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Boredom results from being attentive to the passage of time itself.

William James (1842-1910) 

When are you a philosopher?

Baruch de Spinoza

In his book Es musste etwas besser werden …(It had to get a little better)  – in which Jürgen Habermas is interviewed by Stefan Müller Doohm and Roman Yos – Habermas tells us (p. 14): “I have always suspected myself not to be a ‘real’ philosopher; not one, if you will allow me the cliché, who starts from contemplating one’s own life situation and strives for deep, metaphysically valid insights. I recognized my motives more in Marxism and pragmatism. I consider the desire to make the world a little better or even to help stop the ever-threatening regressions to be an entirely unblemished motive. Therefore, I am quite satisfied with the term ‘philosopher and sociologist’.”
When reading this, I was a bit surprised, for Habermas started his academic career as a philosopher; that is, he wrote his PhD thesis The Absolute and History about the development of the concept of the absolute in Schelling’s work against the background of Heidegger’s Being and Time. Isn’t this a real philosophical theme? Only after having written his thesis, Habermas switched to more sociological themes. Moreover, aren’t Marxism and pragmatism philosophical movements? Or at least, aren’t they also philosophical movements? And thirdly, if you are a philosopher and a sociologist, does the fact that you are also a sociologist make you a less real philosopher? Does it make you an inferior kind of philosopher? Nevertheless, I can understand Habermas’s feeling, since I have a bit the same “problem”, but then the other way round. I studied sociology and later I switched to philosophy and then I wrote my PhD thesis on a philosophical subject (in the field of action theory). Since then, I have written mainly on philosophical subjects (although I must admit that over the years my themes have become more sociological again). So there are reasons to call myself a philosopher. Nevertheless, I hesitate to do so. Why? Actually I am a philosopher and sociologist in the sense explained by Habermas. That’s okay, isn’t it? Then why should I hesitate to apply these designations to myself?
However this may be, I think that Habermas’s words betray a German view on philosophy; a view that he wouldn’t have expressed in this way, if he were an Anglo-Saxon philosopher. In his view, a philosopher – as a philosopher! – should deal with “deeper” ideas; he or she should answer “deeper” questions; so with questions about the Absolute, the Being, the Good, Reason, etc. In this view, questions like what actions are and what makes them different from behaviour (Davidson) are not philosophical; just like questions about the right political system (Spinoza); or what meaningful language is (Dummett); what the distinction of science and non-science is (Carnap); etc.; so, questions that refer to the practice of life, methodological questions, and many more. These are questions especially studied by Anglo-Saxon philosophers. Understand me well, Habermas doesn’t object to them. Also according to him, they make sense. Even more, Habermas studied them, too, and he tried to find answers to these questions. Nevertheless, if I understand well his words quoted above, in his heart Habermas thinks that such questions are not to be studied by a Philosopher as a Philosopher (so a philosopher written with a capital P).
Apart from the question whether Habermas would defend this “German” view on philosophy – and I think that he would not and that, when asked, he would give a much broader view of what philosophy is; but here I am just interpreting the hidden view behind the quotation above – I think that many people have such a “Habermasian” view on philosophy as a vague and woolly activity. As we have seen above, this does not correspond to philosophical practice. But what then does a philosopher do? If you would ask me, I would say: A philosopher studies questions that are not empirical (or theological; but here I want to ignore the question what makes philosophy and theology different). So a philosopher studies all questions that cannot be empirically tested (and that are not theological). Okay, there are also so-called experimental philosophers, but they do not experimentally test philosophical views as such, but they test whether philosophical intuitions and justifications are generally shared. For example, if a philosopher says “This statement is intuitively true”, an experimental philosopher is interested in the question whether this intuition is generally shared and not in the truth of the statement.
Questions like the difference between action and behaviour, or what the right political system is, etc., may not be “deep” questions, but they are relevant for the practice of daily life. For example, whether we interpret a crime as an action or as a piece of behaviour makes whether we send the perpetrator to prison or to a psychiatric hospital. Such an interpretation is, at least for a part, philosophical. In case a practical question cannot be solved by an empirical test, we can try to solve it by thinking it through. And for that we need a philosopher or someone who thinks philosophically.

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Texts offer their resistance to the reader, philosophical texts even more so.

Jürgen Habermas (1929-) 

Poisoning the well

In old times, it was an often-used method to poison the wells of your enemy. Actually, it’s not only a method of the ancient past. In March 1917, during the First World War (1914-1918), the German army decided to shorten their lines on the Western Front in Northern France in order to make them stronger and they left extended areas to the French and the British armies. The Germans devastated these areas with scorched earth tactics and they poisoned the wells there as well. I am convinced that this method is still applied in the present wars in the world, although I have no evidence. This is already bad enough, but when in medieval Europe an epidemic broke out, often the false myth went around that Jews secretly poisoned wells and drinking fountains used by Christians and that this was the cause of the epidemic. Often this created a gulf of antisemitism if not violence and injustice against Jews. Certainly in those days it was difficult for the Jews to refute such false allegations.
Poisoning the well – in reality or confabulated – is not only a method of fighting, it has also become the name of a fallacy, so a mistake in our way of thinking. It belongs to the category of ad hominem fallacies or “playing the man”. The essence of the poisoning the well fallacy (PTW) is this: “PTW occurs when we illegitimately prime our audience with a pre-emptive strike against, or with adverse information about, an argumentative opponent before the latter has had a chance to say anything in her own defense or in defense of her point of view.” This will make the audience – and maybe the speaker as well – prejudiced against the opponent with the effect that the audience will interpret the opponent’s claims “as ‘fulfilling’ and ‘confirming’ the presumptions buried inside this conceptual trap.” (Ruiz, p. 196) In other words, the opponent is already put in a bad light before she has had any possibility to react, with the possible effect that she isn’t taken seriously or that her reaction is seen as a confirmation of what the speaker said about her, anyhow. For example (from “Poisoning the Well”):

“Tim: Boss, you heard my side of the story why I think Bill should be fired and not me. Now, I am sure Bill is going to come to you with some pathetic attempt to weasel out of this lie that he has created.
Explanation: Tim is poisoning the well by priming his boss by attacking Bill’s character, and setting up any defense Bill might present as ‘pathetic’. Tim is using this fallacious tactic here, but if the boss were to accept Tim’s advice about Bill, she would be committing the fallacy.”

