Two weeks ago,
Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado received the Nobel Peace
Prize, although a narcissistic political leader claimed to deserve this award. Anyway,
I think this is a good time to pay attention to a person who was not only the
first woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, but who also had a major impact
on the creation of this award: Bertha von Suttner.
Bertha von Suttner was born in Prague in 1843 as Countess Kinsky. At the time,
Prague belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Bertha had Austrian
nationality. Until the age of thirty, Bertha led an existence that was not
unusual in her circles: studying, travelling and an active social life. Then,
in 1873, when the family fortune was almost exhausted, partly due to her mother’s
passion for gambling (her father had died before she was born), she became
governess to the four daughters of Baron von Suttner. She gets into a
relationship with the seven years younger son Arthur. This is disapproved of by
the family and she is fired. In 1876, she applied for a job as a secretary to
the industrialist Alfred Nobel, who lived in Paris, but decided to return after
a short stay there and secretly married Arthur. The couple goes to live in the
Caucasus at the invitation of a friend. They earn their living by giving
lessons and by Arthur's journalistic work. During this time, Bertha began to
write, first socially critical articles, later also novels. In 1885, the couple
was accepted again by the von Suttner family and they returned to Austria.
Through a friend, Bertha now comes into contact with various peace organisations.
In 1886 she went back to Paris for a while, where she met Alfred Nobel again. A
strong, lasting friendship develops between the two. The pacifist ideas that
Bertha von Suttner had developed in the meantime would have a great influence
on Nobel and partly because of her he later decided to establish the peace
prize, in addition to the prizes for science and literature. In 1889, Bertha
von Suttner’s most famous book Die Waffen nieder! (translated into
English as Lay
Down Your Arms!) was published in a small edition, after it had
previously been refused by various publishers. In this partly autobiographical
novel, the female protagonist undergoes all the misery of the war. The story is
also very realistic, because Bertha von Suttner had done thorough research into
the wars of that time. The novel is a great success and from then on Bertha is
a leading figure in the peace movement. She founded various peace organisations
and attended international conferences. In 1892, together with the later Nobel
Prize winner Alfred Hermann Fried, she took the initiative to create the peace
magazine Lay Down Your Arms! She supported attempts by the Russian tsar
to organise a peace conference and when it actually took place in The Hague in
the Netherlands in 1899, she was the only participant who did not represent a
government and she was also the only woman.
Meanwhile, Alfred Nobel died in 1896. For the peace prize awarded from 1901
onwards, he probably had Bertha von Suttner in mind as the first laureate. She
did not receive it until 1905.
In the years that followed, she played an important role in the attempts to
bring about reconciliation between Germany and England. She attends many
congresses and conferences, including the Hague Peace Conference of 1907, and
she makes many tours, including in Scandinavia and the United States. In
addition, she writes many articles and also some books. In 1913, she again
addresses the International Peace Congress in The Hague. She had become ill in
the meantime, but in May 1914 she was yet able to help prepare for the Peace
Congress in Vienna. For her, the danger of war was already very real. A month
later, she died of cancer in Vienna, just before the war, the First World War,
would indeed break out. Her ashes are interred in Gotha in Germany.
The significance of Bertha von Suttner lies not only in the fact that she
denounced the misery of the war and in her organisational work. She also came
up with concrete proposals, such as the establishment of an international court
of arbitration to mediate conflicts between states, a peace union of all states
to repel with common strength the attack of one state on another and the
establishment of an international court to administer justice on behalf of all
peoples. Some of her proposals are only now being properly implemented. Bertha
von Suttner also had a visionary view. As early as 1911, she was the first to
point out the possibility of nuclear war and a year later she foresaw the
misery that air wars would cause, only ten years after the first flight with an
airplane had taken place. (see here)
In Austria today, she is considered a great national personality. Her image is
therefore on an Austrian 2-euro coin and she is also depicted on commemorative
euro coins. Also postage stamps commemorate her memory in several countries Moreover,
streets and squares in Austria, but also in other countries, are named after
her. Her book Lay Down Your Arms! is reprinted to this day.
Thursday, October 16, 2025
Random quote I want to do AI my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing,
not for AI to do my art and writing, so that I can do my laundry and dishes.
