he argued that while it is correct that experience is fundamentally necessary for human knowledge, reason is necessary for processing that experience into coherent thought. He therefore concludes that both reason and experience are necessary for human knowledge.

All information is taken from Wikipeia

Bliss
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Age of Enlightenment

.... or Age of Reason, 18th Century. Such  an extreme reaction perhaps to the age of religion and piety. Suddenly nothing was valid unless backed up with hard evidence. SCIENCE! The move away from blind faith. How wonderful that there are people now trying to combine the two. Dalai Llama I believe is one.
 

I was stimulated for the first time in a few days by someones theatrical project - All I know is that it's about childbirth and science using famous figures through history. Two mentioned were Voltaire and Emilie du Chatelet. Voltaire of course is known to me. I have not read much and have decided I would like to know more. He was an outspoken and prolific writer. I was amused by the way in which he apparently adopted his pen name Voltaire - Airvault was the name of a family Chateau and a reverse of his pen name. But also it is said that he used an anagram of his name in Latin. Complex gentleman if any of this is true. Oh and apparently it signifies a separation from his family.
Hmmm! It was Montesquieu who wrote Persian Letters (around the same time), a satire. A Persian visiting Paris. How clever a way to write about the absurd way of life in the Western society. I should like to be that creative. Anyway, when I learnt about Persian Letters, it struck me just how ironic this would be if Montesquieu wrote about the relationships between peers. Perhaps I could write something today. I think I am still embroiled too deeply in emotions to be able to separate myself and see just how incongruous things can be. Emotions and life don't always seems to add up. Some are so too sensitive and some are competely detached. I think I will find out more about Persian Letters.

Anyway Voltaire and Emilie - or the stimulation to discover a bit more about them (which of course I will forget because my memory doesn't seem to store as much information as I would someetimes like to draw from - most frustrating because it's good and expanding and inspiring to be able to make connections and open talks with references to other works).
So reading about Voltaire lead me onto to looking at Candide. I studied Candide when I studied French at Sixth Form but I cannot remember a thing about it. Darn it! But what I read was how Voltaire was actually critiscising Leibniz's positivity philosophy. I guess Candide attempted to see things with the optimism Leibniz projected, that this Universe is the best anything can ever be. Gosh how I question this - dead against my difficulty in reconciling why bad things happen to good people. I do not like the term that everything is just as it's meant to be. It is how it is, this is the way I am more inclined to think when I am able to step aside from my very overpowering emotions. The growth is being able to observe my own emotions whilst using them to motivate and at the same time being able to encompass the philosophical approach and put a logical spin in as well. It's helpful to realise that my thoughts and questions and desire for understanding is an age old human frustration. And the same questions are being asked and debated today. So with a wry smile I am up there with the great philosophers. And I have a desire still for growth and knowledge. I expect on the last breath I will get a sense of knowing.

A Love Story


I love this story of these two people - gosh it's passionate, volatile, fascinating and exciting. I am sure along the way it was difficult and painful. I think wherever there is passion there are heightened emotions and difficulties to overcome. It is is a source of deep love that enables two people to stride forward through thick and thin, through good and bad. But of course it does take a willingness from both parties and an openess. BUt there also needs to be some sort of common ground and principles. I am supposing. Of course I am certian that this story of love is writtten with a romantic view.
Voltaire and Emilie Meet
In 1733, Voltaire was 39 years old and a successful playwright, poet and businessman when he met Emilie. She was 28, and lived the life of an upper class Parisian woman of society. When they met, they felt an instant attraction to each other.

The two certainly knew of each other before their first meeting because they had mutual friends and acquaintances. Emilie had read Voltaire's work, attended his plays and was fond of the theater. The Duc de Richelieu and Voltaire were close personal friends. Emilie had had an affair with Richelieu, and wrote to him saying, "Why did you never tell me that M. de Voltaire is the paragon of Men?"