As Nelson Todd explains: “The reason [PTW] is a fallacy is that it, like other fallacies, operates on the basis of little or no evidence. As such, it is prone to yield erroneous conclusions because it is not an orderly, objective way to reason through an argument.” The argumentation of the speaker is only based on the defamation of the opponent and then already before she got a chance to speak. It is not based on what the opponent really says. Moreover, besides that the other person is defamed, it is quite possible, even if the defamation generally is true, that it is not true in this case. If you say or think that John is a pathological liar, it is still possible that in this case he speaks the truth.
Poisoning the well can be an intentional tactic to “win” your case. It is often used as a tactic by politicians in order to get the voters on their hand. However, it is also possible that the speaker really believes what she says. Then PTW is not only a kind of false reasoning but also a kind of prejudice in the head of the speaker. If so, PTW is not only a kind of false reasoning that influences what others do but also your own actions. To take an example of Nelson: If “a patient in alcohol or drug rehab … encounters a therapist who has never had any alcohol or drugs themselves[, the] patient might think, ‘There is no way this person will ever truly understand what it is like to be an addict – therefore, I am not going to listen to anything they have to say.’ ” But maybe the therapist has much experience with treating addicts and has become the best expert in this field. The patient is prejudiced against the therapist. Since every person has prejudices, everybody of us should be aware that he or she can fall into the PTW trap. For instance: “I think that he is such and such a person, so therefore he’ll react in X way”. But is he really such and such a person? Isn’t it a bias in your head? Beware, for often we don’t poison the wells of our adversaries but our own wells.

Sources
- Nelson, Todd, “How ‘Poisoning the Well’ Hurts Everyone”, op website https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/us-and-them/202310/how-poisoning-the-well-hurts-everyone
- “Poisoning the Well”, op website https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Poisoning-the-Well
- Roberto Ruiz, “Poisoning the well”, in Robert Arp; Steven Barbone; Michael Bruce (eds.), Bad arguments. 100 of the most important fallacies in Western philosophy. Oxford, etc.: Wiley Blackwell, 2019; pp. 196-200.

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As a single, self-contained person, man can only exist by drawing breath from the space of meanings and reasons shared with other speakers, that is from the linguistic infrastructure of his "world" - but at the same time intersubjectively shared - life.

Jürgen Habermas (1929-)

Culture and clashes

Edward Sapir is especially known for his contributions to linguistics. During his work as a linguist, he studied Native American languages. This made that he became interested in anthropology as well. So, his Culture, Language, and Personality. Selected Essays (see my blog last week) contains besides linguistic studies also anthropological articles. One, “Cultural, genuine and spurious” (pp. 78-119), describes what culture is, and, though written a century ago, I think that Sapir’s classification of types of culture there is still relevant in the present world; a world characterized by migration flows that bring people with different cultural backgrounds into contact with each other on a large scale. Some (notably Samuel P. Huntington) think that this will lead to an increase of conflicts in the world, even to that extent that they speak of a clash of civilizations or cultures. Although I think that the origin of the present conflicts and those that can be expected in the near future is more complicated, this seems to me sufficient reason to go into the question what actually culture is.

According to Sapir there are three wa=ys that the concept of culture is used. Firstly, “culture is technically used by the ethnologist and culture-historian to embody any socially inherited element in the life of man, material and spiritual. Culture so defined is coterminous with man himself…” (p. 79) In this sense, culture is every human material and non-material product, but in a material product not the product as such is important for seeing it as cultural, so not the “hardcore” or “stuff” is important, but the way humans use it and have produced it. For instance, not that we eat cauliflower as such is cultural, for humans need to eat, like all animals. But it is cultural, because we prepare this vegetable in a certain way; because we eat it in a certain way, which is different from culture to culture (if people elsewhere eat cauliflower); because the present cauliflowers are the result of an age-old cultivation process; etc. In this view, culture is what makes a material thing a social product. Since as a child I read already anthropology books, I am very familiar with this use of the concept of culture, but most people don’t see it this way.
“The second application of the term is more widely current”, so Sapir. “It refers to a rather conventional idea of individual refinement, built up on a certain modicum of assimilated knowledge and experience but made up chiefly of a set of typical reactions that have the sanction of a class and of a tradition of long standing.” (80-81) It is the concept that makes that we call something sophisticated, or that we call a person so, because he or she knows how things are or should be done, especially in the intellectual field. We call such a knowledgeable person a “cultured person”, but, so Sapir adds, “only up to a certain point. Far more emphasis is placed upon manner, a certain preciousness of conduct which takes different colors according to the nature of the personality that has assimilated the ‘cultured’ ideal.” A negative expression of this kind of culture is snobbishness. (81)
The third type of culture is most difficult to describe, Sapir says. It is vague but undeniable and all-penetrating. It “shares with our first, technical, conception an emphasis on the spiritual possessions of the group rather than of the individual. With our second conception it shares a stressing of selected factors out of the vast whole of the ethnologist’s stream of culture as intrinsically more valuable, more characteristic, more significant in a spiritual sense than the rest.” This cultural conception “aims to embrace in a single term those general attitudes, views of life, and specific manifestations of civilization that give a particular people its distinctive place in the world. Emphasis is put not so much on what is done and believed by a people as on how what is done and believed functions in the whole life of that people, on what significance it has for them.” (82-83). This type of culture is often ascribed to nations, also to groupings within nations, and sometimes it unites people that are separated by borders. In this way we can talk of the Dutch culture, American culture, Kurdish culture, Scandinavian culture, Catalonian culture, and the like.
To this threefold use of the concept of culture I want to add yet another application. Briefly, it refers to what we could call the works and practices of intellectual, and in particular artistic, activity. Music, literature, painting and sculpture, theatre and film are types of practices of this idea of culture. Especially, it refers to the “higher” versions of these practices. I think that this fourth type of culture is what most people think of, when they think of culture. Many countries have a Ministry of Culture that deals with and tries to stimulate culture in this fourth sense.

This now fourfold use of the concept of culture makes clear that it is a multidimensional concept. When we talk about culture, at first sight it may not be clear what we mean by it. It is a thing that must be clarified, explicitly or implicitly, before we can go on. A certain use or “dimension” of the concept is relevant only in the right context. In the context of a political discussion and practice in which migration, ethnic diversity and integration are important themes, the first and third uses are most important, so the ethnological use of the concept of culture and the use that stresses general attitudes, views of life, and specific manifestations of nations and peoples. For just these cultural dimensions lead to and form the values, norms, customs and habits of peoples that are often mutually not understood and that can lead to large-scale frictions that surpass individual irritations. Just cultural differences created in this way are often misunderstood and belong to the factors that make that some want to kick out the newly arrived.

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We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation.

