Tomasz Lis on Bidding Farewell to America: "The Worst is Likely Yet to Come"

This is automated translation of Tomasz Lis article which appeared in NaTemat online journal:
https://natemat.pl/blogi/tomaszlis/589934,felieton-tomasza-lisa-pozegnanie-z-ameryka  

transformation is nothing short of shocking. The former leader of the free world is now evidently becoming its adversary. For decades, America inspired admiration and hope. Today, it evokes outrage or pity. A great power that elicits pity—this does not bode well.

The Roman Empire was attacked by barbarians. The American Empire has been assaulted by internal barbarians. The chief barbarian turned out to be the Caesar.

An America that not only tolerates but even rewards an approach to international relations exemplified by Vladimir Putin is becoming a parody of itself and a negation of everything it stood for over two centuries. Despite its flaws, shortcomings, and mistakes, America appeared to millions around the world as a beacon of hope.

America was the world’s first empire of good—willing to confront and pay the price of confronting successive incarnations of the empire of evil, from Hitler’s Germany to Stalin’s and Brezhnev’s Soviet Union, to bin Laden’s network of Islamic terrorism.

Over sixty years ago, a young American president, taking his oath, addressed the world: "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, support any friend, and oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty."

Three years later, in Soviet-threatened West Berlin, he reassured its citizens, declaring, "Ich bin ein Berliner." A quarter of a century later, one of his successors stood by the Berlin Wall and called upon the Soviet leader to tear it down. America spoke in the voice of freedom, dignity, and human rights.

In 1989, the leader of Poland’s victorious Solidarity movement, Lech Wałęsa, spoke with deep emotion before a joint session of the U.S. Congress, highlighting America’s generosity: "This Congress," he emphasized, "appears to many oppressed and disenfranchised people around the world as a light of freedom and a bastion of human rights."

Today, that generosity is being rapidly replaced by pettiness, wickedness, and vileness. Instead of a free America, there is lawlessness. To paraphrase Churchill: Never before have so few, in such a short time, destroyed so much of the legacy of so many. The Statue of Liberty shrinks and collapses in shame.

An America that scorns its most loyal allies while openly rewarding its greatest adversary—a brutal aggressor and war criminal—is systematically erasing what has been the essence of its spirit and identity for two centuries. An America that favors and appeases tyranny is destroying itself.

Before our very eyes, Donald Trump is obliterating the principle of national self-determination, which, since the signing of the Atlantic Charter by Roosevelt and Churchill, has been the foundation of the Western political community. Along the way, he is dismantling America's soft power and the extraordinary legacy of talent and hard work contributed by remarkable individuals—from Michael Jordan to Steven Spielberg, from Einstein to Chaplin, from Martin Luther King to Whitney Houston, from Mark Twain to Stephen King, from Meryl Streep to Tom Hanks, from Walt Disney to Ralph Lauren.

All of this is being sacrificed to appease the man despised by the free world—Putin. Roosevelt sought to defeat Hitler, not to gratify him. American presidents, from Truman onward, aimed to overcome the Soviets, not to appease them. America’s entire soft power is being swiftly buried. Instead of America the Beautiful, we now have America the Terrible.

It is not only America that needs the world’s sympathy. The world, for its own good, needs an America that is liked and respected. Today, at breakneck speed, it is turning into an amoral outcast—both ethically and in terms of global perception—a toxic and radioactive state. Instead of leading the free world, it is becoming a pariah. This could be the greatest public relations catastrophe in world history.

Bin Laden and the Iranian ayatollahs could never have dreamed of such an outcome. Instead of MAGA, we are witnessing MASAcre. A world in which America becomes a laughingstock is a dangerous world. An America that disregards values loses its own value. America’s strength and prestige have never been just military power, but rather the power of its ideas and spirit. This was its historical uniqueness. Strength without virtue inevitably becomes a tool of evil.

Power without values is a colossus that, in the end, must collapse—a tragedy not only for America but for the world. The fall and disgrace of America is good news only for its enemies. For its allies and friends, like the Polish people, it is disheartening. It is deeply unsettling to realize that a nation once destined to protect the world may now become its greatest threat. And all of this within just a few weeks.

