The Dark Knight Trilogy

It is easy to read too much into any movie. Especially when talking about a super hero fantasy, the genre where explosions are much more reliable than philosophical insights. However, for those of us looking for meaning in the world of banality that is Hollywood, the Dark Knight trilogy is as rich as anything else that has come out in the last many years.

Batman Begins was about fear, revenge and of how far justice can go. Through the well-known tale of Bruce Wayne and the tragic death of his parents, it shows how Wayne loses himself in the search for revenge. It also shows how good intentions can easily turn into accepting anarchy – i.e., the League of Shadows ‘burn it down and rebuild later’ idea. Actually, Wayne’s renunciation of the League of Shadows is perhaps the most defining point in Batman’s morality: the idea that justice is not an end on itself but instead a tool to save the innocent. At the end of the day this is a movie about how Batman decides to tame his own anger and how his ‘right wing’ believes are controlled by his empathy for Gotham’s citizens.

The Dark Knight is a more complex movie, which develops the theme of justice by looking at what good and evil are. The Joker is presented as the antitheses of Batman: the enabler of evil, an agent of chaos who is not interested in anything else but to disrupt society for the sake of it. It also adds Harvey Dent, the ‘white knight’ who is in many ways the ‘realistic’ version of Batman himself. The main point of the whole story line here is to show how difficult and imperfect justice is and how that justifies the existence of Batman while at the same time the existence of Batman does not solve the imperfection of justice. The Joker exploits that permanent imperfection by forcing Batman to choose between Dent and Rachel (can be seen as personal interest versus the common good). That moral conundrum is enough to completely destroy Dent: while he understands Batman’s choice he cannot accept Rachel’s death. Dent’s belief in righteousness is gone and he becomes an amoral agent who decides to act purely based on luck (“The only morality in a cruel world is chance. Unbiased. Unprejudiced. Fair.”) The movie ends with the reinforcement of the power of symbols. Batman sacrifices good standing with society in order to save the legend of Harvey Dent.

The Dark Knight Rises is maybe the less complex movie of the trilogy but still an interesting one. The initial part is dedicated to show how Batman and Gordon are displaced by their own success (‘war heroes in peace time’). Wayne is also paying the price for all the physical damage inflicted by fighting crime for so long. The new villain is Bane, who we learn later is another incarnation of the League of Shadows and their continuous goal of destroying Gotham to ‘cleanse’ the world of its decay. Also new to the plot is the Cat Woman, who is an amoral character that goes back and forth between good and evil based purely on personal interest. She seems to thrive in this peaceful time and in the end she helps to enable the return of evil. That resurgence of evil is enough to bring Batman and Gordon back into action but they struggle to react (a message about the dangers of accommodation). There are several side plots about how different people deal differently with difficulties (Talia al Ghul versus John Blake) and also about how cat woman finally decides to help Batman (even though her amorality seems to persist).

The most interesting side note here is how Bane and Talia implement their destruction plan: by manipulating Gotham’s underclasses into revolting and destroying the current system in the name of ‘social justice’. This was an incredibly surprising move in my opinion, given the recent history of all the ‘Occupy’ movements and the pervasive left wing bias of Hollywood.

At the end of the day however, Dark Knight Rises ends in a similar way to Batman Begins: evil is eliminated, balance is re-established and justice triumphs over chaos. There’s even the usual ‘coming next’ hook with the identification of Blake as Robin.

Overall, I found the trilogy incredibly entertaining. This is really as good as it gets as far as pop culture mixing up with deeper subjects. There’s definitely a right wing overtone (maybe lefty’s see it differently?) but the beauty is mostly in the execution. I just hope we can get something else this good in the near future.

Levels of violence

One can only imagine how wars in the past would have looked like on TV or internet. How many kids did Genghis Khan slaughtered? How many women were raped and killed during the American civil war? We really have no idea.

We have a very skewed view of what war really is. We live in times of peace where even our wars are somewhat civilized. During the worst times in Iraq, we still had a very contained and scoped kind of violence by historic standards. Yes, beheadings are brutal but still women and children were for the most part spared (or at least not intentionally targeted). It did help that we didn’t have American citizens there but in any case, the point is that with some exceptions that war still maintained some resemblance of ‘civility’.

What we see now in Syria is a good counterpoint. Killing women and children has become the rule, not the exception. Unless something happens, I predict the situation to get even worse.

Why would we have that difference? My take is: the less military power involved, the more brutal a war is.