Edward Sapir (1884-1939)

Language and life world. Edward Sapir

About 100 years ago, a group of philosophers, the so-called logical positivists, tried to develop a system which should make it possible to reduce all scientific statements to logic. Especially Rudolf Carnap tried to do so in his 1928 book Der logische Aufbau der Welt (The Logical Structure of the World). It failed. The problem was that these philosophers considered language as something objective, a mere instrument. What they forgot or ignored was that each objective scientific language is based on the ordinary language of daily life and that there is a close connection between a language and the life world of its speakers. In other words, there is a close connection between language and culture. We can never define the basic terms of a scientific theory in a purely objective manner, for in the end, we must always fall back on the colloquial language in order to describe these basic terms. Logical positivists could have understood this, if they had been open to the language theory of one of their contemporaries, Edward Sapir. Sapir, didn’t study the relationship between scientific language and ordinary language and life world, but he gave the tools that can be used for such an analysis.
Edward Sapir (1884-1939), a Polish born American, worked both in the field of anthropology and in the field of linguistics. He is especially known for the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which he developed together with his student Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941). This hypothesis says that the way someone perceives and conceptualizes the world is determined by the language he or she speaks. We can find the essence of this thesis in Sapir’s article “Language”. In the first place, so Sapir states there, language is “a system of phonetic symbols for the expression of communicable thought and feeling.” (p. 1) This means that a language is not merely phonetic, so a combination of sounds, for these sounds refer to something in the world, which makes that they have a meaning. “In all known languages, phonemes [sets of similar speech sounds] are built up into distinct and arbitrary sequences which are at once recognized by speakers as meaningful symbols of reference.” (4-5) Such phonemes are combined into words. These words can be combined and structured in a “complicated field of … formal procedures which are intuitively employed by the speakers of a language in order to build up aesthetically and functionally satisfying symbol sequences …” Together these formal procedures constitute the grammar of a language. (5)
A language doesn’t have only these formal characteristics, but it has psychological characteristics as well. First, language is felt to be a perfect symbolic system for handling all references and meanings of a culture, both useful for communication and for thinking. (6) Second, as a way of acting, language does not “stand apart from or run parallel to direct experience but completely interpenetrates with it.” (8) Reality and language are often felt as two sides of the same coin. Thirdly, since we grow into language from our birth, it is, “in spite of its quasi-mathematical form, … rarely a purely referential organization. It tends to be so only in scientific discourse, and even there it may be seriously doubted whether the ideal pure reference is ever attained by language.” (10; my italics) Given the expressive and communicative function of language plus the fact that language refers to the world around us and that in this way it gets a symbolic content, we can say that, in Sapir’s view, language is a reflection of our life world, and is often felt to be the world itself.
Though “the importance of language as a whole for the definition, expression, and transmission of culture is undoubted”, so Sapir, “it does not follow … that there is a simple correspondence between the form of a language and the form of the culture of those who speak it. … There is no general correlation between cultural type and linguistic structure.” (34) For then grammar and culture should develop in a parallel way, which is clearly not the case. But though we cannot see the influence of the general form of a language on the culture where this language is spoken, we can see such an influence of the detailed content of this language: “Vocabulary is a very sensitive index of the culture of a people and changes of the meaning, loss of old words, the creation and borrowing of new ones are all dependent on the history of culture itself.” (36) It is in the words and distinctions made in languages that we can see the impact of a language on a culture. Moreover, his view on language implies that language can be influenced by culture, such as that new inventions lead to new words. The essence is – and that is what the logical positivists ignored and what led to the failure of their approach – that language refers to the world; not to the world as such but to culture. Culture gives language its meaning while language gives culture its views. One implication is that we cannot develop an objective language with no connection with our culture, and by that with our life world.

Blog written on the occasion of Edward Sapir’s birthday (26 January) and the anniversary of his death (4 February).

Source
Edward Sapir, “Language”, in Culture, Language, and Personality. Selected Essays. Berkeley, etc.: University of California Press, 1956. The page numbers after the quotes in the text refer to this edition.

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The network of cultural patterns of a civilization is indexed in the language which expresses that civilization.

Edward Sapir (1884-1939)

How to end war

Käthe Kollwitz, "Grieving Parents". 
Roggeveld German Military Cemetary, Vladslo, Belgium

“While nations go to war expecting quick decisive results they habitually find themselves mired in protracted conflict.” (source)

It is almost three years ago that Russia invaded Ukraine, and although Russia expected a quick victory, also in this case the statement just quoted proved to be true: The war has reached a stalemate and, despite slowly moving front lines, no end of the fighting is in sight, nor seems a quick solution possible. Nevertheless, US president Trump thinks that he can end the war within one day. At least, so he said during his presidential campaign. Although this statement doesn’t seem realistic, nevertheless it is a good moment to think about the question how to end the Ukraine-Russia War (and isn’t any moment a good moment for this?). Here I want to mention some problems that make a solution of the conflict difficult, and that certainly will make it difficult to lay the basis for its end in one day.

- No war of this type ends without a truce as a first step to peace. But making a truce is not simply a matter of calling each other and saying “We are both fed up with this war. Let’s stop fighting tomorrow at ten o’clock.” The fighting parties must agree on demarcation lines (what is in my hands, what is in your hands; what if my troops are located behind your troops; etc.). Soldiers must be informed about the truce. Front lines must be disentangled. And certainly in this Ukraine-Russia War, we need a mediator.
- Which country or organisation or person can take the role of mediator? The USA/Trump? The USA is a party in the conflict, but Trump as a person seems to distance himself from the war. Will he really do? Is he acceptable for Russia/Putin? Most likely, he is not. Who will then be an acceptable mediator? China? But till now China has chosen – more or less – the side of Russia. Turkey? But Turkey is a NATO member and supports Ukraine, but on the other hand the country behaves itself often in quite an independent way. Another option is India. India seems to be acceptable for both parties and president Zelensky has asked unofficially India already to play this role.
- Russia invaded Ukraine three years ago. That is, then the present phase of the war started, but actually the war began already with the occupation of the Crimea by Russia in 2014 and the fighting in the east of Ukraine and the “independence” of the region since then (followed by its annexation by Russia). As a consequence, there is great distrust between the two countries, especially from the side of Ukraine. So, what we need are so-called confidence-building measures. What should they involve?
- Once negotiations have started, what should the parties talk about, besides of a vague “bringing peace” or “ending the war”? In view of the present military situation, what Russia probably wants is keeping the regions conquered, the withdrawal of the Ukrainian troops from Russian territory, and turning Ukraine into a vassal state. On the other hand, Ukraine will want to have its territory restored, if possible including the return of the Crimea. Moreover, it will not want to have to give up its future membership of NATO and the European Union, which it sees as essential for its security.
- This, security, is maybe the key word of the peace negotiations. In order to avoid another invasion by Russia in future, Ukraine will ask security guarantees. What must such security guarantees involve? That Ukraine will become a NATO member? (unacceptable for Russia) Foreign peacekeeping forces? If so, from which countries? Only a treaty saying that Russia and the USA etc. will guarantee the inviolability of Ukraine’s territory will not be enough. For didn’t Russia, the United States and United Kingdom sign the Budapest Memorandum in 1994, in which these countries formally recognized Ukraine’s sovereignty within its then-existing borders and undertook not to violate them? Even more, they promised to “respect the independence and sovereignty and existing borders of Ukraine” and “to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity and political independence of Ukraine.”

