Conditioning and disruption as a cause for the Russian invasion

In 1975, after 5 years of Law School (Leningrad State University), Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin submitted his thesis titled “The Most Favored Nation Trading Principle in International Law”. This thesis offered some knowledge about the mind of the future richest person alive in the richest period for humanity. His appeal to International and business Law reflected his understanding of what is the grasp of Power. With Sobchak as one of the role models, Putin´s education was set in motion, bringing forth a self-serving motivation in parallel to his conditioning becoming the world fearless ruler that we know today.

Putin gave the order to invade the sovereign state of Ukraine with the intention to annex it to the Great Russian Empire, known in the past as U.S.S.R. There are many aspects and possible reasons for this war but one that stands out: conditioning. Briefly, Putin was selected to the K.G.B. program already with a mindset of a great achiever with strong ideals. We know very little of what he went through in the training, but we can be sure that it was not how to promote world peace.

The existence of his life became clear, he must become a disrupter for the sake of ideal peace. There are many things wrong in this phrase that should provoke fear in any person that is facing this kind of person. First is the sensation of obligation, it is not about choice, not about free will, and certainly not about a global recognition, when feeling oblige can only be about preservation. Then there is the becoming. A notion of evolution and a place to evolve to is natural in any person but where to evolve to is a question that permits us to distinguish different types of people, when physical evolution means land expansion. This type of clear and primary sense of evolving might be the more basic one. It is much easier to see where we can evolve than to think it or even feel it. While in the last century, the West evolved all the way to a non-physical conception of a the World Wide Web and now even beyond with the MetaWorld (e.g. metaverse of Facebook and others), other countries are still repeating the instinct that followed us for hundreds of thousands of years. And yet, probably the word in the description above that provokes the most fear is disrupter, the breaking of the status quo. Loaded with ideals, the will to disrupt, can only lead to a conflict.

The difference between the concern about the security of a country or the survival of its people is precisely what makes a strong variation from the notion of a disruptor leader. There is no danger to Russia coming from the Ukrainian nation or people. Putin chose the moment carefully while preparing for it in a peaceful post imperial time for more than 8 years (that we know of for sure). A disruptor chooses the right moment to disrupt and not because of necessity. The problem with ideals is that from the moment they massify in a person, they become eternal. Hold steady with the glue of historical narration, they can only be maintained or released, and when released, the only outcome will be death.

Any details will shed more light on the mind of a disruptor, but the understanding of the motivation can urge leaders to act upon the only possible solution, united strong. The one million question is: was there a way to stop Putin from engaging this war and invade Ukraine with diplomacy? The answer is probably no. While there was not a threat to Russia by any means but the interior force that opposed Putin from within with other ideals such as democracy. Hence, probably the only path to appease the mind of Putin would have been by changing the interior narrative of the Russian people. If the people feel greatness as Russians and recognize their superiority vis a vis their neighbours, it will undermine the ideal of unison with the pretext of same people under the same roof and enhance the real reason of expansion, meaning, colonialism and territorial expansion from the core of the empire outwards. The history teaches us that it was the opposite, the Russian were born from Kiev which is why the aspiration of unison can only be from the banished son consumed with ideals of coming back home.   

*The author has a master in Peace and Conflict Resolution and Human Rights Education

Trispectivism to rethink riddle psychology

In an interview on September 2021 Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel Prize laureate said that he was working to understand the reason why intelligent people mistake simple riddles.

He used the following example: if a bat and ball cost 1.10$, and we know that the bat cost 1$ more than the ball, how much does the ball cost? 50% of Harvard students say the same as most people and answer: 10c. This is the wrong answer since the math would be that the total cost of the baseball bat and the ball will be 1.20$. The right answer is 0.05c as the next equation shows: X+(X+1)=1.10 or 1.10-X=X+1; eliminating 1 leaves X=0.10-X, thus, we are left with X=0.10/2=0.05c. So, how come some of the brightest minds in a top university answer wrongfully to a question that if they will think it through, they will undoubtfully answer correctly? The reason for that question relates to so many different decision-making problems everyone encounters in our quotidian life. As so many of us, we tend to deduct the 1$ difference between the bat and the ball from the total amount of 1.10$, which indeed leaves 0.10$. However, the decisive data in the equation is that the 1.10$ is the total price of both items and not a simple comparison between them.

