MooWorld... thoughts on the gohttp://mooworld.postach.io/feed.xml2023-05-04T13:39:41.861000ZWerkzeugArtificial Humanityhttps://mooworld.postach.io/post/artificial-humanity2023-05-04T13:39:41.861000Z2023-05-03T08:17:07ZMark Edwards<div>Human societies are shaped through social construction. But artificial intelligence forebodes a spectre of digital construction, and a human sociality increasingly less human. </div>
Defining Arthttps://mooworld.postach.io/post/defining-art2023-05-01T10:11:57.048000Z2023-05-01T10:07:11ZMark Edwards<div>Art is an acronym: A Response To…</div>
Want and need on a platehttps://mooworld.postach.io/post/want-and-need-on-a-plate2023-04-23T17:58:02.200000Z2023-04-23T17:56:53ZMark Edwards<div>Eat half as much as you want because it’s probably all that you need</div>
The Big Top in The Big Applehttps://mooworld.postach.io/post/the-big-top-in-the-big-apple2023-04-05T07:57:29.062000Z2023-04-05T07:43:01ZMark Edwards<div>Protagonists and observers opined the prospect of trumps court appearance degenerating into a circus. But one can’t have a circus without a clown. Although this clown dropped the usual face painted smile in favour of a frown.</div>
Liquid Historieshttps://mooworld.postach.io/post/liquid-histories2023-04-03T08:55:42.425000Z2023-04-03T08:27:21ZMark Edwards<div>Historic precedents are inherently spurious. They are set at points in time, the selection of which both define and limit their validity. If one goes far enough back in time then all precedent is lost. All the empires of recorded history are but dust because they have not yet existed. All claims to particular states of affairs erroneous. </div>
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<div>This social construction of rights is particularly relevant in the current era of cultural claims over land and peoples - Putin’s perverted claims to cultural provenance in the context of Ukraine being a most deadly example. </div>
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<div>One might try to argue for a fundamental delineation of belonging at the genetic level. But this too, we now know, is not discrete but mixed in its make up and ultimately singular in its origins. If the likes of Putin are serious about the purity of human provenance then they should accept that their ‘peoples’ - like all of us - are ‘out of Africa’ - not some erstwhile empire.</div>
Fleeting Beautyhttps://mooworld.postach.io/post/fleeting-beauty2023-03-31T07:11:32.673000Z2023-03-31T07:02:39ZMark Edwards<div>Why are the most beautiful moments in nature often so fleeting? Cherry blossom, magnolias, the short lives of the dragon fly and the butterfly. </div>
The Weakness of Vanityhttps://mooworld.postach.io/post/the-weakness-of-vanity2023-03-30T11:14:54.672000Z2023-03-30T11:05:48ZMark Edwards<div>Evident in the behaviour of Putin and Trump - and vicariously in their duped followers who bath in its spurious glow. </div>
Cancel Culturehttps://mooworld.postach.io/post/cancel-culture-22023-03-22T09:22:48.567000Z2023-03-22T09:20:12ZMark Edwards<div>Morality is fickle. Shapeshifting across time and place, the dialectic of equity renders morality largely uncertain and particular. As with all things, morality is a process not a state; thesis and antithesis a necessary and productive perpetual process. Moral certainty is as unrealistic as it is dangerous. </div>
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Sunak the Pugalisthttps://mooworld.postach.io/post/sunak-the-pugalist2023-03-22T09:15:00.602000Z2023-03-08T06:28:10ZMark Edwards<div>If Sunak is up for a fight then let him fight the criminals driving the process not the victims</div>
Paradox of assumptionhttps://mooworld.postach.io/post/paradox-of-assumption2023-03-22T09:13:00.222000Z2021-11-30T08:53:12ZMark Edwards<div>On the one hand, politicians are assumed to be universally lacking in common sense and any genuine connection to the real world that the rest of us live in. Whilst at the same time, we assume - through expectation - that they will, or at least we expect that they should, get on with running the country. This paradox of assumption leaves us in a perpetual state of frustration that is of our own making. By and large we enjoy a peaceful existence in this country compared to many others, the UK is relatively stable, but it seems that the price of stability is complacency. </div>
Nice man - no planhttps://mooworld.postach.io/post/nice-man-no-plan2023-03-22T09:15:21.108000Z2021-09-09T12:50:28ZMark Edwards<div>As Boris Johnson continues to progress the normalisation of lying to effect conservative policies, the frustration is that the socialist alternative is no alternative at all, Keir Starmer is a nice man but with no discernible plan. </div>
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Powerhttps://mooworld.postach.io/post/power2021-05-16T09:23:35.297000Z2021-05-16T09:23:32ZMark Edwards<div><p>Power without humility is ugly - and dangerous</p></div>
Educating the educatorshttps://mooworld.postach.io/post/educating-the-educators2021-05-14T14:36:08.240000Z2021-05-14T14:13:25ZMark Edwards<div><span style="font-size: 20px;">Nietzsche identified two kinds of people in this world, those who want to know and those who want to believe. It follows, then, that educators should teach students how to think not what to think.</span></div>
Voicehttps://mooworld.postach.io/post/voice2021-03-16T20:37:28.296000Z2021-03-16T20:35:02ZMark Edwards<div>The human world is socially constructed through discourse, The most important thing is voice.</div>
To laugh or to cryhttps://mooworld.postach.io/post/to-laugh-or-to-cry2021-03-14T09:14:49.261000Z2021-03-14T09:13:38ZMark Edwards<div>The denials of reality that characterise political discourses such as those promulgated by the Chinese communist party are comical in their transparency. But the realities they deny are shameful and upsetting cruelties. </div>
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<div>The messages are received by two very different audiences, those who want to know and those who want to believe; the wider world who can see the emperor’s nudity, and the internal audience who find comfort in the blanket of ideology.</div>
