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317 comments on “OPEN DISCUSSION JULY 2022”
Welcome to the July 2022 Open Discussion thread.
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Last few comments from the June 2022 Open Discussion thread copied across to assist with the flow.
Two ruling from the Supreme Court this morning. In one opinion the Court sharply cut back the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to reduce the carbon output of existing power plants, a blow to the nation’s chances of averting catastrophic climate change. The vote was 6 to 3, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. writing for the court’s conservatives. “Capping carbon dioxide emissions at a level that will force a nationwide transition away from the use of coal to generate electricity may be a sensible ‘solution to the crisis of the day,’ ” Roberts wrote, referring to a court precedent. “But it is not plausible that Congress gave EPA the authority to adopt on its own such a regulatory scheme.”
Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the dissenters, countered: “Today, the Court strips the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of the power Congress gave it to respond to ‘the most pressing environmental challenge of our time,’ ” referring to another precedent.
Amazing, that Roberts wrote that limiting carbon emissions “may be a sensible solution…” You think? But we can’t be having sensible solutions.
In the other opinion the Court ruled the Biden administration could cancel the Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” program, which required authorities either to jail asylum applicants from Central America or deny them U.S. entry until their cases are resolved.
phil rimmer says: June #155
Michael, #154
Non-experts (in every sense) with the outrageous power to disable the empowerment of expertise.
Young people, this is your world.
Take hold of it for pities sake.
Michael 100 says: June #156
Phil # 155. You hit the nail on the head with every word in this post.
On another note: I know #152 was not addressed to me, but I hope you won’t mind if I offer a response. I’m hoping the Republicans experience the same fate as the Democrats did after Jimmy Carter’s presidency. Carter, if you remember disappointed many of his initial supporters, not the least of which was the United Auto Workers union, without whose support Carter would not have won the nomination. Carter was challenged by Ted Kennedy for the 1980 nomination. Kennedy lost, and Carter went on to lose the election to Ronald Reagan.
The bigger picture though was that the Democrats formed a circular firing squad from which I’m not sure they have fully recovered to this day. The Carter and Kennedy factions, at all levels of the party, found it very difficult to work with each other. In my state, for example, we had two of the best U.S. Senators in the history of the state. In 1980, we lost one and in the next election cycle we lost the other one. The Senator who was elected in 1980 is still in the Senate and seeking another term in November. At the next election another really great senator was defeated by a Mike Pense lookalike. The only reason he was defeated by a Democrat — and a very good Democrat at that— was that he got caught visiting a massage parlor that he claimed was a health club — you can still hear echos of laughter to this day.
So I’m hoping that the same thing will happen now to the Republicans who, on one hand know they must renounce Trump and everything he stands for, and, on the other hand, the die hard lunatics. The chaos the Dobbs decision is going to cause is so catastrophic that I think in a short period of time, the hard-core pro-lifers are going to be a minority in the Party. Likewise, at some point they must recognize that we can’t live in a country where every Tom, Dick, and Harry can be armed for urban warfare. Once that split takes place in the Party, it won’t easily be repaired.
I would be willing to bet there are Republican leaders who are debating whether or not they can continue to claim support for Donald Trump. If they repudiate Trump, will their rank-and-file continue to support them. I don’t think the traditional Republicans can win elections without the crazies.
Unfortunately Has-a-mass got it right when he pointed out that the Supreme Court is going to be doing damage for a long time to come.
phil rimmer says: June #157
Michael, #156
I was certainly hoping for a split between GOP money and the crazies. After all it was Pence that got the money men on-side with left-field Trump. My dream scenario was Trump passed over and in a huff standing as an independent…
Elsewhere, I predicted SCOTUS damaged for at least a decade, maybe two. It will undoubtedly see the states diverge in their legal provisions and further drive a DisUnited States of America, with interstate migrations.
Aroundtown says: June #158
Personally, the word of the day as concerns our ever present trajectory here in the United States is…Woe!
Succinctly describes our condition.
woe
interjection
\ ˈwō \
Definition of woe
(Entry 1 of 2)
—used to express grief, regret, or distress
woe
noun
plural woes
Definition of woe (Entry 2 of 2)
1: a condition of deep suffering from misfortune, affliction, or grief
2: ruinous trouble : CALAMITY, AFFLICTION economic woes
Mods: Not sure if in the past you carried over a few posts from the previous month, but its a very good idea. Thanks.
Thanks for that, Michael. We did it once before, when the month-end interrupted a discussion in full flow. It’s easy enough to do. Glad you like it.
The mods
Seems what we are dealing with presently is a lack of discernment, a failure along the lines of a “can’t see the forest for the trees” scenario. The condition has been with humanity from the start but the level of deceit and deception has been amplified to levels of overflowing we haven’t seen since the dark ages.
The true intentions of the Republican cadre and their leadership has nothing to do with an often repeated call for freedom, quite to the contrary, the actual goal has always been a campaign of suppression to force their radical views on the rank and file citizen so they might create this utopia of belief that they’ve been indoctrinated with. That is what the conservative Supreme Court justices are truly trying to accomplish, they would gladly welcome a theocratic system of governance wrapped in a pretty package of convoluted opinions to see that end come about. It has never been about following our dusty Constitution, conceived by men in an age of non-enlightenment and ignorance. The conservative Supreme Court justices are trying to deliver bait and switch decisions to bring about the religious mysteries that float about in their gray matter with a conviction that their actions are appropriate for all men and women as ordained in religious doctrine and dogma.
The remedy to fight this long running infection of superstitious adherence is the same as it’s always been, inspection of any and all propositions with and open mind to seek the most plausible truth. The problem with bringing about that free thinking arena of evaluation is the battle, religious purveyor’s fight tooth and nail to avoid being dragged into the light of reason and they will do most anything to protect their delusions.
This constant tidal fight of enlightenment and regression is the battle humanity faces, unfortunately the clock is ticking and the belief that we have time to sort it out is closing. Regardless of the significant challenges and setbacks we are presently suffering, those of sound mind have to fight the ill winds of change once again to see an Age of Enlightenment come about that serves everyone, without favor.
I will add my opinion on the struggle women are presently facing once again. It is high time that women’s issues regarding their bodies and health are decided by WOMEN! It is disgusting that men have a say in this regard. It is time that women solely address their needs. No man should try to dominate a woman’s health issue, for any reason.
I think when I finish reading my current book I’m going to get Jason Stanley’s book out and reread it. On the one hand I hate to think the sky is falling, but it seems to me that we are seeing the beginning of minority rule. As was pointed out here recently, Donald Trump and his minions have already won as evidenced by the string of rulings by the Supreme Court of the United States this week. Who knows what they’ll do next term. As Stanley points out, in the video clip https://youtu.be/7Nc1d0WPmZU democracies are very rare in human history. The right wing has been organizing for a long time, and it’s going to be hard to counter them, but we had better begin.
See also https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/23/opinion/uvalde-evangelicals-guns.html
Let’s get our political labels right. The latest atrocities put forth from SCOTUS are perpetrated by Reactionaries, not by Conservatives. If the shoe fits- they need to wear it!
From Wiki:
In political science, a reactionary or a reactionist is a person who holds political views that favour a return to the status quo ante, the previous political state of society, which that person believes possessed positive characteristics absent from contemporary society. As a descriptor term, reactionary derives from the ideological context of the left–right political spectrum. As an adjective, the word reactionary describes points of view and policies meant to restore a past status quo ante.[1]
In ideology, reactionism is a tradition in right-wing politics;[2] the reactionary stance opposes policies for the social transformation of society, whereas conservatives seek to preserve the socio-economic structure and order that exists in the present.[3] In popular usage, reactionary refers to a strong traditionalist conservative political perspective of the person who is opposed to social, political, and economic change.[4][5]
Reactionary ideologies can be radical in the sense of political extremism in service to re-establishing past conditions. In political discourse, being a reactionary is generally regarded as negative; Peter King observed that it is “an unsought-for label, used as a torment rather than a badge of honor.”[6]
aroundtown #6
Thank you for that. In our downcast state I know women appreciate statements of support like yours.
A few years ago I met Katha Pollitt, author of the book Pro: Reclaiming Women’s Rights.
The book is important but what I really wanted to know from her is whether or not she thought that young women in their twenties and thirties would rally to our cause in the event that abortion rights were challenged. I wondered if all the progress that we second wave feminists made would be taken for granted and lost in a battle with well organized reactionary forces here in US.
I asked her this because I felt like she had a better view of our young women at that time. She assured me that young American women were aware of the situation and could be counted on to counter attack when needed. I left feeling a little better for that assurance.
Now I remember this conversation with some trepidation. I really hope she was right. I am trying not be overwhelmed with bitter resentment right now, not just over the abortion rights fiasco but over the other SCOTUS decisions from this session.
What consequences will follow from severe restriction of access to abortion? It ain’t rocket science. The consequences are cruel and mean. We don’t need to look very far in the past to create the list of disasters heading our way. I pity poor desperate women and the children who will be born to mothers and fathers who have no way to raise them with even the minimum of standards.
If there is one group of people on earth who pose the greatest risk to the well being of women and children and yes, to their fellow men as well – it’s the religiously deluded zero empathy reactionaries.
I certainly subscribe to you input and observations, LaurieB. The short answer for me as to what women will experience post roe v wade is women will suffer and literally die. I come from that second wave time frame and remember the very vocal contribution of the National Organization of Women (NOW) against the oppressive state of that era. It has been disconcerting that I’ve heard little from them since the Supreme Court decimated those hard fought for rights. They certainly need to find their voice again. I also observed Megan Rapinoe chastising men for their inaction on the abortion issue but she should be aware that there are men who lament women’s plight in the here and now, and the past as well.
