Thursday, March 23, 2006
The difference between nations
The breaking news
Afghanistan, Islam, a man, Germany,
Memetics, semiotics, evolution,
On German TV breaking news was shown, a man from Afghanistan who used to live some time in Germany before, decided to change his religion, and went from Islam to Christianity. The state attorney in Kabul pleads for capital punishment for that man.
In simple words, one of the highest men in the Afghanistan justice wants death penalty for somebody who only changed the religion he wants to belong to.
This shows the level of “human thinking“which the Kabul state attorney is endowed with. It resembles the primitiveness of some totalitarian systems, like German nazi system or the communistic system, which mostly maintained the motto “who is not with us is against us”. This sentence is deeply stupid and deeply primitive.
No wonder that some German politicians said that it is difficult to pursue the goal of globalisation when there are some nations which are more the 500 years behind the development. The human development, including tolerance positive thinking and mutual help was meant.
Unfortunately, we do not have only highly developed nations on one end of the scale and the nations which are estimated to lack some 500 years behind, but we have also nations somewhere in between these two extremes.
Czechs seems to me to represent a good example of a nation “somewhere in between”. The bribery, overall crime and inability to punish crimes are huge in this nation. The human respect toward each other is not too highly developed either. People do not speak with each other as openly as is mostly done among members of a more developed nation.
Very often when they are forced to communicate their sentences are empty, there is no real content to that what they say. Very often they only pretend, and mostly they even do not know it, they consider their way of communicating with each other the best one in the universe.
They use the communication only at the level of semiotics, of signs but there is no or extremely little memetics, memes, contents to that what they say and how they say that.
A typical way of communication between the school management and the teachers and other school staff is, that one person from the school management places a sheet of paper with some requirements on a board and expects everyone to read it and behave accordingly. There is extremely little personal contact at the level of managing, coaching and leading the staff. Seldom are also appraisals of any kind.
It comes to a direct contact only when the school management believes someone deserves punishment for poor performance, which mostly is a mistake or even only misprint in some kind of a form. This kind of communication is mostly carried out in front of all the staff.
There is completely no coaching whatsoever, now systematic development of the school. No improvements in the overall philosophy of teaching and the school could have been observed in last 10 years.
This morning, March 23, 2006, I have read a Czech newspaper saying how important it is to have an experience working or studying abroad. I went nearly nuts, as this is what I have constantly saying to at least two school directors here. In one school I even succeeded in organizing such a study and working stay for Czech students in Germany, completely on private basis, with absolutely no help from whatever kind of local, state or European authority. Which then has been suspended as the respective Czech director was not able to bear the fact that it was work and something extra he had not made himself. I have written and published post to this topic on this BLOG including copies of German newspapers about this study stay of Czech students in Germany. Poor Czech students and poor Czech schools, and of course, poor Czech nation.
The problem is being able to see the small differences. The huge differences of nations at he other ends of developmental scale are easy to see and perceive as negative. If the difference is much smaller hardly anyone can see it and even fewer people are able to describe the difference. Nevertheless the difference between nations does exist, regardless what stupid politicians proclaim. They just do it to be re-elected and not to do their job.
There is extremely lot to this topic, the easiest way to get an idea is to read the article by Derek Gatherer in Journal of Memetics in the internet, and try to understand his model of passing information among people based on a model by Axelrod.
One of the ways how one can approach the problem is the combination of memetics and semiotics. Some people prefer content, memes in their speech and behaviour, and some prefer semiotics, signs, sometimes just only in order to mislead the others.
Afghanistan, Islam, a man, Germany,
Memetics, semiotics, evolution,
On German TV breaking news was shown, a man from Afghanistan who used to live some time in Germany before, decided to change his religion, and went from Islam to Christianity. The state attorney in Kabul pleads for capital punishment for that man.
In simple words, one of the highest men in the Afghanistan justice wants death penalty for somebody who only changed the religion he wants to belong to.
This shows the level of “human thinking“which the Kabul state attorney is endowed with. It resembles the primitiveness of some totalitarian systems, like German nazi system or the communistic system, which mostly maintained the motto “who is not with us is against us”. This sentence is deeply stupid and deeply primitive.
No wonder that some German politicians said that it is difficult to pursue the goal of globalisation when there are some nations which are more the 500 years behind the development. The human development, including tolerance positive thinking and mutual help was meant.
Unfortunately, we do not have only highly developed nations on one end of the scale and the nations which are estimated to lack some 500 years behind, but we have also nations somewhere in between these two extremes.
Czechs seems to me to represent a good example of a nation “somewhere in between”. The bribery, overall crime and inability to punish crimes are huge in this nation. The human respect toward each other is not too highly developed either. People do not speak with each other as openly as is mostly done among members of a more developed nation.
Very often when they are forced to communicate their sentences are empty, there is no real content to that what they say. Very often they only pretend, and mostly they even do not know it, they consider their way of communicating with each other the best one in the universe.
They use the communication only at the level of semiotics, of signs but there is no or extremely little memetics, memes, contents to that what they say and how they say that.
A typical way of communication between the school management and the teachers and other school staff is, that one person from the school management places a sheet of paper with some requirements on a board and expects everyone to read it and behave accordingly. There is extremely little personal contact at the level of managing, coaching and leading the staff. Seldom are also appraisals of any kind.
It comes to a direct contact only when the school management believes someone deserves punishment for poor performance, which mostly is a mistake or even only misprint in some kind of a form. This kind of communication is mostly carried out in front of all the staff.
There is completely no coaching whatsoever, now systematic development of the school. No improvements in the overall philosophy of teaching and the school could have been observed in last 10 years.
This morning, March 23, 2006, I have read a Czech newspaper saying how important it is to have an experience working or studying abroad. I went nearly nuts, as this is what I have constantly saying to at least two school directors here. In one school I even succeeded in organizing such a study and working stay for Czech students in Germany, completely on private basis, with absolutely no help from whatever kind of local, state or European authority. Which then has been suspended as the respective Czech director was not able to bear the fact that it was work and something extra he had not made himself. I have written and published post to this topic on this BLOG including copies of German newspapers about this study stay of Czech students in Germany. Poor Czech students and poor Czech schools, and of course, poor Czech nation.
The problem is being able to see the small differences. The huge differences of nations at he other ends of developmental scale are easy to see and perceive as negative. If the difference is much smaller hardly anyone can see it and even fewer people are able to describe the difference. Nevertheless the difference between nations does exist, regardless what stupid politicians proclaim. They just do it to be re-elected and not to do their job.
There is extremely lot to this topic, the easiest way to get an idea is to read the article by Derek Gatherer in Journal of Memetics in the internet, and try to understand his model of passing information among people based on a model by Axelrod.
One of the ways how one can approach the problem is the combination of memetics and semiotics. Some people prefer content, memes in their speech and behaviour, and some prefer semiotics, signs, sometimes just only in order to mislead the others.
# posted by Dalibor @ 2:18 PM 