Voltaire wrote to a friend about Emilie: "Everything about her is noble, her countenance, her tastes, the style of her letters, her discourses, her politeness. … her conversation is agreeable and interesting." They had a lot to say to each other - this was a meeting of the minds.

Rules Are for Other People
Voltaire and Emilie went to the opera, dined at the most respectable inns, and appeared together in the audience chamber of the King. This public display of an affair was considered inappropriate and all of Paris society was shocked at how they ignored the rules of acceptable conduct. But Voltaire and Emilie didn't care. Rules were for other people, and they were in love.

Police Looking for Voltaire
In May of 1734, Voltaire and Emilie attended the wedding of the Duc de Richelieu. Several days after the ceremony, Voltaire received a message from the office of one of the king's ministers that said: the author of the "English Letters" would do well to "absent himself." This was a warning from a friend that the police were looking for him. He didn't know why, but quickly left the country to escape arrest.
Voltaire learned later that a printer wanted to make some fast money by printing and selling his work without him knowing about it. Voltaire's book, the "English Letters" (Lettres Philosophiques) praised political and religious freedom in England. Government censors viewed this as criticism of the King and the Church in France. The printer was in the Bastille. A lettre de cachet had been issued for Voltaire's arrest and the police were looking for him.
For two months, Voltaire hid out staying with people he knew along the French border. He also stopped at the Chateau de Cirey, the ancestral estate of Emilie's husband, and found it was in great need of repair.

Decide to Live at Cirey
It may appear strange that Voltaire and Emilie devised a plan to live at the Chateau de Cirey and that Emilie's husband agreed to this. Voltaire loaned the Marquis 40,000 francs at low interest to pay for the renovation. The Marquis gained a home in the country where he could hunt, and Voltaire paid for Emilie's extravagant spending. This arrangement made sense to Emilie's husband.

Voltaire had always wanted a home in the country where he could write. Renovation of the chateau began in August and Voltaire and Emilie made the chateau into a comfortable home. Voltaire was a wealthy man; they wanted for nothing, and lived in luxury.

The Love Relationship
Those who knew Voltaire and Emilie were interested in their romantic relationship, and stories about what transpired between them at Cirey. Madame de Graffigny, a guest for three months at the Chateau de Cirey, wrote to her friends that Emilie had a lot of jewelry which was likely gifts from Voltaire, and that the couple spoke in English when they had arguments. It was details like this that people found most interesting.
Madame de Graffigny also wrote that visitors were only entertained in the evening. Voltaire and Emilie worked during the day, frequently sent notes to each other and often met to discuss their work. Guests were expected to stay in their rooms, read a book, or entertain themselves. Thus, few people understood the intellectual world in which this couple lived.

Intellectual Relationship
Both Voltaire and Emilie had a desire to discover the "truth" and to write about their findings. They both wanted to make an impact on the world. The bond the couple had for each other was greatly due to the work they were doing, both jointly and separately, and how they supported each other to achieve their goals.

The Search for the Truth
Voltaire and Emilie collected a library of 21,000 books, which was the equivalent of a university library of the 1700's. The library included the work of writers from ancient times up to their present day. Time was spent reading, analyzing, and discussing the work of many writers to determine what they believed was the truth on many subjects.

What were the subjects that were of greatest interest to them, and about which they wrote?

Metaphysics: This is a division of philosophy that is concerned with the fundamental nature of reality that is outside of what can be perceived with the senses. Voltaire and Emilie were seeking answers to questions that have been asked for centuries and are still asked today, such as: Is there proof that there is a God?, What is the soul and is it immortal?, Does man have free-will?, What is the origin of evil?, and Where do our thoughts come from?

Moral philosophy: Of special concern to them were problems such as: What is happiness?, the nature of pleasure, social good and evil, rewards and punishments, equality, and the relationship between passion and reason.

Physics (also referred to as natural science in the 1700's): Both Voltaire and Emilie were interested in the work of Isaac Newton and in the sciences.

History: Emilie's expressed a lack of interest in history because it was just a recording of wars and conquests. This led Voltaire to include in his historical writing the accomplishments of the great men that contributed to the advancement of civilization.

