Tag Archives: Socrates

March 7, 2022 · 22:39

The educational track

What if education got a helping hand? We seemingly play games, we seemingly read books, we seemingly learn. What if we unite this? And here we have a setting to the larger stage and I will admit that Ubisoft has the baton. They got it when they aded the Discovery tour to AC Origin. And when we weren’t in a rush to get the achievements we would have learned a decent deal of life in Egypt. The embalmers, the beer makers and so on. I stated it before, Ubisoft screwed up [plenty, but not that game. That one they got right and credit should be given where credit is due.

And Ubisoft (others too) have been sitting on top of a whole range of IP that they could redistribute in a ‘plus setting’. The stage is decently easy. We have the person we play, we unite the maps of AC Origins and AC Odyssey and we go to town. Remove the wild animals, remove the enemies and so on. Then we add the tracks and works of

Homer, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Plato, Hesiod, Democritus, Socrates, Empedokles, Anaxagoras, Herodotus and many more (well over 300 more). When set in a time line we learn and we now have an educational program. This can be done for Greece and Italy (aka Roman empire). The finny part was that I would have expected that Ubisoft had picked up on this, especially after the discovery tour. And let be honest, it is a much more interesting way of learning. See it as missions, from person to person, take a gander from where they were born to where they stopped living (or until the big works are illuminated). We see all thee boring books (not all mind you), but to use games to educate has not been explored enough and weirdly enough Ubisoft has an inside track here the renaissance (AC 2, Brotherhood), US independence war (AC 3), And there is plenty more to tip on and with streaming systems seeking a larger hold, having the games with optional educational side will be a growing thing and lets be clear the expected $200,000,000,000 that the analysts state that gaming represents might go longer for Ubisoft if they find the larger application and I reckon that AC Origins (with Odyssey) might show to be a larger cash cow that could help them stretch time, time they basically no longer have. I would grasp at all options to stretch what is there. And they are not alone, but they are as far as I can tell the most visible one.

We need to realise that not all games have an educational option, but those who do could have a larger stage to fill and a larger appeal (especially to parents). And don’t knock the idea. To get kids (11-16) interested in classical education topics is hard enough, getting them to walk the timeline of Homer and write a paper in it (with screenshots) might be the new setting no one in education considered before. It might not be their fault, but I reckon it is the foot in the door Ubisoft desperately needs at present.

Ketchup with the past

Yup, a wordplay and I am always happy to make wordplays. I think it was the Monty Python team who instilled that part in me. I reckon they came at the right time. One might say that it was a ‘Papers having been a place for the Great Charter’, the latin joke gains perspective once you add ‘great’ to the equation of a ‘shitty place’, but that is merely me trying to find the joke in all the wrong places. It brought me back to a situation I thought of before. It is added with the thought that when you decide to steal a billion dollars YOU WILL BE FOUND! Unless everyone realises you are dead, the loot is gone or if the theft was never detected in the first place and it is that last part that matters.

In 1495 Girolamo Savonarola started something that would later be known as the bonfire of the vanities. In that event works by Albrecht Dürer, Giovanni Bellini, Luca Pacioli, Michele Giambono and at least a dozen others, from these makers some works made it to today, but not all. A lot was burned by the people adhering to the words of Girolamo Savonarola. Books and pantings that would now value at a billion plus. So what would happen if (massively sci-fi and fantasy) we could step through in the minute before it happens and replace these works with forgeries? The forgeries would be burned, the originals saved. It is not the only moment that this happened. There was Kristalnacht (9–10 November 1938) and more importantly the Library of Alexandria that had in excess of 200,000 scrolls holding the works of Plato, Homer, Aristotle, Apollonius of Rhodes, Aristarchus of Samothrace and many more. Some survived but a lot were lost to the flames, what do you think that a scroll, a first edition to a work by Didymus Chalcenterus, the man that inspired Cicero would fetch? I reckon you are millions short in your estimate to the value of such works. Parts were burned (allegedly accidentally) in 48 BC? After that there was another issue where Caliph Omar had another go at the same library, now in 642 AD. How much was lost? So there is no foundation in reality, but in fantasy? Three jobs in two places with a loot amounting to that could fetch well over $4,000,000,000 and no one is the wiser, history was written and 2,000 year later that loot is no longer hot and wanted, so what could be gotten? History is filled with events where we see that fires and natural events caused havoc, and what stops the inquisitive minds to seek out those ‘forgotten’ treasures?

