Mereja.Forum

sarcasm wrote: ↑

02 Aug 2022, 17:49

ZEMEN wrote: ↑

02 Aug 2022, 16:09

@Red wrote: ↑

02 Aug 2022, 15:38

I was shocked to learn he doesn’t allow people to build even residential houses in Asmara, let alone resorts and hotels.
Great people but their government reminded me of derg era Ethiopia that everything is owned by the government.

You are right no one is allowed to build anything. The reason is, Eritrea believes in social justice. Eritrea do have many nomads who circles Eritrea and following rainy seasons and the Eritrean government wanted to end the nomadic nature of those Eritrean. To do that the Eritrean government must build dams to hold water year around. Once they have done that the nomad Eritrean use the dam water year around and they are permanently stay put in place around the dams. So, build this dams, cement and any constriction material must go to the dam project. You got to understand, Eritrea was/is under endless sanctions and resources are limited and what ever is available, it went to the dam projects. I do believe social justice is the key to any nation in the world, with out it, there is peace nor prosperity.

So the logic is to encourage cultures that prefer a nomadic lifestyle to accept a sedentary lifestyle, you deny housing / house building and repairs for almost 20 years and counting . . . to those who already practice sedentary lifestyle.

Re: Equality by Subtraction (Equality Shaebia Style) - By Yosief Gebrehiwot

sarcasm wrote: ↑

01 Aug 2013, 17:08

One of Yosief Ghebrehiwet's masterpieces written 10 years ago in July 2003 but more relevant than ever.

Equality by Subtraction
Yosief Ghebrehiwet

The story, as it was told then, goes as follows: The first time Keren was liberated by Shaebia, a certain medical doctor was offered a bed by grateful and overjoyed residents. The doctor graciously declined the offer by saying, “I cannot sleep in that comfortable bed while right at this moment tens of thousands of teghadelti are sleeping on hard ground all over Eritrea.” A charitable person would point to this as proof of the egalitarian and austere culture of sacrifice that has evolved within the front during those long and arduous years of struggle. A less charitable interpreter might draw a different lesson from it; he might detect the early seeds of a phenomenon that I am calling “equality by subtraction.” In both interpretations “equality” would be upheld, but in the latter one it would have mutated into a detrimental one.

The gist of the principle of “equality by subtraction” goes as follows: within a given population group, one attains equality NOT by adding anything to the individual members within that group but by subtracting from each one of them – all in the name of sacrifice that supposedly benefits the “group,” a fictional entity that is made to exist above and over the individuals. This zero-sum game, once started, is unstoppable in its down-sizing [the Tigrigna word “mitsiltsal” would be a more apt description]. The far-reaching consequences of this principle could be grasped when one takes into consideration this sobering fact: in the name of equality, it intends to level off not only the economic field, but also the psychic field. So, in its ultimate and pervasive form, the principle aims at nothing less than the leveling-off of that uniqueness that defines the individual, with the intention of producing a mass of look-alike clones; or rather, dispensable creatures that would be easily manipulated to fit into the greater design of a totalitarian system.

In the above given example, equality is maintained not by adding anything to those who were deprived of beds, but by denying beds to those who could have easily gotten them. Within such a world, one's sacrifice would add nothing to those for whom the sacrifice has been made: the doctor's sacrifice not to sleep on a bed would add nothing at all to all those who were sleeping on hard floors. When pushed to its logical limit, the principle of equality by subtraction culminates into mass deprivation: if everyone was to follow the doctor's abstemious behavior, then no one among that population group would be made to sleep on bed.

The last point could be made poignant by looking at another example that belongs to the same era; an era where this misguided mutation began to take root. A certain teghadalay, who hadn't been to his village for years – that is, since the day he had joined the front – made a conscious decision not to see his mother when his battalion was passing by very close to his village. Later, when he was asked why he would let such an opportunity that might never come up again slip him by [his mother was old], he is believed to have said words to this effect: "She is not better than the rest of Eritrean mothers. My concern should be directed towards all Eritrean mothers, and not to my mother in particular." And we have to remember that these kinds of reactions were the norm, and not the exception.

The fallacy that underlies the principle of equality by subtraction is made poignantly clear in the latter example because the deprivation that comes as a result of it is as tangible as it could possibly get, for it attempts to maintain the love that we ought to have for all the mothers of Eritrea by withholding the love that we have for each and every mother. But we know that the realty happens to be just the opposite: if each of us doesn't visit his own mother, then no mother in Eritrea would be visited; and if each of us fails to love his own mother, then no mother in Eritrea would be loved. Simply put, the principle has gotten the natural order of things reversed; the love that we develop for all the mothers of Eritrea could only take place by extrapolating from the experience that we get from the love of our individual mothers. But if someone would insist that we should attain love at a general level (that is, at the communal level) by bypassing love at a particular level (that is, at the individual level), then the result would be mass deprivation: surely there would be equality, but it would be an equality that would leave all mothers unloved. The moral of the story is this: that anything that is experienced takes place at an individual level; a communal experience that bypasses the individual is no experience at all. Hence the necessity for all kinds of civil liberties to be tailor-made to fit the individual.

