The title "The importance of being ethical" short changes this discussion. I can never quite put my finger on what it is about Jordan Petersons' speech that grabs me and holds me. It's like there are two of him running in parallel, one orates the moment while the other simultaneously takes the free elaboration of an idea (from a question posed) and condenses it down to a gist (one of his favourite words). However, the form of the gist -if you have the vocabulary and the ability to extrapolate- hits your brain and unpacks like a Zip file. It's quite extraordinary.
I watch a lot of these Youtube broadcasts instead of mainstream TV, so much so that I subscribe to Youtube (ad-free is better). I don't review them as a rule, I just repost them with my recommendation in brief, likewise this one. Just watch it, it's an hour of two smart people hashing out topical ideas and putting some Post-Modern mores under a microscope and finding them to be at best foolish and at worse counterproductive to us all.
I will say this, you can't watch Jordan Peterson and not grow up a bit, and in some cases a lot. You put yourself your ideas and opinions under the same microscope the protagonists in these interviews put the world and themselves under and that has great utility.
I don't quite know what to make of this video. I watched it end to end. I have effectively got skin in the game by dint of family connections and sit in an odd position of not wanting to believe either of the major players could either be so stupid or duplicitous to the detriment of seven billion people (I suspect that's self-preservation... possibly denial). However, it would be ludicrous of me not to look at the events of seventy years ago and think it's unthinkable in our time; from the comfort of our apparent consumerist democracy, all but inured to the effects of wars that by-and-large for the last few decades "always happen at their place, not ours."
Clearly, as a piece of documentary film it's built around a certain dramatic `lean' possibly in a style relative to its home culture that makes me look at it with a slightly jaded eye, and in the slightly cynical knowledge that all of the links, the narrator connects together over a period of nineteen years directly, and with tangential links dating back seventy-six years, look to that same jaded eye like the kind of random connections conspiracy theorists put together to bolster their case.
However, the pragmatic me says to ignore the style; I don't get Bollywood, so why should I understand this guy's style straight off the bat? And instead, look at the overall content, however, propagandic it feels to my western European heart (for want of a better word), and wonder how close we actually are to war after thirty years from Glasnost? And from what felt like the end of all that cold war shit that plagued our childhoods, only to bimble through the nineties, noughties and now the twenties to find ourselves looking at new ICBM's that get here before the four-minute warning has finished telling us we are fucked.
I get the metaphor at the end regarding Russia being backed into a corner and feeling like it has nothing to lose, and better to end a horrible existence with a horrible end than to endure the horrible existence. But, that footnote also makes me think this could be very clever wrong-footing or coercion of people like myself and others, who do see our governments and media organisations as a bunch of hypocritical bellends in need of a dry slap. And that this is just another slice of misinformation to muddy already murky waters.
So the disclaimer is that I am posting this here because I don't know the truth, I suspect many of our politicians don't know the truth either, they just brief what they have been briefed on and take the paychecks.
There is plenty of information from both sides of the once Iron Curtain that suggests toxicity at a political level that exists almost entirely to justify military budgets and by dint of that, multi-billion dollar corporations that make things go BANG! So, My eye is jaded. I don't know what to believe anymore, but I do think the broader the spectrum you view the less likely you are to be taken in by any ideology. And you now have the opportunity to do likewise.
An approximate measure using Google Earth says I cycled 26.58km (in old money 16.5 miles). The route went south down the esplanade through Highbridge, Walrow, and out towards Watchfield, and from there the video starts.
Interestingly the Western Power Distribution truck was a contractor doing security, because the new pylons need to be looked after in case of activists or idiots.
Every plant in this tray was grown from a single leaf of a plant my mother owns or owned. The flowers are truly spectacular. I find it amazing that some people do manage to kill these plants.
Image courtesy of T'Tinternet because none of my photos are equal to this one. I have this colour flower I also have peach, Pink, and near Red.
This is quite the interview. I found it challenging because it undermined so much of what I understood about the current state of play. That isn't to say I haven't become (or previously been) more aware of the highly polished propaganda of the west and more so over time, but that Oliver Stone talks about the west and his own country's politics and policies as scurrilous and underhand is revealing. It is also a measure of our relative freedom of speech that he can do so, so we need to bear that in mind when we get all antsy about freedom of speech, it's only really marginalized from mainstream media, but if you look (and not too hard) you will find sensible counter-narrative and those all-important alternative facts (it's a shame the phrase `alternative facts' got so buggered up as it was born).
There is a truth to this interview that is jarring. Some time ago I happened to look at some stats on Our World in Data (I fell down a rabbit hole of looking at military expenditure, population, conventional forces, land mass, capital, reserves, playing a game of mental Top Trumps if you like) and I came away thinking, that if Russia ever got out of its pram and decided to go first strike, that it would be crushed like a bug. The point was that having been down the rabbit hole and having this mental calculation glaring an answer at me I still clung to the notion of ... well it was once the Evil Empire, and the light of Glasnost was extinguished fairly quickly. So, I ignored my instinct and my own calculations answer, and now I have to sit here and feel disjointed and uncomfortable about things I held truer than not, and know I was probably wrong not to listen to my inner voice.
Oliver Stone's take on nuclear is very clear, we need more of it, simple fact. Our World in Data will help again.
