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Old 06-02-23, 06:09 AM   #1
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Eric Gujer, chief editor of NZZ:

The strange incidents are becoming more frequent. In Vienna, a bearded man demanded admission to a municipal sauna reserved for women. He presented a document that identified him as a woman. As a result, he was indeed granted entry. A spokesman justified the action by saying that employees could not check gender and therefore had to rely on written information.

According to media reports, a German trans activist had staged the incident to gain publicity - which he subsequently received in abundance. An Austrian feminist protested, and the German women's magazine "Emma" also picked up the story. Social networks briefly boiled over.

These days, it doesn't take much for a culture war to break out, as the municipality of Stäfa in the canton of Zurich also learned. A school had its students discuss gender identities. The term "gender day" chosen for this teaching event and the gender asterisks in an invitation letter generated questions that a politician from the right-wing Swiss People's Party (SVP) gratefully took up.

This time, too, social networks boiled over. Fearing for the safety of the students, the municipality then canceled the event. It's easy to dismiss the discussion as agitation by right-wing populists. The local politicians, caught off guard, stooped to denying the SVP politician any democratic legitimacy because the gender day is based on the cantonal curriculum - as if criticism of official guidelines is forbidden for democrats.

Of course, rather base motives led the SVP to its protest. Nevertheless, the outrage is no mere election campaign. When the arch-feminist "Emma" and an arch-conservative politician oppose the softening of gender identities, one cannot speak only of party politics. They are articulating an unease.

The fear that the relative certainty of two biological sexes will evaporate in the nirvana of gender activism is real. It doesn't matter that the implications are very different.

A gender asterisk is unsightly, but not an assault on human dignity. When drag queens give readings to children in libraries, the added educational value may not be plausible. At least parents have the choice whether to take advantage of what a pluralistic society has to offer. If, on the other hand, women lose protected spaces, this has far-reaching consequences. All together, this provides material for debate.

Gender orders and sexual morality have always excited people. The emancipation of gays was accompanied by discrimination and debate. In the darkest days of AIDS, they gained an existential poignancy. Only by arguing about it - sometimes unobjectively and polemically - did a consensus emerge.

Sexuality concerns the core area of lifestyle. So running away is not an option, even if the parties of the center would like to do so. In their distress, they declare the uncomfortable subject to be a non-issue. The mayor of Stäfa, for example, demanded that people should rather deal with real problems such as inflation and old-age provision. It is reassuring when the authorities know what should be talked about.

On the political fringes, things look different. Right-wing populists are happy about the instrument for mobilization. Left-wing parties make themselves the mouthpiece of all sexual minorities that emerge, one might almost say, every month.

The issue will not disappear, nor has it simply spilled over from the United States, where the most indisputably savage religious battles rage over race and gender. For here a megatrend of modernity is manifesting itself.

The disputes are based on the progressing individualization. Individuals are self-confidently staking their claims. Each small group insists on rights and on individual justice - even if it is to be able to freely choose one's sex and the place in the sauna as a being with a beard (formerly: "a man").

The times when the ruling forces could impose a mandatory morality are over. This leads to problems not only in the area of sexuality.How will a society survive in which unifying ideals and norms are disappearing?

Liberalism has won: Against all authorities, it has asserted the autonomy of the individual. This is now threatening to be its undoing. With polarization and atomization, the tolerance on which every liberal society depends is diminishing.


[NZZ]
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Last edited by Skybird; 06-02-23 at 06:41 AM.
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Old 06-02-23, 06:14 AM   #2
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Old 06-02-23, 02:56 PM   #3
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[...]
In the meantime, Europe and especially Germany have left the path of success. Even small military conflicts cannot be resolved without the help of the USA. For the U.S., Europe is more of a burden than an ally that can be counted on in case of conflict.

Sure, the churches are empty and secularization is far advanced. But with ecologism and postmodern ideology, Europe and especially Germany are in the process of submitting to new and closely related religions just as the Portuguese did with fundamentalist Catholicism at the beginning of the modern era. The fervently held belief that man can change his sex is in the process of displacing the findings of biology. Genetic engineering, nuclear power and artificial intelligence are demonized and in some cases banned. And the knowledge gained at universities and institutes can only be put into practice slowly and hesitantly, if at all. The desire to live in prosperity is demonized. The clerics of the post-growth economy praise poverty and renunciation and thus gain popularity among people who no longer have any idea of what poverty and renunciation mean in everyday life.

Progress is no longer taking place in Europe. No other region in the world is following in its path. In terms of the number of patents, its countries have long since been unable to keep up with China and the USA. Companies are outsourcing research and production: The genetic engineering departments of Bayer and BASF are in the U.S., the dual fluid reactor developed in Germany is being worked on in Canada, and in the IT sector, Europe, where the computer was invented, has long ceased to play a major role.

