Note (May, 2012): I fear I must distance myself from the affirmation made in this post’s title. It is possible that it would have been true if him and the Green Party would have somehow bridged their differences, but since they failed to do so and went their separate ways, they have both added to the long list of disappointments, Remus and his new party now being even higher on it than the Green Party, unfortunately.
Sunday was the first round of our presidential elections. The fact that Traian Basescu and Mircea Geoana were going to make it to the second round was extremely obvious, but ten others decided to try their luck as well. Some of them truly desired to become president, others perhaps merely dreamed of it, but I’m quite sure that one of them didn’t want the position at all. I’m talking about Remus Cernea, who enlisted in the Green Party shortly before the start of the campaign in order to become their candidate.
So why did he run if he didn’t want to become president? To create visibility for both himself and the Green Party, of course. For himself because he keeps fighting against the “system” and such visibility will improve both the credibility of his future campaigns and his chances of obtaining funding when he requires it; for the Green Party because they’re new on the Romanian political scene and could only obtain fractions of a percent so far.
Perhaps the biggest problem with this pairing was that the Green Party can perhaps be noted for a moderate environmental doctrine and little else, while Remus Cernea is a strong advocate of nondiscrimination, of the rights and freedoms of all individuals, of the separation of church and state and several other related concepts. Proof of this is that, when asked why did he choose to join the Green Party, he said that he can work well with their doctrine, that there are no conflicts between their doctrine and his ideals. And that’s true, the Green Party’s doctrine and Remus Cernea’s ideals can work together very well, but they’re different things, so the situation could be better described as the independent candidate Remus Cernea being supported by the Green Party. This was painfully obvious whenever he was invited to a show during the campaign, since he promoted his own ideas whenever he was given the chance and didn’t appear too thrilled when he was asked to talk about environmental issues, simply because that used up time he would have preferred to use to talk about something else.
Because of that, some of the people who noticed that something wasn’t quite right were likely inclined to dismiss the whole thing as yet another one of the many tricks that politicians try to play. And that should have really been avoided, because a recent survey showed that, for example, 92% of Romanians discriminate against homosexuals, so a person who supports nondiscrimination would already have a dreadful time gaining approval even without a potentially suspicious behavior. True, any publicity is good publicity, so the fact that his stance is very much against that of the majority means that some people have at least heard of him already and others are likely to hear of him when his position will generate some controversy. It’s also true that, considering the Green Party’s target of obtaining the required 5% to make it into the parliament at the next elections, they could potentially focus just on the minorities. But when the message itself becomes confusing, when it’s obvious that the party and the candidate are talking about different things, it’s hard to gain any significant support.
What’s more, perhaps his main theme was the unfair and restrictive electoral law, which is a discussion that I’m sure the vast majority of potential voters just tuned out because it truly is irrelevant at the current time. It was obviously too late to change it for the current elections and it’s too early to start talking about it for the next ones, which are scheduled for 2012. Talking about the environment would have attracted a certain segment of the population and also bridged the gap between the party and their candidate, while boldly tackling the most sensitive matters when it comes to discrimination would have obviously gone well with the minorities in question, but this approach likely drove away more people than it attracted…
Still, it can be somehow understandable. He has never been involved in politics before and the party is new and inexperienced. I can only hope that they’ll know better next time and take proper advantage of anything they might have gained in this campaign, because they truly are better than just the lesser evil.
The Green Party in Romania is far from what it should be, even as far as their doctrine goes, but it is a little step in the right direction, while all major parties represent either steps or true leaps in various wrong directions. And activists like Remus Cernea are more than needed in important positions in this day and age. Yes, I always admitted that he’s completely unsuited for the role of president, but there are plenty of other positions where him or others like him could do a world of good.
You should note that all the criticism posted above was strictly about this campaign, so it should come as no surprise when I say that I truly wish to see the Green Party making it into the parliament at the next elections and perhaps also see Remus Cernea appointed in a position that’ll offer him the chance to truly influence the country’s direction in the areas that interest him. That’ll be very hard, considering the mere 0.62% of voters that he managed to persuade this time around, but it’s not impossible if the lessons will be properly learned…
As for the second round of the elections, I must add that Traian Basescu is still, in my opinion, by far the lesser evil at the current moment. Right now we need a strong and determined president, who also enjoys sufficient support to have a chance of subduing certain interest groups, many of which are in some way connected with his opponent’s party, and he’s the only actor on the current political scene to meet those requirements. Sure, he has his own “clients” as well and the direction he’ll attempt to steer the country towards is far from the best one, but I honestly feel that his “clients” and ideas are significantly less dangerous than the alternative.
