from the except-for-all-the-others dept.
The BBC are covering a story regarding a university that was set up in Budapest at the end of the Cold War:
In the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Communist regimes in Europe, a unique university was created. It was going to be a laboratory for democracy. George Soros, the Hungarian-born investor and philanthropist, funded the creation of the Central European University, with the specific aim of promoting the values of an open society and democracy. The university in Budapest in Hungary is still going strong, with graduate students from more than 100 countries studying courses taught in English.
But the challenges have changed. If the university was created on a rising tide of democracy, it now has to examine liberal values under pressure. In parts of Eastern Europe, the voices of authoritarianism and nationalism are getting louder. The president of the Central European University is John Shattuck, an American human rights lawyer, law professor, diplomat and former assistant secretary of state in the Clinton administration.
[....]
But if Budapest is a crossroads between Eastern and Western Europe, he says that we're now living in an era approaching its own crossroads. "We're in another period of time, which is as disruptive and complicated as it was in 1991 when the university was founded." The financial crash, the loss of confidence in party politics in the West, the rise of the "Putin model" of government, the weakness of international institutions are all raising "a set of questions that haven't been asked for 25 years". "We see very dangerous trends at work," he says, such as the rise of "xenophobia" and antagonism towards immigrants.
The full story is worth a read. It outlines several of the problems that we face today and describes several traits that appear to be more prevalent now than they were a few years ago; intolerance and racism, for example. It also prompts us to consider how modern technology and communications shape an individual's view of democracy.
(Score: 3, Informative) by zeigerpuppy on Thursday December 04 2014, @04:46AM
I was fortunate to receive a scholarship to attend a CEU course in neuroscience. It was a wonderful experience with excellent and passionate lecturers. Budapest is also a fascinating and progressive city.
I haven't been back for a few years but there is a lot to be said for Universities with innovative teaching and and international posture.
The pressures are evident worldwide however. In Australia we are struggling against our current government's view that tertiary education should be only for the rich. There's no doubt that education is expensive but properly implemented it returns the investment of the public purse with dividends. For this reason it is essential that education remain accessible and, I would argue, free.
However, as universities are exposed to increasing commercial pressure, they also need to constantly reassess their missions, lest they become property management companies with a side serve of education.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by aristarchus on Thursday December 04 2014, @05:31AM
You should have been there before the end of the cold war! I knew someone who had a Soviet scholarship to study there. Unfortunately, it was when they had a very bad earthquake, and though he survived, he was somewhat traumatized. (and was that Budapest, or Bucharest? I forget.) Besides, a university that preaches democracy is no university.
And universities that are there for ideological purposes are no better than Bringem Young University, or Sockagakkai in my eye University, or the Hebrew University, or Georgetown. Back during the Cold War, there was an institute in the city previously and presently (?) know as St. Petersbourg, that offered scholarships to persons from the world that might want to learn the details of Dialectical Materialism according to Uncle Joe Stalin. Shortly afterwords there was an institute established in Hawaii (better climate!) offering scholarships for people from the same places to study Uncle Milt Friedman. Very little learning was done at either institution, but a great way to redistribute wealth from superpowers to starving graduate students.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Thursday December 04 2014, @06:11AM
And a university which sells its graduation papers is equally not an university, it's a shop (note: university comes from "universitas magistrorum et scholarium" - community of teachers and scholars, not cobblers [wikipedia.org]).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday December 04 2014, @07:45AM
Magnum cum laude, magister!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 04 2014, @09:27AM
Magnum [wikipedia.org] cum laude? Or rather Magnum [wikipedia.org] cum laude?
Your comment certainly doesn't earn you a magna cum laude. [wiktionary.org]
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday December 04 2014, @09:37AM
He's a big dude! Or do you only get your Latin from wikipeidia? My native language if Greek circa 400 BCE, so I might have gotten it wrong.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday December 04 2014, @07:45PM
Don't piss him off, guys--Malaclypse the Elder will bring the ruckus.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 04 2014, @06:58AM
I'd like to know what your specific gripe is with every member of a society having an equal vote in making decisions about how that society operates.
