Emotions are the driving force of human history

07/01/2014

Emotions are the prime reasons driving the human acts and also the human history. And since the human emotions are unpredictable and uncontrollable it is the major cause of the tragedy play called “The History”.
Lets take as an example the brake out of WWI. Nobody predicted it and there was no rational reason to start it. At 1914 everything seemed to be in positive trend and positive evolution. Science (Atomic and sub atomic discoveries, psychology, etc.), technology (benzine and diesel motors, electricity, aeronautics, etc), economic prosperity due to new technologies and products, social evolution (introduction of social legislation of pension systems, education and health care) and also international political stability due to family relations of all the European kings. And suddenly a confused student, who lost his way, kills a prince, and an 80 year war starts, that its tragic political consequences diminished only recently with the collapse of USSR.
Now lets take the world today and to where the emotions drive us;
On one hand the world economy is advancing to more riches and more evenly distributed wealth among different regions. The Asian and South American economies are caching up with the highly developed US-Europe-Japan. Technology is advancing at accelerating speed, introducing to the market every few years a consumption paradigm changing new product. Science is advancing in wide range of new fields. Birth rates are collapsing in increasing speed. These are all good news.
But what about the bad news?
a. The environmental problem. The world failed to create a global institution that can enforce environmental protective policy with all the price to be paid of such a policy. As an obvious example of price to be paid is the need to reduce hydrocarbon fuel usage, but also the need to change the custom of meat eating.
b. The wake up of irrational anachronistic ideologies mainly in the Muslim world, that see destruction as a legitimate tool to achieve their goal of imposing their faith on rest of the world. The worst of all this is that their system denies the reality, that political-legal-social-religious system, that was very successful 1400 years ago, cannot be applied on a world with population more than twenty fold higher, with hunger to consume more and more products. It may be said that when the realities exposes the difficulty to implement their fundamental policy (as it is happening in these days), the religious fundamentalist movement will be eventually marginalized. Yet, because of the level of commitment of the followers, by using the tools of the modern world (as they showed they know to do), even very small group of believers can endanger the whole human civilization.

Can we prevent the World War III

11/01/2014

The outbreak of WWI, brought directly to WWII, with all its catastrophic results. Yet, as contrary to the WWII, that was 100% German initiation, and here i blame not only the Fuhrer but the majority of Germans, who supported him actively or passively (i don’t speak only about the less educated masses, but also the authentic leading elites), the outbreak of WWI is much more complicated story.
We have to start to understand, Germany came to existence only few decades before the outbreak of WWI, after Prussians winning the 1871 war against France. Until then but also after the unification of Germany, the Germans felt inferior against the French. Paris was Paris and Berlin couldn’t come close to its importance. So they tried to cover up these feelings of inferiority with stories of superiority about the German race. After the unification, as Germany became a dominant force in Europe, it wanted to become also major worldwide player. This explains also the strong connection of German after 1871 to its traditional rival the Austrian empire, with whom they fought war just few years before the unification (1866). This also explains the German friendship to the declining Ottoman Empire, that caused enmity with Russia, that later became a decisive factor in the outbreak of WWI.
The unprecedented German economic rise in 40 years following the unification, made it the biggest European economy, while still remembering the history of continuous humiliations they had to absorb from France in the years previous to 1871. It made the Germans paranoid about losing their recently achieved dominant position in Europe. This feeling strengthened with the enormous Russian economic development, that started at late 19 century and got extra push with the political reforms following the revolution of 1905 and the French-Russian pact from 1892.
This was the psychological-emotional background, that made Germany paranoid and also aggressive. All the generals including Molkte (the hero of the Franch-Prussian war at 1871), wouldn’t be able to start a world war, if not the German feeling of being unjustly kept as the underdog of Europe.
Of course there were some additional unfortunate circumstances, like the murder of Ferdinand, who personally strongly opposed the war in the Balkans, and his murder weakened very much this opposition. Ferdinand was also close associate to Wilhelm II, and his murder provoked in psychologically not very stable Kaiser, state of unpredictability. And the last but not the least, the old monarch Franz Josef, aged 84 at 1914, couldn’t oppose the militarily activist intentions of Leopold Graf Berchtold von und zu Ungarschitz, Frättling und Püllütz or shortly Count Berchtold who was obsessed greatly with the Balkan wars.
Conclusion;  emotions and psychology are the driving force behind the history and as so the human history is arbitrary and unpredictable. All the idea that there is causality in human history comes from the Bible and as so many other claims in the bible, it is also not correct.
I know with this statement above i will make angry many historians and rightly, because there are times, when i do think the history is predictable, like i would claim that the Arab revolution could have been predicted, and i have done it few month before its outbreak
viz; https://rodeneugen.wordpress.com/2010/12/15/some-history-and-an-accurate-prediction/
still if you would ask me to where this revolution is heading too and what impact it will have on the world, i wouldn’t know.
So let us just stick to the notion, history is unpredictable, and better to be careful, not to start a WWIII.

Can be predicted WWIII

12/01/2014

I will try to cope in the following pages with the question, is any possibility to predict WWIII. “Luckily” I do not have to cope with the obvious, like what will be after WWIII.

So, let us take as an anchor or the starting point of our historical, prediction the obvious result of such a war and ask, who could sincerely think about a WWIII, without to be afraid of the annihilation of the human civilization? Only those with tendency for suicide, or those who act out of ignorance and instinct, without to be able to think about consequences of their acts. 

War is a common act of a community of people, who have an emotional glue strong enough, to persuade every individual in the community to endanger its life in the sake of preserving the community as whole. What are these glues? An obvious case is family or tribe, very similarly as it happens in the nature with certain highly skilled animals that live in communities.

But the humans have an additional glue, the cultural bond. This makes us, us and those others different. Yet culture is a very wide phenomena, and I have to ask does all cultural phenomena have potentiality to cause a conflict or alienation of one group from the other? Take for example the most simple one, the food you eat or don’t eat. I am sure, a religious Muslim or Jew is annoyed by seeing a non Muslim non Jew eating pork. The same is with the clothing. The hijab or yarmulke as well as too exposed women clothing may cause fury and anger among those out of the community. If so simple and apparently neutral cultural phenomena have potential to create need for segregation and animosity what about more basic and fundamental cultural differences like cultural epic story strongly believed, religious faith, code of rules, ethical behaviors, etc.? All these cultural uniqueness phenomena, if connected, arise in the individual humans negative emotions towards the other, the different. If we add to it lingual and facial and body feature differences, even if the slightest ones, it can bring animosity that may result war.