The worst is likely yet to come.

Original text in Polish: Felieton Tomasza Lisa. Pożegnanie z Ameryką | naTemat.pl

Full Reverse. Musk, just like Trump, is our child

This is an op-ed written originally in Polish (https://natemat.pl/blogi/tomaszlis/586808,felieton-tomasza-lisa-o-trumpie-i-musku) by Tomasz Lis, Polish journalist.

Donald Trump may be the cause of countless misfortunes, but at their core, Trump and Trumpism—and likewise Musk and Muskism—are inevitable consequences. Consequences of our mistakes, our negligence, our foolishness, and our lack of imagination.

We live in an era where the main values are convenience, comfort, freedom from stress, and peace of mind. It’s somewhat understandable. After millennia of wars, murders, violence, and two horrific world wars, humanity had every right to want to ease off, catch its breath, and dock in a safe harbor.

The problem is that life never stands still; the world is never motionless. Just because we take a breather doesn’t mean the Earth stops spinning or that ancient forces stop roiling beneath us. Any sense of peace is merely an illusion, stagnation is a façade, and stillness is illusory.

I fully understand the desire to escape from all sorts of problems. I myself embrace a rather minimalist notion of happiness, which I call sans souci—“without worries”—just as Voltaire’s friend, King Frederick II of Prussia, named his beautiful palace in Potsdam. If you feel safe at home, the fridge is full, and the roof doesn’t leak, you can already call that happiness. Most of us need little more, and that’s perfectly fine.

On the other hand, despite subscribing to this form of happiness, I’m still drawn to the motto posted at the exit to the US Open’s center court in New York: “Pressure is a privilege.” However, few people share that view. After all, why stress out when our civilization’s top priority is to avoid stress? Even when we give ourselves challenges—running marathons or doing Ironmans—we do it for pleasure. In other words, even enormous effort serves our hedonism.

And that’s okay. Our lives have changed completely over the past 30–40 years. Because the fingers on my left hand aren’t fully functional, I’m typing this text with the thumb of my right hand on a phone. As I do this, I look back with nostalgia and a hint of melancholy on how, 40 years ago, I wrote my first pieces on a typewriter. I hammered those keys, it was incredibly loud, and I loved it because everyone knew a real journalist typed on a machine, surrounded by clouds of smoke, lighting one cigarette off the other and snubbing them out in an overflowing ashtray. That’s how it used to be.

A few days ago, we celebrated Grandmother’s and Grandfather’s Day. Most children passed on their well-wishes by calling from a cell phone. And with just one more button press, they could see grandma or grandpa. Once upon a time, you had to travel across town or place a long-distance call (something kids today don’t even know existed and never will). It’s all quite amazing.

In the past, when I was sending TV reports from Los Angeles or San Diego, I needed satellite links. Today, a phone call is enough. Incredible. The world at your thumb. At your thumb you have access to every library, every book, museum, store, flight ticket, or any information about your favorite actors or athletes—who post this information themselves. Everyone is at your fingertips, the entire world’s knowledge is a tap away. The transformation is so staggering that being intoxicated by it comes naturally. Lightheadedness is inevitable, a nearly narcotic high guaranteed.

So, what does Trump have to do with all this? In a world where comfort is king, and success is measured in clicks, likes, and followers, humanity effectively glorifies and institutionalizes egotism and narcissism. The highway for the Trumps of the world is wide open. Especially since—here’s another paradox—while access to knowledge is easier than ever, ignorance is more widespread than ever. Everyone knows everything, which means no one truly knows anything. Everyone is an expert at everything, which means no one understands a thing. On top of that, it’s an ignorance that’s smug and self-assured. We now have perfectly tilled soil for a Trump—or many Trumps—and for his supporters.

I very much appreciate audacity. It fuels ambition and imagination, drives desires, and forces us to take action and meet challenges head-on. But audacity without humility is a devilish trap. It gives the illusion of omnipotence and omniscience. Over fifty years ago, when humanity landed on the Moon, most people watched that triumph on television. Today, enjoying humanity’s countless triumphs is our everyday routine.