I also fear a complacency from the young women of this age, they are going to need to fight the good fight once again and I certainly hope they are up to the challenge.
Michael 100 @ post number 7
I appreciated the link you provided. For me what jumped out was Jason Stanley’s opinion on non-punishment of those responsible for the coup attempt. That has frustrated me massively. Literally, Donald Trump has been accused of rape and do you see any action taken to hold him accountable along with his other myriad crimes. The answer is no! In actual fact the Department of Justice is protecting him. Ghislaine Maxwell is off to prison but Trump and Matt Gaetz are free as birds for similar crimes.
The lopsided prosecutions are hard to take. The individual who inadvertently takes so much as a pack of gum from a store without paying faces the “Laws of the land” while in direct opposition lawbreakers like Trump and countless others are given a free pass and no punishment. Doesn’t seem fair now does it. To answer my own question, no, it isn’t fair, it’s a travesty of our unequally applied justice.
This contemporary resurgence of rightwing conservatism is appealed to as a righteous cause, driven by traditional christianity, the state religion.
‘In God We Trust’ was the national motto. It seems it still is, by default.
A Democrat government is deemed fundamentally illegitimate, because it is not implicitly faith-confessing.
Also it inclines to the left, to economic, racial, environmental justice, to equality – to humanism, science, reason.
Christianity impugns the same as, “Of man.”
Christians have been allowed to get away with asserting a patent on morality. Now they are claiming the mandate to take government, the ‘Government of God.’
Implicit in this schema is the notion that atheists are inherently amoral and dangerous, degenerate, since to be godless is to be necessarily ‘ungodly’. Atheism is socially corrupting, decadent, libertine.
RD noted the word, ‘atheist’ sounds vicious, in its very ononmatopoeia.
Certainly declaring oneself atheist isn’t of no consequence. But to do so is seen as being contentious, confrontational. It can cost.
Conversely, evangelical christians assume the right and indeed the duty to advertise and confess their faith, with the given that everyone else should be christian; they must ‘get right with god’, this being the individual’s chief business.
“God bless you” is to be taken as a token of appreciation, of empathy, of well-wishing, as nothing but well-intended. It is also witnessing, foisting religion upon the blessee, affirming its primacy.
The same goes for, “I’ll pray for you.” And certainly one doesn’t want to be this rude curmudgeon.
It is taken as impertinent to declare in reply that one is actually an atheist, but thanks. The reaction to invoking atheism is often, “So what? It’s not relevant. Cool it.”
Oh, but it is. It takes a bit of pluck. It is to say, “There is an intellectual life.” It is challenging, and mindsets do need to be challenged.
Christian gets to be capitalised. Atheist doesn’t, although they are both identifiers regarding the same subject.
During the days of The Four Horsemen/Horsepersons, the atheist discourse was pretty lively, was gaining attention, was indeed challenging.
I think affirming one’s atheism is very relevant to countering America’s descent into authoritarianism, indeed into a theocracy as many would have it.
They are an organised and energised minority, misappropriating power.
America is becoming more polarised as the consequence. Dangerously so.
The converse to theism obviously isn’t nihilism. We make our own meaning and purpose, and can engage in free, democratic inquiry.
Russia seems to be the cult of joylessness. Certainly the Kremlin, the FSB and the military leaders, perpetuate the cult of joylessness.
Russian black humour, levity:
“We thought we’d hit rock bottom. Then we heard somebody knocking from below.”
“The Chairman of the Election Commission comes to Putin after the election: I have good news and bad news. Which do you want to hear first?
The bad news.
Zyuganov, the Communist Party candidate, got 75% of the votes.
Holy crap! – cried Putin. What’s the good news?
You got 76%.”
Actual democracy could help lighten the general malaise.
The message they get from the Kremlin and its state media is that Russians can’t do democracy, that it would imperil them to disintegration, and worse.
The same with China, from the CCP.
The rationale goes, “Just look at America.”
https://youtu.be/ZKefDGEe9qQ
12 very important minutes!! I confess that initially, his thick Texas accident was a turn-off for me, but his message is right on — Now is the time to organize, tomorrow it will be too late. After listening for a while, I remembered that he is not the only progressive Texan. I remembered Molly Ivans
Beautiful.
And of course all is not resignation and fatalism in Russia, either, but the Resistance is inspirited, uses ingenuity to defeat Putin’s false narrative, suppression of real information.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/02/putin-porn-russians-truth-ukraine-gambling-sites
I’m going to offer my opinion which affirms those already circulating out there after the roe v wade debacle. It’s pretty clear to most people that the United States Supreme Court has lost whatever credibility they had left, they have become, to my sensibilities anyway, nothing more than a rogue partisan activist body which no longer applies restraint to their worst inclinations. They have no respect for the majority of Americans opinion as concerns abortion rights and the American people are certainly not ill informed on the matter. The majority medical community has long held the validity of the procedure irrespective of the intricacies of the matter as a whole as well.
It should not be glossed over that a few of these selfsame Supreme Court appointee’s, recently installed on the court, have had no problem with their perjurious testimony as regards past precedent in their confirmation hearings. Mr. (I like beer) Brett Kavanaugh assured those asking for his views on the validity on the roe v wade opinion asserted his view that roe v wade should be considered settled law so it’s pretty obvious he was lying through his teeth and that is only the tip of the iceberg as concerns him generally. Let’s also not forget that he is an accused rapist and that condition was sidestepped by a sloppy lackadaisical effort by the FBI and law enforcement generally in seeking the truth on those assertions. He should be viewed as tainted for these situations alone.
It goes further to consider the condition of Amy Coney Barrett as well, the disclosure of her extreme religious affiliation in her confirmation hearing was given a free pass and it should come as no surprise that she applied her religious sensibilities in her judgement on issues before the court that should have been devoid of religious interpretation. Her judgement and opinion in the decimation of roe v wade and other recent capitulation to religious questions before the court shows that she is predictable in supporting the religious equation at every opportunity. This religious condition can be applied to all of the courts members in actual fact and the level of religious infection in deliberations, albeit personally hidden from view, can be assured in varying degree by all of them.
To sum up, it is going to take a long time for the country to become unshackled from this rogue body and little can be done about it. It is pretty clear at this juncture that President Joe Biden is never going to consider expanding the court, due to his affection for Republicans in the main, so there is not much of an option left to redirect the courts imbalance. It is also becoming somewhat obvious that Attorney General Merrick Garland is missing in action as concerns the bigger issues that many hoped he would pursue, the low hanging fruit prosecutions are offered up as distraction, but the idea that he will become animated and compelled to act is quickly slipping away. Time will tell overall but in the interim we can expect many more outlandish opinions from this present Supreme Court and that is a condition you can pretty much rely on.
Laurie #8
It appears at least one NYT columnist agrees. Opinion | The National Ambitions of States’ Rights Reactionaries – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
I just tried to post a comment, and I was rebuffed by the message that it was too long. It was nowhere near as long as some of the comments I have been reading. then it disappeared so I can’t find it and edit it to be shorter. I give up.
Joe M @ post #19
Moderators would be better at assisting you but I will pass on my method generally. I’ve been copying every message I create, at the last sentence I tap the cursor and select all and then copy the message. I’ve seen messages evaporate too so I know the feeling. When you hit post comment wait until your sure the message didn’t post and then you can paste your saved message and try again. Hope that helps.
I see in the news that every day the January 6 insurrection investigation committee implicates Donald Trump ever more deeply. Any observant and informed person would already have known that Donald Trump was the instigator of that attack, triggered the attack, and failed (as President and in charge) to do anything to stop it. He is certainly and unarguably guilty of sedition, and arguably of treason as defined in the Constitution. He has certainly violated his “sacred” oath to uphold, protect and defend the Constitution. In accordance with Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, he has rendered himself ineligible for any elected office, including and especially that of President. His nomination as a presidential candidate would be unconstitutional, and his election would not be valid. Challenges in Federal court to any such outcomes will be inevitable, I hope. Our nation now faces numerous critical problems, and Trump is not the answer to any of them, being a wicked, despicable, incompetent, sociopathic man. I have sent similar messages to my three congressmen (Kentucky Republicans), some news media (NBC and NPR), and the U.S. Attorney General, with no significant responses. I fear that the news media and the Democratic party are somehow under the influence of Trump and his aptly named “base” along with the Republicans, and that we are headed for a civil war and the failure of our constitutional republic, which I served for many years. I grieve for America.
I sent the following message to the U.S Attorney General (with no response yet):
“A federal judge has stated that there is sufficient evidence that Donald Trump could be culpable and can be held liable for the January 6 armed insurrection, and that lawsuits against him can proceed. This can obviously be interpreted to mean that Trump, having instigated and triggered the attack, and having done nothing to stop it, has “engaged” (to use the term expressed in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution) in insurrection or rebellion. In accordance with Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, Trump is no longer eligible to hold any office. His nomination would be unconstitutional, and his election would not be valid. Trump’s ongoing re-election campaign must be stopped, and he should be prosecuted for the crimes of sedition and treason.” In my opinion, it would not require an act of Congress, or a conviction in criminal court, but just a ruling by a federal judge, to establish that Trump cannot be nominated as a Presidential candidate. Nobody seems to be reading the Constitution or listening to my exhortations. What can we do to stop this outrage?