Think about it. What was the ‘cleanest’ war ever fought in a large scale? The cold war. Both the US and the USSR knew that the other had enough power to completely destroy them. So every time violence occurred (and it did) the level and scope of that violence was controlled by the threat of escalation. The outcome was known from the start.

What makes something like the Syria civil war so damaging is the lack of power from both sides. Both government and rebels only have small weapons, and no side has a clear advantage. So what do they do? They escalate, trying to gain an edge. How do you escalate when you have no military power? You use terror.

The world has a very, very clear choice in Syria. We can watch as they grind into a slow, brutal carnage or we introduce a larger power in the mix. Will less people die if we intervene? Probably not, at least in the short term. Democracy is not cheap on blood. However, there is such a thing as different levels of violence. If we don’t intervene, expect to get a little glimpse of how wars in the past were fought. It will not be pleasant.

The world without its police – Syria edition

How is this working out for you my dear bleeding-heart-Bush-lied-people-died Liberal? Can you watch all of this without a tiny bit of shame?

Clinton condemns Syria ‘atrocity’ in Houla

Things Liberals don’t understand – There is no pie

When Liberals say that we should ‘divide the pie’ they are (purposely?) misleading the public into thinking that wealth is something that is just out there and can be physically divided. Even worse, the idea that wealth is a like a pie gives the false impression that the economy is a zero sum game. That is, if I am wealthy (have a large slice) someone else will necessarily be poor (have a smaller slice).

The fact is that wealth is not static. It is a continuous cycle, constantly being generated every single day. Our world would not last a month if everybody simply stopped turning the wheels. Most importantly, liberals don’t seem to understand that nowadays wealth is a lot different than what it used to be. Before the industrial revolution wealth was land. Countries went to war for it, farms (and our existence) depended totally on it. After the Industrial revolution, the equation started to change. You had small factories producing more wealth than large plots of land. Energy and information became the bottleneck. Now in the information age, people are wealth. If someone broke into my company’s office, there wouldn’t be a lot to be stolen. A few computers you can find at your local store, some desks and cheap paper. Hardly worth the trouble. My employer makes money purely on brains. Software is the closest we ever got to translating pure thought into products. There is no way to steal or redistribute that.

Therefore, what makes companies powerful nowadays is how they deploy their resources into ‘harvesting brains’. That is by the way why recessions are so powerful: it is not the direct losses from bubbles that cause the damage but the fact that companies across the board will decrease their investments in the economy (which in turn decreases jobs, which in turn decreases consumption, which in turn lowers tax collection). By the way, this is the main point in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged: the fact that the world’s producers (i.e., the 1%) are the motive power behind our society.

So when Liberals go about the need to tax more, or the evils of inequality, they should ask themselves if that is really an evil in the first place. As long as they keep looking for pies to be divided, they will be missing the point. You need to teach people how to build ovens.

You cannot solve a problem before you understand it

People who deal with the world solely based on feelings are bound to make things worse.

Throughout the world injustice still exists. Poverty creates vicious cycles. Poor public education handicap kids’ potential in criminal ways.

However, to identify a problem is the easy part. To understand the dynamics that actually keep those problems in place is the real challenge. Now, even if you are clueless to what is the cause of something it is very easy to understand when a false reasoning is being used.

Karl Popper understood this well. He defined a concept called “Falsifiability”. In a very high level, Popper believed that something can only be considered scientific if it could be proved false. Belief in God for instance, is not scientific because it cannot be proven false. Using a real life example: if you believe that the cause of poverty is high unemployment, you would have to accept that your theory is false if you had some society where there is very little unemployment and poverty still exists.

Now, the current theories around racism all fail the falsifiability test. The easiest way to prove this is to ask your friend who believes in these theories: what would have to happen tomorrow to prove to you that racism is not an issue anymore? Would having the same percentage of poor being white be enough? Should we have the same percentage of black and white NBA players? Would having a black man being the most powerful man on Earth be enough?

Same thing applies to the idea of race itself. What would it take for someone to belong to a race? What would it take for me to prove that I am not a member of a certain race? What would it take to call affirmative action as ‘done’ or the need or affirnmative action as not valid anymore?

Chances are that these people would have no answer for these questions… They will tell you that they don’t need to know these answers! For them, the fact that “we have a lot of black men in prison” is proof enough but again, they would never accept having less black in prison as proof of the absence of racism. In other words, the definition of what they call racism itself is not scientific. Therefore, it is scientifically impossible for us to find any kind of true solution for it.