We practically breathe the fruits of human genius. And we devour them from dawn to dusk: touch-screen phones, voice-controlled TV remotes, voice-activated lights—a kind of Edison and Goethe on steroids. Our intellect has proven boundless, our minds untamable, yet behind the brilliance of these creators and inventors, there’s been no parallel revolution of the heart or of empathy.

In 1998, Pope John Paul II wrote the encyclical Fides et Ratio—faith and reason. It was essentially a desperate defense of religion, values, and the embattled human heart, pitted against reason’s triumph and its intoxicating self-congratulation. After all, this extraordinary reason had already decided that faith was passé, religion an anachronism and relic, and talk of moral values just a waste of time. Humanity decided it was smarter than God, no longer needed Him, and considered morality and ethics worthless junk fit for the landfill.

At the very peak of its intellect and the zenith of its absolute power of reason, humanity found itself on a desert of madness and nihilism, more lost than ever before. Cut off from any signal, geolocation, or navigation, it flailed blindly, searching for a way out and following charlatans who offered easy, pleasant, and comfortable solutions—since, after all, convenience is everything.

Pope John Paul II wrote that faith and reason are like wings lifting man toward contemplating truth. Humanity, however, concluded that it either already knows the truth or doesn’t need it. And if it does decide to look for truth, it tries to fly with just one wing. Even without the Smolensk disaster, we know you can’t fly with only one wing.

The greatest triumph in human history thus became the foretaste of the collapse of ideas, the death of ethics and values, and a total defeat for humanity.

Welcome to Trump’s world. Are you happy? Are you fucking happy? Trump is your child and your downfall. Now, to paraphrase Gogol, go ahead and weep for yourselves. And as Scripture says: “there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” And so it is. Humanity mindlessly believed in a utopia and chased after it. Yet every utopia is merely a foyer to hell.

Huxley knew this when he described his Brave New World, as did Orwell. And so did the millions of victims of Nazism and Communism who fertilized the soil where it grew. A handful of madmen decided they would save humanity—or at least the “master race”—and they set off with great gusto to realize their vision. Every overly pushy and reckless recipe for happiness has been, and will always be, a recipe for disaster. Every rejection of faith and values has been the antechamber and appetizer to a nightmare.

Now we have Musk, who is saving the planet with electric cars and planning a trip to Mars. But he’s so intoxicated with his own power that he’s removed all brakes and safety switches. Audacity made him dream of Mars. Lack of humility will send him to hell first—and us along with him. Musk, like Trump, is our child. We gave him the toys, the opportunities, and the power, forgetting that all power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Reworking Kennedy’s words is in vogue, so here’s my version: Don’t ask how humanity can achieve success and triumph. Ask how to prevent it—before humanity becomes the multi-billion-strong victim of that very success.

Republic of Spaces - Foams - The third volume of Peter Sloterdijk Spheres...

 

I've just started reading the third volume of Peter Sloterdijk's Spheres. It promises to be a true intellectual feast...

"Foams offer a theory of the present age from the perspective that 'life' unfolds multifocally, multiperspectivally and heterarchically."

December 25th, 2024, Lodz

Foam is actually existing deception—the non-entity as an entity nonetheless, or a feigner of being, a symbol of the First False, an emblem for the undermining of the solid by the untenable—a ghost light, a superfluity, a mood, a swamp gas, inhabited by a dubious subjectivity.

Foam begets nothing, it has no consequences. With no life expectancy or next generation, all it knows is running ahead into its own bursting.

Hegel’s new logic, a positivization of the negative came into view, and with it a possible rehabilitation of foam: “Out of the ferment of finitude, before its transformation into foam, spirit rises up fragrantly.

Does spirit itself, the medium in which substance develops into the subject, even now owe something to foam? Does this bastard that could not be trusted transpire as the long-sought middle element in which the spiritual and the material join to form that concreteness which we call existence? 

Is it the third factor through which binary idiocy could be overcome? Did Aristotle foresee such amalgams when, in Problemata physica, he classed the illness of brilliant men—melancholy—among the “air-filled ailments,” whose features include an affinity for foamable substances: black gall, which the doctors of antiquity believed to appear as an aerated mixture?