This short list – and certainly more points can be added, like about the war damage and the war crimes – makes clear that this war cannot be ended in one day and also that it must end in a compromise at the negotiation table. And then, how often hasn’t it happened that such a compromise has been the prelude to a new war. The Treaty of Versailles, which ended the First World and was followed by the Second World War, is a case in point. Nobody is waiting for a new Big European War, which certainly be a Third World War.
As Thania Paffenholz, an expert in international relations, remarks in an interview: “The war goes on until one party feels, ‘If we continue, we will weaken our position’ – or rather ‘What we want is now better achieved at the negotiating table.’ When a conflict reaches this point, we call it ‘ripe for resolution.’ ” The question is: Have we reached that point already? If we would ask the people of Ukraine and Russia, without a doubt the answer would be “yes”. Even more, the war would never have started. However – adapting Ms Paffenholz’s words a little bit – “The current system allows those in power to act like kings in the Middle Ages sending their peasants to war.”

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The principle of inviolability of borders applies to every country whether it is in the East or in the West.

Olaf Scholz, German Chancellor 

Who I am not

Image by Chat GPT (see note below)

Sometimes I am curious to know who I am according to AI. As far as I know there is not much about me on the internet, though I guess, that there is more there, than I assume. So, what would AI say about me? Therefore, I asked ChatGPT to write a text about me as a philosopher. Here is the result. I have added a few comments between square brackets:

“Henk bij de Weg (1919-1991) [False. I am still alive and I am also not from 1919] was a Dutch philosopher and professor of philosophy at the University of Amsterdam [Fake]. He is best known for his work on the philosophy of language [Fake] and the philosophy of action. His work was heavily [No: a little] influenced by the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein and he was an important figure in the development of Dutch analytic philosophy. [Fake] Bij de Weg was an advocate of logical positivism [Quite the contrary] and argued that language should be used as a tool to clarify and sharpen thinking. [Hmmm] He believed that language was a tool to express and uncover the underlying structure of reality and argued that our understanding of language should be guided by the principles of clarity, consistency and economy. He was also a proponent of the view that philosophical problems should be solved through careful analysis and argumentation. [Some] Bij de Weg's work has been widely influential in the development of Dutch analytic philosophy [Fake] and has been cited in many scholarly works. [I wish it was true] His work has been used to address topics such as the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of language, and the philosophy of action. [?] He is remembered as an important figure in Dutch philosophy and his legacy continues to influence philosophical thinking today. [Fake]”

IT’S ALL LIES

Now, because I have published this blog here, when you are going to ask ChatGPT who the philosopher Henk bij de Weg is, probably you’ll find something like the text above, for it will find this blog text about me on the internet and think that it’s true, just because it is on the internet. Then, because AI has written it, maybe you think that it is true. However, it’s all lies.
In another version, ChatGPT made me “a renowned Dutch philosopher who has been a leader in the field of moral philosophy. He is best known for his views on the ethical implications of technology and the implications of modernity on our daily lives….” etc. Also this is all lies. Why cannot AI not give the simple human answer “I don’t know?”

Note
I asked ChatGPT, in Dutch, also: “Create an image of the famous philosopher Henk bij de Weg. This is what ChatGPT said, before presenting the image above (note that my last name can be translated in English as “by the road”, or something like that):

“Henk bij de Weg seems to be a fictional name, so I will make an image of a philosopher named Henk who is thinking along a rural road, surrounded by nature. He has a philosophical appearance with a long coat and glasses, and has books around him.”

Again, ChatGPT goes wrong. “bij de Weg” is a real, though, rare, Dutch family name. Moreover, I have published several books and articles under this name and I have several websites under this name (see the columns left and right on this blog page). Why then does ChatGPT say that it is a fictional name? So, ChatGPT could have found my real me simply via this blog website.

Random quote
You cannot outsource the assessment of a question to computers. There is no objective or detached criterion for it; a good question is always a good question for us.

Marjan Slob (1980-)

Paths of freedom

I think that everybody knows them, those unplanned, spontaneous tracks and paths through lawns, open grounds, ruderal terrain, etc. that we call desire paths, elephant paths, or how you like. They are used as shortcuts in parks, between roads, between paths, etc. Maybe a shortcut is used only once by someone and then it will fade away. If only this person uses it regularly, it is a kind of private shortcut. If also other persons are going to use the same shortcut regularly, it will gradually wear out. Then, what once was a hardly visible trail becomes a clear path, although an unofficial one; a path that has come into existence by habit. It came there because the users desired there to go; because so they were faster where they wanted to go; or because walking there was easier than on the official path or road. Once it is there, people may come to see it as an official path; as a real path. What once was a trail or only a casual shortcut has become institutionalized by habit. In an older blog I preferred the name “elephant path”, but here I want to call it a “desire path”, because this fits the present blog better.
Desire paths can be seen as self-willed, if not stubborn, reactions to the infrastructure made by planners. A desire path is a kind of re-interpretation, or personal interpretation of the spatial structure designed by city planners. City planners have filled in the space in a certain way and they have given it a certain meaning in terms of spaces to be used as paths or streets; or as sidewalks; or as lawns; and so on. The meanings given to these spaces are sometimes clarified if not ordered by traffic signs, information panels and signs with texts (“Don’t walk on the lawn”, “No dogs allowed”). They make the interpretation of the structured space clear to its users, especially if these meanings don’t follow from generally known customary standard meanings. (That also standard meanings are not self-evident or objective and usually are culturally dependent, becomes often clear when you are travelling around in another country. Then such meanings often are not so obvious to you as they are to the locals.)
However, people frequently don’t follow the official or accepted interpretations. Often they give structured spaces their own meanings. A desire path is such an alternative interpretation. By making or using a desire path, the user doesn’t see, for example, the lawn as a piece of nature to be protected or as a playground, but (also) as an open space that can be used as a shortcut to go from A to B, instead of following the official paths or roads. The maker or user of a desire path gives the official structure of the space a personal interpretation or re-interpretation. Sometimes city authorities follow such a re-interpretation, when they provide the desire path with a pavement; sometimes they take countermeasures by putting a barrier there in order to stop the use of the desire path or they put there a sign forbidding the use; or they simply ignore it.
Such an explanation of desire paths in terms of how planners and users interpret and re-interpret structured space is not far from an interpretation in terms of power. Roads and paths constructed by city authorities are ways to organise public life and to guide streams of traffic (walkers, cyclists, cars …). They are means to force passers-by, with a gentle hand or with a hard hand, to follow pre-determined roads and paths according to the preferences of those authorities. Such constructed passages are means to exercise power. This becomes explicit, if preferred routes are indicated by direction signs and traffic signs, and even more if not following the signs can be fined. Then the passer-by doesn’t only simply “actualize” the preferences of the city authorities, as Michel de Certeau would call it, but he or she is forced to do so. In other words, city authorities construct spaces, called roads, paths, etc., to guide and control the movements of the citizens. If less important, such spaces are merely spaces preferred for a certain use by the city authorities, but if necessary its use can be forced by signs, fences and fines. So, even in our seemingly banal, insignificant everyday movements through the city, we are constantly under pressure of forms of power. (see Lauren Daran) “I have to go here and not there, because there is no passage there” or “… because there the road is blocked” or “… because there it is forbidden.” This is what a passer-by constantly must think.
If we can see roads and paths and all officially structured city spaces (and the same for such spaces outside the cities, of course) as constructed power structures for guiding people in the right way, then we can see desire paths as ways of opposition against this power. Seen this way, desire paths are acts of resistance or at least of disobedience to the power structures that organize and construct the public spaces and that have been imposed by the authorities. Desires paths don’t follow the preferences and desires of the authorities, enforced or not by signs, fences and fines, but the preferences and desires of the users. By flouting the rules, desire paths are not just personal shortcuts but paths of freedom.

