"... som var det én enkelt by"

Jeg sitter for tiden og leser Micheline R. Ishays The Human Rights Reader, og ble overrasket over en passasje fra Cicero hun tar med:

Men i alt filosofene diskuterer må det da i sannhet ikke være noe som er mer verdifullt enn innsikten at vi er født for rettferdigheten, og at det rette ikke avhenger av menneskers meninger, men av naturens. Dette bør øyeblikkelig bli klart når du tydelig ser menneskets brorskap og enhet med sine medmennesker. For ingenting er så likt noe annet, så nøyaktig dets motstykke, som vi alle sammen er til hverandre. (...) Dette er et tilstrekkelig bevis for at det ikke er noen vesensforskjell mellom mennesker.

(...)

Hva blir det da av vennskapet, det helligste av bånd, hvis selv ikke vennen elskes for sin egen skyld, "med hele hjertet", som man sier? Ja, ifølge denne teorien skulle en venn forlates og kastes til side så snart det ikke lenger er håp om gavn og profitt fra dette vennskapet! Og hva kunne vel være mer umenneskelig enn det? Dersom vennskapet derimot skal søkes for sin egen skyld, så skal også felleskap, likeverd og Rettferdighet oppsøkes for sin egen skyld. Og om dette ikke er tilfellet, så finnes ikke Rettferdigheten i det hele tatt, for den nedrigste urettferdigheten er å søke betaling for Rettferdighet.

(...)

For idet sinnet har oppnådd kunnskap om, og anskuelse av dydene, har lagt av seg sin underkastelse for kroppen (...) har flyktet fra all frykt for død eller smerte, (...) hvilken større glede kan beskrives eller forestilles? Og når den har undersøkt himlene, jorden, havene, universets natur og forstår hvorfra alle disse tingene kommer og hvor de må gå, og hvordan de alle er dømt til å gå under (...) og når det innser at det ikke sperres inne av smale vegger, ikke bebor et fast sted, men er borger i hele universet som var det én enkelt by — da, midt i denne storheten, (...) hvor godt vil det da ikke kjenne seg selv, som den pytiske Apollo forteller oss? Og hvor mye vil det ikke avvise og regne som intet det folkemengden kaller herlig?

— Cicero, De Legibus, 52. f.kr. (Min overs.).

Jeg ble overrasket over tre ting:

1. At Cicero har en så sterk uttalt humanistisk universalisme. Det ventet jeg ikke. Men så er spørsmålet om han ser på for eksempel slaver og kvinner som likeverdige.
2. Å se formuleringer som ligner på Kants kategoriske imperativ eller utilitarismekritikken i tiden rundt Kristi fødsel. Mennesket som middel mot et mål, vs. et mål i seg selv er noe som går igjen både i kantiansk etikk og Rawls' kritikk av utilitarisme.
3. Å se kosmopolitiske ideer så tydelig uttalt så lenge før renessansen. Jeg var ikke klar over at disse ideer ble snakket om i så tydelige ordelag så tidlig. Jeg trodde mer de lå der som uutalte idealer.

(Med mindre jeg har misforstått, og oversatt feil, den engelske versjonen var ikke fantastisk, så vidt jeg kunne se.)

Paper

Imagine this design assignment: Design something that makes oxygen, sequesters carbon, fixes nitrogen, distills water, accrues solar energy as fuel, creates complex sugars and food, creates microclimates, changes colours with the seasons and self-replicates. Why don't we knock that down and write on it?*
– William McDonough, in this TED talk–

* (It's a tree)

Ord for dagen – i disse valgkamptider

The democratic and socialist Lefts, still united in 1848, had to split apart before fascism could become possible. The Left also had to lose its position as the automatic recourse for all the partisans of change – the dreamers and the angry, among the middle class as well as the working class. Fascism is therefore inconceivable in the absence of a mature and expanding socialist Left. Indeed fascists can find their space only after socialism has become poweful enough to have had some share in governing and thus to have disillusioned part of its traditional working-class and intellectual clientele. So we can situate fascism in time not only after the irreversible establishment of mass politics, but indeed late that process, when socialists have reached the point of participating in government – and being compromised by it.

That threshold was crossed in September 1899, when the first European socialist accepted a position in a bourgeois cabinet, in order to help support French democracy under attack during the Dreyfus Affair, thereby earning the hostility of some of his movement's moral purists. By 1914, they part of the Left's traditional following had become disillusioned with what they considered the compromises of moderate parliamentary socialists. After the war, looking for something more uncompromisingly revolutionary, they went over to Bolshevism, or, as we have seen, via national syndicalism to fascism.
(Robert O. Paxton: The Anatomy of Fascism, Allen Lane, 2004, s. 43-44)

St. Augustine on killing people from a great distance

While the Washington Post is busy having quasi-fascist hard-ons for the rescue operation the US Navy did off the coast of Somalia...