There are many reasons for wars in history, but roughly they can be divide to two. The wars between separated political entities and civil wars happening within the borders of one political entity.

The well known examples of civil wars are the Russian and French revolutions, which are wars within the society, where people who were left out of political influence fought to change the ruling elites and the whole political system they represent. On the other hand the Spanish civil war, even if also fought within the borders of the same political entity, was different. It started as a military coup, where the army, that was part of the political elite, supported by certain part of the society, used its military force to replace the existing political system. The Spanish civil war started when big parts of the society decided to oppose this act of their army. Then we can take as a different example, the civil war in Rome following the murder of Julius Cesar, this was a war among the ruling elites. So if to categorize the wars called revolutions, the question is who fought it. Was it one segment of society against other segment of society, or segment of society against the ruling elites, or one ruling elite against the other one.

And what about the wars between the separate political entities? For example what kind of war was WWI. A war among different nations? Did really the Germans hated the French or the Russians more than they hated their own neighbors? Hard to believe. Maybe for a moment. And still they were enthusiastic to enter the war.

On one hand WWI was caused because of competition of the ruling elites, who fought each other for dominance, on the other hand it seemed as if whole nations were recruited in this effort to achieve dominance. National wars are relatively new phenomena that started in Europe with Napoleon and the redefinition of the European political entities from dynastic monarchies, kingdoms, oligarchic city states to national entities. The most common joint feature of national state was a common language (or what they were told that is a common language in spite of wide range of dialects), religion and race. The definition of nation is not so clear as it may sound. For example the Jews mother tongue in Germany, Hungary France etc., was German, Hungarian or French, still they were excluded from the definition of the nation. Probably the best definition for the nation would be one language and one national epic that we all believe or suppose to believe.

Before Napoleon the wars in Europe were;

a.     religious – Crusaders, 30 years war, Muslim wars,  Protestants against Catholics, etc. ,

b.     socio-economic -Barbarian take over of Roman empire, the Viking invasions,  

c.      wars for dominance of one cultural empire upon the other,  -the Romans against Cartago, the Greeks and later the Romans-Byzantines against the Persians),

d.     wars for achieving imperial dominance with tolerance to the different culture  - The Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, and so we can go on in whole line of the history,  

e.     battles among different fractions of the same ruling elite -the very best example is the 100 years war between the English and the French, but many other conflicts were of this kind.

Since Napoleon it became clear that national identity is a very strong tool to create cohesion within the political entity that gives military advantage, almost  invincibility, when used against political entity that doesn’t have it. For example, the weakness of Austrians in WWI was the absence of such a cohesion, after Catholicism, that gave to them cohesion since the thirty years war, lost its attractiveness among the secularized elites. On the other hand this Austrian weakness became one of the reasons for the Austrian leadership support of war before WWI, while hoping that a war will mold such a cohesion within the borders of the Austrian Monarchy. Unsurprisingly the result of the WWI was liquidation of the Austrian Monarchy in spite of their relatively long history, if compared to the short time the German state existed. And still Germany survived the defeat in WWI with even stronger national identity than before the war, while Austria has not, and their identity become unclear. This became obvious with the Austrians support for the German Anschluss. By the way the German Anschluss paved the road to the Munich agreement, etc.

So if we look more deeply into this rather lingual division between wars and revolution, we will hardly find a clear cut between wars among different political entities or revolutions happening within the same political entity. At the end of the day, all the wars are about competition for dominance of one group of leading elites against other group of leading elite and the difference is rather the pretext used to mobilize the masses by these elites.  Of course many leaders among the leading elites don’t have the sophistication to understand this reality, and have honest faith in their cause. But their illusion based on faith is always short lived, while the reality is very, very prolonging.  I do believe in Robespierre’s honesty, but who survived after him? Fouche, Talleyrand, Napoleon and then the Bourbons.  The same can be said about Lenin, who was followed by Stalin. I could bring up many politically successful idealists, who against all the odds successfully changed the political system according to their ideas, but very soon the cruel reality overcame their best intentions.

Here I would like to start with a new perspective of categorization of the wars. I would divide the wars to those to be the totalitarian wars, their aim is destruction and annihilation of certain segment of human community, and wars with limited destructive aim. The Punic war of Romans against Carthage  was this kind of war.

In twenties centuries we could find many wars, their aim was destruction and annihilation of certain human society segment, be it a national, racial, religious, economic or social segment. The German intentions to start WWII aimed from the very beginning to annihilate subordinate races. In Nazi Germany they started with homosexuals and mentally ills, then it went to Jews, Gypsies, Slavs and probably all the “ non Aryans” would follow, if Nazi Germany would win the war. An other totalitarian war was the “Big October revolution”, that at the beginning aimed to annihilated the ruling elites of the Russian society, then the bourgeois and the kulaks followed them,  and then the Ukrainians, the Generals, the intellectuals and who could say where it would end if not the WWII, that eventually saved Russia from ever more crazy plans to annihilate new and new segments of the society.  To these examples we could add, all the genocide type of conflicts, like in Cambodian, Ruanda, but also the Chinese cultural revolution, that aimed and was quite successful to diminish the Chinese cultural identity. It seems, in these days in Syria a new rampant totalitarian war fulminates, while the Sunnis try to annihilate the Shia and the opposite, and both sides try to annihilate the Christians, the Druze and all the others. 

All this leads me to the thought, that we should be rather focused on the potential totalitarian war than the political war. These are the wars with potential to start a WWIII.

Let us remain to ourselves;

a.     The modernity did not secure the humanity from the totalitarian wars.

b.     The cultural belonging is still a very strong biding force among people.

c.      People are strong in their readiness to kill and to be killed for all the non-rational reasons that the human fantasy can imagine. The major and most persuasive substance behind the conflicts is the “Our Story”, as contrary to “Their Story”.

If to look for the next potential conflict, we shouldn’t look for the economical problems, since these have become more and more marginal, unless  there will be some total collapse of the economic system, as it almost happened at 2008.

We also should not look for the national conflicts, even if some of the world powers, like Russia and China, tend to behave nationalistically. But both these countries adopted the rational modernity as the only way how to manage and solve political problems.