Perhaps a truly good candidate will somehow appear in 2014, maybe even from the Green Party, but until then I have to stick to my usual rule: Vote for the party or candidate whose values are closest to yours in the first round and against the one who’ll either directly cause or indirectly allow the most harm to come to you and your city, country or world in the second round. This rule made me vote for Remus Cernea in the first round, and this rule will make me vote for Traian Basescu in the second round.
When I first saw the proposal for the new Dutch road tax, I thought something was finally moving in the right direction. The basic concept is correct: You don’t pollute or damage roads simply by owning a car; you do that by driving it. Plus that purchase taxes discourage people from replacing their old cars with newer ones, which likely use less fuel and emit less carbon dioxide, so eliminating them can have a positive environmental effect under certain circumstances. However, installing a GPS on every car in order to report its location to the authorities for the purposes of calculating the distance covered and whether it’s being driven in high-traffic areas during rush hour is a frightening prospect, not to mention ineffective in calculating how much the car actually pollutes.
I don’t think I need to explain why having a GPS installed in order to track where you are and where you’ve been at all times and report that information to the authorities is a bad thing. Whatever the officials say about how that information will be used and even if this could help recover stolen vehicles, the price is much too high!
One has to wonder why has this method been selected when it’s not even necessary, since sealing the distance covered indicator to prevent it from being tampered with would be enough to know how much the car has been driven and installing some sort of device in the exhaust system to record the emissions would indicate the exact amount each car produces, which is a very important piece of information that the GPS could never gather. And since rush hour traffic implies frequent starts and stops and engines running without the vehicles actually moving, the resulting emissions are also higher, which would result in the desired higher tax for the people who insist on driving through high-traffic areas during rush hour.
I can’t stress this enough: Tracking people like that is unacceptable! Knowing how much they drive and the emissions they’re responsible for is completely reasonable, even necessary, but the authorities shouldn’t be able to know where a person is or has been at all times unless they have reasonable reason to believe that said person is carrying out criminal activities!
At least, as I said before, getting rid of the purchase taxes could help, but only if it’s done right. Eliminating them entirely actually encourages people to buy their first car or additional ones if they already have at least one that they intend to keep, which is certainly not desirable. But if these taxes would be waived for people who turn in their old car when purchasing the new one, and even then only if the new car has a lower fuel consumption and lower emissions than the old one, the advantages of both systems would present themselves: People would still be discouraged from buying their first car or additional cars, but they’d be encouraged to replace old cars with newer ones that are better for the environment.
I have finally finished moving those really old posts, written over nine years ago, here. Took a very long time because I had to make room for them, since they’re all personal posts and one of my rules for this blog is that the personal posts must make up less than half of the total. But at least that’s done now…
I’m still awfully embarrassed by that period of my life, but a lot of things make me feel embarrassed in hindsight and I doubt I could have done things differently anyway. Besides, it’s a part of my life and, taking everything into account, I don’t think it was any worse than what I’ve been going through for the past four years. It probably wasn’t any better either, just a slightly different kind of suffering and a few different problems…
If for some very weird reason you want to have a look, go ahead. If you click that link, you’ll see that they’re sorted with the oldest ones first, so if you’ll click “Previous Entries” at the bottom of the page you’ll actually see the next ones, while clicking “Next Entries” will take you to the previous ones. I put that tag before the title for each of them just to make it obvious, in case someone stumbles upon them and doesn’t notice the date, and that also allowed me to link to all of them like this. There are 25 posts in total…
Yesterday I received a notification from John Feeney, the founder of Global Population Speak Out, announcing that the Population Institute will administer Global Population Speak Out 2010, so I want to post a little rant about getting the media to cover the problem of overpopulation, and to do so properly.
It’s true that I say that environmental awareness campaigns are just a waste of time and money, because education requires a couple of generations to produce truly significant results on a large scale and we don’t have that time because we needed those results at least a generation ago already, but things are a little different when it comes to overpopulation. Pretty much everyone who doesn’t deliberately reject facts is aware of the damage we cause to the environment, there already are a noticeable number of activists and organizations that support these causes and the corresponding political movement is gaining strength, to the point that the Greens were the only previously existing group to gain members and influence at this year’s elections for the European Parliament, so the time of talking about the environment is past us. But there seems to be something that prevents people from making the connection between population and pollution and resource consumption, which means that we are far from having any significant number of activists or organizations tackling this issue, and none of the few that do exist have any political power. So it’s true that we needed significant results at least a generation ago, but it doesn’t look like we’ll ever have them unless we start from the beginning.