Thinking in duality is the cause of that simple and honest mistake. From the one hand we tend to see the total cost (1.10$) and from the other hand we compare two items with a difference of 1.00$ between them, that will lead to the immediate erroneous conclusion of a ball price of 10c. Applying the trispective method we take under consideration a third detail, which in this case will be the transaction. If I pay X money for a ball and then I pay the same price of the ball plus 1.00$, I will receive a ball and bat for 1.10$. That transaction will have to be divided to the price of 0.05$, adding to it 1.00$, meaning 1.05$ that will in fact sum up to a total of 1.10$ for the ball and the bat. Hence, the difficulty occurs when we resolve to a simple and immediate basic calculation  satisfying ourselves with a deduction of the 1.00$ from the totality.

So far is the obvious reflection that can be made, but the surprise is why even when the person knows that it is a riddle and thus the answer will most probably not be the obvious one, it is still strenuous to reach the correct one? Most people, including very intelligent ones, will simply tire in the thought process and murmur the faulty reply of 10c. Thus comes the methodology of the applying trispectivism forcing upon the process the third element in two ways:

1. There most be another number other than 1 and 0.1.

2. There most be another element other than the individual prices and the total price of the two elements.

Combining those two factors will increase the odd to find the correct answer in the fastest time without overthinking it and satisfy with the chance of an obvious one. The other number is a missing one and the added element is the transaction. Let´s break it down: if I pay the missing number and add to that the number 1, I get the two items for 1.10, thus the missing number must be 0.05. A quick check resolve in 0.05+1+1.05=1.10.

Think about it for a minute longer and then try the next two riddles:

If five machines made five gadgets in five minutes, how much time would it take for 100 machines to make 100 gadgets?

A beautiful lake is covered with lily pads. We know that each day the lily pads doubled in size, and it took 48 days for the lily pads to cover all of the lake. How long took for the lily pads to cover half of the lake?

Did you reach the correct answer?

(5 minutes / 47 days)

 Let´s check the thought process and the application of trispectivism.

In the first riddle we know that 1. The number should not be 100 minutes; and 2. To get to the right answer we must separate the elements that constitute the riddle and check their interconnectivity. Which is why we avoid the immediate thought of one machine produces one gadget in a minute but the total time for the same number of machines to produce the same number of gadgets is 5 minutes. Thus, the correct answer will be that no matter how many machines there are, as long as they produce the same number of gadgets, it will always be 5 minutes. The number 5 is different from the number 100 that our immediate brain insisted on as the correct answer.

In the second riddle we know that 1. The number will not be the division in half of the number of days (24); and 2. We must separate the elements. Here´s what we do while applying the trispectivist mindset: we look at each lily pads as an interconnect individual unit and we ask ourselves if each one of them across half of the lake doubles in size in a day, how long it will take them to cover the lake? The answer is 1 day. That day we deduct from the 48 days given to us as data (48-1=47). The answer is 47 days, and it is indeed different than the number 24 our binary mind insisted on. And what about if it took them 60 days, or 100 days? In any case it will be the total number of days minus that day.

NB. If from the first second you thought about the correct answer, it is anormal though it doesn´t mean that you will do as good with other riddles that involve logic more than numbers. Either way, trispectivism is something we can all work at and improve our immediate brain functioning.

Trispectivism as perceived by Roland Barthes, in Mythologies

“How is a myth received? We must here once more come back to the duplicity of its signifier, which is at once meaning and form. I can produce three different types of reading by focusing on the one, or the other, or both at the same time.