To my opinion, the conflict that appears to have potential to become a pretext to start WWIII is conflict between societies, who look for salvation for their problems in modernity, science, technology, or in other words the future, and those, who oppose all this, and are looking for truth and legitimacy in the stories of the past. While doing it, they deny the modernity as legitimate way of life, but still are ready to use the tools the modern technology creates as legitimate to achieve their aim.

Why the ancient Greeks failed?

11/05/2014

The Greeks since the fifth century had the tools and capacity and philosophical sophistication to introduce scientific revolution. All we know about their knowledge is probably only a fraction of what they knew.
Why Archimedes couldn’t be the ancient Galileo? Archimedes did not have problem to fight church to distribute his knowledge. He knew mathematics at least as good as Galileo. And he has done many technological inventions. Was it because of lack of printing machine that Galileo used so successfully? Even if murdered by Romans, they were interested in his knowledge, and most probably he had followers who were aware of his findings and his books where in their disposition. If Eutocius of Ascalon wrote about his work more than 700 years latter, his work had to been far from forgotten. And it is well known, he was not the only great mathematician and inventor of the classical world, far from it.
Lucretius poem of “On the Nature of Things”, amazing as it can be, may be only fraction of what the Greeks discovered by system of meditation and deductive reasoning. And yet they had not done it into the modernity.
The claim that in society of slaves there is no need for technological inventions seems to me folly. If not for economic reasons, the Roman war machine and probably also the Greek one needed military technology as much as we do. In contrary, Roman society, was free enough to support technological initiative, definitely more than the renaissance society in western Europe.
If there is any answer to the question why the Greeks and Romans did not do it to the modernity, even if they had almost 1000 years from the first philosophers until the Christianity closed on their knowledge, it seems to me modern scientific technological development was a pure accident. Several factors came together in the right time, somewhere in the mid thirteen century, which started with the black death plague decimation of European population, that brought huge social and economic upheavals. Then the Mongol invasion weekend the Muslim world and reduced the military pressure from the Christian Europe, at the same time the classic philosophers following the christian conquest of Spain was rediscovered. Exactly in these years Fibonacci introduced mathematical revolution partly imported from the Arabs and partly developed by him. Some importance played probably the fact that Italy was a country of competing city states rather than one autocratic statehood, as was the Roman empire. Add to it the new Gothic architecture just recently introduced, invention of perspective and some more major events that i haven’t mention and you have completely new tools to judge the reality of the being. The result is new European perspective of understanding the earthly reality and the way to the new knowledge was opened for the scholars and intellectuals, Yet these new discoveries could go easily down of the drainage of the history, if not the patronage of Medici and some other Italian rulers, who competed with each other on prestige, but non of them had the absolute power to overcome the others. Probably without this, these very first discoveries wouldn’t continue to thrive.
Many start the modern way of thinking with Copernicus. I don’t agree with them. The idea of heliocentric world was probably quite widespread in the classical world. Even if Copernicus ideas helped to shake the dogmas of the church, it couldn’t make a scientific revolution by itself. To my opinion after Galileo and Kepler, who both connected mathematics to empiric data, the road to the modern scientific method was paved. So the question remains, how come, the Greeks did not succeed to produce within a whole millennia, what the Europeans had in few hundred years? And lets not forget that the renaissance scholars needed to overcome the burden of religious dogmatic thinking tradition, the classical Greeks did not had to cope with?
As to the findings of Kepler, they happened because of several fortunate sequential events. Brahe Tycho had to die, so Kepler could inherit his observations. If not he would remain probably with his esoteric theory of perfect spheres of planet movements. Also he needed a crazy king like Rudolph II, who was rather strange for a catholic emperor of holly Roman Empire. Then you had the accidental discovery of telescope, Galileo copied and redeveloped. There had to be such an arrogant self possessed man like Galileo, who so strongly believed, that the circumstantial evidence is verified proof for heliocentric planetary system, that he opposed all the Catholic establishment. Someone less self possessed wouldn’t do it all the way.
Modern science is based on connection and verification of philosophical (mainly ontological) understandings derived from rational reasoning with the empirical evidence, translated to practical technological achievements. The Greeks did not make this two necessary step far enough, and this is the source of their failure. Why they have not done it, this still has to be answered.

Dictators and other criminals

22/06/2014

EugenR said on June 21, 2014 to:

http://ianmillerblog.wordpress.com/2014/06/18/syria-iraq-and-ukraine-is-secession-right/comment-page-1/#comment-157

Dear Ian, I have to say your analysis of the politics in Syria, Iraq is rather oversimplified. The problem is, that these countries, and you could add other failed countries like most of the Arab and African countries,since they were left after the decolonization to self rule, failed to created a functioning state, whose main aim is to improve the living condition of its citizens. Unfortunately in all these countries, and by the way also in most of the post communistic countries including the mentioned Czech and Slovak republic the only occupation of the political leadership is how to rob the country and enrich themselves. It seems to me that this kind of political behavior is caused by total loss of ideological intentionality, and also existence of masses, who still did not figure out how to control the acts of their leaders. By the way in Czech Republic few month ago the leading political party, that brought the corruption to unprecedented level, were almost completely wiped out from the political scenery. It seems the Czech citizens were the first to understand that in democracy they do have the power to punish the corrupt politician. Still it has to be seen if these corrupt politicians, who damaged the economy and the social fabric of the country, and almost succeeded to create skepticism among the people towards democracy, will be put on trial for their criminal deeds.
But this happened in Czech republic, country in the very heart of Europe, with some democratic tradition, and well educated people.
As contrary to it in the failed countries, (Arab, some Asian and African) there are relatively few educated people, and their education system is anachronistic, often based on memorization and not understanding, not to speak about exclusion of women from the education process due to cultural reason etc. This results alternative way of thinking of most of the population of these countries, not based on critical thinking and verification of evidences, but acceptance of traditional values and epical stories as dogmatic truth. And these epics are full of idealization of the Us, and hate and dehumanization and demonization of the others. And here you have the ideology of permission to kill. Add to it the growing population together with economic stagnation in these countries, concentration of the wealth in very few hands, mostly generated by unfair practices, like misusing political power and restricting competition etc.Then you have environmental catastrophes caused by general mismanagement of countries resources, and then not surprisingly you find that it is not just about political fragmentation, but more basic issues of economics, society, beliefs, ideologies etc.

