Ms. Cheney also said:

“Here is the truth: Donald Trump attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election and seize power,” she said in a statement. “He mobilized an angry mob and sent them to the United States Capitol, where they attacked police officers, invaded the building and halted the official counting of electoral votes. Trump watched on television as police officers were brutally beaten and the Capitol was assaulted, refusing for hours to tell the mob to leave.”

She continued: “This was the worst breach of our Constitution by any president in our nation’s history. Donald Trump’s suggestion that members of Congress who later investigated his illegal and unconstitutional actions should be jailed is a continuation of his assault on the rule of law and the foundations of our republic.”

(Now here’s what I think: How far out to lunch must you be to choose a desiccated clown and a proven pathological liar such as DJ Trump for your next president? It defies all logic that a convicted felon and a confirmed charlatan who only ran for office for his own aggrandizement – and to get even, apparently – will be assuming the highest office in the country once again because a majority of US voters could not see past his fake and bloviated personae to give him the definite heave-ho he so richly deserved. Nausea should have been the primary response to the mere fact of him opening his mouth to bleat his mindless blather, but apparently it struck a chord with enough Americans lacking common sense to get him elected on the assumption that he will look after them. HA!  This unreasonable facsimile of a human being doesn’t give a pig’s fart in a windstorm whether you live or die, so long as you are willing to vote for him. However, he is on record for caring enough to call you a loser should you die on the battlefield for defending the rights and freedoms of your country. God –or somebody – help America.)

* The phrase “liar, liar, pants on fire” is said to have originated from William Blake’s poem “The Liar”. The poem begins with the line, “Deceiver, dissembler. Your trousers are alight. From what pole or gallows. Shall they dangle in the night?”

Heidegger said this in the context of his concept of “Being”, as in “Being in the world” which he named “Dasein”,  a term that refers to the  unique way humans are the world, when they are  able to confront their existence with questions about mortality, meaning,  destiny and the like. This as opposed to merely just being in the world as one of many different species”.

When it comes to raising various questions concerning the meaning of life, its origin, purpose etc.  traditionally it has been the purvey of organized religions to provided all the answers. But we have  since grown up and learned to think for ourselves such that we are no longer able to accept the fabricated fables of their imaginary metaphysics.

And while we have been clever enough to see ourselves as a product of of a lengthy evolutionary process,  as much as this tells us about how we came about as a unique humanoid species: this does not tell us anything as to the “why”, as in “why are we here?”. So when it comes to being able to account for our presence here on earth beyond being merely another creature on it we are definitely left wanting.

Science cannot give us the answers either: as renowned physicist and Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg stated in his 1977 book “The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe” The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless. … “.

Just because you can explain how something seemingly very complex is put together does not give you the “why” for compiling and launching a particular process in the first place. What is required is a sense of intent  or purpose to be able to connect the dots and complete the picture.

The conclusion has to be that we do not  appear to have the intellectual acumen that can take us from the questions we have about our place in the world  to an intelligible framework of facts and explanations that would give us a sense of purpose within the context of a destiny able to inspire and motivate us. Right now we absolutely do not grasp the reason for our being here, at this time, on this planet, in this universe: we likely require a significant upgrade in the grey matter department to get a sense of what is being played out here  and what our role in this cosmic venture ought to be.

And so we can’t get there: we are too early for being able to accept our  role in the world because we cannot see beyond the event horizon of our current perception as being just one more species among many and  grasp what lies waiting for us at the centre of all that is the world as we find ourselves immersed in it.

If this means anything at all – and that is the point I am trying to make here – it is likely that evolution clearly isn’t done with us yet – and  that , in all likelihood , we will be superseded by a superior version of ourselves and that is able to put itself as an integral entity into the picture of a meaningful “being in the world”, in harmony with the interests of this magnificent cosmic venture we refer to as “the World”.

And let’s be honest: based on our collective actions to date we clearly aren’t the species to safeguard the future of this magnificent creation called Earth. Just look at our current destructive efforts which – to date -have resulted in making this planet less habitable for many forms of life: human induced pollution is poisoning the atmosphere (carbon emissions), the oceans (garbage) and the landmass (pesticides).

