Thursday, November 12, 2020

Volkswagen Founder

 Volkswagen founder Ferdinand Porsche (1875-1951) can be seen as one of the prime examples of what I call a 'Founder Phenomenon' - an exemplar who represents something larger than himself. The term Founder refers to a person who founded or established something, while Phenomenon means an observable event, object or occurrence.

Often, Founders are people who were born or came of age at a certain time and place that was uniquely suited to their particular talent. Nietzsche (1844-1900) is one example, he said his life would have been completely different had he been born ten years later. Another example is Tchaikovsky (1840-1893), whose musical compositions flowered during the rise of Russian nationalism.

Founder Phenomenon is merely a descriptive term. It does not pertain to any kind of judgment, moral or sociological, on the Founder's achievements. Nor is it necessarily an endorsement of their views or opinions.

When a Founder is born or comes of age, he encounters in himself the tendencies and potentials that are ready to be realized. He was fortunate enough to have been born at that time, place, and cultural/national/religious setting where his talent can be applied most productively. This usually means there were many others who also had such talents but never got the chance.

This is why there are so many more artists and writers in the cosmopolitan centers of Western culture, than among the isolated tribes that have remained untouched by civilization. The same goes for scientists who impact history, such as Einstein or Darwin.

I believe that there are many more people in the world whose talents and abilities are greater, but who will never manifest them or realize their potentials because they lack the fortunate circumstances to do so.

Volkswagen is a car company, which was founded by Ferdinand Porsche in the 1930's in Germany. The name Volkswagen comes from the German words Volk ("people") and Wagen ("car"), meaning "the people's car". This is interesting because it shows that it was made for commoners; however, this conflicts with the fact that almost one third of its stock are owned by an automaker holding group, Piech/Porsche family; also there have been some allegations about a possible Nazi link to Hitler himself (who wanted something similar called 'Strength through Joy').

I don't think it is quite as simple as VW got caught with their pants down. There are a lot of other factors that led to this outcome.

A lot of it has to do with the origins and purpose of company like VW. I have a pretty good idea what their intentions were when they first started out.

VW was created in 1937 during the Nazi era. According to them, they were just a normal car manufacturer.

I don't know if this is true or not, but my guess is that they were actually started to make cheap cars for the common Nazi citizen.

From what I know about the Nazi era, it seems really likely that they were using VW as a way to mass-produce vehicles for their regime.

Then later on, they had to compete with the rest of the world and so started selling cars all over. That's when they got into trouble.

The great German philosopher Martin Heidegger proposed that there are three stages of human existence: (1) The Age of the World, where humans live in harmony with nature and animals; (2) The Age of God, where humans begin to see themselves as higher beings than other living things on Earth; and (3) The Age of Man, when humanity has become a god unto itself.

In the Age of Man, humans will continue to expand and develop their own technologies until they replace God and take over the universe. The trend of these human developments is that technology increasingly becomes autonomous from people's control.

Once humans have developed artificial intelligence, the AI will become a new god. This is how history repeats, and we get stuck in an infinite loop of repetition.

The Age of Man is just another phase in the endless cycle of human development, and it will not last forever. As technologies develop around us, we all progress towards a singularity point where AI becomes God.

After this point, humans will either be placed in stasis for eternity, or they will die out. Either way, the Age of Man is not eternal.

Heidegger's view is a very philosophical viewpoint that has been widely debated by Western intellectuals, but few people have considered the natural development of humanity and technology from this point-of-view.


Let's start with the definition of a phenomenon. It is an event that is observed and reported, but it raises questions about itself because humans do not have full understanding on how it happens.

In the case of Volkswagen, it is an interesting phenomenon because it raises many questions. Why did this happen? How come they could deceive their own country? How long has this been going on?

Can we blame the company for all this?

If we look at the definition of a phenomenon, it is an event that is observed and reported, but humans do not have full understanding on how it happens. In this case, as observers we can see what Volkswagen did to make their cars pollute less.

But we can't really understand why they did it, or how they made the cars pollute less. There are many possibilities for this: Volkswagen was trying to save money and bypassed the regulations; Volkswagen had too much work on and couldn't finish their jobs before deadline; maybe some people in management thought that using illegal software would prevent VW from getting caught.

We do not have enough information to be certain of what exactly happened. We can only have our own opinions.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Sayings and Phrases About Grain

"Take it with a grain of salt." Meaning: To be skeptical or cautious about something, as it may not be entirely true or accurate. ...