Reply ↓

ianmillerblog on June 21, 2014 at 11:00 pm said:

Dear Eugene, of course my comments were oversimplified. What I am trying to do is to isolate some of the requirements for how governance should work. I do not claim to know the lot, and all I seem to be able to do in the novels I write is to illustrate the faults with whatever system I pick on. Your comments on the Czech republic highlight an additional requirement for governance to be for the benefit of the people: an absence of corruption, and that requires law enforcement above the government, and it requires a strong message from the citizens that corruption will not be tolerated, and it requires a mechanism (such as elections) that will remove a government that gets out of line. However, the topic of the post was limited to whether secession is desirable in these places. There are a number of corrupt governments around the world that seem to be stable. They do this by applying the corruption evenly! That is bad governance, but it does not necessarily lead to splits.
Your last paragraph summarises fairly nicely what is wrong with the “democracy” concept that was imposed on those countries, which in turn were never countries prior to western intervention. Iraq was a particularly bad example, the boundaries being drawn with a ruler by some self-styled geographer after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. If the people refuse to analyse and vote for policies and instead vote for the religious/tribal/whatever head, that effectively is a vote for someone to pillage the treasury. Nevertheless, I dispute to some extent the idea that Iraq was always badly governed by Saddam. Yes, he was a dictator, and his war with Iran was disastrous, although I am far from convinced that there was not US “egging on” going on then. However, before the invasion of Kuwait, provided you were not planning a revolt, the evidence seemed to be that Iraqis enjoyed a high standard of living, with good health and educational benefits. The question then is, does the average citizen care that much who governs if their lifestyle if good? I rather fancy many Iraqis would prefer the conditions then to now.

Reply ↓

EugenR on June 22, 2014 at 2:39 am said:

Dear Ian, from Your comment about Saddam Husein it is obvious that You know very little about Saddam Husein and his acts. Even before his war against Iran, during the Shah regime, when Iran was the dominant force in the region of the Arab-Persian golf he was nothing else but a murderer. From the very first moment of his appearance on the political scenery his way of acting was bloody and murderous (according to rumors he personally killed one of his family members on his road to grasp the power). During the Kurdish uprising in the late seventies he committed war crimes, murdered hundreds of thousand civilians and used chemical weapons .

The very best example of his character was his act in the assembly of the Ba’ath party on July 1979 a long way before any signs of war initiation against Iraqi neighbors.

During this assembly, Saddam claimed to find treason within the Ba’ath Party and forced one party member to read list of names of alleged co-conspirators.These members were removed from the assemble room one by one and taken into custody and most of them murdered by firing squad made of other high-ranking members of the party. By 1 August 1979, hundreds of high-ranking Ba’ath party members themselves. After this Saddam congratulated to those party members who were not part of the “conspiracy” and made them partners in the country leadership. They, out of horror and fear became loyal to him like flock of sheep.
His social and economic achievement were nothing more than cynical usage of the newly found wealth after the 1973 oil price jump, initiated by the way by the Iranian Shah, to increase his personal popularity. But this policy of investment in economy and social services was short lived, and Saddam very fast started to use Iraqi wealth to military spending and his atom weapon program supported by the French president, Jacques Chirac,the criminal politician, who among other crimes initiated atomic bomb tests in the pacific in the eighties, when everyone knew the horrific consequences of such a test to the environment. Luckily for the world and the region Israel destroyed the Saddam’s intention to become atomic weapon power.
Then Saddam initiated war against Iran, where he used again chemical weapons to prevent military catastrophe,

During his reign, according to his own account he murdered about 2 million Iraqi citizens. The mass graves discovered after his downfall proved that he was not exaggerating at all.
The truth is US interference in Iraq, mainly the second Iraqi war, was catastrophic because of misunderstanding of George Bush the junior and his co-partners of the political and military realities in the region. He was confused by the annoyingly aggressive military speeches of Saddam, that had no coverage of military strength behind.
Yes the US political leadership can be many times horrendously ignorant about the world out of US, they are supposed to lead.
Here i would come to my opinion about the major problem of democratic-liberal political systems, that feel secure enough from any outside threat as contrary to the despoticly ruled countries. It seems, liberal societies that are managed relatively smoothly and are not threatened by some external enemy, have tendency to create within few decades a rather stable political elite, that concentrates most of the political power and economic wealth. As to the masses, that do not participate in this fete, the elites share with them a pinch from their generated wealth, so as to give them hope for better future. From time to time this system collapses with a economic crises, and a new redistribution of the wealth occurs among the elites. The masses in this scenarios pay the most heavy price, and if they feel their situation is unbearable any more, they may rise and destroy the whole political system if they are successful. The last economic crisis could be catastrophic if those very elites that brought it wouldn’t have the tools to prevent a total collapse. But it seems the modern economy do have the tools to prevent a total collapse, as contrary to what happened in 1929, when all the world leaders made all the mistakes they could do.
Conclusion; Not only the despotic leaders have tendency to neglect the masses and endanger the political and social stability, but also Liberal-Democratic political systems.