Joe M #19
Sorry you’ve had problems posting, Joe. We are aware of an ongoing issue with some comments going missing, but there isn’t currently much we can add to Aroundtown’s advice in #20, other than to say that, after hitting “Post comment”, it’s important to wait until the page has completely finished reloading before doing anything else at all (e.g. navigating away from the screen, refreshing the page, closing the page, trying to post another comment etc.). It’s also important to be aware that that can sometimes take a considerable length of time. If your comment doesn’t appear fairly quickly, we’d advise waiting at least 1 minute, preferably even 2, before doing anything else at all. But yes, if things do go wrong, it’s obviously less annoying for you if you’ve taken a copy of your comment before posting it (or have composed it elsewhere and copied it in), so we definitely advise that too.
We’re not aware of any limit on comment length, so that’s a bit of a puzzle. If you or anyone else gets that message again, please let us know.
We see you now have 2 comments, at #21 and #22 – hopefully this means you were able to get there in the end, but please feel free to get in touch with us via the moderator@ email address if you’re still having issues and we’ll try to help.
The mods
It should be unsurprising when Trump and Pence sought out delusional faith-thinkers for nomination, that there will be “circular ink-blot interpretations of legal texts”, to be made supernatural doctrine compatible!
After all, courts in Saudi Arabia still execute people for sorcery!
. . . .
Those who choose anti-science, anti-intellectual supernaturalist theocracy, inflict it on themselves and everyone else!
Moderator says:
We are aware of an ongoing issue with some comments going missing,
I have just successfully posted the above comment on the third attempt!
Alan #24
I don’t think Pence had any say in the nominations, although I’m sure he was happy with the choices. And Trump doesn’t really have the mental acuity to even fashion a list, let alone pick the nominees. No, what we have is the result of a deep collaboration between Mitch McConnell and the Federalist Society.
Federalist Society – Wikipedia
Yes, Joe M, #21 and #22, I empathise with your distress, and frustration, indeed, despair.
I’m Australian, but I have been following developments in America intently since Trump began to seek the Republican party nomination.
Often I have found myself in a state of melancholia.
If the polarisation and Republican madness actually eventuated in civil war, it wouldn’t be standing armies this time, but ‘all against all.’ Well, those with their arsenal, stored against this very scenario. They’ve long fantasised about it. Supply of ammunition can’t meet demand.
When the water stopped coming out of the tap, things would go quiet in a couple of weeks.
I subscribe to the Guardian online. Regrettably I couldn’t read Vicki’s link to the NYT article as there was a paywall.
Perhaps the Guardian will be a little more magnanimous and let non-subscribers read this piece by David Smith, if they wish. He’s a Guardian political commentator resident in America, and who is British.
It looks like Ron DeSantis will likely become the new Republican despot, supplanting Trump, whose brand is growing rather toxic.
Where conciliatory president Joe Biden will hardly use his executive power at all, DeSantis would wield it like a king, far and wide, and far more capably than the inept Trump could ever do. That couldn’t end well.
All I can do is watch, and I’m also engaging here now. I have to step up like an adult.
We in Oz think about China. Our Penny Wong is a champion.
I also follow Russia’s invasion and the state of Russia.
Indeed, there is much that is disquieting.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/03/donald-trump-ron-desantis-republicans-maga-presidential-candidate
Meanwhile I see there are problems with the infestation of parts of Africa by delusional missionaries!
. . . . .
There seems to be no limit to the lengths fundamentalists will go, to inflict their delusions on vulnerable or gullible people!
I’m providing a link to a commentary from Mehdi Hasan of MSNBC where he argues for expanding the United States Supreme Court. The embedded video is worth a look as he elaborates on the subject. An expansion of the court would certainly turn the tide but I’ve already provided my opinion on how unlikely the proposition would be with President Joe Biden in stiff opposition to the concept.
In my estimation Joe Biden has a great deal in common with Senator’s Sinema and Manchin in that he can thwart progress with staunch opposition to measures that could serve the American people at large, their intransigence to measures that could help means we all end up suffering as they prevent that needed change.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mehdi-hasan-supreme-court_n_62c285d6e4b0f6125728f31d
Ugh!!! Why didn’t I copy first?!!
Aroundtown #29
I am not in favor of expanding the SCOTUS. I’m no deep thinker, but a glaring flaw to that idea is that we would also be expanding the number of potential problems. Particularly if we have an ultra-conservative (ie, reactionary) Congress and/or administration. It may solve our current issues, but it might also be opening a whole new can of worms in the future (think Harry Reid’s nuclear option–it seemed like such a good idea at time).
SCOTUS justices can be impeached. And I’d say we have a couple of current good examples who warrant opening impeachment investigations. Thomas’s publicly declared agenda (as well as his wife’s political maneuverings), and Kavanaugh’s emotional melt down during his confirmation hearing when he lashed out at his Democrat “enemies.”
There is also the option of legislating term limits for justices.
Both are, admittedly, a slower and harder process, and would require getting representatives into Congress who genuinely have the welfare of Americans as their priority. But I strongly believe those routes are better for the nation in the long run; expanding the court just strikes me as a lazy fix.
Vickie #31. : I agree that it’s probably a bad idea to expand the Supreme Court. Although there is nothing magical about the number nine, an expanded Court might favor the party in power, but if our democratic republic is to survive with peaceful transfer of power, there will come a time when the other side will be appointing justices. Nine is enough.
I don’t think term limits for Federal Judges, or any Judges, for that matter, is a good idea. I think life time appointments are necessary for an independent judiciary. I think the answer is to vote for the party which most represents your values. I have never understood why any woman, LGBTQ, racial minorities &c, would either not vote or vote for a party who’s platform states your rights should be denied or repealed. Likewise, rights granted by the judiciary should be codified by the legislature.
In other words, what we learned in 8th grade civics class should be practiced every day.
Continuing my#32, term limits for federal judges would require an amendment to the Constitution. As far as impeachment goes, while it’s possible, for all practical purposes, it’s probably not going to happen unless a judge or justice is serving prison time.
The 4th of July is a good day to be talking and thinking of our civic responsibilities.
Here are some high-calibre pieces in the Guardian, as expected,
David Sirota,
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/04/democrats-fear-own-voters
Robert Reich
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/04/us-patriotism-true-meaning
Vicki: I just realized I added an “e” to your name in #32. Apologies! It’s that rabbit again, see #210 in the 2022 Book Club.
Michael #34
I wonder if lifetime tenure is as written in stone as I used to think:
Supreme Court Justices: Give them term limits instead of life tenure (usatoday.com)
As to impeachment, I’d like to see Congress entertain the possibility. Right now, Thomas is like a runaway horse; maybe just the threat would rein him in some.
I completely agree in the importance of voting one’s values. I don’t think voters pay enough attention to the party platforms that are put out during their conventions. Those platforms are a wealth of information on the candidate, and so far, Biden is staying fairly well focused on the DNC’s. I like that–a lot. Sadly (or maybe typically), the RNC didn’t even bother to put one out last cycle. They just dusted off the 2016 platform, complete with the ‘clean coal.’
Vicki, although most federal judges take senior status when eligible, they can’t be forced to do so. If they want to, a judge can die with his/her boots on. I know too that retired Justices frequently sit on Courts of Appeal. Also some younger judges (e.g. 65 years old with 15 years of service) who are eligible to retire, quit altogether and either practice law or go fishing.
Strato, #34
Reich is always good, but Sirota is essential! Good stuff and thanks.
The problem is, too many Democrat politicians have still bought the stupid story about how the (American) economy is supposed to work and think too little of a politics out to the highest bidder. Yet a poor vote counts quite as much as a billionaire’s.
Memories are so short. The thriving 1950’s turnaround in the US standard of living when fairness engineered-in, in the decades before, seeded a citizenry both more capable and more rewarded, because they themselves had been invested in.
Investing in people, their sustainable happiness, pays the biggest rewards, not trusting to crumbs off a burgeoning high-table. This, amongst other boons, is the way the looney right will be quieted, because they will be invested in, in a way that a Bezos never could and never will manage.
Bernie Sanders must be cloned and the young must wake up to their impending future, else the world will have to judge them polluting pariahs, culturally and climatically. In the past I have proposed a tourist boycott of key states, but this might have to expand into other areas, geographically and commercially.
Vicki, SCOTUS.
Yes . The problem is not fixed by opening the Pandora’s box of multiplying up judges. Even testing impeachment may be a worthwhile task to bring some idea that judges may, too, be judged.
Fixed terms? Maybe. And or full medical and neural testing above a certain age might be an idea…
I think a tally of the body count due to Roe overturned, alongside a name call out for the criminal six judges, is worth doing also.
In my long life I have hitched my wagon to the Democratic party with the expectation that their promises of change would materialize and the world would be a better more inclusive place for everyone. Well, the reality is I’ve been thwarted and disappointed more times than I can count and that pattern continues.
Our government is supposedly predicated on the notion that we are “one people” who have checks and balances installed to serve the collective wants and needs of that populace, but from where I’m standing, and from what I’ve experienced, that grand notion is only a pipe dream. The endless volumes of rhetoric from our politicians who offer up platitudes and promises on the campaign trail eventually succumb to the realities of our bought and paid for government. Lobbyist with deep pockets have always steered the ship on a course they desire and those objectives are generally adopted. They may miss the occasional principled political servant but that is of no consequence at large, the majority of bought off politicians end up winning the day for them.