So, this has no bearing on reality and its setting, and as far as I am concerned, the creative mind merely needs to dream, realistic or not, we tend to dream (sorry Scarlett Johansson). For me it all started with Tom Hanks and Melanie Griffith in ‘Bonfires of the Vanities’, it was an entertaining movie, but it was there (1990) when I learned of the origins of that name and some Italian prophet who enticed people to burn art, the lowest form of censorship. That day I learned (again) that Adolf Hitler wasn’t even original, he got the idea from an Italian. It also intersected with the thoughts that censorship burning have no positive outcome, it never does, what existed was lost, we could never see the ‘feigned’ negativity of the works and learn for ourselves. It is perhaps the only reason I opposed the banning of ‘Mein Reich’ not because of the work, I never saw or read it. We can never make up our minds if we do not see the negativity of the work. All these so called ‘wise people’ stating that it is better for us, we have learned that these people are all about forwarding their own positions at the expense of EVERYONE else. And we lose the option to learn.

We can search the red book of Mao and wonder in that same way what some were trying to hide from us. We saw the posters, the presented imagery by the Chinese in those days, but we never got to learn what was wrong and why things were wrong. I reckon that the what and why are connected, but from me that would be speculation. You see, we should have learned something from the trial of Socrates in 399 BC. We are told (from primary school onwards) that he was given the “death sentence of Socrates was the seemingly legal consequence of asking politico-philosophic questions of his students, which resulted in the two accusations of moral corruption and impiety”, yet in that we were never told what these politico-philosophic questions were in the first place, we were too young? It was too complex? We didn’t learn, merely that some questions get you the death penalty and there is a larger failing there. If we cannot learn, how can we move forward? In that same setting in school we were never made aware of ‘Apology of Socrates to the Jury’ by Xenophon of Athens, if so would we have learned anything more?

We need to catch up with the past at times, although it was a snow globe that gave me the idea how to push a meltdown to nuclear reactors, actual positive inventions are clouded by censorship. And the times is filled with those examples, so what were we not allowed to learn then and have we learned now? Do not take the work from power players proclaiming to know, learn it for yourself. You might pick up a few ideas on the side and that might give you your first big break. It is up to YOU to decide what to do, and as long as you have peace with whatever path you take, that will be all that should matter to you.

In the past we were inspired by books and music, then we got records and electronics, then there was the internet, but it will be limited to what you are allowed to see, I reckon that the really nice parts are hidden in what you were not allowed to see because people decided what was good for us. I do accept there are premises where censorship is a given (read: a must) and essential to protect the vulnerable groups and I do not oppose that, I merely wonder who gets to make certain calls, especially in the case of political censorship. Yet overall I spend a nice day day dreaming of a situation and it passes the day. Optionally I came up with a new movie, not bad for a simple Sunday in May.

To do or not to do

Weirdly enough, the act, the thought and the interest is not new. The ‘wisdom’ has been seen as early as the 60’s in public toilets.

Socrates tells us that “To be is to do”
Jean-Paul Sartre states that “To do is to be”
Frank Sinatra taught us: “Do be do be do”

Socrates, or So Crates as Keanu Reeves called him, started the thought, yet in the 19th century French philosopher, Sartre, who also dabbled in playwrights, novels, biographies, literary criticism was also a political activist. In his philosophical views, he share the view of Existentialism, where philosophical thinking begins with the human subject, hence, we can ask whether he should be on the side of So Crates. Even as Existentialists are often seen as ‘too abstract and remote’ from concrete human experience, we might wonder, because of the actions of Sartre whether he was a true Existentialist. Perhaps he was an academically inclined individual on the path of applied logics in the evolving field of pragmatism. His view on Phenomenology, or over simplified ‘taken intentionally as directed toward something’, as some might see it as ‘the hammering of a nail’, yet in all this, does one consider that the nail ‘just’ is?

So where is this going?

Well this is about a BBC article titled ‘Did Sean Penn break the law with El Chapo interview?‘ (at http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-35228910).

The quotes that are in question is “In his Rolling Stone piece, Mr Penn talked about the use of burner phones and other methods used to escape detection by authorities. Many people have wondered whether Mr Penn broke the law with his reporting – and whether or not he could be prosecuted“, so is there really a ‘group’ of many people, or is there a select group of some people in specific positions? By the way, burner phones are used in a massive amount of ways by people in many circles, the financial circle for one, the intelligence circle as another side and both have been illuminated by novels, TV shows and movies in a massive way, so why mention this part at all?