Franks, Romans and Europe

16/07/2014

http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2014/07/13/serres-decapitates-france/
Dear Patrice, to start with, your historical interpretation about history of Franks, English etc. i would say is slightly misleading. The Roman British citizens, left unprotected, after the Roman garrisons left Brittany at begging of the fifth century, afraid from the Scottish “Barbarians”, invited the Saxons, a other German tribe, to protect them, who pretty soon took over the kingdom. Then from 8 century as the Saxons get “cultured”, the Viking invasions started, and in the nine century they almost took over the whole country. For a while Alfred the Great, who lived in the tenth century, (he was the first Saxon king who knew not only to read but also to write), drew them out. But the Saxon success did not last for very long time and in the early 11 century the Viking Canute added Britain to his wast kingdom. When at 1066 the Norman William II, (himself a descendant of vikings) invaded Britain and killed Herold II, he started a long line of Norman English kings. Since the Norman kings claimed sovereignty not only upon England but also big parts of France, this ignited the 100 years war, which lasted actually for more than 800 years, and ended with the treaty of Entente Cordiale signed at 1904. In all this description i don’t see any Franks, whose empire actually fall apart after the treaty of Verdun at 843 that created all the problems Europe had to face for the next 1200 years. So not everything what the Franks had done was perfect.
As to the French achievements in science, modernity etc. i don’t think any educated person would underestimate their achievements and contribution to the modernity. Yet the French screwed for themselves that they did not become the leading nation and culture in Europe, and subsequently in the whole world. When they made Revolution, they created the first political modern terror state. Then to end with the turmoil, the French came up with Napoleon, who created the very first fascistic state. Then instead of investing his talent and the opportunity the history gave him, to unite politically and modernize whole Europe under French enlightened leadership, he continued the French tradition of war against the English, (the pretext for the Russian invasion was Russian commercial ties with England). If instead he would dismantle the Hapsburg Empire and together with the other German mini-states, and probably even with Prussia, he would create a whole European entity, we would probably exchange our opinions in French and not in English, language i don’t speak, yet just by its sound it seems to me superior to English. Maybe even the tragic twenty century, wouldn’t had to be so tragic, etc. So if you look for the cause of whole European decadence, that started 100 years ago with outbreak of 80 years war, (WWI, WWII and all the revolutions)  its roots go back to France and the French revolution, that couldn’t copy the American revolution, because Jean-Paul Marat was not Thomas Paine, Maximilien Robespierre was not Thomas Jefferson, Fouche was not Hamilton and Napoleon was not Washington. I know you don’t like Jefferson, as he was one of the causes of American slavery, and i agree that not forbidding slavery in the territories he bought from Napoleon he committed a historical crime and evil, but i like to judge Jefferson during his years before his presidency.

• Patrice Ayme Says:
  July 16, 2014 at 6:35 am | Reply Dear Eugen: I fail to see how my “slightly misleading” history differs from yours. You present facts that are completely compatible with mine. In general, I deliberately present facts that seem deeper, and from a different angle, in all of history. For example, Caesar crossed the Rubicon. All books have that one. Why? Natural to attribute it, to raw ambition. But in truth, the Senate was out to get Caesar, he had little choice (my angle).
  Guillaume (William) of Normandy was French (descending more or less from Viking, partly so). A very big guy. His mother was a French tenturiere. She was not noble, and owned a firm that cleaned and prepared animal skins, among other things. That’s why he was called “The Bastard”. He was touchy about it, even executing famously 35 prisoners who had taunted him with skins in a siege.
  You described lightly the mess Britain became after the legions left. In the Seventh Century, the Franks even intervened: that’s how Bathilde, a high society British girl became a slave of the Franks (and, a few years later, after at least one evasion, their queen and leader!!!!!!)
  Fact is until the Normands/Franks/French established a sturdy government making a direct alliance of Crown and People, with a strong parliament, Britain was a mess. Brittany is named after the British army had to flee there in the Sixth Century, creating a Duchy that served as a model to Normandy. (Before that it was Armorica.)
  PA
  
  • EugenR Says:
    July 16, 2014 at 7:39 am | Reply Dear Patrice, what we are doing here in your blog, is trying to understand the Human animal as a creature, being aware and acting in the flow of human history. As we see many times the human history is a result of a particular act of an unique person. Let us take the act of crossing the Rubicon by Julius Cesar. He could as well turn back and create a new kingdom in Gaul, probably then France wouldn’t be France now, and everything would be different. I could imagine that he would try to conquer Spain, and maybe even Germany, and would marginalize Rome to Italy and Greece. But all this is just speculation, and it could be otherwise too. The historical fact is that he crossed the Rubicon. History on one hand is influenced by particular acts of individuals, like J.Cesar, but also many times it creates predictable deterministic situations, when the trends and developments are given and decided by the circumstances.
  • If we stay with the Roman history as an example, it seems to me, that after Rome adopted the highly sophisticated Greek culture, philosophy, ideas and scientific thinking, that nothing similar was in the surroundings, and combined it with Roman stubbornness, ruthlessness (as seen with the Carthaginians) adaptability and political organization skills (Republic and Roman law), it was inevitable that they created an empire, that ruled at the time almost all the civilized world between the Atlantic and Middle East, (except Persia). Yet a civil war between Augustus and Antony could end all this, but haven’t. Why? Probably exactly because of limited sophistication of other potential empires, like the Persian empire, whose leaders were hardly aware of the historical trends, and for this reason couldn’t grasp the opportunity, opened to them during the civil war between Augustus and Antony, which happened few years after they destroyed the Roman army of Marcus Crassus. What killed Rom is the civilization itself, that had no more the ruthlessness needed to fight back the barbarians, who at the end dismantled the whole empire, even without to be aware of it.
    You are in France now, i wonder if you can feel there the bit of the history.
• Patrice Ayme Says:
  July 16, 2014 at 7:13 am | Reply The “Normans” kings did NOT claim sovereignty over France. It’s not what happened. What happened is that the French monarchy got total direct control of England, for a number of reasons and in various ways, and that led to a Franco-French fight, misrepresented as a Franco-English war. I wrote many times on that, including in:http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2013/05/18/joan-of-arc-roasted-too-late/ Henry V of England, descendant from Philippe IV Le Bel of France, was the legitimate king of France. Joan of Arc was bin Laden, just worst.
  PA
  
  • EugenR Says:
    July 16, 2014 at 7:53 am | Reply Agree, but all this claims of legitimacy of kings and kinsman look to us from the modern perspective, very folly. Politics then and now is about how to pacify all this alpha males, who subdue others, many times with extraordinary cruelty and usually devastate what other people built. (Built i mean not only physically but also socially and culturally). Why are this “Alpha Males” needed, because the ignorant masses are sometimes even more devastating than them, as it can be seen in front of us in Egypt, Syria and some other Arab countries.

The worst rule the world, because they are the worst.

09/08/2013

PA; The worst rule the world, because they are the worst.

GD; Not for long

RE; For ever

GD; No RE, social media and independent journalism, what is left, will keep fighting. And even the most oppressed will get tweets and pings. Assange, Manning and Snowden have started movements. Non Violent Civil Disobedience is spreading. It can’t be suppressed with pepper spray and soft restraints. To many heroes in this show. They will win little by little. Patience, there are more good than bad, Even if the bad have all the money and congress. It may seem they rule the world but thats what they want to believe. My thoughts, my mind, my actions are the world to me

RE;  At the end the “Non Violent Civil Disobedience” is a human organization, and as such it will either die out, or in worse case will have an organizational structure in which the worst bullies will be on the top. There is nothing new under the sun.