 

1. If I focus on an empty signifier, I let the concept fill the form of the myth without ambiguity, and I find myself before a simple system, where the signification becomes literal again: the Negro who salutes is an example of French imperiality, he is a symbol for it. This type of focusing is, for instance, that of the producer of myths, of the journalist who starts with a concept and seeks a form for it.
2. If I focus on a full signifier, in which I clearly distinguish the meaning and the form, and consequently the distortion which the one imposes on the other, I undo the signification of the myth, and I receive the latter as an imposture: the saluting Negro becomes the alibi of French imperiality. This type of focusing is that of the mythologist: he deciphers the myth, he understands a distortion.
3. Finally, if I focus on the mythical signifier as on an inextricable whole made of meaning and form, I receive an ambiguous signification: I respond to the constituting mechanism of myth, to its own dynamics, I become a reader of myths. The saluting Negro is no longer an example or a symbol, still less an alibi: he is the very presence of French imperiality.

The first two types of focusing are static, analytical; they destroy the myth, either by making its intention obvious, or by unmasking it: the former is cynical, the latter demystifying. The third type of focusing is dynamic, it consumes the myth according to the very ends built into its structure: the reader lives the myth as a story at once true and unreal.”

[Taken from Roland Barthes, Mythologies, Selected and translated from French by Annette Lavers, The Noonday Press – NY, Farrar, Straus & Giroux  p. 127.]

When Was the Last Time You Listened to Real Music?!

Sometimes the most inspirational epiphanies arrive from the most unexpected places. Recently I had the pleasure to experience one of those feelings.

For some time now, I found myself less and less enjoying to simply listening to music. I still think it is inspirational at times, some music can, still, drive me to tears but I don´t find any pleasure in simply having it around me constantly (except specific moments). Well, to be honest, up until recently, I never actually stopped to seriously think why I feel this way, unattached by music. Then on a train ride where I finally got the chance to start the next book on my list, I came across this next phrase:

“¿Os gusta la música?

Le mentí. Acostumbrado a los infinitos rumores de la mar, no concibo otra música que no sea la de las olas. Ade­más, la verdad, no estaba yo para muchas músicas. Y dila­tar la tarea para la que había sido llamado, me parecía, en verdad, un fraude. Pero como debe hacerse en tales ocasio­nes, disimulé y le contesté de esta manera:

-Mucho, señora. La música eleva los espíritus y consue­la de las aflicciones.” (from En el último azul, Carme Riera).

Briefly, it says that after being asked if he likes music, the Captain felt he had to lie, saying that yes, the music lifts the spirits and sooth afflictions. However, his main and truer claim is that music seems to him as a fraud, for he was accustomed to the “infinite murmurs of the sea” where he could not conceive man made music but the one of the waves.

For so long I simply thought that people were right telling me (after realizing my stand about music, of course exaggeratively) that I was emotionless, unable to feel the intensity of a Leonard Cohen’s song, of a Rhapsody melody, or a shake with Shakira (I actually enjoy that part). “You are a robot! – some said – I feel bad for you.”

But no, I used to love music, listening to it all the time, as a teenager in high volume and later, while growing up, somewhat more constrained. I listened to all types of music having my periods of modern Greek style depressive songs, to Rock, and during other periods the Classics and New Age. I listened to music constantly, until my travels. And then, music began to fade, songs became a cultural experience, another form that construct one´s identity. Sounds and tones simply lost their power after experiencing the pleasure of listening to the jungle´s heartbeat. Music became a fraud, a mere imitation of the true power of nature. I found my connection with nature through the eternal song of life, in the form of animals (what instrument can travel 3km inside a dense jungle like the cry of a howler monkey?); of a summer storm (what greater emotion can a drum give next to a series of thunders or even the break of a pacific 5m wave some footsteps away from you?). Music became a fraud, a simple man-made artifact to incite in us a safe imitation of those intense emotional states as they appear in nature.

It has been many years since the industrious mind of man’s imitations was clear to me. Lipstick for an aroused woman, high-heels for a better physical posture, tailored broad shouldered suit for a more distinguished male look. Perfumes are a billion dollar industry today, simply to imitate the smell of a young, fresh pheromone of a desired girl, or to enhance the masculinity of a village-born man with his wild nature. So much money is invested in finding a formula that will reproduce natural phenomenas, the mimetic existence we call real life.

We worked so hard to run away from nature into comfort, great technology. But are we really that far away from it as some will say? It seems that the more we want to distinguish ourselves from nature, the more we look for it with artificial creation.