The three quick shots off the fantail of the USS Bainbridge that terminated the piracy incident in the Indian Ocean early Sunday night made a number of points for various pointy-headed political pundits to chew on, cudlike, for a few weeks. But one they'll probably miss is the following: The three shots make clear to a wider public what has been clear to people who pay attention to such things -- we are in the golden age of the sniper.

He has become a kind of chivalric hero. He is the state, speaking in thunder, restoring order to the moral universe. Or he is civilization, informing the barbarians of the fecklessness of their plight. He is the line in the sand, the point of the spear, the man with the rifle, one of the few, the proud. He is also the intellectual of combat, in some ways, bringing a cool logic to what is normally hot, messy and exhausting.

... yes, seriously, one can do worse than reflect on the circumstances which led four presumably impoverished people living in a failed state to take arms onto a sea of troubles. Here's Johann Hari on piracy off the coast of Somalia:

In 1991, the government of Somalia collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since – and the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country's food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.

Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died.

Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy to Somalia, tells me: "Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury – you name it." Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to "dispose" of cheaply. When I asked Mr Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: "Nothing. There has been no clean-up, no compensation, and no prevention."

At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia's seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish stocks by overexploitation – and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300m-worth of tuna, shrimp, and lobster are being stolen every year by illegal trawlers. The local fishermen are now starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: "If nothing is done, there soon won't be much fish left in our coastal waters."

This is the context in which the "pirates" have emerged. Somalian fishermen took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least levy a "tax" on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia – and ordinary Somalis agree. The independent Somalian news site WardheerNews found 70 per cent "strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defence".

No, this doesn't make hostage-taking justifiable, and yes, some are clearly just gangsters – especially those who have held up World Food Programme supplies. But in a telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali: "We don't consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas." William Scott would understand.

(h/t Zunguzungu in this thread)
Also, the words of St. Augustine, quoted by Noam Chomsky, spring to mind:

...an apt and true reply [was] given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride, “What meanest thou by seizing the whole earth? Because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet art styled emperor.
--St. Augustine, The City of God

Fra selvangivelsen

1.5.11 Har du eid kraftverk i 2007?

Hjelpetekst:
1.5.11
Eier du eget kraftverk svarer du ja på spørsmålet.

*
1.6.2
I denne posten fører du beregnet positiv personinntekt fra enmannsforetak hvis du driver annen virksomhet enn fiske, dagmamma¹ eller deltakerliknet foretak.

*

Lønnsoppgavekode.

[401] Positivt ber. pers.innt. - annen næring
[402] Positivt ber. pers.innt. - annen næring

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3.2.17 Fyll ut Tilleggsskjema for næringsdrivende innen jordbruk/gartneri, skogbruk, reindrift, pelsdyrnæring og skiferproduksjon i Nord-Troms og Finnmark (RF-1177), og beløpet blir overført til denne posten.

1. Jeg foretrekker termen "dagperson".

Et portrett av Martins sinnstilstand tidlig på ettermiddagen mandag, 4. februar 2008

Vi vil ikke f.eks. anse filologi som del av økologien, selv om massekommunikasjonen av sproglige ytringer er betydelige miljøinteraksjoner og allerede har forvoldt megen tankeløs ødeleggelse av verdifull skog.
-- Arne Næss, Økologi og filosofi (preliminær utgave)

advice for the ambitiousm, young man who wants to get ahead in the world, by leonard woolf

Say, Lenny - can I call you Lenny? - you were a man of the world, you did all kinds of stuff, can I ask you for some advice?. You married Virginia Woolf (what a coincidence!), you wrote books, you did all sorts of political work, ran your own publishing house, and so on and so forth. Any helpful advice for a young man at the beginning of his career? Any cheerful thoughts to take with me on the way to...

Looking back at the age of eighty-eight over the fifty-seven years of my political work in England, knowing what I aimed at and the results, meditating on the history of Britain and the world since 1914, I see clearly that I achieved practically nothing. The world today and the history of the human anthill during the last fifty-seven years would be exactly the same as it is if I had played pingpong instead of sitting on committees and writing books and memoranda. I have therefore to make the rather ignominious confession to myself and to anyone who may read this book that I must have in a long life ground through between 150,000 and 200,000 hours of perfectly useless work.
-- Leonard Woolf, The Journey Not the Arrival Matters

Yeah. 'Kay. Thanks, Len. You're the best.