Instead of an efficient agriculture that can help to feed nine billion people soon, which is nothing but a damned duty of Europe, it wants to become the delicatessen producer of the world. The European Union dreams of regulating technologies worldwide. It was different in 2000: The Lisbon Strategy adopted at that time wanted to make Europe the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economic area in the world. Now it just wants to become the global TÜV (Technischer Überwachungs-Verein, MOT; Skybird)

Europe, and Germany too, is free to choose relegation and poverty. If its citizens want it that way, this wish will come true. It would only not be stupid to realize what it means if it becomes reality: Poverty is not picturesque, it means death for many people. Freedom and democracy are closely linked to prosperity; it pacifies societies, mitigates distributional struggles and creates security. It protects the weak, because in poor societies the law of the strongest applies. And by the way, in a poor Europe there will not only be no more good hospitals: There will also be fewer chairs for post-growth economics and gender studies. Yes, poverty also has its good sides.
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Old 06-02-23, 10:59 PM   #4
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'How is the Dictionary getting on?' said Winston, raising his voice to overcome the noise.

'Slowly,' said Syme. 'I'm on the adjectives. It's fascinating.'

He had brightened up immediately at the mention of Newspeak. He pushed his pannikin aside, took up his hunk of bread in one delicate hand and his cheese in the other, and leaned across the table so as to be able to speak without shouting.

'The Eleventh Edition is the definitive edition,' he said. 'We're getting the language into its final shape -- the shape it's going to have when nobody speaks anything else. When we've finished with it, people like you will have to learn it all over again. You think, I dare say, that our chief job is inventing new words. But not a bit of it! We're destroying words -- scores of them, hundreds of them, every day. We're cutting the language down to the bone. The Eleventh Edition won't contain a single word that will become obsolete before the year 2050.'

He bit hungrily into his bread and swallowed a couple of mouthfuls, then continued speaking, with a sort of pedant's passion. His thin dark face had become animated, his eyes had lost their mocking expression and grown almost dreamy.

'It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn't only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other word? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take "good", for instance. If you have a word like "good", what need is there for a word like "bad"? "Ungood" will do just as well -- better, because it's an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of "good", what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like "excellent" and "splendid" and all the rest of them? "Plusgood" covers the meaning, or "doubleplusgood" if you want something stronger still. Of course we use those forms already. but in the final version of Newspeak there'll be nothing else. In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words -- in reality, only one word. Don't you see the beauty of that, Winston? It was B.B.'s idea originally, of course,' he added as an afterthought.

A sort of vapid eagerness flitted across Winston's face at the mention of Big Brother. Nevertheless Syme immediately detected a certain lack of enthusiasm.

'You haven't a real appreciation of Newspeak, Winston,' he said almost sadly. 'Even when you write it you're still thinking in Oldspeak. I've read some of those pieces that you write in The Times occasionally. They're good enough, but they're translations. In your heart you'd prefer to stick to Oldspeak, with all its vagueness and its useless shades of meaning. You don't grasp the beauty of the destruction of words. Do you know that Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year?'

Winston did know that, of course. He smiled, sympathetically he hoped, not trusting himself to speak. Syme bit off another fragment of the dark-coloured bread, chewed it briefly, and went on:
Quote:
"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. Already, in the Eleventh Edition, we're not far from that point. But the process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there's no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime. It's merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won't be any need even for that. The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. Newspeak is Ingsoc and Ingsoc is Newspeak,' he added with a sort of mystical satisfaction. 'Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?'

'Except-' began Winston doubtfully, and he stopped.

It had been on the tip of his tongue to say 'Except the proles,' but he checked himself, not feeling fully certain that this remark was not in some way unorthodox. Syme, however, had divined what he was about to say.

'The proles are not human beings,' he said carelessly. 'By 2050 earlier, probably -- all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron -- they'll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually changed into something contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of the Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like "freedom is slavery" when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking -- not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.'

One of these days, thought Winston with sudden deep conviction, Syme will be vaporized. He is too intelligent. He sees too clearly and speaks too plainly. The Party does not like such people. One day he will disappear. It is written in his face.


George Orwell, 1984, part 1 chapter 5


Read the novel online:
https://www.george-orwell.org/1984
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Last edited by Skybird; 06-02-23 at 11:10 PM.
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Old 06-05-23, 04:58 AM   #5
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https://www.zeit.de/digital/datensch...e.google.de%2F

Quote:
(...)
Whittaker: The big tech companies have built up a surveillance business model over the years: they provide us with their services free of charge, while in the background profiles are created from the gigantic amounts of data generated and stored, and access to them is sold to the advertising industry. This is the engine that drives the entire technology industry. Around 2010, these companies asked themselves how they could further increase their profits. How they can open up even more markets where they can use the data that they already have stored anyway. How they can use their computing capacities - the huge data centers and server farms that they operate anyway. The answer then was: you can use all these resources to train what we now call artificial intelligence. And then you can sell that across many different markets as a super capable, intelligent solution - from education to health and so on.