The only problem I have is when critical thinking isn't a priority of the educational system at EVERY level and for ALL the people.
Even without my caveat, however, I don't see an alternative that is superior to Democracy.
What are you suggesting?
-- gewg_
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Thursday December 04 2014, @07:33AM
Ah, a gewg question! OK, listen up! Everyone gets their say, insofar as their say is credible. A confederancy of dunces is still a bunch of dunces. The point is, that if actual knowledge, real expertise, actually existed, we who do not know should most reasonably defer to those who do! But what passes for "democracy" in these "black intellectual ops" is just ideology in favor of a free market, where those with the least knowledge (bosses and investors) tell those with the most knowledge (craftspersons and workers), what to do. The opposite of a hierarchy of competence, or meritocracy, which is that the capitalist class seems to say. I say we need to reverse the canard "if you are so smart, why aren't you rich" to "if you are so rich, why aren't you smart?" Bueller? Bill? Mitt?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 04 2014, @08:56AM
The opposite of a hierarchy of competence, or meritocracy, which is [what] the capitalist class seems to say.
I agree with what you said there.
we need to reverse the canard
I agree with that as well.
Now, about the communications channels which are consumed by the masses:
How do we wrest those from the control of the aristocrats?
We appear to be inside an endless loop.
...and I still don't see a viable alternative to Democracy.
Are you suggesting a coup by the nerds and a new gentry of technologists?
That sounds awfully Randian.
-- gewg_
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Thursday December 04 2014, @10:29AM
Randians run away to their Galt Gulch, withholding their superior brilliantness until we all beg them to come back. But the truth is that they are not really experts at anything, except marketing and being Randians, or as most of us would see it, being assholes. I can put up with an awful lot of sub-optimum steel if I don't have to put up with an asshole.
Real authority, real knowledge and expertise, is humble. It does not seek recognition or acknowledgement, but since it is real wisdom it is sought out and followed just because of what it is. It does not need intellectual property rights, or legal authority, or, really, anything else than being what it is, reality. Insofar as democracy is this freedom of all to recognize, without coercion, the real authority of wisdom, it is all good. But people got to be at least as smart as monkeys!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 04 2014, @10:36AM
> Everyone gets their say, insofar as their say is credible. A confederancy of dunces is still a bunch of dunces.
That is an argument which is just a hop and a skip away from authoritarianism because everyone is a dunce in most fields of knowledge. We simply do not have the time to be experts, or even moderately informed, in everything. I'll take a confederacy of dunces over an insulated and myopic "elite."
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday December 04 2014, @10:52AM
Evidently you mis-read me! Maybe you are one of the dunces! Or I could be, since my point was not clear. Elites are only dangerous in so far as they are ignorant, and usually even that is not enough, they have to be seriously wacko. I am more afraid, recently, of the erosion of respect for knowledge, the sort of "my opinion is just as good as anyone else's" talk we get about things like cop-killings, global warming, and whether Gucci is better than Louis Vitton. We don't have time to be experts in everything, so we should defer to those who are actually, you know, experts in their field? Deference is not tyranny, but the lack of it is.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Thursday December 04 2014, @03:50PM
Not all governmental decisions are based on knowledge though. Many are purely opinion based. Anything that is an ethical decision, for example. Freedoms are heavily tied to personal choice. For example: a physics expert could say rocketry is now a domain for experts because he thinks amateur scientists will only hurt themselves and damage property. Rocketry is now illegal. WTF! I have the right to risk my fingers and windows with homemade engines : ) Does the world gain anything from me goofing around? Nope. But i should still be allowed to send crappy rockets up as long as i don't hurt other people and other people's property.
PS: You are always fun to ague with : )
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 04 2014, @05:47PM
Evidently you mis-read me! Maybe you are one of the dunces! Or I could be, since my point was not clear. Elites are only dangerous in so far as they are ignorant, and usually even that is not enough, they have to be seriously wacko.