Random quote
If we do something good in a dilemma, we automatically omit something good in such a case and thus do something morally wrong.

Markus Gabriel (1980-)

How to recognize AI texts

Look at the picture. No doubt you’ll have noticed that the text there has been written by Artificial Intelligence (AI). The picture as such is human-made, however; made by me (with the help of Photoshop).
We can characterize 2024 in many ways, but we can say that 2024 was the year that AI made its definitive breakthrough. Of course, AI was already known among insiders and experts, and reports of its use had already reached the general public. Launched in 2022, in 2023 ChatGPT (to mention only one application of AI) had already gained over 100 million users, but since 2024 ChatGPT's website is among the 10 most-visited websites globally, and in 2025 it’s impact will only be stronger. AI has become inescapable.
AI can be very useful, but it can also be dangerous. As for the latter, often it generates inaccurate information, especially about recent “facts”. I noticed this myself when I asked ChatGPT to write a text about me, namely who I am as a philosopher. It was full of nonsense. It made me a professor in philosophy at a certain university (fake!); it told that I had written about certain subjects, which was also nonsense; etc. In fact, the whole text was nonsense. Moreover, it has also happened to me that people sent me mails written by AI, suggesting that they were written by real persons. AI can mislead also in other ways, and if you base your decisions on false or misleading AI generated texts, you can make enormous blunders. It can even be a matter of life and death, if you work in the healthcare sector. On the other hand, AI can be very useful, and it can help you save time and make you more productive. So, you certainly should not avoid using it. However, it is always important to know that a text you use has been written by AI, as just illustrated. Despite all its positive effects, “the rise of AI’s use has been matched by the rise in AI’s misuse to deceive, manipulate, and extort, creating the potential for significant economic and political implications”, as one website says.
If you have recognized the text in the blog photo as AI written, probably it was because of its woolly language. Nevertheless, AI texts are becoming more and more perfect, and maybe, in future, you cannot distinguish any longer AI generated texts from human written texts, or at least it will be very difficult. Even now, tests show that in many cases people see AI-generated texts as human written (and also the other way around). And some people simply have no sense of seeing that a text is AI generated. Of course, you can use an AI detector, but before you decide to use one you must have reason to do so. For in the end you cannot use an AI detector for every text you read. Therefore, here are some tips how to recognize AI texts without the use of such a detector.
As I read somewhere: “The magic – and danger – of [an AI text generator] lies in the illusion of correctness. The sentences they produce look right – they use the right kinds of words in the correct order.” And just this is also the weak point of AI generated texts, for such texts are often too beautiful, too correct. Such texts are often so beautifully and correctly written, that they become “woolly”, and that’s often a reason to become suspicious. But let me briefly list ten points that can help you recognize AI texts. (compiled from this website)
1) Repetitive writing: AI writing is characterized by repetitive phrases and ideas, while humans try to vary their words (I have even learned to do so at school, when writing texts).
2) AI texts are often formal or formulaic. It looks as if they come from a phrase book, and AI texts too often use common phrases and idioms.
3) Related to the former point is that AI texts frequently use certain words. Typical AI words are crucial, delve, dive, tapestry, furthermore, consequently, “not only but”, “in today’s adjective world of”. But there are more.
4) Presenting questionable facts and claims without giving sources. Don’t believe if you doubt and cannot check. (Should you actually always do)
5) Lack of personality. AI texts are monotonous, don’t use informal language, don’t use colloquialisms or slang, and don’t have a unique tone of voice.
6) AI texts are general and avoid details. They are not specific. Moreover, complex subjects are covered superficially, because AI lacks the depth and detail that come from first hand expertise.
7) The facts presented in an AI text are often outdated.
8) Absence of personal experiences, or they are formulated in a vague way.
9) Unconvincing storytelling or an incoherent narrative. No progression in a story and the story has no natural flow.
10) AI doesn’t understand sarcasm and the symbolic, non-literal meaning of words.
For this list, I used a blog by Satyo D., where you can find these points in more detail. Other websites list more or less the same characteristics of AI generated texts. Once you think that a text is AI generated, you can check it with an AI detector (there are many free detectors on the internet). However, also AI detectors can mislead, for also they sometimes make mistakes and don’t recognize AI written texts as written by AI or they think that human texts are AI generated. For aren’t there many people who use woolly language? Machines use woolly language because they don’t understand what they write, but isn’t it so that also humans often don’t understand what they are saying or writing? That they don’t understand themselves?
Happy New Year! (Note that this expression fits most of the ten points listed above. Nevertheless, it is not AI generated.)

Peace on Earth
In light of the ongoing conflicts and tensions around the world, World War I strongly reminds us of the need for international cooperation, dialogue and conflict resolution. While paying tribute to the fallen soldiers of the First World War, we also honour their memory by working for a more peaceful and fairer world. This presupposes an open and independent handling of history and also facing it in its entirety. Unfortunately, this is not possible in Russia, for example. History is used there as a political means.

So let’s not forget the lessons of the First World War when we take on today’s challenges.

Eugène Rosier, (President of the Foundation “Centre for the Study of the First World War”, Netherlands)

What I got from Santa

Dear Santa,

Thank you very much for your presents. But I am afraid that by studying these books I cannot make the world better but only worse.

Henk

 

What I got

- Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

- Carl von Clausewitz, On War

- Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Christmas Wish List

 

The author of this blog. Photo taken by my father.

Dear Santa,

I am very worried. There is so much misery and war in the world. When I grow up, I want to bring peace on earth. But first I must study hard. Can I therefore get these books from you? Thank you, Santa Claus. 

 - Robert A. Seeley, The handbook of nonviolence. Including Aldous Huxley’s An encyclopedia of pacifism.  