In addition, the often careless ways in which we go about about our  business on this earth can be absolutely devastating for our  fellow creatures. To give just one tragic example: the North Atlantic right whales should live well past 100 years, but threats to the endangered species –  including entanglements in lobster and crab fishing gear, and strikes by commercial vessels – have cut their lifespan to a fraction of that and now they’re dying around 20. Their troubles already compounded by the historic whale hunt, their population has been left with almost no older whales — and little inherited wisdom for the younger generation, such as how to navigate the ocean to find food as the climate changes.

Beyond that – and if we excel at anything – we are experts in killing each other en masse with our clever weapons of mass-destruction specifically designed for that purpose. As a consequence, ALL forms of life on this earth are under duress and less likely to prosper, if not driven into extinction, and all this the result of a species ruled by mindless ambition and greed as opposed to a thoughtful mindset guided by empathy and compassion based on the understanding that we are all in this together.

But this magnificent  planet  – which I believe is a living, conscious organism – will defend itself and evolve the next iteration of our species hopefully in time to save itself and the millions of creatures  and other forms of life that are being nurtured by it.

“We are the product of 4.5 billion years of fortuitous, slow, biological evolution. There is no reason to think that the evolutionary process has stopped. Man is a transitional animal. He is not the climax of creation. (Carl Sagan – The Cosmic Connection)”

But that is not the question I’m asking. Instead, I would like to know about wat lies at the bottom of all of these various motivations, for even if we consider something as basic as the need to survive as a primary motivator to affect our actions, it is not clear what that encompasses beyond saying that the need or will to survive and thrive is a basic feature of all living organisms.

When the organic rose from the inorganic, it was more than an advanced arrangement of organic molecules that came about when life made its presence, as eventually, when we came about via the subsequent phylogenetic tree, that jump from the inanimate to the animate introduced and enabled the prime motivator for all our actions.

Now we cannot infer a cause from an effect, but it would be logical to assume that the seed of this process – and the entire evolutionary history of living matter – must have been present prior to the emergence of life. As well – and unless you believe that there are such things as magical metaphysical beings waving a magic wand on occasion – whatever gets and keeps us going is an expression of what must have been determined when the world came into being and forms an intrinsic aspect of the very reason it and all of us are here.

Another way of putting this would be to say that we are an instantiation of the very reason the world is here: we cannot  be separated from that reason, no more than we can be separated from the world that brought us about.

And so the following question should loom large for all of us: where are we going with this process – if that is the right word for it?  What – in fact – are we surviving for after all that effort to bring us about?  When I ask a question like this, I am once again reminded of Shakespeare’s “ Life’s but a walking shadow; a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

The thing is, this “nothing” might not seem that much of an issue if everyone was having a good time with it – something along the lines of Goethe’s “For what end is served by all the expenditure of suns and planets and moons, of stars and Milky Ways … if at last a happy man does not involuntarily rejoice in his existence?”

However, it is abundantly clear that – since the beginning of time  – not much rejoicing has been  going on for too many people unable to escape varying degrees of pain and suffering, and frequently  during an  entire lifetime and through no fault of their own, to the point that a philosopher such as David Benatar believes that the world would be a better place if sentient life disappeared altogether, i.e., no remaining life-form capable of undergoing pain or suffering. (But then there is a Nietzsche who believes there is value in suffering: “To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering”, but I guess opinions will vary greatly on that matter.)

So where am I going with this? Nowhere in particular other than to say that we have to keep believing that – while it does appear that humanity appears to be an exercise in futility and despite our apparent efforts to bring about our own extinction – we have it within us to make it a meaningful enterprise if only we started acting on that assumption by valuing the sanctity of life – the cosmos’ greatest accomplishment – and do everything in our power to nourish and protect it.

In return, the world, this planet, will allow us and our future generations to flourish into a future we cannot even begin to imagine what that might look like.  I’m thinking about the absolute and worldwide absence of poverty, starvation, exploitation, slavery, discrimination and war and, instead, communities centred on such higher human values as compassion, empathy and mutual respect. All reasons – I might add – to celebrate life as opposed to having to endure it, as is the case for so many of us across this earth today.