December 26th, 2024, Lodz

"It does not pass on outpourings of immediate truth; if Einstein lived next door, I would not know any more about the universe as a result. If the son of God and I had lived on the same floor for years, I would only learn afterwards—if at all—who my neighbor was. 

Every point in the foam offers glimpses of the bordering ones, but comprehensive views are not available—in the most advanced case, exaggerations are formulated inside one bubble and can be used in many neighboring ones. Messages are selectively transferable, and there are no exits into the whole. For theory that accepts being-in-foam as the primary definition of our situation, final super-visions of the One World are not only unattainable, but impossible—and, correctly understood, also undesirable.

Whoever speaks of foams in this tone has abandoned the central symbol of classical metaphysics, of the all-gathering monosphere, namely the orb-shaped One and its projection into panoptic central constructions."

January 1st, 2025, Dębina

How Trump can drag us into an even bigger war ....

This is a translation (which I made with help of AI to do it fast) of an extremely thoughtful article by Marcin Wyrwał - Polish war correspondent in Ukraine (See Marcin on X). The original  text is here).

A note - I did not get permission from Marcin to do so. I hope I do not make any harm though ...

Donald Trump promises to end the war. In reality, he will drag us into an even bigger one

At the Republican convention, Donald Trump promised to end all wars, including the one in Ukraine. At first glance, his proposal seems brilliantly simple. In reality, it is simplistic and guarantees dragging not only Ukraine but all of Europe into a much bloodier conflict.

During the Republican Party convention in Milwaukee, the presidential candidate, Donald Trump, once again made populist promises. One of them is particularly dangerous—not only for Ukraine but for our entire region. It concerns ending the war in Ukraine.

Trump, in a single sentence, promised to end not only this but "every international crisis caused by the current administration." The promise to end all crises is classic populist fluff, unsupported by reality, and aimed at applause from less informed voters. However, the promise to end the war in Ukraine might actually come true if Trump comes to power. The issue is that, in Trump's proposed formula, it is a ready recipe for bloodshed on a much larger scale and territory than Ukraine alone.

Trump's plan to end the war has been known since at least April. In private conversations described by "The Washington Post",  the Republican presidential candidate suggested that to achieve this, it would be enough to give Russia Crimea and the other territories it currently occupies in Ukraine. In the same conversations, Trump said that such a plan would allow both sides to "save face", and that the residents of the occupied territories "would not mind" joining Russia, which clearly indicates a complete lack of understanding of the situation.

Let's focus on the core part of Trump's plan—peace in exchange for territories handed over to Moscow.

The problem is that Ukraine has already been through this, and each time, the result of such a scenario has been escalation on a much larger scale. Explaining this is a bit more complex than Trump's rally slogans.

How the West Allowed Ukraine to Be Pushed into the Gray Zone

Ukraine liberated itself from Russia on August 24, 1991, with the adoption of the declaration of independence by the Ukrainian parliament. The Ukrainian nation gained freedom, but this development was also extremely beneficial for Poland. Until then, we were the buffer for Europe and the first strike zone for Russia in an attack on Europe (of course, for several decades, we were also in the Eastern Bloc, which would still end in conflict on our territory).

Macrospherology of humans. Globes - volume two of Peter Sloterdijk's Spheres

I have been reading the second volume of Sloterdijk's magnum opus for a couple of months now. I still haven't found the time for a full review, or, as I have done in the past with some books, to post quotes here. However, the book is so significant that I've decided to write this post now and share a few quotes:

"As a process of growing solidarity complexes, the history of homo sapiens in the time of advanced civilization is above all a battle for the integral and integrating hothouse. It is based on the attempt to provide the wider inside, the reconciling own, the more far-reaching common area with an invulnerable form, or at least a livable one that is superior to the attacks from the outside.

That this attempt is clearly still in progress, and that despite immeasurable setbacks-the struggle for ever larger

parts of humanity to move into ever larger communal shelters or endospheres is still being undertaken, testifies as much to its irresistible motives as to the stubborn resistance to the historical pull into the extended realm of inner security. Struggles to preserve and expand spheres form both the dramatic core of our species' history and its principle of continuity."

https://www.amazon.com/Globes-Spheres-Macrospherology-Semiotext-Foreign/dp/1584351608  

However, if you look around, at the world as it is today... we have more setbacks than progress...