It is not surprise that certain groups of people remain in a vicious cycle of poverty and under achievement. You cannot solve a problem before you understand it.

Jack Tramiel passes away

He is not as well known as many other ‘giants’ of the early computing days but Jack Tramiel was a crucial player back then. Not only he created Commodore International (and its iconic C64) but later at Atari he released the great Atari ST. Both were huge milestones for the home computer market and I still have both of them here, feeding my 80s nostalgia.

Tramiel was born to a Jewish family in Poland, destroyed by the Holocaust. He immigrated to the US and embodies the true meaning of the American dream: from rags to riches, guided only by his own mind and will.

He died today at the age of 83.

Which country has the most progressive tax system in the world?

Well, if I am asking this you already know the answer.

Some additional information here. It is really no surprise to me that the US has such a crazy system. The US is still the most free and productive nation in the world. Our liberals have a much larger target to shoot at then other countries do.

Question is for how long.

Meritocracy and the left

The idea of meritocracy, that is, a system where people succeed based upon their merits is invariably incompatible with the left’s ideals of equality and fairness. This discussion might quickly digress in a semantics rat hole but overall, I think this is a very clear point. Only people who don’t think through the consequences of these lefty ideals fail to see this clear conflict.

For one thing, I believe there are very few people who would challenge the idea that all people are by nature different. Physically and psychologically, each one of us ha strengths and weaknesses that ultimately give us unique talents and potential. We are also unique in what we appreciate and therefore in what we as a society reward. Therefore, in a free society you will have certain people who follow certain careers and at the same time, you have certain professions or occupations that are more highly regarded than others.

All of this means that, at the end of the day, it is simply impossible to have a free society that is ‘equal’.

Second point is about fairness. You see, the left’s response to the natural inequality of our society is that we are not ‘playing in a leveled play field’. What that really means is that they think people’s starting point, i.e. the wealth of your family, your race, country you are born, etc., are factors that override personal qualities in determining one’s success or failure. In simpler words, people on the left believe that ‘luck’ is the most determinant factor in life. Therefore, the left justifies equalization policies (always based on force, as all government policies are) as an effort to help people with bad luck so they can compete more equally with the more fortunate.

The fact that luck plays a role in life is undeniable. A poor kid in Ethiopia has very little chance of succeeding at anything. Someone born with mental disability might never be able to take care of himself no matter what. The problem is when this valid concept is expanded in a way to include all our natural differences. The current ideology in our left believes that almost all inequality in the world is caused by factors beyond one’s control. When you follow that logic, you end up tracing someone’s success to something that was ‘given’ to that person and on the other hand anyone’s failure to something that was inflicted on them.

This ideology is by definition in conflict with meritocracy. If people don’t control their actions or their outcomes, there is no way to organize a society around personal achievement.

What I believe (and most of what is called ‘conservatives’ believe) is that, in a stable society where healthy individuals are free of war, famine and political persecution, most of our outcomes are a consequence of our acts. Yes, rich people do have an easier starting point but that advantage can be easily wasted if that person doesn’t make the right choices. Yes, racism exists and certain people will have a harder life because of it but that doesn’t mean these people cannot succeed and be incredibly wealthy. We have examples that prove these ideas true all around us. This is not theory, this is reality.

Most importantly, I believe that ‘success’ goes beyond money. We live in a society where people are free to work very little if they accept a lower economic situation. It might sound weird to think of people choosing to be poorer but I think this is a profoundly misleading fallacy. Actually, much of the left’s intelligentsia is comprised of people who chose the academic life which is by no means a great way to be making a lot of money. The problem is, of course, that these people sometimes don’t understand (or accept) such trade-offs.

Oh irony, you ruthless bitch

“Pelado por um mundo mais ‘descente'”. You got it baby.

Causation or correlation?

Sources: Unemployment, election.

It’s hard to hide your agenda

Do you think the word ‘endure’ was not chosen intentionally?

The article itself does not use the same language.

Life goes on, until it doesn’t

Woke up to the news that Andrew Breitbart has died. He was 43 years old and died of ‘natural causes’. How can such an unexpected death at such young age be natural I don’t know.