So, next time, a person next to you is not thrilled from the music around, from colored faces and Armani suits, don’t scorn his “inability” to feel the music but instead, we can appreciate the capability to simply be truthful to the origin, to the source, constantly and only overwhelmed by the eternal song of Gaia.

What do Durkheim, Charlie Hebdo and Trispectivism have in common?

The reflections of Emile Durkheim, the person considered by many as the father of Sociology, are relevant to the understanding of any modern era social problems. According to his theory, there are some structural effects in society that by acknowledging them, one might be able to organize better. Now, I´m not a sociologist but the resemblance of certain parts of his writings to the universal idea of Trispectivism captured my attention. Well, that and an article someone brought to my attention that blames the Western European societies in the recent clash with some radical Muslims.

Actually, when talking about the Western world and in particular about the differences between the US and countries as France, Denmark and England, the most obvious social issue that is noticeable is with the difficulties with the Other. While the US fights with that omniscient Other abroad, meaning, extrinsic alterity problems, the Europeans have to fight it intrinsically, in their cities and amongst their population.

Ironically, in the beginning to the middle of the 20^th century many thinkers mentioned Durkheim’s theory of the differences between Social Solidarity to predict that the US will collapse from interior conflicts because of the immigrant that were swarming into the neo-promisedland. With a capitalist system and thought, surely the individualism will thrive, separating the different groups into heterogenic groups that eventually will deteriorate the country from within, or that is what they predicted.

As we now know, in the US the immigrant manage to integrate unimaginably better than the EU immigrants. While there are, of course, some racial issues and the streets are rivers of prejudice and a-prioris, the level of hostility and anger is small in relative to the old continent.

So what is the difference? Durkheim divided Social Solidarity into Mechanical Solidarity and Organic Solidarity. The first is collective consciousness in beliefs, work, thinking the same about value, which, as you have might guessed can remind us the Marxist way of thinking. It is when the social forms a unity (as bird flock of fish schools). The Organic solidarity, on the other hand, is more to describe modern societies, that are based on functional interdependence.

Both of the paradigms can be explained with the trispect mindset, after all, in every discussion about society the use of Trispectivism is obvious and even necessary. There is the individual, whether indigenous or immigrant, interacting with the universal (the social sphere, the country), and the change between the configuration of one system and another is the interaction, which is constant and prone to continuous modification. While in the EU there is a kind of emphasis on the social group acting as one (even with the capitalist influence), the Americans give more relevance to the fact that an individual, any individual will want to succeed, thrive, live better and thus will have to develop a will to integrate into the current. Free will and personal effort of integration from the individual in the US has turn out to be incredibly different from the country programs of integration and continuous effort to make it seem as one happy family.

France is a great example of that, today with more than 6 millions of Muslims that making about 14% of the total population, the country is in disarray. Immigrants find themselves as marginal groups unable to comply with the rest of the traditional ties that were assumed by the locals many years back. Thus, instead of integration we see self-segregation, a search for another identity. When in the US one creates an identity within a multiple of other individual identities, in the EU, one creates a sphere within a beating social collectiveness. This is more terrifying than any crazy radical individual on the American ‘higher unity’ of individuals, as Simmel described it.

There are many other components in this equation, no doubt, state of economic crisis, the fact that the numbers of immigrant augmented immensely in the last 30 years and many more.

So, to reiterate, it seems to me that the problem of assimilation in the EU is BECAUSE of erroneous programs of assimilation of the governments and not the lack of them. The reality is that while the immigrant feels as if the country owes him equal rights, he will most likely do the least possible to attain them (generally speaking of course). While if US makes it clear that rights are not attainable but by proving you are worthy of them, the country thrive on hard working, assimilated new Americans. The interdependence of many individuals is a well established reality that is function better than the ideal of one social collective body.

Why, one might ask, does the sporadic radical Muslim, attacks, act and react mostly in France, Spain, Belgium, Denmark, when other countries, little further in the region, in Africa on in many other places have a much more bloodier history with the Muslim world (not only under the Ottoman Empire). Why is it that Charlie Hebdo and some Jews in a kosher market get to be the target for radical, mal-integrated, group of 2^nd generation individuals? Or is it simply a question of media coverage? Who know?