Stay tuned ... I will put here quotes and my thoughts on that great book ...

See this: 

"As the monstrous employer in the work of mourning, death is the first sphere stressor and creator of cultures. The mourning communes survive by accepting the task of taming the fury of disappearance through expanded spatial formation. It is the distancing power of the imagination, which embeds the current living space in surrounding spaces of ghosts and the dead, that spawns cultures as self-harboring spatial figments in the first place."

November 12, 2023 ... 

See Peter Sloterdijk's latest great lecture: Future Cities Conference 2023 | Peter Sloterdijk | The Future of Too Big Cities - YouTube

November 25, 2023

Human is "a natal and mortal creature"...

See what is an essential thought from "Vascular Memories" chapter:

"Hence the human being is the animal that, together with its significant others, produces endospheres in almost every situation because it remains shaped by the memory of a different having-been-inside, and by the anticipation of a final being-enclosed. It is the natal and mortal creature that has an interior because it changes its interior. Relocation tensions are in effect in every place where humans exist; that is why their entire history is the history of walls and their metamorphoses."

November 26th, 2023

The most beautiful Song since Song of Songs....

Just (After Song of Songs) 

The song written by David Lang 

and beautifully sung by Trio Mediæval

Just your mouth

Just your love

Just your anointing oils

Just your name

Just your chambers

Just your love

And my mother's sons

And my own vineyard

And my soul

Just your flock

Just your companions

Just your kids

Just your cheeks

Just your neck

Just your couch

And my perfume

And my beloved

And my breasts

And my beloved

And my love

Just your eyes

And my beloved

Our couch

Our house

Our rafters

And my love

And my beloved

Just your shadow

Just your fruit

Just your banner over me

Just your left hand

Just your right hand

And my beloved

And my beloved

Our wall

And my beloved

And my love

And my fair one

And my love

Concluding reading of Sloterdijk "Bubbles" - volume I of Spheres

In my busy life, it took me almost a full year to read the first volume of Peter Sloterdijk's trilogy "Spheres". The volume, titled "Bubbles", delves into all situations and places (in a metaphorical sense) where we are "In" - with others, with our mothers, lovers, friends, with music, angels, and even with God.

Sloterdijk's contemplation of our "In" draws from so many diverse sources, from St. Augustine to Heidegger, from the mystics who wrote about the internal life of the Holy Trinity to those who practiced psychoanalysis - it's breathtaking.

Moreover, Sloterdijk writes in a manner that appeals to both the devoutly religious and to atheists alike.

It's unfortunate that I read it during a period of my life when I was so preoccupied that I couldn’t elaborate more on this great book here.

Statement of the The Polish Center for Holocaust Research

Once again, we observe with great concern a situation in which government representatives and other public officials comment on scientific findings, which are the result of years of research and analysis. This time, it concerns comments on an interview with Professor Barbara Engelking, given on April 19, 2023, to Monika Olejnik in the program "Kropka nad i".

The subject of the interview was the fate of Jewish civilians during the uprising in the ghetto and later, as presented in the exhibition "A Sea of Fire Around Us" at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, the concept of which was created by Prof. Engelking. The exhibition shows the tragedy of these fates and the heroism of the silent resistance of Jewish women and men, who recorded their experiences in hiding places and bunkers; their words often being the only trace left of them.

In preserved diaries, accounts, and memories, one can find the entire spectrum of what Jews had to face trying to survive in hiding in occupied Warsaw: fear and hope, a sense of loneliness and the formation of supportive groups, passivity and agency. There are also mentions of reluctance, lack of help, blackmail, betrayal, death at the hands of the Germans, and help, friendship, and rescue provided by other Jews and Poles.

It was about all these aspects of Jewish fate during World War II, analyzed for years by Holocaust researchers, that Prof. Engelking spoke in the interview.

However, in public statements by government representatives, including Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and Minister Przemysław Czarnek, Prof. Engelking was attacked for presenting "unauthorized opinions" and "pseudo-historical statements" that are not supported by facts. This is especially concerning the scale of Polish help provided to Jews and the scale of phenomena such as anti-Semitism, blackmail, and denunciation.