GD; There is, we have the internet… Truth can hardly be sequestered the way the have in history books. Researching the truth is a simple finger click away. watching science is a click away. People know more. Education is an easy choice today. I have faith in knowledge. Many old stays are dismantling. This is not my fathers worlsd

RE: At the end the truth wins, the question is when and at what price. In between the lie and cruelty celebrates. Just remember the last century events (Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, Mugabe i mean Dr Mugabe, etc.) All of them are gone (except the least evil Dr Mugabe). Did you know Pol Pot studied in Paris? Don’t be upset by history but learn from it.

GD; I agree. I have always appreciated my parents, being from their generation of indoctrinated fear, never pushing that on to their children. While humanity should not forget and always learn from the past, even though as we speak people are trying to erase it in history books, we should all understand why things were done, politically, economically, strategically. All the while we have new fears, NSA monitoring and surveillance drones. I guess the real question is do we have less fear because we have more access to knowledge? Or more fear because the media has portrayed fear as the new normal? I am not sure that mass herd mentality works in modern society anymore. And that is how dictators ruled. Even china can’t hold their grasp on social media. The new fear is forced acceptance. It is worse. Or should I say financially forced acceptance.

AH; I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.

— Martin Luther King, Jr.

ER; Yes, they were in history few good leaders who won. Martin Luther King is among them, others are N.Mandela, M. Gandhi, V. Havel all of them won, but at what personal price. Two of them murdered, two served years in jail. And anyway after them some scoundrels destroyed anyway their achievements. Still the strife for self evident justice (that’s what these leaders were after) must go on. But who are the new Mendelas, Gandhis, Kings or Havels? In the best case those who came after them are kind of jokers

AH; It is a process. In the last 500 years from time of Galileo (who was threatened by his Church for telling the truth about the nature of the planets) to today there has been tremendous progress on a global scale. We with progressive values and committed to the path of love, must remember that darkness is also part of human nature (perhaps an essential part) and remain vigilant — and hopeful.

RE; I assume you never lived in a country where the government terrorizes its citizens. Try to express your truth in one of the terror countries, like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc. Try to say there, it is wrong not to let women to have education (about 50% of them are illiterate). Try to say something about freedom of faith. Communism was wiped out only 20 year ago, its leftovers are regimes like the one in N. Korea but also Cuba. You say, ……darkness is also part of human nature…. The question is not if darkness is part……..it definitely is and nobody can deny it, but how do you fight it. In most of the cases the fight is with even more darkness.

AH; I have never lived in a terrorizing country. I did have terrorizing parents and an entrenched belief in a terrorizing Pentecostal God. I am a racial minority in a world that devalues everything I do because of my skin colour. We all have our challenges.In the end, it is arrogant for me to think you can make (force) people do what I think they should do or feel what I think they should feel. This is exactly the mindset of the dictator and I reject that thinking completely. The best I can do is look at my inner signaling. I seek to elevate my own consciousness and change myself for the better. The next step is the social conversation. I share my thinking and values with others in the hope that they too will be inspired to change themselves for the better.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

― Martin Luther King, Jr.

RE; Sorry Alexi, this time M.L.King had it wrong. The Nazis were defeated by Stalin, just because his cruelty did not have limits, while the Nazis limited their cruelty only to the non Germans. Without Stalin the Western powers would never stand against the Nazis.

AH; If you think about it carefully, the darkness of Hitler was replaced by the darkness of Stalin. This was true for the USSR, East Germany, East Berlin and most of East Europe. So Stalin did not drive out darkness, he just replaced it with his own dark shadow.

PA; Sorry I just surface so late, I’m hanging my head in shame. I was quite busy, plus I carpet bombed Summers once again in my latest (see “Summers Of discontent”). and I have a cold, plus somebody in uniform hand on his gun informed me that “there will no be a third warning” (geeee, i did not notice the first warning; the police state is assuredly not a myth, but experimentally verified…). All right, I’m going to read the preceding.

 Dear Gena: All I can say is that, after being threatened with termination by someone in uniform, today, as I was with my 3 year old daughter, i think you are naive. You do not realize how much violence authorities are ready to use, and how cowardly most people are. Revolution is expensive. Most people in the USA are firmly keen to not notice whatever would irritate the authorities.

Dear Gena: Most of the Internet is carefully controlled JUNK. I spent a huge amount of time writing careful and deep essays, but I see vulgar and manipulated stuff mightily reigning. And I have seen deliberate manipulations. Both the NYT and HP published in the past me only after I protested their censorship… And even then. Another point is that the rise of feudalism in the USA is accelerating at this point, so optimism is hard for me to gather…

Alexi: Stalin was in control by 1923, ten years before Hitler (Lenin tried to stop him at the end of his life).

PA: The French started the nuclear bomb program in 1938. Nobel Laureate Irene Curie was certain that a bomb could be made. The program went to Manhattan, in total secret to the Nazis, and total opening to Stalin. Hitler would have been nuclear bombed into submission.

RE; If we speak about destiny probably Hitler would survive even the nuclear bomb, as he survived about 30 assassination attempts. If to believe in God here you have him. God is against humanism and humanity, and mainly against his “chosen people”.

PA; As he misled His Own People, some Jews made a trial of god in some extermination camp. Seriously, tribalism invites the same.

RE; Truth, and their verdict was, Death penalty. But then after the verdict they went to the next ceremonial pray. The religion is not about morality (mostly in contrary), not about reality or evidence, not about belief in truth (I know many skeptic believers), not even about tribalism since there are religious newcomers, who did not grow in the tribal tradition.
Is all this about some false answers to questions of eternal life? It can be right for some, but not for everyone. So tell me, what it is all about?

The faith in communism did not include even belief in eternal life, and still it had and still has so many followers. It seems religion or faith is need of the human to believe in some fundamental dogma, be it even an obvious lie, all it needs is enough followers, and supporters of a false idea. In a way to be a football club fun is also a religion.

PA; Yes, in essays on religions I have argued: Football & other team sports re-tie. Superstitions are a type of religion (with varying degrees of superstition).

QA; There was a good quote in a New Yorker article about the recent overthrow of Morsi in Egypt, something to the effect of “The corrupt rule efficiently because they want to turn a profit, the failed rule miserably because they won’t admit they have failed.”