Narcissism is a
characteristic of some political leaders. It’s a characteristic that brought
them to the top. Narcissism is not only a characteristic of leaders. Many
people have it, and that’s why, perhaps, the myth of Narcissus
exists in Greek mythology, and without a doubt in other mythologies as well. In
the past the number of narcissists was limited, though. It could be annoying if
you met one (if you weren’t a narcissist yourself), but you could live with it.
In the present world this has changed. It is no longer so that only a few
persons belong to this category, but it has become the norm, it seems. Even
more, narcissism has permeated all of society and it seems as if everyone has
become subjected to it, including those who are actually not narcissists. Even
if you don’t want to give in, you still have to, if you don’t want to place
yourself outside society. Contemporary society is a society in which the ego is
central.
This is what I learned from Isolde Charim’s book Die
Qualen des Narzismus (“The torments of narcissism”).
I’ll not give a review of the book but only pick from it what strikes me, and
I’ll give my own thoughts and interpretations. We see then for instance that
competition and selfishness have become very important today, especially in the
way of “working on yourself” and presenting yourself. In the present neoliberal
society, everything is seen in the light of money value, including sectors that
were traditionally seen in their own light, like education, culture and even
friendships. For instance, for a long time education was a value of its own,
but now it’s an investment in yourself in order to increase your market value. Nowadays,
you don’t choose a study because you like it, but because it will give you a good
salary. Life in the neoliberal view has become a cost-benefit analysis. And if
you can, stand out! Be different! The market of life is shaped by the competition
model, and you can only win and become better if you are not like others. The
market logic shows you the way to self-improvement; the improvement of your
material but also your spiritual welfare.
How to know that you are successful; that you are on the way to success? How do
others know that you are good? How does your boss know it? In terms of
cost-benefit analysis it means that you must be the highest on the rank. And so
evaluation and ranking have penetrated society, and everything and everyone is
evaluated and ranked. Simply being good and that things have been done well is
not enough. What is good must have an objective value. So after every purchase
on the internet or when you have used a service, like going to the dentist or
simply having a parcel delivered, you receive an e-mail asking for feedback and
maybe to rank your purchase or service on a scale. Charim calls this objective
narcissism. There is also subjective narcissism, for we are also evaluating and
ranking ourselves continuously by comparing ourselves with others and by
comparing what we think is our real I with our supposed ideal I.
These rankings show what your worth is, what your value is, and how unique you
are, in the eyes of others and even more in your own eyes. The modern human is
continuously busy with a narcissistic self-evaluation, and both types of
evaluation have become a driving force and control mechanism in modern society.
For example, in order to improve ourselves we give much attention to our
appearances; to how we look to others (it’s why the beauty industry has become
so important, for appearance counts).
What, I think, is the most striking phenomenon of modern narcissistic personality
is what I want to call the selfie-cult. I have always been surprised that quite
a lot of people, mainly young people (as yet?), have uploaded not only one or
two, but often dozens of selfies on their social media pages. And then not so
much photos that show them in a situation (at home, at a festival, somewhere
abroad…) but usually outside a context, often only their faces. For an outsider
these photos are hardly different, though I assume they are for those who do
so. Why publish ten, if not sometimes hundred almost equal photos of yourself
in one album on the internet? I can see it only as an expression of a narcissistic
ego: Look who I am. Look how beautiful I am. But actually, this
selfie cult is not meant to show yourself to others, to your public on the
internet. The public of the selfie is actually you. It is the optimal
expression of your narcissistic feeling.
Spinoza wrote in his Ethics
“that we in no case desire a thing because we deem it good, but, contrariwise,
we deem a thing good because we desire it … everyone, therefore, according to
his particular emotions, judges or estimates what is good, what is bad, what is
better, what is worse, lastly, what is best, and what is worst.” (Part III,
prop. XXXIX. Note.) Thus, following Charim, good-bad corresponds to our wishes,
our desires. What is good or bad is my subjective judgment. Only I am the
measure and the measure is me. That’s how we think today. Isn’t it narcissism
in the highest degree?