Critical deism (criticism of the Bible): Voltaire and Emilie did a detailed analysis of the Bible to form their own opinion on whether this document was a valid basis for religion.

Much of the results of their research, discussion and analysis on the above topics are the subject matter of Voltaire's writing. 

Collaboration and Critique
In the Introduction to the "Elements of the Philosophy of Newton" published in 1737, Voltaire states that he and Emilie collaborated in the writing of this book. They both believed that bringing Newton's work that explained principles of gravity, optics, and light into the French language was a work of major importance. After this joint project, Emilie continued her study of mathematics and completed her translation of Newton's "Principia" which Voltaire had published after her death.

Voltaire's original manuscripts have comments in the margins written by Emilie; and Emilie's manuscripts have comments in the margins written by Voltaire. They read each other's work and made suggestions for improvement. Voltaire frequently praised Emilie's intelligence, saying she was a genius, and dedicated almost all of his work to her during their fifteen-year relationship. Possibly Voltaire's dedications to Emilie are a recognition for some degree of input that she made to his work.
Voltaire and Emilie had similar values and supported each other's intellectual goals and achievements. This was the part of their relationship that others did not see and helps to explain the high regard, devotion, and bond that they had for each other.

Voltaire wrote to a friend shortly after Emilie's death in 1749, "It is not a mistress I have lost but half of myself, a soul for which my soul seems to have been made."

Lost Correspondence
During their fifteen-year relationship, Emilie saved all the correspondence that Voltaire sent to her. She had his letters bound into eight books with red morocco leather covers. This correspondence has never been found.

I have no idea if plays or films are made of this story. But I am now enlightened not reasoned.

Bliss
XX

Telepathy 27Feb2011

Odd - I have a feeling of JH now being very distant from me.  I know our relationship of closeness was finished but I felt that we had some connection still. I don't know how to put this all into words.
I cannot explain this. ....
Feels like a vacuum has been left. It has occurred over the last 2 days. Like he has moved on and away.
I am aware that some really major life things are happening for him and that he really needs all his attention there. But I am also aware that he still requires escapism - how on Earth could he be expected to make major changes all by himself. I hope that he can maintain support strongly with fellowship and I can guarantee that he will heal and grow. Difficult and painful to stay with the emotions but better than that than getting stuck and repeating the destruction over and over again. Easy to say from the outside. I know my own patterns return and its a gradual process of changing each time the patterns are obviously hurting. All in the name of increasing self awareness.
Perhaps seeing the reality being reflected is too much. It's hard enough with some years behind me. But JH also says how much he is already on that spiritual path and self aware.
I feel really he is very young in this and really vulnerable to it. Needing gentle hugs and love. Some of my own hurt has probably seemed harsh when I wanted him to know my hurt. He was a part of the hurt but not able to take on the reflection of that right now.

This however is about putting me aside.

I hope that if it's duty contact with me now he would not do that. I will be OK whatever there is or isn't between us.
I would absolutely hate to find out he is keeping in contact because he feels he ought to.
That is not friendship or even nice.

It feels to me as if there is no interest now in me as a person. I don't know how else to describe what I am sensing. And I get confused with what's strong intuition or made up?

JH if you do read this and you are detaching from me, would try and find the courage to tell me. It would be kinder I feel in the long run.

I will not post this right now as I think it's inappropriate.
Bliss
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Sadness

I can feel nothing but sadness. I would like it to pass just as quickly as it can.
It feels so bad and nothing seems to take it away.
I thought JH was going to be the love of my life. But it seems that was not possible.
I feel sad at my loss.

I was so interested at Uni this morning but everything right now is cloudy.
I hope it passes soon.

Bliss
x

More thoughts on Love

"The grand calculations in algebra
by which your mind is absorbed
will no doubt make you famous.
I would dare to devote myself to them,
but alas A + D - B is not = to I love you."
Voltaire


“Be the change we want to see in the world.” Ghandi