World War I and its consequences

Europe before 1914 was ruled by illegitimate regimes from the Rhine river to the east. The two Kaisers, the Sultan and the Tzar, who were unable to understand the huge social and political upheaval Europe went trough with the industrial-technological revolution, massive urbanization and population growth since the end of the Napoleon wars. The authority of these kings was derived from fables and folk stories, and not from popular support. They had no political system to reinvent themselves. Not surprisingly the two kaisers ruled by 1914 in their countries for more than 50 years. The two Kaisers felt the loss of popular support among growing urban population, who were mainly dispossessed proletarian, supportive to socialistic parties, while the agrarian communities, who were rather supportive to the tradition leadership, declined in their numbers. The two Kaisers, each in different way where obsessed by these trends and believed that a “good war” can stop these “negative” trends. The war, even if broke out because of a rather peculiar reason,(murder of heir) was well prepared and discussed for years before the war among the ruling elites of Germany. The surprise was the machine guns effect and the stupidity of anachronistic generals, who could not predict the slaughter of millions of soldiers in the very first weeks of the war. Then there was no political courage to stop the war without some justification, like territorial achievements. So they continued the slaughter until destroying themselves and if you take WWII as direct result of WWI the whole Europe as well.
Europe never really recovered from the two world wars. It lost its morale and political legitimacy to spread its cultural, social, political and philosophical achievements, and now it is in retreat while its cultural existence is threatened by newly awaken religious fundamentalism of its neighbors.
Unfortunately i see similar illegitimacy in the US and EU politics, where the politics is driven by short sighted, pro-plutocracy interests, protecting the existing financial elites on account of the rest of the population. This was the main reason for the 2008 economic crisis and will be the reason for next crisis. These politicians support economic system, where publicly traded companies are managed by interconnected individuals, who are guarantees for each other, whoile by their short sighted policy and drive to personal rewards dilute the real owners of the companies, the general public, and mostly the pension funds depositors. Not surprisingly this system cannot cope with the main danger of the world today, the environment, the despotic regimes in Africa and Asia, and the demographic explosion of uneducated masses in the underdeveloped countries.

Pretentious chat of neophytes about physics II-

25/12/2013

Dear Patrice, If may i to make a summary of your theory just to figure out if i understood you correctly, You claim, since the observations show us that the Universe expansion is accelerating, logically should be expected that this acceleration existed from the beginning of the time, (when the so called Big Bang occurred). This theory solves the problem of need for inflation, which is not coherent with the existing paradigms of the science, like speed of light etc. Yet your theory raises new problems, like how to explain the flatness, homogeneity, and isotropy of the Universe as thadroberts mentioned above.
I want to remain to you our previous correspondence in the subject where i propose an alternative theory called the big spin viz;
https://rodeneugen.wordpress.com/2013/07/02/pretentious-chat-about-physics/
I am fully aware of me being very far from understanding the field and the Mathematics of it, and don’t want to be pretentious to understand to much about the subject. Yet i take the courage to suggest out of my ignorance an extra universe explanation to the very existence of all.
My theory says, “Since everything in the Universe is in movement, and the movement is the basic bloc to the very existence, why the universe itself shouldn’t be in movement?”.
In the link above i still suggested that the Big Bang should be called a Big Spin, while suggested all started with a Big Multi-axis spin of the universe.
You answer to my ideas was as follows;
Your model would fit a linear “Hubble” expansion law. Unfortunately, as I said, the usual BB model has an enormous inflation, to start with, and now apparently we observe an accelerating inflation.
Another problem is that in a rotation appears a so called “Coriolis force”. On Earth, it causes “Trade Winds”. In space, it would cause something similar, on a larger scale, a systematic Coriolis deviation. an anisotropy of the universe. To my knowledge that has not been observed (although some other features seem present, of unknown origin). it would in particular affect cosmological photons (redder in one direction than in another).
Still another problem would be that the tremendous acceleration necessary initially would prevent the gathering of matter long present, and observed, as gravity would be nothing relative to that acceleration.The usual Big Bang is in part here to convince the public that the “Standard Model” is of some use (that’s my cynical view of it). Although, personally, I think it’s interesting by itself. It’s true it provides a neat explanation of the 3K cosmological background radiation…
——————————————————–
After thinking again as an amateur, i thought, why to stick only to circular movement, there are after all many other forms of movement we know, just to mention some, expansion and contraction, vibration,linear straight movement, etc. All of them could be created/happened at the moment of the very beginning. And if to relate the theory to your model of “100 Billion Year Universe”, if the Universe started its expansion gradually, why couldn’t be that the movement like spin, vibration, etc. started gradually too, and its acceleration continuous to this days?
Yet i understand every mathematical model has to have some anchor presupposition. I would start with the speed of light, unless even in this phenomena were found some irregularities, which i don’t know about.
If to continue with the idea, Mathematically i would try to see what kind of movements of a Planck scale dot are necessary to explain the expansion of the universe from one point to the today vastness, and explain all the unexplained phenomenons that oppose the existing paradigms of the science.
As a supplementary of my naive theory of everything i would assume that the very creation happened, when certain type of movement (spin, vibration, etc.) caused the split of the nothingness at Planck scale to matter and antimatter, while certain kind of asymmetric movement made the matter more abundant then the antimatter.

Jews as a Nation and antisemitism

Jews as a Nation and antisemitism

Christianity as any other belief system that is based on dogmas, expects that everyone excepts it as the final truth. When opposed it has tendency to become violent againt any phenomena that doesn’t fit to these dogmas. And the very existence of Jews was exactly about this. Saint Augustine solved the Jewish problem more humanly than Luther. He pointed on them as wretched people, whose suffering is a proper punishments for their refusal to recognize the truth about the Savior. But as compared to Luther , he was for continuous Jews existence, just not to let them thrive. But then Augustus lived in the fourth century, at times when the Vandals and Visigoths threatened the very existence of his community.

 Luther lived more than thousand years later, before the European religious wars of the 17 century, that his own ideas woke up, on the other hand was an extreme example of Christian theologists, who had problem to cope with the very existence of Jews, who as it appears stubbornly refusing to except Jesus as the Messiah.

As contrary to some apologetic claims of some Christian scholars, Saint Augustine is the very prove that the antisemitism didn’t start with the crusaders but is derived from the foundations of the Christian faith itself. But then let's not forget, that Augustus lived in times, when it seemed that nothing will stop the destruction of Christian Roman empire, (he died when the Vandals besieged his city). Naturally his approach had to be more mild than that of Luther, who lived when Christianity looked as the superior faith.