Thursday, October 09, 2025
Random quote “I have done that,” says my memory. ‘I cannot have done that,” says my
pride, and remains inexorable. Eventually – my memory yields.
The fallacy “Guilt by
Association”, discussed in my last blog, is related to two other fallacies,
which I have already treated before: argumentum
ad hominem or “playing the man” and “jumping
to conclusions”. An example of the latter is a fallacy called “hasty generalization”
(HG). Because HG is so often found in present-day political discussions, I want
to write a few words about it. Hasty Generalization – also called
Overgeneralization or Faulty Generalization – is the fallacy that one or
several singular cases are seen as exemplary for the group the case belongs to,
without further evidence. Or, as Wikipedia tells
us: HG is a conclusion drawn about all or many instances of a phenomenon on the
basis of one or a few instances of that phenomenon. You could also call it
“proof by example”, or better “false proof by example”, for a false proof it
is.
When writing this, an example immediately comes to my mind. Recently (case one),
near Amsterdam a girl was murdered by a young male asylum seeker when she
cycled home at night. Many people, and especially some rightist politicians,
reacted with the claim: Asylum seekers are criminals; there is no place for
them in the Netherlands. However (case two), a few years ago a similar case
happened in the province of Friesland in the north of the Netherlands. Just as
in case one, a girl cycling home was found murdered, now not far from an asylum
seekers’ centre. Many people reacted that the murderer must have been an asylum
seeker, adding that there is no place for asylum seekers in the Netherlands.
After some time, the murderer was caught: A local Friesian farmer, living not
far from the crime scene. Should we remove then all Friesians (or at least all
Friesian farmers) from the Netherlands? Nobody said so in case two (and many of
those who uttered the false accusation should have to leave then themselves).
These two cases together are good examples, I think, of why without further
information, a single instance cannot be seen as representative for a whole
group or population. Just as one criminal Friesian farmer doesn’t “make” all
Friesians (or all Friesian farmers) criminals, one young asylum seeker doesn’t
“make” all asylum seekers criminals. The generalization is too hasty, namely
based on insufficient evidence. In general, we can say that a Hasty
Generalization happens
1) when there is a lack of knowledge of the selected example (there was no
reason to make a connection between the murder and the asylum seekers’ centre
in Friesland);
2) when the selected sample is not representative of the whole group (the
murderer in case one is not representative of all asylum seekers, just as the
farmer is not representative of all Friesians or Friesian farmers);
3) when both (1) and (2) are true. (see Michael J. Muniz,
“Hasty Generalization”)
It is also striking in case one that many people saw the murderer as an asylum
seeker, and not as a young man, who happened to be an asylum seeker, or as a
man, in the first place. Humans are complicated beings with many
characteristics, and why pick out just one characteristic?
In formal terms, the argumentation often follows the patterns:
1) X is true for A
There is a connection between
X and A.
For instance, the crime scene is near the asylum seekers’ centre, so there is a
connection between them.
Or: Asylum seeker A has committed a crime, so asylum seekers are criminal. We
need much more information, before we can to draw such a conclusion.
2) A belongs to population P
A has characteristic X
So the whole population P or
everybody or many in population P have characteristic X.
For instance, A is a criminal, so everybody in or at least many of his group
are criminals.
We see hasty generalizations committed almost every day in politics and the
media. In politics, HGs are used to emphasize the extremes of a particular
viewpoint. For example, case one (the murder near Amsterdam) is often cited in
the present Dutch immigration discussions, however without mentioning case two
(the murder in Friesland), which would refute its “conclusion”. We find HG not
only in political discussions, but also in other discussions in the media, in
advertising to promote particular products, etc. To avoid committing this
fallacy, the arguer should take into consideration the amount of justifiable
knowledge one might have on a particular subject and whether the selected
sample being used in the case is justifiably representative of the group in question.
(Muniz)
Often this is not simple. Good arguing requires much background knowledge and
much insight into the problem at hand. A first step to avoid logical mistakes
is to take your time. Avoid hasty steps and jumping to your conclusions.
Thursday, October 02, 2025
Random quote The translation of our social relationships, for example friendship,
into a matter of investment and benefits seems to be guided by objective market
categories, but is in fact no more than an ideological representation of
self-calculation.