I will use an analogy my European readers will appreciate in describing my opinion above. Many of our politicians promise to get something done for their constituents but they end up being the footballer who showed great promise to deliver a winning team but on the pitch they simply fail repeatedly to get the ball past the goalie and into the net. They want to win and they have skill but the opposing team thwarts their desires over and over again. I have written many letters to Democrat politicians lamenting this condition and I’ve stated in crude terms my opinion that the Democrats always end up being the one legged man in an ass kicking contest, they very rarely win.
Bernie Sanders and, in a new vein, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are quite vocal in stating their opposition to the lopsided power of the wealthy but their resultant capitulation, like other politicians of their fabric, end up losing the battle time and time again. We are always told that if we just elect more democratic politicians the next time they will get the job done for the American people but that promised day never comes.
There may have been a day when we were largely one people who could call each other “our fellow Americans” but that is no longer the case. I lay the blame for this collapse directly at the feet of the Republican Party who vilified Democrats at every turn with endless vitriol that Democrats are the loony fascist left who hate America and the outcome of beating that drum of division finally paid off with the dividend they desired. How ironic that it is the Republican Party that ended up tearing down the Republic. I would say the biggest con in recent history has been their ability to steer millions of Americans into buying their lies that they care for them, nothing could be farther from the truth, Republican politicians simply want a populace that will stand by with complacency and inaction while they secure more profit. They don’t give a rats behind that their actions are caustic and destructive, they are simply controlled/addicted to the principle of gain, largely known to many as GREED.
A day will come when these people who supported the Republicans and Trump will look to the Democrats to save them from themselves but that will end in vain. The Democrats have lost so much ground on every field that their ability to redirect the imbalances are slipping away. The efforts of Mitch McConnell to pack the Supreme Court has paid off and secured the lopsided government he craved and you can bet the newly installed justices are doing exactly what they were chosen to do, serve the few at the expense of the many, all while waving a flag of their religious bona fides to boot. In my estimation there are countless Republicans that personally don’t give a damn about religion and they are only to happy to use it as a tool to push themselves forward.
The Republicans wanted us divided and they succeeded but rest assured we will eventually be united again, we will all be united as we go down in the same ship to Davy Jones locker, that is the most likely outcome from this self-imposed insanity.
Just wondering if anyone else has noticed the emboldened commentary from the Pope as of late, seems the demise of roe v wade has afforded him an opportunity to condemn abortion more vociferously than usual. Makes me wonder if LGBTQ rights might be on the chopping block next so he can show his true colors on that front if they are stripped of their hard earned rights.
George Carlin had it pegged pretty accurately when it comes to perceived rights, he stated the alternative view that they were temporary privileges with the Japanese internment being a classic example, looks as though that will be the case in the immediate as we see new edicts dropping from the U.S. Supreme Court.
Don’t expect to hear much from the Pope on pedophilia though, I think we all know the reason for him being tight lipped on that front. It seems that selective rage is the order of the day from the pontiff.
Indeed, Vicki #26 and Aroundtown #39, Mitch McConnell bears a heavy onus. Grasping is always shabby.
One could generously opine that he had a principled bone in his body, once. He was characterised a ‘moderate’, for a Republican, in the beginning.
Wiki:
‘McConnell attended the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where Martin Luther King Jr. gave the “I Have a Dream” speech.[17] In 1964, at the age of 22, he attended civil rights rallies,[18] and interned with Senator John Sherman Cooper. He has said his time with Cooper inspired him to run for the Senate later in life.’
I’m skeptical of this ostensible solidarity. Perhaps, the calculating pragmatist attended the civil rights rallies as a political scientist, studying how movements gain traction.
And it seems in his service with John Sherman Cooper, the man’s integrity didn’t rub off.
Cooper is an example of what Republicans might be, back in the day. You couldn’t get away with it now.
Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger might do well to run as independents. The GOP doesn’t like their kind these days. You have to be a love-slave of Trump, although such fealty looks somewhat treacherous lately. Oh, what a tangled web we weave…
Interesting bio,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Sherman_Cooper
U.S. Senate (1985–present)
‘In his early years as a politician in Kentucky, McConnell was known as a pragmatist and a moderate Republican.
Over time he shifted to the right and became more conservative.
According to one of his biographers, McConnell transformed “from a moderate Republican who supported abortion rights and public employee unions to the embodiment of partisan.”
McConnell has widely been described as an obstructionist.’
Morally, or existentially constipated, or impotent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitch_McConnell
Aroundtown #40: How many times did Christopher Hitchens warn us that fascism is the political arm of the right wing of the Catholic Church, as though it has a left wing?
Rebecca Solnit isn’t caving to despair. She takes the contextualising perspective of history, and notes the gains, as does S Pinker. She’s a leading light.
“And the supreme court’s hideous decision confirms that there is still a lot of work to do.”
One could see it as but a reactionary swing of the pendulum in terms of Hegel’s dialectical theory of social change.
Two steps forward and one step back. That’s progress.
History is not foreordained, predestined, or teleological.
The Just-World Hypothesis is indeed a fallacy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis#:~:text=The%20just%2Dworld%20hypothesis%20or,fitting%20consequences%20for%20the%20actor.
But people do want freedom, autonomy, despite what religion and the Republican party, or Xi and the CCP, or Putin, or ‘the powers that be’ say they need and want, what they may not have, what their opinion is.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/03/abortion-roe-v-wade-womens-rights-rebecca-solnit
The libertarian credo of meanness: “Rich or poor, or indeed pregnant and poor, you deserve your status.’
Fend for yourself, if you weren’t recipient of generational wealth, and all it furnishes one with, happily, in terms of security, materially, and status. Elites live longer.
‘The meritocracy.’ It acts like a caste system.
‘Data shows that women who seek abortions tend to be the ones who could stand to benefit the most from social services. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 75 percent of American abortion patients are poor and 60 percent already have a child.
State bans already on the books could lead to an additional 75,000 birth per-year, Caitlin Knowles Myers, an economics professor at Middlebury College, predicted, and the costs of an unplanned pregnancy have been shown to be substantial.
A University of California, San Francisco study found that women who wanted an abortion but could not get one saw their household poverty rates increase for at least four years as compared to women who were able to access the procedure, and also struggled to pay for necessities like food and transportation for years after.
America is also a uniquely deadly place to give birth.
The Commonwealth Fund found that in 2018, the United States’s ratio of deaths for live birth was more than twice that of most other wealthy countries.’
After Roe, are Republicans willing to expand the social safety net?
Chris Stein,
‘The party has shown little enthusiasm to help those affected by unplanned pregnancies – is anything likely to change?
Republicans across the United States cast the supreme court’s decision last month that allowed states to ban abortion as a victory for “life”. Left unsaid was the quality of life that families and mothers set to be left dealing with unplanned pregnancies might have.
For years, the Republican party has pushed to ban a procedure that is mostly sought out by people who are poor, while showing much less enthusiasm for efforts to permanently expand the country’s social safety net.
Critics have labeled the party’s stance as caring a lot politically about unborn fetuses, but losing interest in them when they are born as American citizens.’
‘I read the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling to see what we lost. Everyone should’.
Francine Prose
https://www.guttmacher.org/article/2021/10/26-states-are-certain-or-likely-ban-abortion-without-roe-heres-which-ones-and-why”
Twenty-six states are now expected to ban abortion entirely following the supreme court’s ruling in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, and following November’s midterm elections, Republicans could gain control of one or both houses of Congress, and make gains in state legislatures.
That dynamic could now give many more Americans a close-up look at what the party’s policies mean for women and families dealing with any wave of unplanned pregnancies, and there are signs Republicans are worried about what they will see.’
………
‘“Republicans claim to be for small government – but where it comes to abortion they are for big government. Traditional views about women – and disrespect for poor women – may blind Republicans to these contradictions,” said Reva Siegel, a Yale Law School professor who wrote a brief unsuccessfully urging the supreme court to overturn the Mississippi law at issue in the Dobbs case.’
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/05/roe-v-wade-abortion-republicans-social-safety-net
“The libertarian credo of meanness…”
Strato #44: Anyone who has the slightest doubt about the veracity of that statement should read Democracy in Chains, The Deep History of the Radical Right’s stealth Plan for America by Nancy MacLean.
Michael 100 @ #42
I miss the intellect and forcefulness of our dear departed friend Christopher Hitchins. I forget his voice of reason sometimes and that’s unfortunate. Your post jogs my memory and allows me a trip down memory lane and I appreciate that nudge.
I do wish Hitch could have patched things up with Gore Vidal, Mr. Vidal had a disposition that didn’t afford him the luxury of recognizing our human condition sometimes and that was a foible on his part, I believe. He could be quite stubborn and unfortunately he didn’t seem to recognize it. I’ve always allowed him wide acceptance though as I gained so much from his brutally honest candor, that is something we don’t see a lot of today. I dearly appreciated both men and took their dedication to heart, we gained a great deal from both. I miss them! No rose colored glasses were possessed by either of them.
We urgently have to get money out of politics.
America and the UK are becoming, or have become plutocracies. The endgame is to go like Russia, a kleptocracy, a full-blown despotism.
Democracy in crisis. Everything is facing crisis, as the consequence. Like rights. Wealth disparity.
The biome.
All I can do is be informed myself. One gets kind of habituated, but not inured to it. It’s like ‘read it and weep.’
But George Monbiot has authenticity, and authority.
He became vegan some years ago. Burdened and disturbed but never despairing. A leader, and, I think, an exemplar.
