i have pointed out in the past that the broad crux of ecological science is traversing in a direction that is convergent with the holistic tendencies of indigenous worldviews and that this provides for the potential of a deep synthesis that truly must be the future of the party, if it wishes to survive. the ideology of the canadian green party should, and must, in a very real sense be a combination of the scientific method, and where advanced insights into technology can take us, with explicitly indigenous concepts of land stewardship and ecological interconnectedness that overturn the aristotlian conception of humanity as the centre of everything; it is the only feasible way forward, and if the party misses it's chance to grasp it, it might fade permanently. we need to keep the science, but pretty much everything else about the west needs to be rethought.

i've been in and out of indigenous advocacy groups, studied some indigenous law and have talked to indigenous activists on the ground, and this kind of laundry list of issues you hear from politicians really isn't close to were their heads are at. there's such a wide spectrum of views on so many of these topics, from sovereignty to the indian act, that it's hard to make sense of laying down ideas ahead of time and pushing them forward.

what the next leader of the green party needs to commit to doing is talking to indigenous people. like, really talking to them - going into their communities, taking note of their concerns and then bringing them back to the party, where some very direct proposals can be drafted.

and, this should be a major project for your party, because the mla is right; i've never understood why the greens haven't sought to build a base in the indigenous community, because it's perhaps the only obvious way to build one.

is the geographical thing complete bs? i think you need to be a little more subtle.

in 1976, the democrats were probably going to do well in the northeastern & union states, but they needed a southerner on the ticket to win georgia. that year, it was the president that was the regional factor, not the vp; nonetheless, by picking mondale, carter did manage to balance the ticket. so, geography was important in 1976.

1980-1988 were landslides, so it's hard to make sense of how geography may have made a difference.

but, my recollection of 1992 was that a very important part of the calculus around picking gore was trying to hold the upper south - tennessee, kentucky. the presence of ross perot makes these analyses difficult, and it does turn out that those handful of states were not decisive, but clinton didn't know any of that when he picked gore; the clinton campaign did legitimately believe at the time that those states were key to victory, and absolutely did pick gore partly in an attempt to win them.

that was why it was ironic that gore could have won in 2000 by carrying tennessee. but, 2000 was overall more like 1976, in the sense that george w. bush had his father's name recognition in key states like florida. so, pointing to cheney and saying that geography doesn't matter is not really grasping the situation.

biden, as well, was chosen partly to help the ticket in the midwest, and there are some states like ohio that obama may have had difficulty carrying without him. but, in the end, the geographic advantage in 2008 belonged mostly to obama, who carried truly decisive states like north carolina by mobilizing black voters.

so, really, what we see over the last few decades is not that geography doesn't matter but that the successful candidates have had decisive geographic advantages of their own.

while biden may do better in some places in the midwest than clinton did, there's not any good reason at this point to think he'll actually beat trump in most of these places. what i'm getting at is that biden's geographical strengths are largely neutralized by trump. we are consequently back in a scenario where biden should be looking for a regional advantage, either by trying to excite black voters to the levels that existed in 2008 (which is an absurd premise, given the historical events of that year), by keying in specifically on hispanics (something that i strangely haven't seen discussed at all, given biden's poor numbers with hispanics) or by doubling down and taking a serious run at the midwestern white vote.

as of right now, biden's geographic base appears to be in solidly red states. he's going to need to build a base in purplish states in order to win.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/10/politics/joe-biden-vp-pick-kamala-harris/index.html

this paper attempts to argue that the edicts of ashoka were actually based on the delphic maxims, which have apparently been found in the region in tablets dating back to 300 bce (about 40 years before the first known fragment of the edicts).

the texts i've read on the indo-greeks have stressed that there was a black hole in the historical record in terms of understanding the exact greek influence on buddhism, but they would be fairly old and it appears out of date at this point.