And so it is my belief – as naive as that might be – that the answer to the question as what to what drives us ultimately from within is to get to that state, when the very fact of finding oneself  alive on this planet is a reason to celebrate.  It would mean that individually as well as collectively, as a species, we have overcome all the negative and self-induced aspects of  our existence that stood in the way of getting to that point, i.e, all the deception, delusion, dishonesty, ego, envy, greed, hatred, immorality, lying, selfishness, unreliability, violence and whatever other self-destructive tendencies that prevented us from living in harmony with ourselves, our fellow human beings and the earth.  It means that we will have found the true value of life, at the summit of creation and at the core of the cosmos,  and  – I suggest – the very reason the world is here today.

Never in a million years you might say? And didn’t I write a post not all that long ago that suggested that we were a defective species and that the planet would likely get rid of us if we didn’t  already manage that ourselves?  True enough, the situation seems absolutely hopeless as we continue to witness the tragedy and ongoing plight of millions of refugees fleeing their homelands across the various continents because of poverty and starvation, ethnic , religious or political conflict, including such recent and outright criminal acts as the  bombing of civilian targets in Ukraine by a member of the United Nations Security council.

But then you witness something positive, such as a simple act of compassion, kindness and generosity,  or when others rush in to help save lives in the case of natural disasters, even when they might be putting their own lives at risk. Then,  the mere fact of a child’s smile , or people genuinely enjoying themselves being out in nature experiencing  its spectacular beauty, all  suggesting that, yes, many of us are getting the message, and that in spite of all the largely self-induced misery, murder and mayhem around us the human race deserves saving, But then there is the  realization that we can only save ourselves.

For this to happen we must first overcome our current confused and scattered selves by redefining ourselves as the creature that we are from ourselves: Others cannot tell you who or what you are, or what your existence should mean to you. Only you can determine what you can be for yourself, as opposed to what others want you to be. And to repeat something from the very first post I made on this blog:

For this you must look at yourself not through the eyes of others, but from yourself, from the inside out – from within the acute reality of your own cognitive and spiritual existence. But this is no easy task – it means assuming responsibility for all your actions as you attempt to recreate yourself from the subjective contents of your stream of consciousness. It will require courage – the courage to re-invent oneself without being plugged into a god, a scientific assumption or the beliefs of society at large for confirmation that you are doing the right thing.

Grunts and gestures became gradually more nuanced and specific, and refined to the point that they were reliably and consistently linked  to the content of  shared experiences and so form the basis for a unique form of communication that we now refer to as language.

Most importantly,  the introduction of language enabled our species to create an abstract version of the world, and what Schopenhauer has referred to as “The World as Idea”.  As a result, the  natural world as encountered by our sensory experiences of it would now no longer just be “there” –  as  would be the case for any other living creature that is immersed in it – but also as a conceptual model for discussion and analysis by means of  linguistic symbols that stand for some aspect of it,  and which together constitute the world as it exists in our thoughts and understanding.

But as much as language allows us to analyze that conceptual world in whatever shared framework of understanding we  bring to the discussion, e.g., cultural, scientific, metaphysical,  philosophical, l at the same time we are very much limited by the fact that the natural world is clearly so much more than what we have been able to capture of it by having a vocabulary to describe it in as much detail as we are able to bring to the fore.

And for any description we have of the world – as complete we would like it to be – it would be a matter of trying to read between the lines what it is, exactly,  that lies behind the idea of it, i.e., what is the intent of the natural world, as well as what role we are supposed to play in this cosmic event and why.

Science tells us that Homo sapiens, the first modern humans, evolved from their early hominid predecessors between 200,000 and 300,000 years ago and began moving outside of Africa starting about 70,000-100,000 years ago.

And so I have this simple question: Preceded by Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis, do we have any reason to believe that we, Homo sapiens, are the end of the line when it comes to the evolution of the humanoid  species?

To answer this in the affirmative is a little presumptuous, don’t you think? I can only speak for myself when I say that I don’t believe we are the finished product that evolution had intended us to be – and not by a long shot – and that it is entirely conceivable  that we will be superseded by a superior edition of Homo sapiens . And they might well look back at the current edition of the species as Homo ignoramus or perhaps Homo perniciosus – given the amount of planet-wide environmental destruction our iteration of the humanoid  species  is leaving in its wake.