George’s latest statement,
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/06/power-wealthy-earth-politics-democracy-plutocracy
“Home of the brave,
Land of the free,
I don’t want to be mistreated by no bourgeoisie.
Cos it’s a bourgeois town,
Ooh, Lordy! it’s a boorshwah town!
I got the bourgeois blues
I’m gonna spread the news all around.”
[Huddie Leadbetter (Leadbelly), June 1937, about he and his ‘sweet wife Marthy’s’ experience in Washington DC.]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2t-X-v7dAM
Strato # 47. Its not the money itself that is the problem, it’s the source of the money. I’m for public financing of political campaigns but that is now nearly impossible here in the US. It takes incredible amounts of money to run statewide or national campaigns, and the more money corporations provide, the more expensive the campaigns come. Our Supreme Court ruled that corporations have a first amendment right to contribute to campaigns. Until someone can figure out a way around that, we have to rely on people turning out to vote.
I can’t remember the exact quote but Mr. Dooley once said something to the effect of “the day may come when politicians reject the money of the rich and corrupt, but when I let Tammany Hall at 11:00 this morning, it hadn’t happened yet.” Mr. Dooley was Finley Peter Dunne’s alter ego.
The quote was actually from George Washington Plunkitt
Of course, the day may come when we’ll reject the money of the rich as tainted, but it hadn’t come when I left Tammany Hall at 11:25 A.M. today.
George Washington Plunkitt
I’m trying to think of a scenario where they’d be distinguishable, but maybe I’m too cynical. Money is power, the source of the money is the source of power, and – as far as I can tell – power corrupts, because power comes with ideology. Ideologies – frankly – have self-serving hearts. And an ideology WILL be needed for PR purposes: you don’t get into power by e.g. honestly admitting you’re no better than any other candidate.
Even when the powers-that-be are subtle enough to treat kindly anyone who doesn’t challenge whatever ideology said power happens to favour, all that proves is that the weaknesses haven’t been tested. The boat hasn’t been rocked. “Ideological commitment for the sake of preserving power while convincing everybody with self-serving PR” is what it boils down to. Talking money is just the obvious expression of that.
Topple one ideological power, another will take its place and pay for a new PR angle. You don’t like politicians and want the public to take charge? Sooner or later, they’ll go against any science that doesn’t say what they want it to say. They’ll just bring to bat another ideology. And since most ideologies sooner or later aren’t scientific or rational, they’ll inevitably become hostile to any science or investigation that threatens to expose that.
Why do you think climate change science is so radically sidelined outside of scientific circles? It’s not just politicians covering their asses: the public have their own optimistic bread and circuses. They don’t want to know either. The few that do are target practice.
Frankly, I think the only way to solve the power problem will be to just straight-up have a scientific leadership. Or at least an explicitly rationalist one. And even then, I’d watch it like a hawk. Climate change science is sometimes sidelined even within scientific circles.
Michael 100 #49 & #50 and Zeuglodon Beta #51, one vacillates between resignation and hope.
In serious journalism one reads every day in penetrating detail about the multiple predicaments we are in, and I’m not in say, northern Africa, where it’s existential, but in Australia.
Safe, for the time being.
I don’t deserve to be.
In these news and science journal articles, it is stated, or implicit that disaster can be averted if humanity but acts now, concertedly.
I guess that were our scientists and enlightened journalists simply to declared, “Nothing will change. We’re fucked!”, what would change is they would just put themselves out of a job. And they would be pariahs.
Causing despair for young people, who have to be motivated, to save the day, the planet, the future.
And our spokespeople have to eat and they want to be relevant, to be agents for the changes so urgently needed.
And who needs shunning? Even if they did candidly fear it is thus?
None of such people are rich. Altruists are rather unlikely to be right into wealth accumulation and the project of using that wealth to run politics to that same selfish end.
Yet Bill and Melinda Gates do good with their foundation.
The other billionaires are buying safe havens for when it all goes down.
All preppers are dreaming.
ZeugLondon #51: What you say about money and power is unfortunately true. However, I don’t know how to operate in the world without money. Anything having to do with a political campaign requires it, and absent public campaign funding and spending limits, the money has to be raised. Campaigns need headquarters, office supplies, communication equipment, transportation, advertising, insurance, venues for rallies, etc. etc. ad infanitum.
I think the answer is transparency and accountability. Here in the US, I hope I’m not being naive when I don’t think the politicians are on the take — even ones with whom I vigorously disagree. Unless our democracy is destroyed by another Trump victory, I don’t think outright corruption will be tolerated.
What’s bad is that the interests of corporations outweigh the interests of people, but that can be overcome by getting it through people’s heads that they have to vote and know who represents their interests. This morning on Public Radio, I heard the owner of the Jackson Women’s Health Organization in the State of Mississippi say on Public Radio that so many women who come to the clinic have no idea that the possibility of a save abortion has been eliminated. If people won’t avail themselves to information and act in their own interest, then we are in trouble.
Strato # 52: “ one vacillates between resignation and hope.”. Those words capture exactly what I was trying to say.
I didn’t mention democracy in crisis, populism, fascism and all the alternatives to democracy which Churchill noted were infantile, really, as against democracy for all its vulnerabilities and clumsiness.
But I think Vladimir Putin thinks that global heating will be a great thing for his part of the world. The monster has zero motivation to cooperate.
And we can compete or we can cooperate.
The world is also watching China, as much as watching America, Russia, and all.
Australia is. Will China grow a conscience? Embrace human rights, dare one suggest, recalibrate towards democracy?
I do listen to music, like CSNY, Stephen Stills lately, or something similarly positive and beautiful, upholding the old hippie idealism. It can’t be anachronistic.
And one has to have a diversion. I’m a guitarist.
Trees died for guitars. The strings don’t get recycled I suspect, much. I put them in the recycling bin.
I tend closer to the resignation end of the spectrum. For one thing, I use the issue of global warming and climate change as a rough gauge of how scientifically inclined a particular group – usually political – appears to be.
In practice, pretty much none of them give me grounds for high optimism. Usually, the ones who do take it seriously don’t have a lot of power. Especially since the issue has been known since at least the 1970s, and so far the only definite result I can see is not only that untenable policies have continued, but that carbon emissions have actually gotten worse while the effects (e.g. on glaciers) have grown more severe.
Honestly, I wouldn’t mind if some dramatic shift swung the pendulum the other way. I just don’t see it happening yet.
True, I can’t deny that. I suppose what I should have said was that it comes down to relative power. That includes money inequalities too.
I suppose the more accurate way to put it would be: so long as people are practically on equal terms, it’s at least pragmatic to take their concerns into account, for the simple reason if you kick them, they can kick back. But if you’ve got resources that they don’t, suddenly the relationship goes from one-on-one to superior-inferior. You have less of a pragmatic incentive to take their concerns into account, for the simple reason you can probably now kick them with impunity. All that remains between you and kicking them when it suits you is personal whim.
Confessing my ignorance here, but I’m vaguely aware the American political system is supposed to incorporate checks and balances for more or less this reason. At least, in theory. Certainly, there’s theoretical overlap between this and scientific checks and balances such as peer review, criticism, and standards of falsification.
I’m just not confident it’s working as intended.
It seems that around half of the US populace just loves a grifter.
I surmise that Roger Stone’s aptitude for it resides in being utterly amoral, having no innate deterrence module in his neural makeup, to restrain him. Just like Trump.
https://www.floridabulldog.org/2022/06/roger-stone-offers-settle-2-million-tax-case-after-judge-orders-records/
And then there’s the likes of Michael Flynn, gaming QAnon fever, and the word, ‘patriotic’ at rallies, when he’s been getting payments from Russia, allegedly.
Trump pardoned the guy as his last act.
What a hide. Goodness!
But it now looks like these guys are on the skids , and may well go Upstate for a holiday, soon enough.
So many of these Republican operators need to. Rudy Giuliani. John Eastman. Sidney Powell, a long list. Reckonings need to be done.
https://theintercept.com/2021/06/27/qanon-michael-flynn-digital-soldiers/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/08/michael-flynn-foreign-payments/
Trump’s lawyer would likely end up pleading diminished responsibility for him, on account of his IQ, his clueless mentality, textbook narcissism, or just plain insanity. I’m not into juries.
But Trump would get apoplectic, facing the cognitive dissonance for the first time, in court.
A crisis.
I think Trump believes that we can create reality by ‘naming and claiming’, and so operating a cosmic, or divine law.
And you have to believe it will actualise, which he seems able to do, mulishly. He just believes he’s entitled to it.
I’m sure he learned that technique from his family pastor and teacher, his mentor, Norman Vincent Peale, who wrote the giant bestseller, “The Power of Positive Thinking” (1952).
Pealeism perfectly resonated with his mentality, his nature.
Repentance used to be prerequisite to being a christian.
John Wesley and Francis Asbury, the old ‘holiness’ preachers, would be turning in their graves, lol.
Putin never had a sense of humanity in the first place, to abandon.
I think total sociopathy, indeed psychopathy militates against reason.
Pretty hard to read about what the Russians are now doing in Sievierodonetsk.
After 80% of the housing and all the infrastructure has been pulverised, they’re loading whatever they can score onto trucks to take to depots to be transported back home, the same as they did before. Appliances, furniture, even clothes, kids’ toys.
The ‘civilising process’ as Pinker terms it has a way to go, by the looks.
It’s thought 15,000 civilians are still in the city. One expects the ongoing accounts of rape and summary executions.
