Determinism and Arbitration

 As you probably realized, my line of work has not been one of writing a lot of proper names. But there is this guy, Antonio Guterres, the chairman of the UN. He has been the prime minister of Portugal by the socialist party. This should make us think: Should someone connected to a socialist party be in that position?

I am not saying that someone should go to prison for being socialist, but should he be the chairman of the UN? Shouldn’t that position be occupied by someone more neutral? Socialism is an ideology and socialists clearly take sides on the conflicts based on their ideology.

The political parties in the world that use the name “socialist” differ between  themselves in some aspects, but they have this general tendence of trying to get more people to their side by spreading the idea that no other group is really concerned with justice, with poverty and so on. They also have a very strong connection with the academical establishment, the intellectual status quo. Their emphasis on education don’t have much to do with giving people  a lot of options of thought, it has all to do with this dominant line of thought in the education world, especially in history and social sciences.

So, to understand the tendences and consequences of giving them more power it is crucial to dive a little in this intellectual tendences, in the mainstream academical idea of “critical thinking”. Even if this is not the ideology they sell to the general public in time of elections necessarily, it shows where their ideological mentors would actually like to go in the future, or, at least, the weapons they intend to use to gain more power.

The ideology that the academical establishment sells is one of division. To make a young person believe that he or she cannot be on the side of the people who face bigger hardships in the world, except he or she lines with their political agenda, they sell the vision of a world divided clearly between oppressors and oppressed. So, not aligning with a political agenda that opposes the oppressors, would make you an oppressor yourself, no matter what you do. In the past it was all about workers versus bosses, now their main focus is in ethnicity. Oppressed ethnic groups versus oppressor ones.

There are, indeed, issues in our society that come from a long history of a world divided by visions of racial superiority. The Blacks shouldn’t ever be asked to forget slavery, the Jews shouldn’t ever be asked to forget the Holocaust and so on. But the World is more complex than tracing simple lines to divide people. What if a person, that you place in the oppressor group, do right in his individual life, and a person in the oppressed group do wrong?

Wouldn’t this generate a paradox inside their thinking, wouldn’t this make us see that a blind “Robin Hood” political system can a lot of times be unfair? Don’t we need some impartiality, I mean, help people in need, sure, but not judge a cause between two people based on their social positions or ethnicity?

To avoid that this kind of questioning lead the young people to put in doubt the justice, or even the efficacy, ff a system totally based on “reparation”, they have to murk a little the very idea of right and wrong. They have to say something close to this: Whatever people do, even things you call “wrong”, they do it for social reasons, the position in which people are in a society snd the history behind it move the person to act in such a way that is, there is social explanations for everything, even things we consider just wrong.

In fact, this means destroying the very concept of right and wrong because “wrong”, by definition, is something we must oppose, and must oppose with good, not say it was somehow “natural”. Where I live, if a person steals a bit of food and it is proven that the person was starving, he will probably not go to jail, and I agree. But if you steal a car at gunpoint, it is just wrong and something must be done.

All this idea of seeing everything as “social” has to do with determinism and free will. “Determinism” is a concept related to Science. After the mechanical discoveries of guys like Newton, following the mathematics of guys like Descartes, scientists seemed very excited with how predictable some phenomena could be. A guy named Laplace famously said that a mind that knew all positions of all things in the present and knew all the laws that rule their actions and reactions, would be completely able to see all the future. I repeat, neither Descartes or Newton envisioned such absolute determinism, Laplace came later.

Anyway, if you think that those laws that rule everything rule also the actions of human beings, which you may end up thinking, if you believe we are nothing but chemical reactions, then there is no more free will. Whatever decision we make is predetermined by the movements in the past, like billiard balls. And if the human being is not a being blessed with the ability to choose, then, in fact, there is no more right and wrong.

But why do I affirm we have free will? Why not billiard balls? Well, is it so antiscientific to think about your own existence? Come on, if you look at your life, and believe you have the ability to make choices, then you have a challenging but exciting road ahead. On the other hand, if you really believe that you are just fooling yourself that you have choices then nothing has any meaning at all.

And also, I think there isn’t much doubt that what made the human beings develop all these cool things we developed through History is that at some point we became able to contemplate the options we had in a certain circumstance and what would be the consequences of each option, and to give ourselves the responsibility for choosing correctly.

So, speaking against free will is the same as to affirm that what moved us through our evolution, what brought me from sitting in a cave hoping to just stop my hunger pain all the way to being here listening to music on my cell phone, is something totally contrary to how the Universe actually works. Doesn’t make any sense to me…

In fact, in the old times, people didn’t have so much trouble with this question. Seems to me that it was well understood that we definitely can’t control all the circumstances around us, but we have room to make choices, to try to make our path better. And we can help someone when we think his path is too hard, but not say that someone didn’t have any option except becoming a murderer, because if he is a human being, he has free will…

And now, back to our main subject, shouldn’t this kind of universal common knowledge of mankind, this search to face the unpredictable circumstances with our power of choice, this balance between helping people in need and keeping the individual accountable for his deeds, what should guide the International Organizations, like UN, to try to build peace?