Donald’s Deadly Egohttps://mooworld.postach.io/post/donalds-deadly-ego2020-12-11T10:17:47.867000Z2020-12-11T09:23:49ZMark Edwards<div>It is difficult not to see Donald Trump’s rush to execute an unprecedented number of death row inmates, before his toxic tenancy of the White House expires, as the ultimate emotional rush that feeds his ego.</div>
Human Gullibilityhttps://mooworld.postach.io/post/human-gullibility2020-11-07T17:16:44.364000Z2020-11-04T09:18:18ZMark Edwards<div>Human beings are intrinsically gullible. Largely because they have evolved a desperate need for certainty. Of course little is certain, but humans feel better if they believe it to be. Variation within species means that the certainties human beings ascribe to are broad and can be stark, rendering a social world forever polarised.</div>
Toxic societyhttps://mooworld.postach.io/post/toxic-society2020-11-07T17:16:41.836000Z2020-07-17T14:12:06ZMark Edwards<div>It is certainly never appropriate, in any social context, to tar all protagonists with the same brush, and I do not. However, the burden of social malady at the macro level does weigh heavier on some societies than others. The UK has its fair share to be sure. But the toxicity of sociality in the United States has morphed, in very short order, from chronic to acute morbidity. </div>
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<div>The Americanisation of UK popular culture has proved a pervasive and permanent UK import, but a pathology of politicalisation is poisoning the population across the pond. We surely don’t want that over here. Do we?</div>
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The Human Virushttps://mooworld.postach.io/post/the-human-virus2020-11-07T17:16:30.156000Z2020-07-17T08:25:34ZMark Edwards<div>I note that ‘Chris from Amsterdam’ remarks, that, mother Earth is telling us that we are the virus - and it has begun testing its latest vaccine against us.</div>
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<div>A sobering thought.</div>
Cancel culturehttps://mooworld.postach.io/post/cancel-culture2020-11-07T17:16:41.856000Z2020-07-08T07:18:52ZMark Edwards<div>Morality is fickle. Shapeshifting across time and place, the dialectic of equity renders morality largely uncertain and particular. As with all things, morality is a process not a state; thesis and antithesis a necessary and productive perpetual process. <span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">Moral certainty is as unrealistic as it is dangerous. </span></div>
Shedding our political skinhttps://mooworld.postach.io/post/shedding-our-political-skin2020-12-11T10:18:12.167000Z2020-06-25T07:00:04ZMark Edwards<div>Aristotle was wrong. We are not political animals, we are fundamentally human animals. But political culture has undermined our virtues and exacerbated our vices. Ideology cannot account for biology; human sociality is not any political hue nor is it skin deep but in our genes. This is not to argue for one stance or the other but to point out that genuinely human sociality is obscured by politics and political visions of human belonging. We need to shed our political skin and try and think outside the box!</div>
Contemporary adaptationhttps://mooworld.postach.io/post/contemporary-adaptation2020-11-07T17:16:37.655000Z2020-06-19T08:47:36ZMark Edwards<div>The human race’s cognitive and behavioural adaptation to cultural evolution stands in sharp contrast to the continued adaptive efficiency of other organisms, including those that cause a threat to human species survival; the current coronavirus challenge being the dominant current example. </div>
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<div>The Darwinian notion of adaptations only necessarily ‘good enough’ to survive in a given environment is stark. The tension between variation as both an advantage and a stressor is in constant play in the human social/cultural world and makes for an anxious state of affairs. That adaptation to the challenges of cultural environments could be more successful, there is no doubt. Human cultural evolution at the macro species level is an ongoing toxic struggle to get beyond the ‘good enough’ to something ‘good for all’. Given that variation is inevitable in a process of evolution by selection then this may not be possible. The thought that such a state of affairs may be a forlorn aspiration is depressing.</div>
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<div>Whether the human race will self-annialate as a consequence of its withering tribal maladies or be eradicated by evolving toxic organisms in the natural world is less certain than the likelyhood that one of them will eventually prevail.</div>
Limitations of Objectivityhttps://mooworld.postach.io/post/limitations-of-objectivity2020-11-07T17:16:41.454000Z2019-08-19T17:40:04ZMark Edwards<div>Reality is a person-specific phenomenon. In a sense, reality and consciousness are synonymous. Shared realities across a population are limited to common sensory experience. Human objectivity, then, is as subjective as the rest of the human world. </div>
Trumphttps://mooworld.postach.io/post/trump2020-11-07T17:16:33.954000Z2017-11-21T14:45:09ZMark Edwards<div>I have argued elsewhere (see <a href="http://www.palgrave.com/gb/book/9781137385857">The Limits of Political Belonging</a>) for a kind of citizenship more human than political. But the advent of Donald Trump has highlighted the variation in humanness that can give rise to equally problematic partialities as those that political cultures provoke. Perhaps my next title should be "The Limits of Human Belonging"</div>
The Guardian view on scrapping the Human Rights Acthttps://mooworld.postach.io/link/the-guardian-view-on-scrapping-the-human-rights-act2015-09-30T08:28:18.880000Z2014-10-17T11:55:37ZMark Edwards<p><img src="https://cdn-images.postach.io/w600_a8686e0d35d4b34a88636f8a4e04ad5f.jpg" /></p><p>To the Sun, on its front page on Thursday, it is simply “the hated Human Rights Act”. To this newspaper it is something quite different. The Human Rights Act is a source of pride. It is a civilised and a civilising law.</p>