A local councillor in Moscow is getting 15 years for calling, during a closed meeting, which was videoed, for Russia to withdraw from its invasion, saying they can’t in all conscience organise a kids’ drawing and dancing festival when children are being killed and injured by Russians in Ukraine.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2022/jul/08/russia-ukraine-war-live-news-putin-dares-west-to-defeat-russia-on-battlefield-ukraine-will-not-be-broken-zelenskiy-says?filterKeyEvents=false&page=with:block-62c80f458f08599e90424355#top-of-blog
I just saw the shocking news out of Japan. I’m afraid we will have a worldwide epidemic of copycats copying copycats. It’s especially troublesome here in the US where the gun culture and Christianity go hand-in-glove.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/23/opinion/uvalde-evangelicals-guns.html
Sorry there, from me @#59, Councillor Alexei Gorinov is getting a mere seven years in the salt mines for impudence, for speaking up.
Putin’s a zealot, a true believer in Joe Stalin’s (Koba the Dread) retributive ‘justice’.
He killed millions in his pogroms and forced labour camps.
Between 15 and 20 million, Stalin had killed or died under his programmes.
There is no god to comprehend it all, or to vicariously take upon itself the evil and all the indescribable suffering.
https://news.stanford.edu/2010/09/23/naimark-stalin-genocide-092310/
But I declare this is rather inspiriting,
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/jul/09/labor-vows-to-shake-up-cosy-monopolists-with-fines-of-up-to-50m-for-anti-competitive-behaviour
Stalin didn’t do it all on his own. This is where the phrase about ‘the banality of evil’ comes in. Whole nations have to be mobilized or assent, out of fear or patriotism.
Thanks aldous.
Yes, Stalin was able to summons something, call up, to license the dark side of human nature, somewhat latent in the gene pool, which tends to express in the male, to do his bidding, to commit all that protracted programmatic brutality and sadism, on such a scale.
I find the insights of Stephen Pinker, describing the ‘civilising process’ in Better Angels in tension with Richard Wrangham’s thesis in The Goodness Paradox, concluding that humans have but half undergone the ‘self-domestication process,’ explain it for me pretty satisfactorily.
I am disturbed by what I read in the Guardian each evening concerning the behaviour of Putin’s invaders in Ukraine. The merciless, unrelenting, pointless shelling of housing, and what the troops get about when they enter towns and villages.
Strato
On the behavior of men in times of war, here are a few sections from the book a Natural History of Rape, Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion by Thornhill and Palmer.
Conclusion:
Wartime is a high risk of rape for reproductive age females.
Local men are dispersed
A state of chaos exists
Conquering army men in state of aggressive excitement
Costs are low- punishment unlikely.
Benefits are high – Multiple women available. Sexual intercourse with no investment at all and in an evolutionary view, high probability of leaving an offspring that rapist will never provision. If the child comes to term someone else will do the provisioning for him.
It seems pointless and counterproductive to try to inject morality at times of brutal war.
Olli # 66. Morality is what we agree on either formally through laws and treaties or evolving understanding of what is right and wrong. In the case of war, the nations of the world have agreed on rules. Although the rules are frequently violated, consequences will ultimately be imposed through war crimes trials etc.
Michael #67
We had a post here a while back about the real inability to judge another’s pain. An example was given about two people playfully punching each other on the arm. The first punch thrown was sort of accepted but the retaliatory punch was seen as too harsh a response with the third, and following exchange of punches, getting harder and harder with tempers flaring. Rules can never be clear enough to judge how much pain the other feels IMHO!
In Cyprus, the Turkish Cypriots were driven into cantons with intimidation, rape and murder. I guess I will never know the whole truth because my mother only spoke of strip searches by Greek soldiers. If rape did occur then it would not have been talked about for fear of been no an outcast from your own. Later, the Turkish soldiers were accused of the same which made sure that the civilian population moved away before the army got there, if you understand me? Russia is now fast tracking Russian citizenship. You nice the land split has been agreed with some sort of agreement then I did not know who will answer for what? It seems like retrospective planning permission to me!
LaurieB #65, thanks, that’s very educative.
Michael #100, I’m wondering if Russian soldiers who rape feel too deterred by the prospect of being court-martialled by their own commanders or especially of getting hauled up to face trial in the Haig, or in Ukraine.
I think they feel they can perpetrate rape, murder and plunder with impunity. But forensic investigation uncovers them.
Claimed ignorance of the law doesn’t stick. Yet I’m dubious of Russian soldiers get heavily lectured on conduct in war, jus in bello.
Ukrainians have been characterised as Nazis, vermin, and as prey, where Russians are implicitly, their predators.
There is generally an orientation in males in many taxa to spread their genes as far and wide as possible. There are also many species where there is commitment to one partner for life.
The expectation of monogamy is also expedient to constraining violence and of women and children not provided for, as LaurieB noted is beneficial in the war zone soldier-rapist’s reckoning.
Strato #69: I’m sure soldiers who rape, pillage and plunder in Ukraine and elsewhere, feel invulnerable. That, however, is not the test of morality — the fact that someone feels entitled to commit an atrocity does not make the act moral. Nor, is it the test of who should be held accountable for war crimes. Already, there have been some war crimes trial is Ukraine. I am confident that more will be forthcoming — war crimes experts are already in Ukraine gathering evidence. Those who commit war crimes need to know that the world has a long memory and justice will out in the end. Even now, Nazi criminals are being prosecuted in Germany — Even 99-year-olds can be sentenced to spend the rest of their lives in prison. Again, whether or not criminals are prosecuted, their acts of rape and murder &c are immoral and subject to the judgment of humanity.
Michael100 #70, yes, Justice wields a sword, two-edged.
How one yearns to see Putin brought to the Haig, and his henchmen.
Unforch the time zones don’t favour me for real-time engagement.
Gotta crash.
Olli #68. I agree that the trauma inflected by war crimes is devastating beyond comprehension. War criminals and human rights violators must be exposed. Whether or not we put a stop to atrocities or bring justice to victims, we must continually demand justice and we must continually expand our notions of morality. That is why your postings here are so important. The stories of atrocities must be told because we must never forget.
Michael #73
The other day, Prince Edward laid a wreath at the statue of Makarios and every year the Greek Cypriots give medals to EOKA “freedom fighters” that killed hundreds of British soldiers in the 50’s and plotted my murder in the 60’s. Forgive me if I remain cynical.
Olli,
Sorry to drop that comment #65 and then disappear for the whole day. I’ve been zooming around all day and now finally at 3 in the afternoon I’m home for a short time before continuing on a busy day.
I’m sorry if the comment upset you and dredged up bad memories from your family’s past. I never want to upset you. It seems like the academic areas that interest me are always upsetting someone somewhere. I suppose one gets used to that. Topics like infanticide/abortion and rape are some of the most difficult human behaviors that we have to acknowledge as our truth as members of Homo sapiens. As difficult as it is to face these ugly behaviors, I feel that the more we know about these things by data and by discussing the evolutionary origins of these behaviors then the better we can try to minimize their occurrence.
To emphasize – It is always my goal to gather data, analyze the data and draw conclusions that can minimize the undesirable behavior.
Infanticide/abortion and rape have mountains of data on the record and at this point we can isolate a number of variables that are often in place before these behaviors occur. Rape in wartime is quite predictable when the variables I listed above all come together at what will be a very tragic day for some women who will be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
When I presented those variables I sure hope nobody takes that as an acceptance or cold hearted observation of human behavior that we would rather sweep under the rug. The suffering caused to victims is too great for me to take in. But perhaps I should express my motivations more overtly when presenting material that causes distress. I suppose I’ve developed some stoic immunity from the horror stories because I tend to focus on the stats and evolutionary background of human behavior. If I ever had to interview the many victims of rape and other wartime atrocities I’d probably need to jump off a cliff from the direct knowledge of the victim’s trauma.
Hitchens once said (paraphrasing) that he appreciated it when women tried to understand men. I’ve thought about that and I think he was right. From a female perspective, it’s not easy to get inside of men’s heads. Males and females do have some very conflicting motivations in this life and it can be difficult to stop and take the time to run that behavior through an evolutionary lens to glean a hint of what their motivation may actually be. It’s so much easier to verbalize anger and frustration and issue a slander against the entire biological sex and it feels satisfyingly vindictive, I’m sorry to admit.
Now in moments of frustration with men, I really bring up the image of Hitch and his appeal to women to try to understand men. Since I can never get into men’s heads then I must run all around Robinhood’s barn trying to mash together what I think might be a reasonable explanation. I accept a moderately high margin of error though.
As always, the most valuable input I could ever get is from males themselves. The group of people who are most sputtering angry about that list of variables I posted above is the young feminist women who insist that rape is a power dominance display by men. They argue that to even consider variables that come together to place women in a high risk situation to be raped is outrageous blaming the victim.
I think we all know without my saying, I made damn sure that my two daughters are well aware of the variables listed above and the others that I didn’t include that increase the probability of rape in normal non-wartime life as well.
Difficult topics. Thank you for your patience as always, Olli.
” If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.”(Noam Chomsky, 1990)
The prosecution of German war criminals by the Allies was victors’ justice. The USA, Russia, the UK, France prosecuted the crimes of the enemy at Nuremberg but not their own.
A point to make is that the laws of war are meant to mitigate the horrors of war but that what armies are permitted to do within the rules is horrific enough. Individual breaches of military discipline are subject to punishment by national military authorities. This is routine. A notable case is the imprisonment of Chelsea Manning for revealing information about American atrocities.