I think it was two days ago when I noticed the cover of a business magazine that said “The Demographic Bomb” in large letters. I was intrigued, wondering how did such a magazine end up deciding to publish something like this, but a better look proved that it was something completely different and actually quite typical for the business environment: They were talking about the aging population and how it is harming the economy, so it was quite the opposite idea!
I also remember that, despite monitoring all important Romanian newspapers during that time, the only article concerning overpopulation that I saw printed during Global Population Speak Out 2009 was one aimed at undermining any such efforts, saying that anyone wishing to reduce the population by lowering birth rates is misguided at best, because there’s no point in caring for the future unless our children will be living in it, then adding a religious perspective into it as well.
To top it all off, the swine flu provides a good opportunity for all sorts of conspiracy theories, generally revolving around the fact that the virus was engineered and released on purpose. They started tamely and plausibly enough, by saying that the pharmaceutical companies desperately needed a solid source of income, which will now be provided by the swine flu vaccines and treatments everyone will buy, so it may be that they created the virus themselves in an effort to increase sales. But then the focus ended up being on the governments, that supposedly are very much aware that Earth can’t properly sustain the current population now and will be able to sustain much less once the oil reserves will run out, so 90% of people need to be killed as soon as possible, which is why such a virus was created and released.
What this means is that the population problem is rarely approached by the media, and when that happens it’s mainly to warn or even scare people away from taking any measures to properly address it. Economists are worried about the fact that fewer births mean an aging population, which harms the economy, ignoring the fact that there won’t be much of an economy left once resources will run out. Most religious individuals claim that not breeding is against the teachings of their religion, ignoring the fact that causing harm to others or destroying what they believe to be the creation of their god or gods can also be against those same teachings. The selfish say that there’s no point in caring for the world itself and all the other creatures we share it with, so they only want to pass on their own genes, ignoring the fact that their own children are likely to suffer greatly if they’ll be born in this world. And conspiracy theorists, through this approach, make a significant number of people skip right past the part that says that a drastic reduction of the human population is required and be on guard against any attempts of accomplishing such a feat, even if the means used would be quite different from the ones the conspiracy theorists claim are currently being used.
In these conditions, it’s obvious why many people don’t know how much of a problem overpopulation is and why many of them are likely to react negatively to any attempts to discuss this issue. This means that anyone who tries to tell them differently will meet a very hostile reaction, making the likelihood of such an attempt even lower and the problem itself even greater. This is one situation where it’s extremely obvious that if you’re not part of the solution you’re most definitely part of the problem.
But there’s power in numbers, so what would be suicide for one person to attempt, a group of people might just pull off. And this is where events like Global Population Speak Out and organizations like Population Institute come in. They don’t get things done themselves, but they could create that critical mass of activists who would then be able to actually get things done. Talking about this may translate into further delays and even lower chances of solving the problem in due time, but at this point we don’t really have another option, or at least not an ethical one.
So I think that pairing Global Population Speak out and Population Institute is a very good thing, despite looking dubiously at Population Institute’s goal of promoting only voluntary birth control. The current state of the environment proves that voluntary measures don’t get things done, but that’s a discussion for later. For now, we just need to inform people about overpopulation, get them to understand how much of a problem it is and that all these other viewpoints that occasionally make their way into the media and claim that drastically reducing the number of births is not desirable are wrong because, if they take any facts into account at all, they fail to see the long-term effects of the current approach.
I kept saying that depressed people think better, but now there’s even a study to back me up, though the researchers don’t agree with me when it comes to causality. They’re saying that being sad makes people think and recall memories better, while I was saying that thinking things through inevitably results in being depressed in this world we have created for ourselves. But the two opinions can simply be summarized by saying that there’s an undeniable connection between thinking and being sad, which is quite obvious.