The Christianity based on Luther's ideas is as dogmatic and vigorous as the Catholic Church,   if not more than that. Yet the Reformation movement made an U-turn from its dogmatic anti culture and education position, yet not due to spiritual but rather material reasons, mainly colonialism and renaissance in arts and sciences partly supported also by the Catholic church. The truth is, the Catholic church was a very corrupt organization at the time, but as to my view, corruption of any autocratic entity is the good news, because it give hope that the autocracy is close to collapse. The bad news are when the autocracy succeeds to keep its zealousness popular and murders all its real or imaginary opponents. An other urban mythology is the intellectual openness of the Lutheran movement that brought to enlightenment and scientific revolution of 17-18 century. France was Catholic and its achievements were comparable to that of protestant English. The English were more lucky because they had a rather gradual and not revolutionary political change to non autocratic political system. Then they invented the steam engine because of need of coal to heat the cities, but above all because North America became rather a protestant English country than a French one. And it could easily be otherwise if not the stupidity of the French kings and dictators. Yes the English King Gorge III was disastrous too, but he had the parliament that eventually forced him to come to reason (or rather to lose his reason).

The theological foundation of Judaism is the intensive God-human-God relation loaded with tension and activity based on recipe prescribed in the Five Books of Moses the Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy or in other words the Pentateuch. This books of stories and law prescribe to Jews many complicated rules God ordered to follow. Most of the laws have no human to human consequences, and it is almost impossible strictly to follow them without to fail. This creates a constant relation of sin and guilt, to which the all mighty God reacts with continuous punishment, threats for the future, but also consolation and promises.

One of these promises is to help the Jews to create an independent statehood under a king directly appointed by the God, the Messiah. (Messiah in Hebrew means one who was anointed, or greased, which is the part of act of ceremony of apotheosis of a king.) The best known Messiah was of course King David (Who according to last archeological findings was rather a local chieftain between the mountains of Jerusalem and Hebron than a great King). But since David times, for thousand years of Jews living in the Levant the “Holly Land”, the Jewish statehood had only very few years of real independence. In the eighth century b.c. came already the Assyrians, followed by Babylonians, Persians, Greeks and finally the Romans. All these empires of the region left very little gap for Jewish independence.

After 1000 years of God’s not fulfilled promises for independent Jewish Kingdom ruled by king Chosen by God how could the Jews cope with this frustrating situation? And on top of sll this, the Promised land was again ruled by a Roman dictator, who was not only non Jew, but claimed that he and his horse are God. To a Jewish believer like Jesus, his followers and many other Jews it had to be a shocking experience to see, that God allowed these people to rule the Promised Land, and it seems it is not going to change very soon. But you can’t go to complain to your all mighty God and claim your promised kingdom, viz. what happened to Job in the Book of Job.

So what could the Jews do in their frustration? Leaving the belief in Torah was not an option, so some of them tried to find new definition for Messiah. Not anymore an earthly creation, but a divine creature, who’s promised kingdom is not on earth but in the heaven. All I wanted to say is that Christianity is a understandable development of Jews theological concept, of Jews living in the first century under Roman governance.

So why had it become the major source of anti-Judaism? First, because in the Canonical gospels when the general public heard about Jesus crucifixion ceremony, where the mocking audience are called Jews and not just "the audience". The second and even more important issue is, that when Christianity has become the dominant political religion in Rome, they tried to destroy every hint, that could shake the foundations of their obscure belief, and every thought that is not compatible to their expansionist intentions. So they destroyed all the gospels except of the four canonical gospels. They persecuted the Arians and many others like them, and of course the Jews, who happened to have the copyright for gospels, yet they themselves or at least some of them refused to except the ultimate truth, the truth of the official Christian church.

Zion is a hill but also became in late eighteen century a symbol. Symbol of Jews who believe that the Jews have the right for homeland at least as much as the Albanians. This need for homeland at beginning of the Zionism seemed to be a rather spiritual need than material so not many were interested. Then around the turn off 20 century, with rise of neo-antisemitism the need became material and more Jews became interested. The Holocaust unfortunately proved how right they were. The remaining left overs of European Jews believed that they can secure their physical and cultural survival only by establishing a independent Jewish state. And then the world community feeling ashamed of its own deeds agreed to it. The Jewish state proved its competence as it successfully absorbed the Jews from the Islam world and most probably saved them from a new holocaust.
But since the seventies and eighties started again the "old new" voices continuing the tradition of St. August, Luther, the Russian Czar, you name the rest who worked very hard to de-legitimate the very right of Jews to exist as a separate culture, with all its anomalies for good or bad. This voices started under the cover of internationalism orchestrated by the imperialistic intention of the post WWII bastion of evil, the USSR. After the collapse of USSR, it’s agents who lost their directive, out of confusion continue until today the crusade against the Jewish culture, under the pretext of anti Zionism. I wonder for how long they can nourish this internationalism pretext until they realize that the enemies of Israel the Muslimo-Nazis are not exactly partners for internationalism, unless it will be an internationally imposed fundamental Islam on the non Islamic world.

As to the question is Judaism just a religion or also a nation, we have to ask what it means nation. Once I read somewhere that Stalin wrote "nation is group of people with common language and common land they occupy". From this perspective the Jews in diaspora are not a nation while the Jews in Israel are. But who really cares what this primitive butcher has to say about the subject.
My opinion is very different from his. To my opinion nation is a group of people with joint cultural heritage and a joint epic story or history they identify with. From this point of view of course Jews are a nation even if without a common land. The oddity about the Jews is that their epic story is more than a tribal-national story, it is a theological epic story or in other words a religion.

 What's more their theological story became the basis for theological epics of the Christians and Muslims as well, and this annoys them a lot. " How come such a wretched nation claims the priority upon our epic story?"

It may be interesting to compare the Jewish identity with that of the Greek national identity. The Greeks have a very long history with a influence on western civilization that is comparable with the influence of the Judaism. But the modern Greeks are hardly connected to their ancient culture. They are orthodox Christians and don't believe in their ancient myths. Their language is very different from the classical Greek etc. Yet they claim they are the rightful descents of classical Greece. Viz how they opposed the usage of name Macedonia. So what are the Greeks? nation? culture? an epic story? it just shows to you that the definition of what is nation is more complicated than what Stalin thought.