“I wish that I could say I was optimistic about the human race. I love us all, but we are so stupid and shortsighted that I wonder if we can lift our eyes to the world about us long enough not to commit suicide. (Isaac Asimov, 1920-1992)”

Lets face it: we can’t help ourselves, collectively, as a species. When I say “defective” I mean to say exactly that, in that we appear to be unable to do what should come naturally, easily and fruitfully should we apply ourselves to our vast potential as an intelligent, innovative and creative species with the realization that it is absolutely essential that we live and work together as one, in harmony with each other to the benefit of everyone without exception.

Instead, we compete, we fight, we destroy – each other and the place that nurtures us – without regard for a future  that we must necessarily share together.  But no one should be that shortsighted, that thoughtless, that self-destructive,  or, simply put:  that stupid!

And have we not all been hewn from the same piece of rock – this planet, this earth, so why are we fighting each other? When we fight each other, we are fighting ourselves. What is the origin of the conflicts within us?

It seems such a simple choice to make, doesn’t it:  working out differences through negotiating solutions peacefully, with the understanding that these must always a matter of give and take. This as oppose to getting your way to the detriment of others, even going as far as the wholesale slaughter of those who are absolutely helpless to do anything about it. History shows that time and time again we haven’t been able to make the right choice in such matters.

And so here we are, seemingly helpless  to get our act together.   No, God won’t help us all; no figment of our imagination can be conjured up to protect us from ourselves. In the end, we are the only ones that can  help ourselves.  But the whole of our history tells it all, and sadly the conclusion has to be: we are a defective species, akin to a rudderless ship about to wreck itself on the shores of ignorance, arrogance and self-deception.

I can’t imagine that this is what the cosmos had in mind when it brought us about, and my guess is that it will likely do away with us – or, more likely, allow us to do away with ourselves – before giving it another try:  to evolve a creature worthy and able  to  make use of the incredible creative powers that have been instantiated by it to achieve its raison d’etre, whatever that might be.  All I know  is that we are definitely not that creature.

 Accepting the absurdity of everything around us is one step, a necessary experience: it should not become a dead end.

When I read this the first time  I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, i.e.,  I was unable to identify with “the absurdity of everything all around us”. Most of the things going around me seemed to make reasonably good sense most of the time and if there was something going on  I didn’t quite understand I was quite confident that it made sense  to someone else.

However, over the years I have come to the realization that this is all a matter of one’s point of view, and that – yes – life, existence,  appears to make little sense  when you take a step back and consider the human effort as a whole, including its history, when seen from the  vastness and complexity of a seemingly infinite material universe.   And as it has been said, the universe remains absolutely silent on these matters: it fails to provide the very  reasons  for  its existence and everything that can be found in it, including our lives.

By way of a simple analogy, accepting this is a lot like waking up one day and discovering that you are travelling on a train with an unknown destination and having absolutely no prior knowledge from where it departed from or how you ended up being on board. With little choice other than accepting the fact of the matter your options are going to be limited in terms of what to make of it.

When I  write this I am once again reminded of Kafka’s short story The Passenger that I have written about elsewhere, about being confronted by an existential disconnect, the acute realization that the immediacy of the moment  is unable to account for whatever situation you find yourself caught up in, e.g., what am I doing here, or: why am I here at all?

It is in this context – or more likely in the absence of any kind of context that would be able to account for it – and what I have frequently  referred to as “the greater context”  that some have deemed life or existence an absurdity, and a seemingly meaningless exercise that appears to have no particular purpose beyond being there for its own sake.

However, it is once thing to conclude this about life, but  – as Camus suggested –  this should not be an end in itself. To contemplate one’s existence this way would be very much  like staring down into the void – the realm of infinite nothingness. And to  paraphrase something Nietzsche once said: if you stare into the void long enough, the void will look back at you, i.e., it will vacuum out your soul, and you might as well end it all right then and there.

