There are many things that matter in life. For instance, when is it expected that the sun will burn out, exhausting whatever vast resource of fuel or combustible gases it currently employs? And who created that explosion in the first place? And where did that authority come from? Another more proximate essence is whether we’ll ever recognize and accept that we’re all in this together? That our differences are merely those of interpretation?
A woman (with – as always – her two small dogs) spoke with me this morning in the subterranean parking lot as I circulated back and forth on my tricycle. She said she intends to do some Christmas decoration but not until December 1st. After a huff (or was it a puff) she confessed that with age she has become increasingly curmudgeonly, a paradigm I similarly acknowledged. The predilection reminded me to recover from the console drawer the Yuletide Teddy Bear we have for holiday decoration. Gone is the small plastic wreath I once hung beside the entrance to our house (I believe it blew away in a frosty winter storm).
Other things matter. Family. That’s always an ingredient impossible to surmount or deny. They are nonetheless merely entitled to the favour because of their proximity. Naturally family are otherwise only people like anyone else. But the significance lingers – perhaps just a lesson or reminder to address what is at hand (a social model of the commercial model to “take care of business”).
Speaking of business, the business surrounding AI (Artificial Intelligence) has lately taken hold. Will it be like the hysteria that preceded the change of the millennium? Or will it be no more or less than the deserved excitement of personal computers, laptops and Smartphones? I have yet to see any human discovery that limited the talent of humanity. These devices are helpful tools, not spirits to overtake us. Today I heard of machines which make organ transplants more scientifically accurate (rather than based predominantly on soft characteristics like the current health or age of the patients).
What interests me more is morality (“a set of personal or social standards for good or bad behaviour and character” Cambridge Oxford dictionary) . Now that’s a lot to unravel. It amuses me not only for its philosophic bent but more because of its overriding emphasis. Whether or not we actively contemplate the meaning of morality, few of us entirely ignore what is right or wrong or socially acceptable. As recently as yesterday President Trump of the United States of America is making news for corresponding with and supporting his erstwhile putative political adversary, the new liberal and social mayor of New York City. This unanticipated alliance triggers what might at last be the beginning of cooperation between politicians of every stripe and government level. Speaking more callously, it signals that Trump’s numbers are in decline. The masses no longer prefer division as a toxic launch pad for popular entertainment. Eighty per cent of Americans are reported to prefer and support cooperation, including improvement of legal immigration (US citizens haven’t harvested crops since the Depression). And their education system is so bad that businesses cannot find people qualified to hire. Meanwhile the Chinese move ahead, buying up continents and producing exceedingly smart – and pleasant – people.
By coincidence this morning I received the following email from my former law school colleague and roommate Professor Daniel Laprès.
Hello friends,
In this day and age when the word “fascist” has become so often bandied about, it’s worthwhile to recall what it actually meant to Mussolini.
Just the other day, Trump said that he didn’t mind Mamdani having called him a “fascist”!
And what if he really espoused himself in that role?
Daniel
Daniel Arthur Laprès
Avocat au Barreau de Paris
Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society (Life member)
11 boulevard Sébastopol
75001 Paris France
Tel: 01.53.32.50.77
Mussolini on the essence of Fascism
Reading Mussolini’s historic essay is illustrative of more than political persuasion. For me it pointedly augments the need to cooperate. Every social or political pattern about which I have any knowledge (conservatism, liberalism, socialism, facism or communism) has come and gone. What remains are the same people – often in the same condition – as before or after. There simply is not one answer to turmoil other than what evolves through cooperation or conflict.
Thanks to my niece and goddaughter Jennifer I can share with you an article to which (among others) she has directed me. It captures the critical issue that,
The gravest of all decisions, to go to war, happens without the consent of the people.
In modern times, the reality of war has become impossible to ignore. The photographs of Hiroshima’s ruins, the televised images from the Vietnam War, the viral pictures from the Bucha massacre in Ukraine and the latest livestreamed bombardments of Gaza all make clear what earlier generations could more easily conceal or forget. War is not only the threat of violence. It is the collapse of moral and political order: a moment when the rules of coexistence fall apart, laws twist into something else, and human life loses its value, or takes on a new one.
Finally – referring to such historic and remote writings as Plutarch’s Lives – the ancient author confronted a similar reality:
Plutarch’s best-known work is the Parallel Lives, a series of biographies of illustrious Greeks and Romans, arranged in pairs to illuminate their common moral virtues and vices, thus it being more of an insight into human nature than a historical account. As is explained in the opening paragraph of his Life of Alexander, Plutarch was not concerned with history so much as the influence of character, good or bad, on the lives and destinies of men.
And guess what Plutarch discovered about morality? Answer: that it surpassed the significance of anything else in human activity – whether the acquisition of wealth, the harbouring of possessions or the dominance of others. And what was that morality? Let me remind you: “a set of personal or social standards for good or bad behaviour and character”. Neither Plutarch (nor shall I) treaded indelicately upon what constitutes good and bad behaviour and character. But he left the clear message that it involved favourable acquaintance with others. These are standards by which we instinctively act – as much as anger and disagreement – but which we’ve learned to prefer even if obsequiously for personal advantage. Cooperation by definition is neither unique nor unanimous; it acknowledges existing differences which people are prepared to overlook for their own advantage. It doesn’t guarantee acceptance. People remain entitled to name calling, incitement of division, advertisement of ravage and war. We do not live in an era of unparalleled and universal convictions. And while we’re at it, you might also ask ourselves whence cometh those categories of right or wrong about which we are so certain?