i did not realize that there were concrete proposals for a genealogical link, based on actual archaeological findings; this theory appears to have advanced quite a bit since the last time i looked into it.

https://www.persee.fr/docAsPDF/dha_0755-7256_1990_num_16_1_1467.pdf

this paper makes a similar point, if you can't read french, without being explicit:
http://www.singor.org/publ/singor201201.pdf

this is the world that ashoka saw himself as existing in:

it's interesting to note that, in the edicts, ashoka seems to position himself in a greek world, rather than an indian world. he doesn't mention china, or the areas to the east of india; his geography is restricted to the greek world, the areas conquered by alexander. this is quite strange, isn't it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edicts_of_Ashoka#Ashoka's_proselytism_according_to_the_Edicts

it turns out that the earliest known buddhist writings were actually literally written in greek & aramaic - the same languages used to write the bible.

menander, who lived a little later but is central to a lot of buddhist writing when it appears, was also a greek.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kandahar_Bilingual_Rock_Inscription

i'm not familiar with this source, but if you want something that's not me, this discusses an academic source that has traced greek influence on the development of buddhist thought.

i understand that buddhism traces itself to before alexander, and i don't dispute that, but the earliest actual writings we have were created during the period of hellenic influence and they really do seem to have a distinctively greek style to them. it's actually very easy to believe, without getting technical about it.

https://tricycle.org/trikedaily/consider-source-buddhas-hairdo-greek/

interesting google search hit.

https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/influence-mystery-religions-christianity

would i have at least gotten along with early christians?

if they gave me enough wine, maybe. it'd liven the debate, at least.

the thing is that early christians were kind of not that different from pagans; they're thought to have carried out most of the same mystery rites, and essentially would have been left alone if they'd have just acknowledged the primacy of the emperor.

given that this was the major crime that christians were charged with, not accepting the superiority of the emperor, i have to admit i'd probably be a little sympathetic to them. they don't seem to have been particularly prude people at that point in time; rather, they were known for wild parties, orgies and who knows what else. they kind of sound like anarcho-primitivists, in an era where the population was low enough to actually live it responsibly.

at some point, some fascist thugs took control of the councils, and they started passing rules and outlawing heretics and whatnot; you can see the beginnings of a dangerous institution develop here, many years before constantine. i'd consequently break with them fairly early - potentially as early as the first generation after his death. i guess the shit really hit the fan with paul, right? that's only about 50 years after his death.

but, i don't think i'd have much particularly negative to say about the very, very first christians. i could maybe get along with them, a little.

and, yes - early christianity itself was another example of greek discourse in opposition to authoritarian rule, it just happens to be the one that got badly co-opted, and turned into a vehicle of tyranny, culminating in (but not beginning with) constantine's declaration that he saw a cross in the sky that demanded he conquer in it's name, perhaps after consuming too much ergot. we forget it was the romans that invented the holy war to attack the persians, and neither the crusaders nor the arabs, who both adopted the idea from the book of roman tactics.

whatever early christianity's position on these matters was, the institution that developed in western europe after the fall of rome and called itself a christian church had little resemblance to anything championing discourse over authority.

while growing up in canada means you've been raised in the west and are a westerner regardless of what you look like, it's important to point out that the west is not the only culture that was dominantly influenced by the greeks. it was perhaps a pitstop in the long run of things, but greek mathematics and astronomy, especially, were developed rather substantially in baghdad during the babylonian renaissance; the centrality of greek origins in this renaissance is itself rooted in the deep cultural realities of centuries of hellenic dominance in the region, from the persian collapse led by alexander through the parthian uprising and well into the roman takeover of the levant, led by pompey. the roman-persian war was initially built on a struggle as to who would inherit the greco-persian empire, a question that history never resolved, until the appearance of islam, which did not inherit it but dismantled it.