- Gandhi, An autobiography or the story of my experiments with truth 

- Gene Sharp, The politics of non-violent action. 

Henk

P.S.

 To relax I would like to have this novel:

Bertha von Suttner, Lay Down Your Arms

 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

 

Random quote
We neither strive for, nor will, nor want, nor desire anything because we judge it to be good; on the contrary we esteem something to be good because we seek it, will it, want it desire it.

Benedictus de Spinoza (1632-1677)

A monstrous child. Montaigne

Monument for the more than 1100 patients of the psychiatric hospital in my town

 murdered, directly or indirectly, by the nazis during the Second World War 

In his essays, Montaigne often starts describing one or more typical cases in an objective way and then gives his personal view on the matter. Sometimes this structure that leads from the objective to the subjective is repeated several times in an essay, and sometimes it ends yet with a final conclusion. A simple instance is the essay “Of a monstrous child” (Essays, Book II-30). It begins with a detailed description of a deformed child that was carried around by his father, an uncle and an aunt to get money by showing it. The child was a Siamese twin with two bodies and one head. The case is followed by an intermediate comment and then followed by a second case. In the comment Montaigne says that “This double body and several limbs relating to one head might be interpreted a favourable prognostic to the king, of maintaining these various parts of our state under the union of his laws.” Montaigne is referring here to the civil war that is going on in France. However, he doesn’t mean it seriously, and it is rather a criticism of the practice of looking for omens after a calamity or a favourable event, for he goes on: “but lest the event should prove otherwise, ‘tis better to let it alone, for in things already past there needs no divination” and “tis said of Epimenides, that he always prophesied backward.” In other words, it’s safest to make your predictions afterwards.
The second case in this essay is about a herdsman without genitals, but who lived and functioned like any normal person would, including making love.
In Montaigne’s time, a deformed child was seen as a monster; as a divine punishment; something the parents wanted to keep secret; as unnatural, although they were sometimes also used for earning money, as in Montaigne’s example, a practice that continued (almost) to today. Although Montaigne called the child a monster, his message is different and typical for Montaigne. Contrary to what many people thought then, Montaigne stresses that also deformed born children are creations of God and are completely natural. “Those that we call monsters are not so to God”, so Montaigne. “From His all wisdom nothing but good, common, and regular proceeds; but we do not discern the disposition and relation. … Whatever falls out contrary to custom we say is contrary to nature, but nothing, whatever it be, is contrary to her.” (italics mine) And then, the final sentence of this essay, which is also the overall conclusion: “Let, therefore, this universal and natural reason expel the error and astonishment that novelty brings along with it.” Or, as my Dutch version of the Essays renders Montaigne’s words (retranslated into English): “Let this universal natural truth free us from the misconceptions and amazement that every new thing brings to us.”
So, in this essay Montaigne calls for tolerance towards what, on the face of it, for many people, is a deviation from nature and therefore objectionable. But deviations from nature do not exist, and so, what seems to be so, cannot be objectionable. How relevant his words still are in a world in which natural behaviour often still is forbidden by law and even can be punished by death, or otherwise still is discriminated in a “milder” sense. See, for example, how much violence and discrimination there still is against LGBTQ people in this world. And see also, how in many countries women still are discriminated because they are women, and in some cases even are killed because they are women.
The essay “Of a monstrous child” is typical for Montaigne because of its structure, as said, but it is also so because of its contents. As for the latter, Montaigne’s Essays are – directly and indirectly – a call for humanity, justice and social fairness, and against torture and cruel punishment. In his essay “Of Cannibals” (Essays, Book I-30), he let natives from Brazil say, when asked for their opinion about France: “… that they had observed that there were amongst us men full and crammed with all manner of commodities, whilst, in the meantime, [poor people] were begging at their doors, lean and half-starved with hunger and poverty; and they thought it strange that these [poor] were able to suffer so great an inequality and injustice, and that they did not take the others by the throats, or set fire to their houses.” Of course, this is what Montaigne himself thought. When he was mayor of Bordeaux (1581-1585), in a letter, Montaigne asked the king for financial support of the poor. If it were up to Montaigne, we would live in a better world; a more tolerant world in the first place. Montaigne had a dream.

By the way, this blog shows a structure I often use: I start explaining the view of another thinker, like Montaigne, and at the end you find my personal view.

Random quote
Most controversies arise from this, that men do not correctly explain their own mind, or else interpret the view of the other man badly. For in reality when men most vehemently contradict one another, they either think the same thing, or are thinking of different things, so that what they consider errors or absurdities in the other are not.

Benedictus de Spinoza (1632-1677)

Montaigne’s tomb.

Montaigne's cenotaph in the Museum of Aquitaine

Montaigne died on 13 September 1592. The cause of his death is not known, but nowadays scientists think that he died of a cerebral haemorrhage. Montaigne was first temporarily buried in the church opposite the entrance to his castle. His heart is still there. His wife had a very beautiful cenotaph made for him. When that was done after a year, Montaigne's body was transferred to what should become his final resting place: The Church of the Convent of the Feuillants in Bordeaux. In 1789 the French Revolution broke out and the monastery was confiscated by the state. The former monastery was now used for housing the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of the University of Bordeaux. In 1871, the old monastery building was destroyed by a fire and a new building for the faculty was constructed. The remains of Montaigne were temporarily transferred to the Chartreuse cemetery in Bordeaux and later they were transferred to the new building of the faculty and buried in the basement. All the while, Montaigne’s cenotaph remained in the same place, so first in the monastery church and then in the faculty building. In 1987 the building was repurposed and the Museum of Aquitaine was established there. The faculty moved out but Montaigne’s cenotaph was left behind and got a special room in the museum. In 2017, the cenotaph was restored and the hall where it was exhibited also got a new look.