The International Criminal Court and UN special tribunals on Rwanda and former Yugoslavia have successfully prosecuted a few cases. I don’t believe any members of the Security Council, or allies protected by them, is ever likely to face impartial, international justice.
In the case of Russia, a new government might decide to go after Putin and members of his administration for incompetent handling of the Ukraine invasion, but whether such trials might take place and whether justice would be done is very questionable.
We see extreme dimorphism between the sexes in species like sea lions, where the male can reach 11 feet long and weigh 2,500 lbs.
Females can reach 9 feet and weigh 1000 lbs.
As in many mammal species, males batter one another bloody for territory and mating rights where sea lions preside over a harem of 15 females on average.
But I watched an Attenborough documentary where a huge bull presides over a cove beach full of females. He gets cuckolded by males sneaking in on the edges when he’s busy siring or out feeding. But he will squash his own pups in his pursuit to see off such an impertinent, unrighteous interloper.
I think such established mating rights are not contested by a metric of morality, of equality, as contemporary humans can.
The defeated male accepts the authority of the dominator, the victor, or he continues to contend that status for sole rights for himself.
‘Nature red in tooth and claw.’
Helping explain male sexual and mating behaviour, RD’s ‘the gene’s-eye-view’ in The Selfish Gene has great explanatory power, impersonal as it is. What works, tends to get replicated, if it doesn’t reach an evolutionary dead end.
Males evidently have an orientation to spread their genes far and wide.
As LaurieB noted, the soldier-rapist is glad to let others, other males, look after his progeny. Does he even care or think at all about said progeny?
Polygany is still practised in Central and West Africa. It’s just understood that the arrangement is one man effectively possessing several women, and not the other way around.
Stephen Pinker says the male upper body is shaped by selection through combat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygyny#:~:text=Polygyny%20is%20most%20common%20in,%2C%20Gambia%2C%20Niger%20and%20Nigeria.
Nature isn’t sacrosanct. We study nature scientifically and manipulate its laws of operation using technology to control and change natural outcomes all the time. The Pill is an example, genetically modified food. Sustainability is the issue.
And ecological diversity, the rights of all species to habitat, if humans are to care, or indeed, survive.
The ‘civilising process’ (Pinker) could effectively, over a great many generations actually breed out, or select out, the very orientation toward polygyny within male biology, as betas get an equal chance to breed in a culture which outlaws polygyny, and those who play up will likely copulate with a woman who is using contraception.
Please don’t take what I observed as though I condone it or defend it.
But one certainly does value the civilising process, the Enlightenment, as progressive and good, indeed, vital.
Yes, aldous, if there could actually be a change in government in Russia, I am still dubious of them ever handing Putin over to the Haig.
That would be to submit, or compromise Russia’s absolute sovereignty. It’s not the Russian way, it seems, or Putin has confirmed that, were Russia heading to actual democracy and rule of enlightened law, BP (Before Putin).
Putin has an army of like minded apparatchiks.
Alexei Navalny might despatch to the Haig those summonsed to it, but how could he ever come to power now?
Putin has many political prisoners put out of sight, out of mind.
Elections in Russia are rigged.
There is now no free press at all, with new Putin’s ban on criticism, censorship over the internet, and of calling his “special military operation,” “denazification of Ukraine” an actual invasion, or a war.
The same as for Hong Kong.
A despotism, a dystopia.
Laurie 75
Dear Laurie
You didn’t upset me or remind me. That is done daily by those denying this time in history to this day. You quite righty try to understand and prevent. High empathy makes it a hard journey.
Only this weekend a friend of mine threw an impromptu barbeque where I saw some other friends I hadn’t seen for quite some time. One in particular that I call a friend but struggle with. He is very boastful about not that much and has been quite violent in the past but, seems to like me very much despite me doing all I can not to have him in my life. I believe I have had a calming effect on the larger group, although I call only two or three actual friend friends, and have kept them out of trouble whenever I could. I knew this one guy had a rough upbringing but didn’t realise how bad it was until this weekend. His drunk Irish father tormented and tortured him all his young life with horrific injuries. He told me that he went to school with wounds and bruises and even suffered a fractured skull at one point. My heart burned as he carried on describing his life of being removed from home but returned after some court decided he should. He has had lots of therapy but still gets night terrors every night. He has now married for the second time and said his wife now is his best therapy. As horrific as it all was as he told it, he seems a little removed from the story. The only time his eyes looked dead was when he asked why the teachers at school had ignored his battered body and more wasn’t done to help him. His thoughts are still with that helpless little boy that make him come awake screaming in the night. I have to add here that I have never heard of him being violent to women and can’t imagine he would be to be honest. I have decided he actually needs me in his life although it frightens me and I know I will have to tread very carefully to do no damage. I get great comfort from educating myself on human behaviour, and then putting most of it together on this site with all your help, but only one of my friends has any interest or knowledge on any of it so it is hard to explain even what I know let alone suggest reading material that might help him. Good to put that in writing. Has helped already.
That said, how can “understanding men” be the right thing to say? Surely the individual is what should be studied? It has been men that have had a gun thrust into their hands and put in situations that they have no idea how to handle no matter how intense their training.
I can’t seem to stick to one subject like you educated lot can do J. I have to compare and look at all the other cogs in this model we call life. I then can’t help but look at all the women who were left home in WW11 to “entertain” the American troops and all that went on there with countless children born without fathers or the biological father bringing up the child. This was the world the women in the UK had dropped into their lives and were equally confused as to what to do. At this point I would like to offer the link below. I don’t know if you have seen the film Fury but it did make uncomfortable watching although the author of the article in the link is getting a bit carried away with what (I think) the film was trying to say. To me it asked the right questions about the rape. Though comfort was offered in that it was between two people of similar age and the male had some sense of morality, it showed the slow corruption of the mind and asked if we were accepting of that as it was not brutal and done by an already corrupted mind. At the end of the day it was rape and I don’t think the film tried to say anything else as the older woman reminds us with her reaction to this young girl doing it “willingly”.
https://www.sbs.com.au/movies/article/2014/11/03/comment-rape-scene-brad-pitts-fury-no-one-talking-about
I don’t believe there is much difference between the sexes Laurie. Only circumstance and how people treat us makes us makes us react as we do. If a woman is treated like a woman, in a traditional sense, then what chance does she have of being anything else. I think a difficult question to ask for a woman would be, at what point as one of those soldiers and near to breaking, would I turn a blind eye while the men raped my enemy? Would that barbarity protect the lives of my comrades in arms so they kill before they are killed? What would it take to make them “a man”?
I do not condone any violence against anybody but try to understand like you Laurie.
Strato 77
“But one certainly does value the civilising process, the Enlightenment, as progressive and good, indeed, vital.”
In pure survival terms, this is just another branch/feeler that has thrown up problems like over population and the need for a one child policy for some in the face of global warming etc. “Vital” seems to say complacency and “enlightenment” seems to give credence to “god/s” working in mysterious ways. You probably didn’t mean any of what I read into it but nevertheless I just felt I had to comment!
I have to say I question the effectiveness and justice of punishing a people with bombs and sanctions for having the misfortune to live under an undemocratic system of government. Despite nearly 20 years of war and $2 trillion spent on teaching the Afghans the meaning of democracy, they have not been collectively persuaded to give up their medieval beliefs and way of life. Nor is the justification evident for following up the retreat from the country by trying to starve them.
A situation not improved by the consequences of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. On the whole, not a promising outlook for the future of homo sapiens.
olli #79,
That’s a powerful post, especially the clear account of your suffering friend whom you can find daunting.
My partner is a clinical psychologist specialising in EMDR therapy.
It is highly effective in treating a range of disorders such as dissociation, PTSD and much more.
I would strongly recommend it for your deeply suffering friend, having ongoing nightmares from childhood abuse and neglect.
I suggest your friend finds a psychologist who practises EMDR therapy.
It is amazing how it can be so effective.
There is help.
My father was a Handley-Page Halifax four-engine heavy bomber pilot during WWII, bombing Germany, night missions. They took a crew of seven and carried 13,000 lbs of bombs. He was Australian, stationed in England.
They were given methedrine for focus, motivation and wakefulness, for performance enhancement.
They took it as they were flying over Germany to bomb Hamburg, Cologne and other targets, often cities, and dropped some more as they were coming back to England, “taxiing home on the flack.”
When I was nine, dad took a shoebox down from the top shelf of the linen-press to show me the contents. It was full of reconnaissance photographs of the aftermath of the squadron’s bombing mission from the night before.
He said to me, “See if you can find a roof on any of those houses.”
The high definition black and white pictures of high density urban landscape revealing houses with no roofs reminded me of honeycomb. Profoundly awesome images. Disturbing, direful.
Bomber Harris’s program of carpet-bombing urban targets with incendiary bombs was somewhat controversial even at the time, and still is. The rationale was to demoralise the German populace so that they would turn on the Führer.
After all, the Germans were mercilessly bombing London, Coventry, Bristol and the other industrial cities. They had V1 and V2 buzz-bombs later in the war. They had gigantic guns on rails trained on England from France which didn’t get to be deployed in the end.
I read Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. I don’t know if my father took part in the bombing of Dresden. I could look it up, I’m sure. Dresden was of zero strategic importance, and so Hitler had Germany’s art treasures stored there, believing they were safe.
I can attest that the contents of that shoebox weighed much on my dad’s mind. I expect he donated the photographs to the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.