Anyway, goes to show you how fragile this whole experiment is. Go out there and enjoy it while you can…

Self-destruction

I cringe every time I hear the ubiquitous ‘be yourself’ or ‘do what makes you happy’. What are we really talking about here? We all want to be happy… Is there any situation where this would be good advice or is this just a sort of wildcard rationalization that validates stupid decisions?

Even worse, there is no way for you not to be yourself. When people tell you that you should be yourself, what they are actually saying is that you should do something you know other people would not do. So the real question to be asked here is ‘why?’. Why are you trying to do something that other people won’t? Is it because you think other people are wrong? Or is it because you are simply trying to ignore the consequences of your acts?

So if I am about to spend money I don’t have in a car I don’t need, I can tell you that I am doing this because ‘it will make me happy’. Which of course is true. But then again, if a true friend tells you that you should not do that is because he understands that ultimately that car will make you miserable.

This seems all related to the one of the ill consequences of the 60s social revolution: the idea that society builds rules based on illogical assumptions and therefore all social mores should be disregarded. This seems to be in part a backlash against religion but I think it is also a consequence of our material wealth. It is very similar to all the idiot theories liberals have on economics: the fact that we are already ‘rich enough’ and that we could just stop worrying and enjoy our gains. People in the past might have needed things like marriage, hard work and saving for a rainy day… but now we are done with that. Dye your hair blue and let’s smoke some weed!

This is not a theoretical post. I am not thinking of this as some thought experiment or criticizing strangers who I see through my car window. I am close to my forties and I have seen friends and family who were either destroyed or badly wounded by these ideas. People who you always thought ‘had it together’ deciding from out of nowhere to do stupid things based on these popular rationalizations, just to realize later on that they had inflicted permanent damage to their lives (and to loved ones as well).

There are very good reasons why our society created the concept of family. There are incredibly important reasons why we are monogamous (and no, the fact that people have always cheated is not an argument against that – it is an argument in favor of it! Humans still kill each other even though we continue to strive for a society without murder). There are very important reasons why we have one male and one female parent, way beyond biological imperatives.

Before breaking a rule we should understand why we had that rule in the first place. Society is nothing but the accumulation of experiences from people who lived before you. These people from the past might look poor and stupid to you but I can guarantee you, they had a much smaller margin of error than we do. We should be grateful for the knowledge we inherited and use it well.

A bit more on the headless world

So here is the deal: if no nation leads the world, many nations will lead the world. There is no ‘natural order’ of things. There is always a force behind anything that happens. It reminds me what a friend told me some time ago: I have no qualms in brainwashing my children. If I don’t do it, someone else will.

What we are seeing in Syria (and in most of all the other ‘Arab Spring’ nations) is the takeover of populist movements over old dictatorial establishment. That establishment was rotten (as all dictatorships are) but they were for the most part stable (within the region’s parameters of course).

Actually, one of the big ironies of this situation is that these populist revolts had more success in countries which were doing reasonably well (Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria) and very little to no success in countries which were in some kind of crisis (Algeria, Iraq, other African countries).

What the US under Obama and all Europe are doing here is very dangerous: we are washing our hands. The one place where we did something (Libya) turned out to be a huge mess; we probably saved some rebel lives but condemned many others to torture and death (Gadhafi would tell you about it if he could). Places where we did nothing are doing even worse (Egypt and specially Syria). No one in their right mind would be able to predict what will happen in these countries. Estimates from Syria say that the death toll is approaching 8,000, with 60,000 detained and 20,000 missing. Don’t forget that this is a relatively small country (22 million people). 86 thousand Syrians are the equivalent of 110 thousand in Iraq’s population. Now do you remember the infamous Iraq’s 100k death toll story a few years ago? Guess what: 100 thousand people might have died in Libya as well and that is a country of only 5.6 million people!

But unfortunately that is not even the worst part in this whole mess: we don’t even know who these ‘rebels’ are or what they are about. For all the mayhem and blood of Iraq, we knew who was in power: us. But look at Egypt. Is it better now than it was under Mubarak? How about Libya? Could any of you name even one important figure on either government? I know I can’t.

This could be the Iranian Revolution multiplied by 10. Now, just imagine all the issues we have had with Iran since 1979 and multiply that by any factor. We can’t even decide how to deal with Iran now, so imagine how crazy it would be to deal with a collection of crazies in the same region some time in the future.

You also have to ask yourself why Russia and China are standing by al-Assad. Is it really just a business matter? Are they afraid of what these rebels would do if they gained power? Should we be?

