(Answer at the end).
DENIAL
By Charles Kocian
After Russia had claimed total control and victory in Bakhmut, a defiant Volodymyr Zelensky has denied Bakhmut is occupied by Russia. This happened after Saturday 20 of May when Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin had earlier claimed victory in Bakhmut. Ukraine’s president spoke defiant in a scene-stealing visit to Hiroshima, Japan, for the G7 summit. They were commemorating the indiscriminate genocide of more than 500,000 innocents below the atomic bombs, something morally unpresentable. Who deny this?
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 75 years ago. Source image: Reuters.com
It is said that war is the art of deception, but when deception is grotesque, it becomes a confession of defeat. Denying reality is a characteristic of human behavior related to cognitive dissonance and functional self-deception, that is, when a brain prefers to deny reality to maintain its comfort zone, although it can mean its death. The great deny of facts during the Renaissance was stablished by the Inquisition, when they condemned Galileo as heretic for trusting its telescope instead of dogma.
Galileo’s “heretic” book.
As we know, Galileo said that the Earth is moving around the sun, but that was against Vatican dogma, so they decided to condemn Galileo in a vain effort to deny the objective reality. With 98% of chimpanzee DNA, is the reader denying reality? As a monkey’s descendant and potential rational-animals, is man making the explicit decision to choose reason as its guide? Reason who starts with sensory perception data or dogma cultural narratives? A lot of newspapers denied Darwin’s discovery mocking him with caricatures. Although all the evidence out there, still today many people deny Darwin’s discovery.
Darwin Caricature in 1871 Newspapers. Source image: https://worldhistoryarchive.wordpress.com
How cognitive dissonance work in ourselves? Does our brain play us tricks to deny reality of, for example, that XX and XY genes are different? Do we deny our monkey DNA in ourselves? Why? Those are some questions that take us out our comfort zone. In its evolution journey man is making its first steps. How far can he goes compared with a child who is giving its first steps, in evolutionary time?
Hypatia teaching. Source image: National Geographic Kids.
Hypatia of Alexandria said: “Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fancies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing. The child mind accepts and believes them, and only through great pain and perhaps tragedy can he be in after years relieved of them. In fact, men will fight for a superstition quite as quickly as for a living truth — often more so, since a superstition is so intangible you cannot get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so is changeable.”
Hypatia of Alexandria death.
Preceded by Pandrosion, another Alexandrine female mathematician, Hypatia was probably murdered in 415 AD by the members of the parabalani Christians. They cut its body into pieces, dragged to a place called Cinarion, where they set on fire. It was the traditional manner in which Alexandrians punished their vilest criminals, cremating them, as a way of symbolically purifying the city. Her death sent shockwaves throughout the Roman empire for centuries. She is described as a universal genius killed by political causes.
Socrates Death in 399 BC.
Eight centuries earlier Hypatia’s murder, another innocent thinker was condemned to death because he was interested in using its rational faculty: Socrates. Meletus accused him of “refusing to acknowledge the gods recognized by the State and of introducing new and different gods” and, also for “corrupting the youth”. The trial happened in 399 BC founding him guilty of death.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, we can ask: what do Zelensky, the G7, Galileo, Inquisition, Darwin, Hypatia and Socrates have in common? They all use words to make their judgements. But can words deny reality if their meanings are not well defined? Are floating concepts without percepts worthless? Yes. All animals, including rational animals (man) begin to know reality through its sensory perceptions. He who denies its sensory perceptions denies reality, a very common practice of pseudo-men. If rulers with nuclear weapons don’t grow up, they will destroy civilization, perhaps again.
Now answer to question 52.
QUESTION N° 52
What is the definition of a concept?
a) Classify a larger group into a smaller group.
b) Classify a smaller group into a larger group.
The answer is: b) For example man is a rational-animal.
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