Shouldn’t peace be about finding common ground between different cultures and finding common moral principles that mankind can share, instead of following a specific political Ideology, which is something artificial in the sense of being created by a very small group of people?

Of course people in these Organizations speak of peace, but to find common ground we must challenge, not follow, ideologies that want to create division, or at least try to be impartial. The way they speak about peace in the Middle East is particularly harmful, since they don’t denounce, but rather propagate, all stereotypes created against Israel.

It’s hard for them to take Israel for what it is: A Middle East Country, built by people who were persecuted elsewhere, and were able to thrive and prosper both in economic and human terms, with individual rights and respect for minorities and so on, choosing as friends the countries that are democratic.

This doesn’t fit their overall scheme of things, it’s easier for them to label Israel as oppressors, because of their economic success, as if it did come by exploiting someone else – who? And to say they are a white people, which is far from truth – but if it were? It seems as the less successful country must always be the victim of the more successful, which is definitely not a fruitful way of thinking, considering all peoples who are oppressed by their own leaders.

And how are the bad leaders going to be denounced, if all this over-intellectualization makes everything so relative, so hard to tell right from wrong? Think with me: When journalists repeat the old mantra that “the situation is Middle East is extremely complex” they are practically giving reason to the Academic Mainstream.

Some aspects may be complex, but when they speak as if absolutely everything is too complex for us to even try to apply any standard, they are taking away the responsibility that people have for crimes committed here and now, they are denying us the right to just call horror by its name, and giving a lot of room for intellectuals to “explain” everything in their sociological way.

Well, the mainstream intellectuals consider the idea that “Israel is stolen land” as legitimate, like, of all the changes that happened in the map with the end of the Empires, with all the displacement of people, including, but not only, Arabs and Jews, Israel was “the one change that should be reverted”.

So all the actions of a group like Hamas are thrown in that deterministic pool, as if they were the inevitable consequence of something, no matter how horrific and cowardly those actions are.

This deterministic blackhole is the favorite place of the Socialists, because it kills right and wrong. And with people who come from this ideology in big positions in International Organizations, then nobody seems allowed to come to the conclusion that reaction is necessary, even when we see a total nightmare filmed by camera.

Something that should not be so hard to see as evil, like an army invading a country, killing, raping, taking hostages, indiscriminately, is now something with “too many factors” for a person like me or you to “judge”.

So, it is never about a country that was cowardly attacked and went to War to destroy the source of those attacks, it’s all about a region where everything is “too complex”, so all we can do is ask for people there to “cool things down” and wait for something – what? When? – that will come and heal the divides.

Then with this “peace” talk, Israel, who is the a successful and prosper country, also a country that is accountable, who subjects to international norms and so on, is judged by what they do at their home to protect themselves from a danger that is proven to be real, to protect their lives from people who try to kill them. The Palestinians, because of their unusual situation of not really having a State – how can they have a State with police and army and guns and all as long as the ideology in power there is all directed to overtake the land of their neighbors by any means necessary? – is not subjected to the same standards.

Israel is the favorite target of UN Human Rights denounces, beating countries like Russia. China, that is not under attack, and treats minorities horribly, besides wanting to control everybody’s lives in the smallest details, is barely denounced.

And it is not only about speaking against Israel. Iran was the chair of the 2023 Human Rights Forum. Iran, with so clear Human Rights violation inside, and clear support to Terror Organizations outside.

Also, all this tendence to turn the blind eye to the terrible challenges that Israel faces, and to relativize all actions of Israel’s enemies, in fact allows that people who are personally committed to anti-Israeli movements, to thrive within these Organizations or in its fringes.

UNRWA, an agency with the sole purpose of “helping” the Palestinian refugees - who are not really refugees, they have a place to live, to work, and Jews were also expelled from many countries in the Middle East taking nothing with them – well, this agency is a good example of effective anti-Israelism sponsored by an International Organization.

UNRWA has schools where textbooks were found to teach the stolen land story, many of their installations were found to have been used by Terrorists, UNRWA vests were found in Terror Cells next to weapons, and at least nine UNRWA employees were confirmed internationally – Israel’s intelligence says many more – to have actively participated in October 7^th.

Once again, too many factors? Infinite factors, so we can never think? As I said, I don’t think nobody should go to jail for simply having some socialist ideas, but should this really be the only thought allowed in the “relevant” part of the Academical World? And more, should it dominate Organizations that are meant to arbitrate World’s conflicts?

And then the journalists say, "UN said that..." and it has such a weight, doesn't it?