Interestingly, to consider suicide as an option is according the Camus the one truly serious philosophical problem we face in life: Judging whether life is or is not worth living.  But while this might be an interesting question for philosophers, one doesn’t need to be  overly presumptuous for suggesting that the vast majority of people do not consider their existence a waste of time, and an absurdity which must be  endured one way or another. Instead, they experience life as meaningful given that meaning is always relative and a function of what one is experiencing within the context of the here and now. Even in the darkest of times it is within the human spirit to try to make sense or look for meaning in what one is experiencing at the moment.  “Hope springs eternal in the human breast” as Alexander Pope once said.

The bottom line is that we remain challenged to provide  the meaning of life   beyond the immediacy of finding ourselves immersed in it. As to the suggestion that there is no meaning beyond it was a consideration for Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl  who suggested that “Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked.” And that “In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”

Finally, I believe that – as a species – we are initially prevented from looking beyond the immediate substance of our lives and seeing the apparent absurdity of it, as we remain preoccupied by the trivial and perhaps not so trivial. But that doesn’t mean that we are unable to encounter it and  be challenged by it as a means to gain a greater understanding of the predicament we find ourselves in, e.g., why is it that we are here and what is it, exactly, that is expected of us?

Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act – S.C. 2000, c. 24

Russia’s totally unprovoked invasion of Ukraine and subsequent atrocities committed against that country,  including the deliberate bombing of civilian targets causing the complete destruction of towns and villages and thousands of deaths among the Ukrainian population brings to mind earlier attempts to bring a country to its knees by targeting its civilian population.

Likely the most devastating example of this  tactic was the  detonation of  two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945 by the US that killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people – most of whom were civilians.  It led to the almost immediate surrender of the Empire of Japan on 15 August and formally signed on 2 September 1945, bringing the war’s hostilities in that region to a close.

Earlier that year a nearly equally abhorrent example  occurred in Europe  towards the very end of WW2 in February of 1945, when the capital of the German state of Saxony Dresden was firebombed during a series of  joint British and American aerial attacks and  which is believed to have caused the death of as many as 25,000 citizens. Exact accounts vary as it is  likely many thousand more perished in this murderous fire storm, given the influx of undocumented refugees that had fled to Dresden from the Eastern Front, primarily from Silesia and on the run from Stalin and the Red Army. Tragically, most of the victims were women, children, and the elderly.

 Looking back at this, I can’t imagine there could ever be a cause that would justify the wholesale slaughter of innocent men, women and children such as happened in WWII in Japan and  Nazi Germany – as much as one might see the cessation of  hostilities and the termination of a criminal and murderous regime as the justification for this.

But even if we should be able to conceive of circumstances so desperate that a nation fighting for its survival might see itself as having no other options than having to resort to the mass killing of innocent civilians on the opposing side,   it is  difficult to imagine that the deliberate destruction of  Ukrainian cities and towns and the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians can be claimed by Russia to have been committed  as a matter of ensuring Russia’s survival as an independent nation.

More likely, the  only matter of survival here concerns  Mr. Putin’s  pathetic and malignant  vision of a renewed Soviet empire, once upon a time a sorry assemblage of  impoverished neighbouring vassal states held together by sheer terror under the absolute dictatorship of the murderous Joseph Stalin.

And how ridiculous is this: Russia – being a democracy in name only – “liberating” the independent Ukrainian nation from it democratically elected government by putting it under Putin’s governance, when it could only be seen as  another  step in realizing the extreme and deadly megalomania of the latter’s  ambitions.

The conclusion has to be that Putin’s resort to terrorize and murder the Ukrainian civilian population in order to force its government to capitulate.  makes the Russian invasion of that country  a criminal act of the highest magnitude, and a crime against humanity by any other name.

While the current  circumstances involve completely different scenarios in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it behooves us to highlight once again the incredible inhumanity inflicted on ordinary folks who end up paying the price of warfare  through absolutely no fault of their own.

Participants at the Potsdam Agreement. Stalin and Truman seen on the left.

As it turned out, the Potsdam agreement resulted in perhaps the largest documented case of state sanctioned ethnic cleansing on record, and one of the most disturbing events of relatively recent European history. It was a direct result of  the US and England giving in to the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin’s demands to keep the part of Poland he had already annexed earlier under the secret Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with Hitler in 1939 as well as  most of the German province of East Prussia.

