INTRODUCTION: In today’s world, politics appears to be a thing of the past, at least as we used to know it. Liberalism persistently fought against those of its political enemies which had offered alternative systems …
Категорија: English
English is a West Germanic language that was first spoken in early medieval England and is now a global lingua franca. Named after the Angles, one of the Germanic tribes that migrated to England, it ultimately derives its name from the Anglia (Angeln) peninsula in the Baltic Sea. It is closely related to the Frisian languages, but its vocabulary has been significantly influenced by other Germanic languages, particularly Norse (a North Germanic language), as well as by Latin and French.
English has developed over the course of more than 1,400 years. The earliest forms of English, a set of Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the 5th century, are called Old English. Middle English began in the late 11th century with the Norman conquest of England and was a period in which the language was influenced by French. Early Modern English began in the late 15th century with the introduction of the printing press to London, the printing of the King James Bible and the start of the Great Vowel Shift.
Through the worldwide influence of the British Empire, modern English spread around the world from the 17th to mid-20th centuries. Through all types of printed and electronic media, and spurred by the emergence of the United States as a global superpower, English has become the leading language of international discourse and the lingua franca in many regions and professional contexts such as science, navigation and law.
English is the third most spoken native language in the world, after Standard Chinese and Spanish. It is the most widely learned second language and is either the official language or one of the official languages in almost 60 sovereign states. There are more people who have learned it as a second language than there are native speakers. English is the most commonly spoken language in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, Ireland and New Zealand, and it is widely spoken in some areas of the Caribbean, Africa and South Asia. It is a co-official language of the United Nations, the European Union and many other world and regional international organisations. It is the most widely spoken Germanic language, accounting for at least 70% of speakers of this Indo-European branch. English has a vast vocabulary, though counting how many words any language has is impossible. English speakers are called “Anglophones”.
Modern English grammar is the result of a gradual change from a typical Indo-European dependent marking pattern with a rich inflectional morphology and relatively free word order to a mostly analytic pattern with little inflection, a fairly fixed SVO word order and a complex syntax. Modern English relies more on auxiliary verbs and word order for the expression of complex tenses, aspect and mood, as well as passive constructions, interrogatives and some negation. Despite noticeable variation among the accents and dialects of English used in different countries and regions – in terms of phonetics and phonology, and sometimes also vocabulary, grammar and spelling – English-speakers from around the world are able to communicate with one another with relative ease. (source: Wikipedia)
THE GRAND CHESSBOARD – ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI (AUDIOBOOK)
INTRODUCTION: Ever since the continents started interacting politically, some five hundred years ago, Eurasia has been the center of world …
CAPITALIST NIHILISM
Capitalism is a nihilistic order, not only for its rejection of the value-based judgment, but also because it destroys the life-creating potential of man and nature. Capitalist nihilism is not merely characterized by its anti-human but also by its anti-existential nature. Nature “knows” that death is a precondition for rebirth, but it does not “know” the annihilation of life. In nature as in history, death opens a possibility for new life: by its nature death is life-generating. Capitalism destroys the very cycle of death and rebirth, that is, the life-generating potential of death, and produces a destructive nothingness.
HOMOSEXUALITY
In contemporary capitalism, movements are created of growing numbers of homosexuals, which would, according to Marx’s “humanism-naturalism”, fall under the classification of degenerated sociability and, consequently, degenerated naturalness. Homosexuality does not have to do with the “deranged” biological nature of man (man is a heterosexual being and has an organic predisposition for pederasty), but rather with the ruling social relations and the corresponding value challenges. It is not about the “sick man”, but a sick society. We should, therefore, not treat people, but create a “healthy society” (Fromm), in which healthy people could develop. Homosexuality is a concrete social (historical) phenomenon which is conditioned by the nature of the ruling order. It is a form in which a certain value system manifests itself, which governs relations between the sexes and as such is a concrete type of social functioning. The ancient homosexual Eros has had a significantly different nature from the capitalistically conditioned homosexuality. The homosexual community of today is one of the forms in which capitalistically degenerated sociability manifests itself. The development of homosexual relations corresponds to the disintegration of the family as a humanized natural community and conversion of marriage into an economic community. Homosexual communities receive the legitimacy of “sociability” not in relation to family as a humanized natural community, but in relation to the desperate loneliness created by capitalism. Homosexual community is the ultimate form of capitalistically degenerated family, whereas the development of pederasty contributes to removing the possibility of making the family a humanized natural community. At the same time, by destroying man as a natural and human being, capitalism destroys authentic sociability, sterilizing Eros and, thereby, destroying the society’s capacity for biological reproduction. “Reproduction of society” has become a segment of destructive capitalist reproduction, which is, like all other areas of life, based on the principle of “Money does not stink!”. Artificial insemination, the sale of semen materials, the rental of uteruses, the sale of children – these are all legal and legitimate forms of capitalist reproduction. Capitalism draws into its existential and value orbit the increasingly pernicious consequences that it produces, assigning them an institutional status and turning them into a means for its own development.