This is a summary of what was known about Montaigne’s grave in 2018. It was known that there was a wall in the basement with apparently closed spaces. The coffin with the remains of Montaigne should still be there. But was it? Nobody really knew and how to find out? Then the director of the museum, Laurent Védrine, got the idea that it might be possible to peep into the spaces with modern means. A team of scientists, led by archaeoanthropologist Hélène Réveillas, was formed. With a micro-camera, they peeped through a hole in the wall into the space where Montaigne probably had been buried. What they saw surpassed all expectations: A wooden coffin with the inscription “Montaigne”. To make a long story short, the space was opened, the coffin was taken out and a few months later, after careful preparation, the coffin was opened, on 18 November 2019. The coffin appeared to contain a lead sarcophagus. The sarcophagus contained “a well-preserved skeleton, a skull with almost all its teeth, as yet undetermined organic matter, tissue remains, pollen and insects. … A paper contained in a flask encased in a metallic capsule, found next to the wooden coffin, turned out to be the municipal record of re-burial of the philosopher’s body in 1886.” (source) All this was a clear indication that the remains found were Montaigne’s. But in order to find out whether they really were, more research had to be done, like carbon 14 dating, DNA research and comparing the found DNA with DNA of Montaigne’s family. And then the investigations had to be put on the back burner because of the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. But at last, a year ago, the results could be presented. As Hélène Réveillas summed up: “There is a bundle of clues, such as the dating of bones, funeral treatment (sarcophagus, embalming) testifying to a certain social rank. And the remains are from a man over 30 years old. The skeleton also revealed excellent dental hygiene, rare for the time, and a single missing tooth, mentioned by the philosopher in his writings.” All this confirmed that the man in the sarcophagus could be Montaigne. However, so Mme Réveillas, “some elements are not convincing enough. … Genealogical research of a possible descent of Montaigne to compare the traces of DNA found on the remains has not succeeded. Nor has research on hair or eye colour, for lack of existing sufficiently ‘reliable’ portraits. The 3D facial reconstruction is not more conclusive: The shape of the ears and skull do not agree with the face of the man lying on the cenotaph.” Therefore, the riddle who the man in the coffin actually is is not completely solved. Nevertheless, Mme Réveillas thinks that it is 80% certain that the man in the coffin in the basement of the Museum of Aquitaine really is Montaigne. (source)

During the years, I have written many blogs and essays about Montaigne and his Essays. I have visited places where he lived, such as his houses in Bordeaux and his castle in the Dordogne in France. I have followed Montaigne’s traces inside and outside France. I have also visited the room with his cenotaph at the Museum of Aquitaine. No wonder, that I wanted to visit his grave, too, if possible. But nobody knew where it was. But now we know, or at least we are nearly certain of it. I have visited the Museum of Aquitaine twice, so unknowingly, I have visited his grave already as well. Or almost.

Addendum
Video about the discovery of Montaigne’s remains (in French): https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8z7llg

Word of the Year
Brain rot: Supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as a result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging. Also: something characterized as likely to lead to such deterioration.

Oxford University Press, word of the year 2024

Jumping to conclusions

In my blog last week, I discussed how rightist politicians and also the Dutch prime minister explained the recent riots in Amsterdam by the insufficient integration of the perpetrators into Dutch society (remember that Dutch hooligans, supposedly with Moroccan roots, attacked Israelian football supporters). I made clear that the situation might be more complicated than supposed in this simple explanation and I explained that, if it were a matter of insufficient integration (which is doubtful), the cause is rather to be found in the lack of acceptance of foreign immigrants than that it is a lack of effort to integrate by the immigrants (and their offspring, so the second and third generation immigrants). But how must we understand the view of the politicians who gave an apparently wrong interpretation of the behaviour of the hooligans? Several options are possible, but from a philosophical-logical point of view the whole affair is a clear case of “jumping to conclusions”, a well-known but too often committed reasoning error.
What actually is jumping to conclusions? An interesting example is given by Daniel Kahneman (Thinking, Fast and Slow, pp. 79-80): How would you understand the sentence “Ann approached the bank”? “You probably imagined a woman with money on her mind, walking toward a building with tellers and secure vaults. But this plausible interpretation”, so Kahneman, “is not the only possible one. [For] if an earlier sentence had been ‘They were floating gently down the river’, you [would] just have been thinking of a river [and] the word bank is not associated with money.” In other words, there is a connection between the conclusion you draw from the sentence and your framing. However, if a clear frame is absent, we construct a frame, often without good grounds, like in the example (for how do we know whether the sentence is about a bank building or a river bank, if the context is absent?). If this happens, we jump to our conclusion, for it is quite possible that the constructed frame is not correct and that consequently also the conclusion based on it is false.
It is this what happened in the political debate after the Amsterdam hooligan affair. Because people with a Moroccan Islamic immigration background are still often seen as not Dutch, even though they live already several generations in the Netherlands and are Dutch nationals (= the framing), and because the hooligans – supposedly – had such a background, the conclusion was too quickly drawn that the hooligans were not well integrated in Dutch society and that this explained their behaviour. As I tried to show in my blog last week, it is far from obvious that the hooligans are not well integrated. This conclusion was drawn too quickly, and therefore those who thought so jumped to their conclusion instead of giving proof.
Now it is so that jumping to conclusions is not always bad. As Kahneman explains (p. 79): “[It] is efficient, if the conclusions are likely to be correct and the costs of an occasional mistake acceptable, and if the jump saves much time and effort. [It] is risky when the situation is unfamiliar, the stakes are high, and there is no time to collect more information.” In the Amsterdam hooligan affair the jump was apparently risky. During the years much evidence had been collected that the problem was different and the stakes were high in case the conclusion was false. If jumping to conclusions can be risky, why then people still do? Ignoring political (if not populist) reasons that may play a part (and undoubtedly were important in the Amsterdam hooligan affair), in short, one can say that it is a matter of simplicity, mental organization and mental laziness. (see Effectiviology, also for the quote that follows) Drawing sound conclusions is often complicated and difficult (one must collect evidence, which isn’t always easy to get and maybe doesn’t exist; and once one has it, it can be difficult to draw the right conclusions). Moreover, “our cognitive system relies on mental shortcuts …, which increase the speed of our judgment and decision-making processes, at the cost of reducing their accuracy and optimality.” So, jumping to conclusions seems the quickest way to get what you are looking for. And why do in a complicated way if there seems to be an easy way as well? But the belief that justifies a quick conclusion is often false and the quickly gathered evidence for that belief is often only gathered for confirming that belief, while contrary evidence is ignored (the confirmation bias). The main function of the quick conclusion is then confirming the false belief instead of giving a reasonable ground for a quick decision. Then the quick conclusion gives an unjustified feeling of certainty, but certainty is what people want. Nevertheless, jumping to conclusions is a natural phenomenon and we do so continuously, for it saves time and most of the time it leads to satisfactory results. However, it can be risky, and if there is a lot at stake (and in politics this is often the case), we should – no, must – avoid it, for otherwise it can lead to nasty consequences (and in politics to social unrest and unjustified treatment of individuals and groups).

Random quote
From the moment when in fact, even indirectly, reprisals against civilian populations and torture practices are justified, there is no rule or value.