On the other hand, the author of the study says that a positive mood seems to promote creativity, flexibility, cooperation and reliance on mental shortcuts. When it comes to creativity, I assume he’s talking about quantity, because when you’re in a good mood you may feel like putting any talents you have, or just think you have, to use and creating something, while when you’re in a bad mood you really don’t want to do much of anything and tend to assume that whatever you’d try will turn out badly. However, it seems to me that the best creative works are very often born out of pain and sorrow, so this statement could be seriously challenged if quality would also be taken into account. The other three parts, namely flexibility, cooperation and reliance on mental shortcuts, can be explained by the fact that people who are in a good mood tend to be more confident, but also shallower and less attentive. So happy people will trust their own abilities to get things right even if they miss certain details and believe that everything will turn out well in the end even if something doesn’t sound so well at that particular moment, but that also means they’re less likely to notice potential problems and more likely to just ignore even those they do notice.
I don’t have many good things to say about happy people, do I? That’s because happy people are far less likely to do something to improve the world and, while further improvements may not be needed in an ideal world, that’s certainly not the case for us, considering how deeply flawed our society is and how much we have harmed and continue to harm the entire planet. Being unhappy with how things are drives you to want to change them, so this kind of discontent is what the world needs, though obviously not what the people feeling it need.
Things are a bit different when it comes to personal lives, however. Being reasonably happy with your personal life helps a lot, because it allows you to overlook any minor disagreements you may have with those who are close to you and the little things that go wrong on a daily basis. Such a good mood also gives you the confidence needed to solve any problems that do arise and also to help those around you, strengthening your relationships. That same confidence can make you believe you can do something to improve the world too, while having strong relationships with the people you’re close to ensures that you’ll have others to support you in your attempts or to comfort you if you fail. But you’ll still need plenty of contemplative moments even in your personal life, to ensure that no serious problem or potential problem slips past you, unnoticed until it’s too late, and contemplation and happiness don’t go too well together.
So an ideal state of mind is probably represented by being generally content with your personal life, though also setting aside some time for contemplation in order to ensure that no problems remain unsolved for too long, and generally discontent with the world, though also enjoying some moments of hope, confidence and excitement in order to actually do something to improve it.
Regarding one’s personal life, long-term happiness is certainly possible, though rather rare, and nearly everyone has reasons for temporary happiness at least a few times in life. On the other hand, extremely few people have any reason to be happy with how the world is and works. So you’d think that the necessary degree of discontent required for improvements would always be there and we’d constantly be moving in the right direction, yet that’s not the case. That’s not the case partly because the powers that be make it very difficult and risky for anyone to try to change society, partly because unhappy people aren’t too confident in their abilities to begin with and partly because those in power have always tried to provide just enough people with just enough reasons for momentary happiness to prevent the unhappy ones from creating a strong enough movement.
But providing people with reasons for momentary happiness requires taking their needs and wants into account and actually doing something for them, so a better method for keeping them subdued was desired. It took a long time, but eventually, with the advent of modern psychology, it finally presented itself. Generalized feelings of unhappiness were called depression and started being treated as a disease, the “patients” being taught how to get over whatever’s making them unhappy and given drugs to simply make them less unhappy regardless of how they view things. That was a great day for the powers that be, not to mention for psychologists and pharmaceutical companies, and a dark day for the world, because people naturally want to be happy and more and more of them resort to these methods, treating the effects and doing nothing to remove the actual cause of their unhappiness, essentially doing the work that those in power had been forced to do up to that point.
If, as this study says, people who are in a negative mood are less gullible, less shallow, more eloquent and have better memory, they’re a threat to the status quo not only because they want to change it, but also because they could actually have the means to do so. On the other hand, if people who are in a positive mood are more gullible, shallower and have a harder time recalling past events, they’re easier to manipulate, while the fact that they’re less eloquent also means that they’d have a harder time attracting others to their cause even if they desired to do so. That said, being happy because you truly have a serious reason to be happy is wonderful, but not being unhappy despite having a serious reason to be unhappy only ensures that things will continue getting worse. It makes perfect sense for those in power to desire such a situation, but I can’t understand why do the rest of us allow it!
Perhaps a society in which the leaders would be unhappy and their subjects would be happy would be a giant leap towards utopia, because such leaders would be able to identify any problems or potential problems and truly want to solve them, while such subjects would be willing to do what their leaders would advise them to do in order to accomplish just that. But since the current situation is more or less the opposite, we need to stop being just pieces in their game, stop doing what they want us to do, hold on to our unhappiness and use it to fuel our efforts until we’ll actually manage to change the world for the better. Because if we don’t, who will?