The scientific facts presented by Prof. Engelking were described as "obscuring the truth," "lying," "anti-Polish narrative," and "insulting Poles." Professor Engelking was also accused of having made comments with a "racist character" in her previous statements.

Following these comments, Prof. Engelking was also attacked by pro-government media, including public media, where she was labeled as a "Pole-eater," and the interview was described as "inciting against Poles."

We firmly condemn political and ideological attempts to question scientific findings. Claiming that saving Jews was a common attitude among Poles is precisely the obscuring of the truth by government representatives; an opinion, not a fact consistent with historical knowledge, resulting from years of interdisciplinary research projects (including those conducted by the Institute of National Remembrance). This also diminishes the heroism of the Righteous who helped Jews, especially those who lost their lives at the hands of the Germans for doing so.

We also remind you that politicizing history and attempts to falsify it, combined with inspiring a wave of hatred, are precisely the dangers that Marian Turski rightly warned against in his speech delivered during the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

The team of the Center for Research on the Extermination of Jews IFiS PAN:

Agnieszka Haska, Marta Janczewska, Jacek Leociak, Dariusz Libionka, Justyna Majewska, Małgorzata Melchior (prof. em.), Karolina Panz, Jakub Petelewicz, Alina Skibińska, Dagmara Swałtek-Niewińska, Andrzej Żbikowski (collaborator)

Translation from the post: Burza po słowach prof. Barbary Engelking w TVN24. Centrum Badań nad Zagładą Żydów wydało oświadczenie - Wiadomości (onet.pl)

Spheres by Peter Sloterdijk - one of the most remarkable books of modern philosophy

I'm reading, slowly, as many books in the recent years, the Opus Vitae of the contemporary German philosopher, Peter Sloterdijk, the three volume Spheres. I will try to report my reading here, but even if I fail, I strongly recommend this great book!

From "Primary Reflections":

"It is the basic neurosis of Western culture to have to dream of a subject that watches, names and owns everything, without letting anything contain, appoint or own it, not even if the discreetest God offered himself as an observer, container and client"

k

From "Heart Operation; Or, On Eucharistic Excess":

Absolutely amazing, and, I must admit, horrifying reference to: Herzmaere, a novella by the poet Konrad of Wurzburg,

(1360):

"One of its daring aspects was the parallel between erotic and Christological language games and the superelevation of sexual desire through the metaphysical idea of union. What takes place here between the lovers as the courtly love of the heart from a distance and the consumption of the heart up dose transposes the act of communion into a dimension of hybridized intersubjectivity; the knight's cooked heart forms a precise equivalent to the host over which the transforming words »hoc est corpus meum« are spoken. Instead of the altar, the kitchen becomes a place of transubstantiation. With the gift of his heart the knight, seconded by his poet, creates a heretical variation of the Eucharist."

k

At the Baltic Coast, November 27th, 2022

Lodz, November 19th, 2022

Ryszard Legutko’s dystopian attempt do discredit democracy

Polish "Liberte" journal has published my review of Ryszard Legutko book: "The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies".
Instead of copying it here, I'm redirecting you to it: Ryszard Legutko's dystopian attempt do discredit democracy - Mirek Sopek - Liberté! (liberte.pl) 

 

Whether the mental is derived from the bodily or the bodily from the mental ...

Painting by Charlie and Eddie Proudfoot 

About 75 years ago, in the dark times of the II World War, Roman Ingarden, one of the greatest philosophers of the XX century wrote: 

"It thus appears advisable for the time being – until such time as material investigation will make possible a rational insight into the generic essence of the mental (or of consciousness) on the one hand, and of the body on the other – to refrain from judging whether the mental is derived from the bodily or the bodily from the mental, or whether they are both ultimately derived from some third factor."

Despite all the progress in neuroscience, in cognitive sciences and artificial intelligence, these words have not lost their actuality and power...

 

About Roman Ingarden:
Roman Ingarden - Wikipedia 
The Roman Ingarden Philosophical Research Center - Philosophical Research Centre (uj.edu.pl)
Roman Ingarden (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)