Continue reading at Asmarino http://www.asmarino.delina.org/blog/wuf ... ew=article

sarcasm wrote: ↑

16 Jan 2023, 11:21

Equality by Subtraction (Equality Shaebia Style) - By Yosief Gebrehiwot

sarcasm wrote: ↑

02 Aug 2022, 17:49

ZEMEN wrote: ↑

02 Aug 2022, 16:09

@Red wrote: ↑

02 Aug 2022, 15:38

I was shocked to learn he doesn’t allow people to build even residential houses in Asmara, let alone resorts and hotels.
Great people but their government reminded me of derg era Ethiopia that everything is owned by the government.

You are right no one is allowed to build anything. The reason is, Eritrea believes in social justice. Eritrea do have many nomads who circles Eritrea and following rainy seasons and the Eritrean government wanted to end the nomadic nature of those Eritrean. To do that the Eritrean government must build dams to hold water year around. Once they have done that the nomad Eritrean use the dam water year around and they are permanently stay put in place around the dams. So, build this dams, cement and any constriction material must go to the dam project. You got to understand, Eritrea was/is under endless sanctions and resources are limited and what ever is available, it went to the dam projects. I do believe social justice is the key to any nation in the world, with out it, there is peace nor prosperity.

So the logic is to encourage cultures that prefer a nomadic lifestyle to accept a sedentary lifestyle, you deny housing / house building and repairs for almost 20 years and counting . . . to those who already practice sedentary lifestyle.

Re: Equality by Subtraction (Equality Shaebia Style) - By Yosief Gebrehiwot

sarcasm wrote: ↑

01 Aug 2013, 17:08

One of Yosief Ghebrehiwet's masterpieces written 10 years ago in July 2003 but more relevant than ever.

Equality by Subtraction
Yosief Ghebrehiwet

The story, as it was told then, goes as follows: The first time Keren was liberated by Shaebia, a certain medical doctor was offered a bed by grateful and overjoyed residents. The doctor graciously declined the offer by saying, “I cannot sleep in that comfortable bed while right at this moment tens of thousands of teghadelti are sleeping on hard ground all over Eritrea.” A charitable person would point to this as proof of the egalitarian and austere culture of sacrifice that has evolved within the front during those long and arduous years of struggle. A less charitable interpreter might draw a different lesson from it; he might detect the early seeds of a phenomenon that I am calling “equality by subtraction.” In both interpretations “equality” would be upheld, but in the latter one it would have mutated into a detrimental one.

The gist of the principle of “equality by subtraction” goes as follows: within a given population group, one attains equality NOT by adding anything to the individual members within that group but by subtracting from each one of them – all in the name of sacrifice that supposedly benefits the “group,” a fictional entity that is made to exist above and over the individuals. This zero-sum game, once started, is unstoppable in its down-sizing [the Tigrigna word “mitsiltsal” would be a more apt description]. The far-reaching consequences of this principle could be grasped when one takes into consideration this sobering fact: in the name of equality, it intends to level off not only the economic field, but also the psychic field. So, in its ultimate and pervasive form, the principle aims at nothing less than the leveling-off of that uniqueness that defines the individual, with the intention of producing a mass of look-alike clones; or rather, dispensable creatures that would be easily manipulated to fit into the greater design of a totalitarian system.

In the above given example, equality is maintained not by adding anything to those who were deprived of beds, but by denying beds to those who could have easily gotten them. Within such a world, one's sacrifice would add nothing to those for whom the sacrifice has been made: the doctor's sacrifice not to sleep on a bed would add nothing at all to all those who were sleeping on hard floors. When pushed to its logical limit, the principle of equality by subtraction culminates into mass deprivation: if everyone was to follow the doctor's abstemious behavior, then no one among that population group would be made to sleep on bed.

The last point could be made poignant by looking at another example that belongs to the same era; an era where this misguided mutation began to take root. A certain teghadalay, who hadn't been to his village for years – that is, since the day he had joined the front – made a conscious decision not to see his mother when his battalion was passing by very close to his village. Later, when he was asked why he would let such an opportunity that might never come up again slip him by [his mother was old], he is believed to have said words to this effect: "She is not better than the rest of Eritrean mothers. My concern should be directed towards all Eritrean mothers, and not to my mother in particular." And we have to remember that these kinds of reactions were the norm, and not the exception.

The fallacy that underlies the principle of equality by subtraction is made poignantly clear in the latter example because the deprivation that comes as a result of it is as tangible as it could possibly get, for it attempts to maintain the love that we ought to have for all the mothers of Eritrea by withholding the love that we have for each and every mother. But we know that the realty happens to be just the opposite: if each of us doesn't visit his own mother, then no mother in Eritrea would be visited; and if each of us fails to love his own mother, then no mother in Eritrea would be loved. Simply put, the principle has gotten the natural order of things reversed; the love that we develop for all the mothers of Eritrea could only take place by extrapolating from the experience that we get from the love of our individual mothers. But if someone would insist that we should attain love at a general level (that is, at the communal level) by bypassing love at a particular level (that is, at the individual level), then the result would be mass deprivation: surely there would be equality, but it would be an equality that would leave all mothers unloved. The moral of the story is this: that anything that is experienced takes place at an individual level; a communal experience that bypasses the individual is no experience at all. Hence the necessity for all kinds of civil liberties to be tailor-made to fit the individual.

Continue reading at Asmarino http://www.asmarino.delina.org/blog/wuf ... ew=article

Zmeselo wrote: ↑

16 Jan 2023, 11:28

sarcasm wrote: ↑

17 Jan 2023, 09:15

Zmeselo wrote: ↑

16 Jan 2023, 11:28

So what is the philosophy for the Ban on Building Residential Housing for 17 years and continuing ?