The folly

Anonymous author. Music by Henry Le Bailly (158?-1637)

Sung by Montserrat Figueras

Bertha von Suttner (1843-1914)

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.

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.

Joanna Maciejewska (Polish author)

The narcissist society

Selfie

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?

Random quote
“I have done that,” says my memory. ‘I cannot have done that,” says my pride, and remains inexorable. Eventually – my memory yields.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

Hasty conclusions

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.

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.

Isolde Charim in Die Qualen des Narzissmus