ARISTOTLE’S PHILOSOPHY OF EQUALITY, PEACE & DEMOCRACY
The son of a doctor, Aristotle was born in the city of Stagira in Macedonia in the year 384 BC, and was educated at Plato’s Academy. When his mentor Plato died in 347 BC, the Macedonian went home and became the tutor of Alexander, the son of King Philip of Macedon. His pupil, who later gained the suffix ‘the Great’, was rather fond of his teacher, and is supposed to have said, “I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well.”
Aristotle stayed at the court of Alexander until 335 BC, when he founded his own academy, the Lyceum, in Athens. He remained in Athens until 323 BC, when anti-Macedonian sentiments forced him to leave. “I will not allow the Athenians to sin twice against philosophy” he said, with reference to the execution of Socrates, and fled to the island of Chalcis, where he died a year later, in 322 BC.
Reading Aristotle is easier than you might think. Even those who are not able to read him in the original Greek(firstly known as “Koine” language) cannot fail to be enamoured by his enthusiasm. A fascinating thing about Aristotle’s Politika (in English normally translated as The Politics), for example, is the way this enormously erudite man got carried away in his lectures. For instance, Aristotle simply could not help telling his students about a certain Hippodamus, the son of Eryphon. That Fifth Century BC Athenian was “the first man not engaged in politics to speak on the subject of the best Constitution.” According to Aristotle, this first philosopher of politics was “somewhat eccentric in his general mode of life owing to his desire for distinction… [he] lived fussily, with a quantity of hair and expensive ornaments and a quantity of cheap clothes – not only in winter but also in the summer” (The Politics II, 1268a).
This is perhaps a glimpse of how entertaining Aristotle could be when he lectured in his Lyceum – how he could spellbind his audience with seemingly irrelevant but highly entertaining anecdotes. But his aside about Hippodamus also suggests that Aristotle – the founder of psychology, political science, logic, poetics, physics, biology, and many other disciplines – had a childlike joy in telling his audience about all he knew. No wonder Cicero (106-43 BC), the Roman statesman and philosopher, noted that Aristotle’s writings were veniet flumen orationis aureum fundens – “like a pouring out of gold” (Academia Priora, Book II). And yet we don’t even have Aristotelian treatises: his only surviving books are lecture notes.
IDIOTES AND POLITES
Very often in everyday speech we use terms like “Idiot”, “idiotic” or “idiocy” in attempt to offend anyone when we are involved in angry dialogue, also when we are in conflict with someone, or when we want to someone to make it clear that with somebody something is not okey. This frequent use not always, but in most occasions they are used by people inaccurate, and users have wrong opinion about meaning of this terms. The term is originated from Idios, Idiota and the cleaner meaning is private person or someone’s private or personal matter, by which it mean for those people who are ignorant and not interested nor involved in the societal matters or matters of general interest, strictly defining in its life only for matters of personal interest. Today the common language, use often this word to refer to some people that they are mentally disabled, which in the case of cleaner meaning of the word it is possible that someone not to be mentally retarded and to have intellectual development on satisfactory level, yet still to be a person with strict views for their own personal interests, ignoring the societal one. By the way that kind of people represent the majority in nowadays societies, compared to those who think and are interested in general good. To becoming a better picture of what majority of people we addressed, better we will understand if we see the clear interpretation of contemporary russian philosopher Aleksandr Dugin with his notion that “idiot is kind of person who has only one thing – private property.”
WHY EMPIRES ARISE AND DISAPPEAR?
Probably many wondered why empires despite all their peak of power, glory and expansion through historical practice all perish. Each Empire has its own flourishing, stagnation and disappearance, and no empire ever had, with total constant over the course of history both in its creation and in its functioning, through the system and through the reflection of the mentality. The formation of empires are no real need of any nationality, which in its formation occurred after natural way, because none naturally formed nation does not share real needs, and have the same term of protection of those needs, with other naturally or artificially established nations. The motive for the formation of empires of nations, can be found on several things, including:
- fulfilling the ambition of a few in the system (the most common, most aggressive and the most unjustified motive)
- cultural and civilizational superiority over other (non-aggressive expansion)
- and because of competition or for the protection of other empires (forced expansion).
Seen through the prism of historicism and historical trends, personal guess is that the first Empire, formed the incentive of the cultural and civilizational superiority over other neighboring nations. After then, fulfilling the ambitions of those who manage the system in order to satisfy the greed, and eventually third motive came for creating sufficient economic and military capabilities in order to be able to protect from the occupation of other empires that have risen and who are a potential threat.
THE SELF LIQUIDATION OF CHRISTIANITY
The striking phrase, “God is dead,” is the poetical expression of modern unbelief. Much is expressed in this phrase that is not to be found in the more prosaic expressions of modern atheism and agnosticism. A vivid contrast is established between a previous age when men believed in God and based their life and institutions upon Him, and a new age for whose inhabitants, supposedly, this once all-illuminating sun has been blotted out, and life and society must be given a new orientation.
The phrase, itself apparently coined by Nietzsche almost a century ago, was for long used to express the views of a comparatively few enemies of Christianity, chiefly “existentialists”; but recently it has caused controversy by being accepted in radical Protestant circles, and not it has become a concern of common journalism and the mass media. Clearly a responsive chord has been struck in Western society at large; the public interest in the “death of God” has made this phenomenon one of the signs of the times.