that ancient hellenic influence, as projected by alexander (but, in fact, preceding him, culturally) spread to the furthest eastern reaches of the indo-european sphere, and all the way into india itself. the legend is that very large numbers of alexander's soldiers ended up india when he died and just kind of stayed put there. when they did, they set up colonies with their own systems of government and manufactured their own art and whatnot. cultural exchange between these greek settlers, called indo-greeks and greco-bactrians, and the indians themselves was in fact exceedingly deep, and the effects of hellenism in india can be traced very far into the future.

i mean, check this out:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellenistic_influence_on_Indian_art

it's a deep academic discipline - well studied, because it's so prominent in the art.

while i'm not aware of any tradition of plato or socrates in india, the period of hellenic influence in india coincided with the earliest buddhist writings, and it's hard not to see an influence from greek discourse on the way that the writings are ordered. it's known that many extant buddhist sculptures were essentially greek in construction, so the influence was there. regardless, buddhism is also a discourse-based system of thinking, rather than an authoritarian one.

i understand that there are cultures on this planet that are highly hierarchical, and in which authority is paramount. these cultures are as ancient as any other, and sending out experts to bark orders may be an effective strategy in those cultures.

but, white people have always been all about discourse; the one thing that survived the vicious dark age that set in with christianity was the platonic discourse, which was the central focus of a real education, in those days. everything was always about talking it through - democracy, the market, philosophy, etc.

we lost that, but we brought it back, partly because it better fit the character of celto-german anarchy as it emerged from the boot of judeo-latin dominance. one of the misunderstood things about the vikings, and one of the things we actually understand best about them, was how startlingly democratic their society actually was. they would constantly convene at assemblies in ways that seem to have been lost to the romanized peoples they encountered. the english common law parliament is also a unique relic of german democracy that survived in hybrid form, where it disappeared virtually everywhere else. it makes sense that the new german aristocracy in europe would identify more with greek democracy than with what had become latin tyranny, and the renaissance kind of gave them the chance to make that choice, as to how they would be civilized. we often think of the renaissance and enlightenment as a struggle between the authority of the church and the primacy of empirical science, but it was just as much an overturning of judeo-latin civilization in favour of greek civilization. with that process, the west inherited all things greek, including the centrality of discourse, which better fit it's shared barbarian character with the ancient greeks than the dominance and authority of judaic religion.

as with any reversal of thought, the struggle is never complete; today, we still see proponents of authority over discourse in the west, and they continue to wield power. but, our history is clear enough - nothing much changes in barbarian cultures without recognizing the centrality of discourse within them, without reaching out to the demos, without having a debate, or maybe even swinging it out.

if you want to get things done, you need to fit the approach properly to the culture.

this article is very poorly written, in it's survey of the science around the topic. that said, it would appear that this doctor is promoting the use of the drug as a prophylactic (which is not based on any science), rather than as a treatment in severe cases (which appears to be part of an effective strategy to prevent septic shock, when it sets in, which is the same way it is used to treat lupus, rather than malaria). as badly written as the article is, the doctor appears to have genuinely misunderstood the science.

however, her confusion is not a reason to censor her.

when somebody is confused about something, attempting to silence them is more likely to increase their confusion than resolve it. people easily develop persecution complexes, and like-minded people are quick to erect martyrs out of people that they feel are being suppressed. if your goal is truly a greater public understanding of the proper uses of this drug in the context of treating covid-19, it is a far better idea to engage this person in discourse, and try to convince them that they are incorrect than it is to silence them or shut them down with force.

further, before you silence dissent, it is always of paramount importance to ask yourself if you might be wrong. for, you might be wrong, and history will judge you terribly for it.

the science is in fact crystal clear that there are valid therapeutic uses for this drug (which is in fact approved by the appropriate bodies, worldwide, for these reasons) in the context of treating severe cases of covid-19. a little discourse may help everybody understand this better; clearly, sending experts out and demanding people obey their authority isn't actually working that well, is it?

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/kulvinder-kaur-gill-tweets-cpso-1.5680122