Not only would two million Poles be forced to abandon their homes and lands and resettle behind the redrawn Polish/Soviet Union border (the Curzon Line) to the West,  the entire ethnic German population east of the Oder-Neisse line was to be expelled and “repatriated” to the remaining German territory west of the Neisse River.  The territories affected would be the German provinces  of Silesia, Pomerania, and East and West Prussia,  as well as sections of Czechoslovakia. This meant that a staggering number of around 13 million  ethnic Germans would be forced from their former homelands where many of their families had lived and worked as far back as the 13th century.

While the plan was to allow for “the orderly and humane repatriation of Germans”, this didn’t quite work out that way. Around 5 million people were forced to flee almost immediately ahead of the Soviet red army advance into East Prussia in the manner of a vicious barbaric horde bent on raping, killing and – in general – ransacking everything in their path.

Rape, in particular, was the highlight on the pillager’s menu. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, then a young captain in the Red Army, described the entry of his regiment into East Prussia in January 1945 as follows: “For three weeks the war had been going on inside Germany, and all of us knew very well that if the girls were German they could be raped and then shot. This was almost a combat distinction”.

German Expellees Leaving East Prussia

Of the remaining 8 million Germans that were forced to repatriate roughly 1.2 million did not survive the unassisted trek west across their now former homelands and through Polish territory to the relative safety of Allied-occupied German territory on the other side of the Neisse river. The survivors – typically not the very old or the very young, and mostly ordinary farm or small town folk who had done nothing more than toil ceaselessly for a living from dawn to dusk their entire lives – told of months and weeks of incredible suffering. They were habitually beaten, robbed of the few possessions they carried with them, the women raped repeatedly. Thousands of expellees committed suicide, not able to withstand the absolute barbarity inflicted on them any longer.

Expellees Leaving East Prussia

Looking back at this ignominious event some years later, the great 20th century humanitarian Albert Schweitzer, in his speech accepting the Noble Peace Prize in Oslo in 1954, said:

“The most grievous violation of the right based on historical evolution and of any human right in general is to deprive populations of the right to occupy the country where they live by compelling them to settle elsewhere. The fact that the victorious powers decided at the end of WWII to impose this fate on hundreds of thousands of human beings and, what is more, in a most cruel manner, show how little they were aware of the challenge facing them, namely, to re-establish prosperity and, as far as possible, the rule of law.”

I can see situations where being vaccinated will be mandatory just to ensure that people don’t turn themselves into a lethal weapon and unwittingly end up killing someone because they are COVID positive – although they don’t know this and are a-symptomatic  for the virus –  and then give it to someone else who might die from it. This might happen in situations where social distancing isn’t an option – such as on airplanes – or when a population group is particularly vulnerable such as senior care homes where the vast majority of deaths (80% in Canada) have occurred.

It might be said that such restrictions infringe on personal rights and freedoms, but I see this more as just another way to ensure each other’s safety, e.g.,  such as restricting vehicles to speed limits or one-way traffic or mandatory stop signs so we don’t all end up killing each other when driving our cars.

Reasonable people with some sense of social responsibility should not take issue with this, but it is clear that not everyone is that way inclined or appears to have evolved  to the point that they are capable of thinking that way.

To take this latter point a little further, no doubt that in the end,  when all this COVID trouble  is over – here’s hoping! – there are going to be people who will proudly proclaim that they were able to survive this plague without being vaccinated or, for that matter,  without wearing a mask or social distancing, so what was the big fuss all about?

However, it is less likely that they survived the pandemic unscathed regardless  of their non-adherence to recommended public safety measures in light of COVID. More likely, it was the fact that the vast majority of people around them did  follow the recommended procedures such as masking up and getting vaccinated and so prevented the anti-vaxxers  from  becoming infected  with this potentially deadly virus even if they themselves were infected with it.

No, you couldn’t prove that of course, but you shouldn’t have to as this is merely an appeal to reason – and  it is an unfortunate fact that, from the looks of it,  not everyone is in possession of this faculty, and so they will not be able to get the point.