The more you turn to AI, the more it justifies and exacerbates the concentration of power and social control in the hands of a few companies that set up big language models.

ZEIT ONLINE: What role did technological development play in this?

Whittaker: Around the same time, it turned out that you could do whole new things with old so-called AI technologies like machine learning and artificial neural networks if you combined them with massive amounts of data and computing power. Artificial intelligence, in my mind, is a marketing term, rather than a technical one. The more you turn to it, the more it justifies and exacerbates the concentration of power and social control in the hands of a few companies that set up big language models.

ZEIT ONLINE: So, by implication, you mean: you can't build and train a big language model today at all that is not based on the logic of such surveillance business models, as you call them?

Whittaker: I think it's impossible to build a large language model that defies that logic. Because it takes gigantic amounts of computing power to train these systems - and that's very expensive. It's also very complex and expensive to make these systems usable by users as an interface, as we see with ChatGPT or Microsoft.
(...)
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Old 06-05-23, 12:44 PM   #6
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Old 06-08-23, 08:56 AM   #7
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Land without courage

Tomorrow Michael Esfeld's book "Land ohne Mut" will be published by Achgut Edition. In it, he describes how we can fend off the collectivists' attack on open society and the rule of law by returning to reason. Here is an excerpt from the chapter "Beyond Corona: the New Totalitarianism".


Increasingly, the state seeks to impose responsibility for all manner of ills on its citizens, whether it is the alleged discrimination against minorities, the spread of a respiratory virus, or the damage to the world's climate. Central government bodies or supra-national bodies even presume to dictate to people how they should move or eat in order to prevent the alleged evils. Citizens must buy the freedoms to which they are actually entitled unconditionally by complying with lockdowns, compulsory masks or social passports. "Totalitarianism is characterized by unlimited social control and unlimited regulation of people's lives by a political authority," Esfeld writes. Both corona and climate alarmism aim to direct the actions of society and politics toward preventing the great catastrophe.
[...]
The Corona, Climate, War, and Wokeness regimes have in common to artificially deplete resources. Lockdowns and other Corona measures weaken a country's economy. The climate regime and the war regime with economic sanctions deplete available energy. Wokeness with favoritism for certain minorities prevents all from developing their talents for the benefit of all. The scarcity of resources then serves as an occasion to expand state control, with state bodies allocating resources, granting access to them, or simply denying them. This applies first to the economy, but then also to private consumption. War is deliberately used to build this regime: First, a war is staged against a virus and against climate change; then, an actual war - Russia's attack on Ukraine - is used as an occasion to install a kind of war economy in the Western world with deliberately induced energy shortages.


At this point, we come full circle to the mechanism described above, through which this regime builds itself up: Everyday actions are placed under general suspicion of harming others. One washes oneself clean of this suspicion by means of a social passport like a vaccination certificate. This social passport can then be used to allocate resources. In the past, during and after wars, people tried to control scarcity of resources with ration cards and the like; today, this can be done digitally and specifically as a reward for compliant behavior. An obvious example is the allocation of energy depending on allegedly climate-protecting behavior. Equally, however, access to energy and food can be made contingent on conformity to the Corona regime in the form of regular covid vaccinations and, more generally, any kind of conforming behavior imposed by a political authority. Consequently, one not only gets back what were once liberty rights as a reward for conforming behavior. More than that, one also receives the resources important for survival, such as energy and food, which were once freely available on the market, only allocated in dependence on socially conforming behavior.


Allocation to food and energy via social passports may still seem like an unfounded horror forecast at the moment. But much of what initially seemed like an unfounded horror prognosis, dismissed as "conspiracy theory," has become reality in recent years, up to and including permanent mask-wearing as an outward sign of social conformity and the plan of lifelong covid vaccinations advanced by the World Health Organization, among others. Non-conformists - and these are ultimately all those who do not want to have their previous way of life destroyed and who are merely demanding their basic rights - can be driven to economic, social and ultimately physical ruin in this way. This is indeed the ultimate consequence: triage by means of social passports, so that only those survive who conform to the respective specifications. These are then the new people, who no longer spread harmful viruses, no longer damage the climate, exercise social justice towards minorities, etc. - whereby they naturally only do what is declared as such behavior in each case, and according to the matter there is nothing more behind it than the corresponding declaration.

I will not die as the free man I was born to be. None of us will anymore




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