Albert Camus (1913-1960)

The integration paradox

The integration puzzle of the Dutch PM Dick Schoof

At the moment, in the Netherlands a discussion is going on that is, I think, not only important for the Netherlands but for any country with a big number of immigrants. The reason of the discussion is the pursuit and beating up of Israelian football supporters by Dutch hooligans in Amsterdam, two weeks ago. It was a clear case of antisemitism. Many of the Dutch hooligans were Moroccan Dutch, so they had a Moroccan and also an Islamic immigration background. In the debate about how to explain and how to tackle this affair, often the term integration paradox is used. What actually is this integration paradox?
Like in many countries, in the Netherlands there are many citizens with a migration background, so people who either lived already very long in the Netherlands, or were born there and have foreign roots (second and third generation immigrants). Most non-European Dutchmen (and that’s what I am talking about in this blog) originally are from Morocco, Turkey, and the former Dutch colonies Surinam and in the Caribbean. Although the level of education and the labour market position of the second generation non-European immigrants have improved considerably compared to their parents, this group experiences more exclusion and discrimination. This is what recent Dutch studies have shown. The phenomenon is expressed in the term “integration paradox”: Those who are better adapted to the Dutch society feel themselves more excluded and discriminated. Especially those with a better socio-economic position feel so, and whatever they do to become accepted, it doesn’t help. This feeling is less strong among lower-skilled people with a migration background. The integration paradox applies especially to people with Moroccan and Turkish roots, and less or not at all to people with Surinamese and Caribbean roots. The integration paradox is all the more paradoxical, since 71% of the Dutch without a migration background think positive about the cultural diversity in the Netherlands. Despite this theoretical attitude of the Dutch without a migration background, one gets the impression that attempts by immigrants and their offspring to adapt and integrate has an adverse effect, especially when they are well educated.
Let’s now return to the violence in Amsterdam described above. Many of the Dutch hooligans who attacked Israeli football supporters because they were Jews were, supposedly, Moroccan Dutch boys and men, most if not all of them being Islamic. After their acts of violence, the Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof and other politicians, especially those of the extreme right party PVV, reacted that these violent acts were due to the inadequate integration of Islamic people with a migration background. Of course, this reaction evoked outrage among many Islamic people with a migration background, for most of them have nothing to do with and don’t want to have anything to do with such antisemitic violence and function well in the Dutch society. Later PM Schoof corrected his words, saying that he meant to refer only to “a specific group of young people with a migration background who exhibit inappropriate behaviour”. According to the prime minister, this points to a broader integration problem, in fact implying that the young people he referred to haven’t integrated well and that’s their fault (or their parents’ fault). But is it? I think that the integration paradox shows that it is not. For this paradox and studies that substantiate it make it more than likely that the problem is not that people with a migration background haven’t integrated themselves, but that it is the Dutch who don’t integrate people with a migration background. Not the migrants and their offspring must be blamed, if their integration is poor, but the Dutch without a migration background are guilty of that, although they say that immigrants must integrate. That’s the real integration paradox.
Integration is a matter of adapting and accepting. Integration is also a matter for two parties: the immigrants and the original population of the country (“original” in the sense of those who are already living there at the moment the immigrants arrive). But when the first group, the immigrants, tries to adapt to the receiving country and to accept what it finds there, but the second group doesn’t do its part, integration cannot be complete. Nowhere.

Sources
- Broasca, Delphine, “De integratieparadox op de universiteit”
- “De ‘integratieparadox’: hoe langer in Nederland, hoe meer onbehagen”
- Dikkenberg, Nicole van den, De integratieparadox in Nederland. Waardoor ervaren hoger opgeleide etnische minderheden discriminatie in Nederland?
- Geurts, Nella, Waarom voelen hoger opgeleide migranten zich minder verbonden met Nederland? De integratieparadox vanuit meerdere methoden
- Pré, Raoul du, “Premier Schoof ziet groot probleem met de integratie: ‘Hun gedrag is schokkend, moreel volstrekt ontaard’”
- “Schoof baalt van ’verkeerde vertaling’ integratie-uitspraken”
- “Vaak onbehagen bij tweede generatie met migratieachtergrond”
- TV programs and other newspaper articles

- The integration paradox is not a typical Dutch phenomenon. Search the internet for studies about the integration paradox in other countries and in other languages.

Random quote
The history of power politics is nothing but the history of international crime and mass murder (including, it is true, some of the attempts to suppress them). This history is taught in schools, and some of the greatest criminals are extolled as its heroes.

Karl Popper (1902-1994)

Paradoxes of democracy

The Dutch National Liberation Monument in Wageningen, Netherlands (detail)

In footnote 4 to chapter 7 of his “The Open Society and Its Enemies” Karl R. Popper mentions three paradoxes typical for democratic states: the paradox of freedom, the paradox of tolerance and the paradox of democracy. The paradox of freedom is, so Popper, “the argument that freedom in the sense of absence of any restraining control must lead to very great restraint, since it makes the bully free to enslave the meek.” This paradox is often solved – which is not discussed here by Popper – by the rule that the freedom of one ends where that of the other is affected. The paradox of tolerance involves, so Popper, that unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. “If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and the tolerance with them.” Popper doesn’t say that we must always suppress intolerant expressions, but we must keep the right to do so. However, Popper is vague about how far the tolerance of intolerance goes. I would say that at least it goes not further than where intolerance affects, if not harms, the basic rights of others or threats to do so; to begin with rights like the inviolability of life and body and other human rights. The third paradox Popper mentions is the paradox of democracy or rather, so Popper, “majority rule; i.e. the possibility that the majority may decide that a tyrant should rule.”
I think that the essence of these paradoxes is the question of respect for the other: Freedom, tolerance and democracy end if others, especially minorities, are not respected. This requires an idea of equality between people and a protection of minority rights and the rights of those who think differently. This is not always easy, however, if we think of, for example, the just mentioned problem of tolerating intolerance. Anyhow, I think that from a political point of view, the paradox of democracy problem is fundamental, since it involves the paradoxes of freedom and tolerance. It is no wonder then that politically Poppers sees the solution in the right institutional structures: “We demand a government that rules according to the principles of equalitarianism and protectionism; that tolerates all who are prepared to reciprocate, i.e. who are tolerant; that is controlled by, and accountable to, the public.” Etc. Then “all these paradoxes can be easily avoided…”, so Popper. Easily? I wished it were true, for when we look at what is happening in the world today, we see something else. With more or less enthusiasm, people in this world vote for intolerant and undemocratic leaders that suppress freedom (leaders who, once in power, often succeed to manipulate the next elections that way that they are re-elected again and again). These leaders legally and illegally undermine the freedom of expression either directly, for instance by putting down those who verbally attack them and who by doing so affect their power, (“you are a foreign agent”); or they undermine the freedom of expression indirectly, for instance by making access to the public media for their critics increasingly difficult. if not by using worse means. Minority rights are restricted as well. Opponents, whose only “crime” is that they belong to another political party are threatened with violence. Nevertheless people vote for such leaders. Will you be the next victim? As I read in UN News: “More than 60 elections are taking place in 2024 and, whilst 90 per cent of people say they want to live in a democracy, many are voting for people and systems that are restricting their rights. The UN has expressed concern about this ‘democracy paradox’, and that fact that some governments and governance systems are becoming increasingly repressive.” Democracy is not that easy.