At the same time, I keep thinking of all the stupidity that we heard during the Iraq war. All the pseudo-humanitarian concerns, all the talk about the ills of nation building… Are we really saving money and lives here by not intervening? Or is this a bill that will accrue interests big time and come back to bite us in the future? I don’t know the answers and I don’t think Obama does. His pathetic attempt to use diplomacy to solve these issues tells me that he is as clueless as Carter was in 1979. He is not alone thought – not even liberal pundits can tell you what needs to be done here. Check this one out as an example.

We will have to learn our lessons someday. Hope our kids do a better job when their turn comes up.

Careful What You Wish For

Amnesty International reports: Libya: ‘Out of control’ militias commit widespread abuses, a year on from uprising

“Armed militias operating across Libya commit widespread human rights abuses with impunity, fuelling insecurity and hindering the rebuilding of state institutions, warned Amnesty International in a new report released today, a year on from the start of the February 2011 uprising.
…
African migrants and refugees have also been targeted, and revenge attacks have been carried out, forcibly displacing entire communities – while the authorities have done nothing to investigate the abuses and hold those responsible to account.
…
At least 12 detainees held by militias have died after being tortured since September. Their bodies were covered in bruises, wounds and cuts and some had had nails pulled off.

Individuals held in and around Tripoli, Gharyan, Misratah, Sirte and Zawiya told Amnesty International they had been suspended in contorted positions; beaten for hours with whips, cables, plastic hoses, metal chains and bars, and wooden sticks; and given electric shocks with live wires and taser-like electro-shock weapons.”

So where are the street protests against this? Where is the ACLU, UN, the New York Times, and all the other bastions of human freedom? Do they care only when the US is involved?

By the way, you can only imagine how much worse the situation really is. And don’t even get me started on Syria where we are watching quietly while thousands are killed or starved (including kids of course).

Is this the post-Bush doctrine for the world? We might send a few jet fighters or drones to bomb some people when is convenient, but other than that we will ‘let pieces fall as they may’? Let the strong rule. Is that the morality of the bleeding hearts?

Turnaround?

Quick question: in 2012, which economy will grow the fastest in the world? China? India? Brazil? Hmmm… According to this, here is the answer:

Yes, yes, this is all from oil but still… Saddam had that same oil available and that country was not going anywhere. Let’s hope this time things will be different.

Feel good

Every year is the same thing – the thought of not being in Brazil during Carnaval.

Kind of reminded me about this one this year. Especially the HAHAHAHA part 😉

The great divide

I think I talked about this before but it keeps coming back to me. I find it amazing how we have this disconnect between right and left regarding ends and means.

This latest kerfuffle from Obama about birth control requirements is as classic as it gets. First they defined that every employer (including religious institutions) would need to provide birth control to all employees. Why? Well, because it is all about human rights and ‘women’s health’. Once they realized the huge backlash from the Catholic Church (who employs a very large number of people) their main response was that the Church and all Catholics were being hypocrites because the majority of Catholic women use birth control! Seriously, it doesn’t get more clueless than that.

Now they finally decided to cave in and changed their policy to an even more comical version: Religious institutions don’t need to pay for birth control… but their health insurance provider does!

This only shows you how powerful this ideological harness really is. Obama and his buddies really do believe they are dodging a political disaster by doing this! They still don’t understand that the point here is that religious institutions don’t want to provide birth control. That is their principle. The problem is not who pays the bill or if Catholic women follow their advice or not! The problem is whether the government can force the Church to do something that they simply don’t agree with.

Yes, Catholic women will still have access to birth control. It is not the goal of the church (or even within their power) to outlaw it. They just want to be free to do what they think is right. You want birth control? Go get it for yourself.

—x—

This really goes all the way down to the very core argument about the power of government. The left believes that the government should use all the tools (euphemism for force) to accomplish certain goals. The right believes that we should focus on setting a very strict, well defined set of rights and rules for government so people can accomplish whatever they want (i.e., the pursuit of happiness).

That is why conservatives love the US constitution and liberals not so much. You cannot have economic or social freedom if you are not willing to accept the fact that end results are not always exactly what *you* think is right.

Tebow for President

This is almost a month old but after last Sunday (and the last few Obama interviews) it applies even more:

Tebow for President? Quarterbacking Our Country

Occupy the USA

Americans make up half of the world’s richest 1%

That is why all the OWS people should move immediately to Cuba. You will find a lot of the real 99 percenters there…