The quote ““Simply having contact with a known narco-trafficker is not the basis of prosecution,” said Daniel Richman, a professor of law at Columbia University and a former federal prosecutor” is equally important, because as is, why place this article in such light? Because some people are as the quote gives “his interview has made people uncomfortable“, really?

Why is that? You see, many people (many thousands) in the UK have been extremely uncomfortable with the Tesco affair and the involvement of Pricewaterhouse Coopers, how many people have shone a light on this within the BBC, or any other large media outlet for print or multimedia?

Would the answer be Zip or Zilch?

The last quote in the article is actually interesting “As Cesar Diaz, a former senior special agent who worked on investigations of Pablo Escobar, a Colombian drug trafficker, said: “If I was a Mexican authority, I would want to know: How in the heck did Sean Penn know where El Chapo was and we didn’t?”“, most likely he is deceiving the listener with his statement, you see, very likely El Chapo knew exactly where Sean Penn was, not the other way around and as such, one was brought to the other, Cesar Diaz actually knows this. Perhaps he is steering away from the issue that CNN gave light to (at http://edition.cnn.com/2015/07/15/americas/mexico-corruption-el-chapo-escape/) on July 16^th 2015. Where we see “but a series of scandals in the past year already had top Mexican officials in the hot seat. And Guzman’s escape, experts say, shines an even harsher spotlight on a problem that historically has stretched from police on the streets to the highest halls of power“, which is nothing new really, we have seen it in many sources, now, we might agree that not all sources are reliably honest, yet when we see a ‘random’ 3465 articles regarding corruption, how many would we need to show that there is a massive issue in that regard? In that view, is it equally far-fetched that El Chapo got a phone call from the airport where a young lady with a warm voice states “Senor, your movie star friend from New York La Guardia has arrived 10 minutes ago, tener un día maravilloso!” That would have been the start for a mere pick-up job. Cesar Diaz knows this, there is little mystery here.

Yet as we see all the speculation and worded effort to try to show that something is here, how come that the BBC and all other players are taking a wide berth around the issues of Tesco and the 3 billion drop in value? I gave a little light towards this yesterday, there is little to no action, what scares them?

Now it is time to get back to my slightly lower than basic feel of philosophy. If we accept that Phenomenology is ‘the study of the structures of experience and consciousness‘ how would the press be valued as we see the structure of ‘morality and values‘ regarding the interview of one person regarding another, let’s say, a person with an arts direction and his observations and interactions with an escaped drug baron, perhaps ruler of a drug empire would be better, yet in that same light, the professional press will not step anywhere near Pricewaterhouse Coopers regarding their involvement in a scandal that broke Tesco in little pieces, an involvement as shown by their peer Deloitte we see a version that forces us to ask additional questions regarding the acts that PwC was involved in, so in all that, the press stays away? How can we remain conscious, or better evolve consciousness whilst the press, regarded historically as the evolving factor of our opinion of events, how can we rely on that press who can to a larger extent no longer be trusted in their assessment of what is an issue?

In a similar light, as we see Existentialism as a view where we see that humans define their own meaning in life, and try to make rational decisions despite existing in an irrational universe. As such, is Sean Penn defining meaning in life? Is he giving us a view where we get to see how the world in some places are managed and arranged? Is that the view that scares Cesar Diaz? Is that the view that scares the ‘uncomfortable’ people? Many know the reality that life for some people in some continents are very different to the one we face.

In that same view, as Existentialism believes that we are free to do, to be and as we must take personal responsibility for ourselves (and our actions), which act is the most immoral one, the path Sean Penn took, or the path the UK press at large refuses to take as they seem to cater to the need of their advertisers and not regarding the path the people are entitled to be informed on? When did the newspaper become the projection of presentation, when did it stop to be the critical informer of events as they happened? So as the press answers that their Existentialism comes with angst, we need to ask regarding the type of angst, angst regarding their income, their career, or their boss. How many of these flags would it take to see them not as journalists, but as mere cowards with some writing skills and decent punctuation? I am just asking!

No, as I see it these facilitators ignore the outside sources, deny angst and move to the music and dance (off the beat) as Sinatra sings ‘Do Be Do Be Do’.

Tag Archives: Socrates

The educational track

Ketchup with the past

To do or not to do

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