ok… ukraine revised (added names on December 15th)
an interesting interpretation of the changing climate in the Ukraine.
I think my descriptions were vague… and misleading so i re-edited them…
two factions fighting for power,
Faction number 1:
Candidate: Viktor Yanukovych
allegidly corrupt and previous administration. Atheistic in religious leaning. *important* This faction is openly and heavily supported by the russian government. On the election day, Putin was recorded as giving his congrats to this faction’s candidate.
Faction number 2,
Candidate: Viktor Yushchenko
They are allegidly the victims of a corrupt and oppressive conspiracy to fix the elections. Video tape were released by our media about the surrounding events and much was made headlines about their corrupt elections. There has been heavy involvement between American agencies in support of this faction’s election. All involvement is covert. i.e. the american government has not claimed to support this side politically, but our government organizations’ actions speak differently. This faction’s religious leaning is a revitalization of Eastern Orthodox Christianity.
my point?
The Cold war was not too long ago. With the dissassembling of the USSR, the belief is that there is no threat. The reality still exists that nuclear warheads exist in large numbers within both governments. Putin has recently been heard giving very coarse analyses of american involvement overseas, not surprising of course since it is the fashionable thing for a foreign/non-american country to do these days.
All of this information was obtained from a PBS newshow called the newshour. I watched it a little bit ago. My professor of anthropology told me not to long ago that we should keep an eye out for this part of the world because there is a religious background that might make it more then what it appears to be. He has a tendency to boil down every conflict to a concern for religion. He might have a point, but he also might be failing to recognize the cause. It could be the fact that religion is caused by the same thing that causes war, individuality.
Mary and I were discussing the us -> them complex shared by every culture in existence. It hit me that this is simply a method of becoming individualized. Once we define ourselves we automatically define what is not us. It is common to use this understanding in creating immoral and moral actions. Why are blacks slaves? “They” are not “us”. objectification… this is all not new… but i thought it was interesting to re-evaluate the information about the Ukraine.
I keep getting swamped in quantum mechanics when i attempt to figure out if these guys are recognized as full of shit in the overall scheme of physics community or accepted as understood.
My current belief is like michael’s and others have said, they are credible in their field but their claims go far beyond their field’s expertese. When they argue points they cannot prove by qualifing them with, “just imagine if” and “what if” you see it become blatant.
December 15th, 2004 at 5:24 pm
I like reading your observations, especially since I like watching newshour and shows like it but I seldom get the chance to do so. Are you suggesting the U.S. is supporting the religious party because our administration doesn’t like atheism? Or is it because Putin is critical of the U.S.? Either reason would be lame. I hope there’s more to it than that, but I wouldn’t put anything past our current president. About a possible common cause between religion and objectification of others …. My first intuition was to agree, but after thinking about it a short while I am sure it is an oversimplification. I do agree that religious people tend to objectify others, but there are many religions that promote tolerance. It would be interesting to look at atheism and atheist groups throughout history (can this be done – how many atheist groups have there been?) and see if they evidence the same us/them mentality as do most people. I have a feeling the us/them mentality is a nearly universal human trait. Present company excepted, of course. 🙂 Then again, you are talking about the cause of religion and not religion. Ideologies change over time … interesting. When building a group identity, it’s helpful to give the people a common goal … too often the goal is to destroy the ‘threat’ of the people next door. But is this coming together against a real or imagined foe the cause of religion? Or is this something that happens in the group formation process whether it is religious in character or not?
December 15th, 2004 at 7:34 pm
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Point One -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Ok as for your first comment, i wasn’t offering one reason or the other as U.S. Involvement in the Ukraine election. What i’m arguing is that we obviously supported the Eastern Orthodox Christian movement while Putin supported the currently non-religious institution. As to why we did and Putin did i can only guess, but aas you said it would be lame to simply suggest one reason only. I think the important thing to note at this point is that there is more going on in the Ukraine then a botched election which is the picture our current media tends to suggest. In fact and this is a very controversial view, but it has often been remarked during news programs that our elections ran smoothly compared to the Ukraine’s. It concerns me that we point to all the corruption and we appeal to international regulations of elections for other countries, yet our own elections didn’t meet international regulations. I am quoting Colin Powell during his analysis of the Ukraine when he stated that the elections were fraudulent and that they “did not meet the international regulations for democratic elections.” In the end, I recognize that there is no simple causality to the current situation in the Ukraine. In fact i’d argue there is a lot that is not presented to us in the media. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Point Two -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- I think, and I have argued this before, that religion is inherent, almost genetic. If we find out that a series of genes regulate our ability to be self-aware, then i argue that those same genes will be used to regulate our religious intuitions. My argument? This is difficult. The evidence i use to suggest this isn’t broad or deep enough. I need to gather a whole bunch of atheists into a census and ask them if they find themselves appealing to superstitious beliefs and/or some form of causal manipulation of the world that cannot be found within physical reality. Personal Testimonial. I call myself an atheist, yet i notice that when things are put in a method of being questionable i tend to appeal to something outside of myself. Usually i say something to the effect of, “Please work for me, this time… ” then when it does i say “thank you…” This sounds inane and i’ve analysed my reaction to it and it is my current understanding that it comes from something instinctual. We inherently want to control our environment, and from that need to control the environment arises our appeals to godheads, religious figures, superstitions, etc. This is also supported by this article we read about this primitive group that used scientific methods to build canoes and yet used a religious ritual to appeal their survival before a god. It matches up with my argument that appeal to god is based on control. just food for thought.. I digress though, my argument about the us => them mentality is not something that is inherently a negative value. Just because i say we are american and they are french doesn’t mean there is animosity between us. The us => them mentality doesn’t take into account negative feelings, it can also take into account positive feelings like the cargo cults in indonesia. They felt that their culture will be improved through religious ritual to where they will “lose their dark skin and become light skinned”. This is important to note, because my key argument is that the us => them mentality is a characteristic of categorization. We are catagorical animals and so we automatically create the us => them mentalit. As for religion making the us => them negative, i would agree there is just as much negative as there is positive. As many people who are murdered by religious beliefs, i’d believe that there are people who are assited, fed, given meaning, etc. At least i would believe that there isn’t enough evidence to suggest the opposing view. wow.. long reply… heh sorry
December 15th, 2004 at 10:30 pm
[quote:95a01f0377]As to why we did and Putin did i can only guess, but aas you said it would be lame to simply suggest one reason only.[/quote:95a01f0377] Okay, I think my statement was a little ambiguous and you might have misunderstood. I wasn’t saying that it was lame for you to suggest a reason, only that it [i:95a01f0377]would[/i:95a01f0377] be “lame” on the part of those people [i:95a01f0377]if[/i:95a01f0377] that was their only motivation for doing those things. I would hope that world leaders would have a more complex view, but I am not sure that they always do. There’s a lot of food for thought in your post and in the follow-up. I appreciate your thoughts and enjoy the blog. It’s fun!