I read you just fine. You misunderstand the implications of what you say. There are no elites, there are only specialists. The problem comes when those specialists think they are elite and make decisions outside of their specialization due to the hubris of believing they are elite.
What you want is perfection and I'm saying it is impossible. I prefer that all those fox-news zombies get just as much of a say as I do because there is no way to objectively determine whose opinion is best in a consistent way. Truth is easy for simple things math, but for real-world complex issues there is no single truth, there are only competing half-truths.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday December 04 2014, @06:31PM
Not all half-truths are equally half-true!
We do not need absolute truth to recognize complete BS!
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday December 04 2014, @07:47PM
But what passes for "democracy" in these "black intellectual ops" is just ideology in favor of a free market
Ah, so you're directly invoking a literal strawman rather than attacking the idea of a university about democracy.
Thanks for tipping us off.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday December 04 2014, @09:57PM
And here I was being so polite and intentionally avoiding the word "carpetbaggers". Sucks to lose a cold war.
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Thursday December 04 2014, @05:57AM
The model of a representative republic, or parliamentary system, is not democracy in the way the Greeks once understood the term. In America, for example, we do not have national ballot questions. Even our Presidential election is not by overall popular vote. Abortion, immigration, wars, Obamacare; In a true democracy these would be decided by votes of the whole citizenry. We have the technology to make such votes possible, but that would require an impossibility. Rulers will not yield great power on principle.
The anti-immigration feeling is largely a result of our political overlords deciding on pro-business policy that is at odds with a large section of the populace. When many look around their crowded cities, or are stuck in traffic, or cannot pronounce the names of their neighbors, they feel excluded from their own countries. In UK politics, this can be summed up by saying Enoch Powell was right. [wikipedia.org] Capitalism did not only defeat Communism, but has been placed above the Nation. The people feel not incorrectly that their leaders are the Esau of Capitalism, selling our their country for Jacob's profits. Indeed, in the West now the concept of the Nation is growing meaningless. It is becoming limited to a border on a map, rather than a shared heritage and shared destiny.
In central and eastern Europe, where many deeply feel their nations were oppressed by Soviet Russia, national feeling is a response of the shackles being removed. Just as the first thing a newly-freed man does is run and jump, so to does Nationalism spring forth.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 04 2014, @07:01AM
Another important part of a working electoral system is that all decisions must receive a *majority* vote to be adopted.
Instant-runoff voting [wikipedia.org] has been shown to work well to achieve this.
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 04 2014, @09:36AM
From the article:
Doesn't sound as if they are aware of the big threat that big data poses to democracy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 04 2014, @11:28AM
I want to marry a young girl.
Old testament says this is OK.
Democracy says no.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Thursday December 04 2014, @02:23PM
If you disagree with "democracy," get campaigning to get the law changed if you feel so strongly about it. I don't fancy your chances, though.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 04 2014, @07:00PM
Please don't feed the trolls, especially this loonie.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 04 2014, @01:37PM
The Europeans, and the United States of America, are fundamentally different nations. The United States of America has been populated mostly by immigrants. Immigration is part of its history. European nations have been populated by the ethnic groups for more than a thousand years, and have had little immigration in that time.
Most of the people seeking to immigrate to the United States of America, are from its neighbor Mexico. A decent, middle income, mostly democratic nation. A bunch of UK's immigrants are from Pakistan.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 15 2014, @09:30PM
I cannot believe janrinok wrote "George Soros, the Hungarian-born investor and philanthropist". What Soros is, primarily and above all, is a speculator. His 1992 attack on the euro caused huge losses to the central banks of United Kingdom and Spain, losses that fell upon taxpayers. So no, Soros is not a philanthropist - rather, he's a scrupleless speculator who has given to philanthropy a small amount of the fortune he earned by ruining people.-Ignacio Agulló