It was amazing he survived. His father was a stretcher-bearer and bugler in Gallipoli and the Western Front in WWI, out in ‘no-man’s-land’, getting blokes in. Dreadful situations.
Dad became a ‘police-rounds’ reporter after the war, night-shift. Witnessing carnage from crimes, road accidents, fires, every night and writing it up back at the office to the deadline for the morning newspaper. High arousal stuff, always.
He could have done with EMDR therapy instead of self-medicating with alcohol.
O when will we ever learn to be done with war?
I guess I’ll learn to copy my post before trying to send it. It failed last night as well.
It doesn’t matter. Maybe I just wasn’t meant to post it, lol.
Strato #82
Thanks Strato. Will learn more on it and hopefully drop it in if I think appropriate. He said he has had lots and f therapy but it don’t know which kind. He did mention he did not want to open any more doors for fear of going over the edge?
Strato #83
The reason for my many typos. I have lost two posts recently and can’t copy them on my iPhone. Can’t scroll up in the comment box when highlighting, if a long post, and panic about taking too long to edit so it goes as is.
Strato #84
We found your first attempt in the Trash folder last night and emailed you about it to see if you’d intended to delete it, since it does occasionally happen that comments land there all by themselves. The good thing when that happens is that we can at least retrieve them. After seeing your comment at #84, we found your 2nd attempt to post it in there to, so have retrieved it and you’ll find it at #83.
The mods
Is it possible to question parts of the axiomatic Darwinist theory on biologic evolution, without being labelled a religious fanatic?
The theory has persistent flaws that were hard to overlook even by the man himself. One of the most glaring ones is the fossil records, which don’t support the idea of a gradual evolution by small increments. Rather a whole range of new species seems to have evolved in a short time (geologically speaking). This problem has never been resolved as far as I’m aware.
Now new, expanding, and increasingly detailed understanding of how the cell works, and how mutations affect the genes, the cell and the organism, will provide a lot of pertinent information. Is it even mathematically possible to have random mutations gradually lead to new species within the time frames we look at? That’s a lot of random mutations, every single one of which must lead to an advantage in order to dominate and then eventually form a new species. A tall order.
What sort of random, blind process out of nowhere could possibly develop a molecule that is so singularly intent on (blindly!) producing ever more complex living creatures? THAT is a SCIENTIFIC question. Scientists should either come up with answers or admit that they simply don’t know.
These are just some of the questions that need to be addressed.
It isn’t very difficult to see the need for an update on the Darwin theory. That is basic scientific practice. Critical scrutiny of everything that we take for granted.
It is not affirmative ideas that bring science forward. It is the negative results, the unanswered questions and the things that don’t fit and therefore force true scientists to re-think. That brings science forward.
That is science.
Science and reason.
I don’t have the impression that Mr. Dawkins is very keen on this. Maybe I’m wrong. He likes to say that he represents the Truth, with a capital T.
Dawkins is always eager to attack the ignorant religious fanatics that can easily be dismissed. Shooting at sitting ducks – that’s his favorite game. That may be good for a few laughs, but it doesn’t bring science forward.
I heartily agree that religious fanaticism is an abomination, but isn’t that another matter?
Isn’t it up to the scientists to provide the evidence?
There is obviously a biologic evolution, no doubt, but what are the exact mechanisms that bring it about? That is a challenge that needs to be taken seriously.
Tomas Hultgren
Tomas # 88. You wrote:
1) Is it possible to question parts of the axiomatic Darwinist theory on biologic evolution. Of course it’s possible to question any scientific theory, but when you say,
2) The theory has persistent flaws, including the fossil records. I’ve read too many books on evolution by Prof. Dawkins, Jerry Coyne (University of Chicago), Neil Shubin (University of Chicago), The late John Maynard Smith & Professor Eors Szathmary, Ernst Mayr, Andreas Wegner to name just a few, to accept that the theory of evolution has too many flaws.
3) it’s time for an update on the Darwin theory. I think evolutionary biology is being studied in numerous universities around the world.
4) What sort of random, blind process out of nowhere could possibly develop a molecule that is so singularly intent on (blindly!) producing ever more complex living creatures? Have you read Prof. Dawkins’ The Blind Watchmaker?
Perhaps you could cite some authorities for your assertions, or in the alternative, your qualifications. I don’t mean to sound hostile. I hope you post again soon.
Moderator #87,
Why thank you.
It seemed to be in the lap of the gods but they smiled after all.
It seems more likely to go awry when I do it on my iphone.
But then I am a long way away!
Tomas #88
Hi Tomas
My first question to you is did you do any research on your question first?
https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2019/february/the-cambrian-explosion-was-far-shorter-than-thought.html
Tomas #88,
Darwinism hasn’t been falsified, but certain errors have had to be addressed.
This should demystify the possibility of such results as nature delivers.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolvability
Wow. Have you guys seen/heard this?
Article & audio via the link:
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/07/leaked-audio-steve-bannon-trump-2020-election-declare-victory/
Tomas #88, The issue you mentioned of the fossil record not supporting gradualism has been thoroughly and in my opinion satisfactorily addressed for several decades now, and the strict gradualism attributed to Darwin has been re-developed into a more descriptive and useful part of the modern synthesis. In 1972 Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge proposed their theory of Punctuated Equilibrium, in which stasis dominates genetic evolution until an event of adaptive radiation occurs, and then speciation or cladogenesis occurs relatively rapidly (geological timescale, still). This is well supported by the fossil record, especially in forms studied by Gould (molluscs).
Marco #93, Every day it becomes more apparent that Trump has engaged in rebellion and insurrection. Soon it will be obvious and undeniable. He might even be charged. In accordance with Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, Trump is not eligible for any state or federal elected office. His nomination would be unconstitutional, and his election would not be valid. But nobody seems to be paying any attention to the Constitution. His ineligibility should be formally declared by a federal judge, and I think any appeals would be sure to fail. No criminal trial or act of Congress or other vote is necessary. How can we make this happen?
Marco #93
For a person with bad intentions, that strategy isn’t difficult to create. On election nights the major news channels present the results state by state and they also break it down with easy to understand graphics of the results that come in by counties as well. We are used to watching the traditionally conservative, often rural counties, depicted in red, present their results by the map and then the blue counties, traditionally liberal and often urban present their own. Even in deeply conservative states we could have a big urban liberal vote come in that changes the total count. Now that we know blue states like their mail by vote and red states take pains to restrict it, a strategy becomes apparent.
I’m not getting my hopes up that these snakes will be punished. I’d very much like to be wrong about this.
Tomas, permit me to, as they say in Congress, revise and extend my previous remarks.
When you say: “Dawkins is always eager to attack the ignorant religious fanatics…”. I wonder if you could provide some citations for that statement. I’ve watched many of his videos, including the series “The Enemies of Reason” and I have to say that I saw very little attack there. I think all he did there was to let the religious practitioners speak for themselves. Dawkins has also had some very intelligent conversations with people like George Coyne, S.J., and some Anglican bishops and archbishops. Here are three links you might enjoy. https://youtu.be/po0ZMfkSNxc https://youtu.be/po0ZMfkSNxc https://youtu.be/2DcySbAt-l4 If you have any examples of our professor taking cheap shots at religion, please cite them.
You write: “Isn’t it up to the scientists to provide the evidence?” As Joe M states in #94, the fossil evidence is overwhelming. Likewise, DNA analysis confirms again Darwinian evolution. If there is contrary evidence, I’d like to hear about it. There are many things Darwin could not know about — and he knew that — but on the essential points, Darwin got it right and subsequent discoveries have only confirmed that.
You write: “There is obviously a biologic evolution, no doubt, but what are the exact mechanisms that bring it about? That is a challenge that needs to be taken seriously.” Of course it needs to be taken seriously and is. In my previous post, I cited Andreas Wagner. In that book he talks about the search for the answer to the question of how self replicating molecules began in the first place. That remains one the unanswered questions, but when the answer is found, I’ll bet you a dollar to a hole in a donut that its a natural solution that will fit hand-in-glove with Darwinism.
Everything has a naturalistic explanation.
Strato #98, those words should be carved in stone!
Joe M #95,
I suspect the explanation for the Department of Justice’s backwardness in confronting the task of even considering indicting Trump in the face of his high crimes and misdemeanours, is fear. Fear of Trump supporters going crazy with their weapons.
When Harry Truman declared, “There is nothing to fear but fear itself.”
They have to act. They can’t not act.
Trump and many others have to go to the same prison everybody else has to go to when convicted of felony.
Otherwise America will indeed fall apart.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/13/criminal-investigation-donald-trump
Strato #100. I suspect the Department of Justice will wait until they have a water tight case before they bring charges. The worst thing that could happen would be for Donald Trump to walk out of the courthouse with a not guilty verdict under his belt.
By the way, it was Franklin Roosevelt who said we have nothing to fear but fear itself.
Also, by the way, I mentioned Andras Wagner but neglected to name the book — The Arrival of the Fittest.
Further to my reference at #83 to Kurt Vonnegut’s classic account of the firestorming of Dresden by a great number of American-led allied bomber squadrons.
Vonnegut miraculously survived the onslaught and subsequent deliberate firestorming phenomenon by sheltering in a cool-room in the baby formula factory he was working in as an American prisoner of war.
The Americans learned how to create the vortex of fire, the conflagration, from the Dresden experiment. Fire so fierce, everything gets sucked into it that isn’t fixed, like people.
Then, encouraged by that event they then created the firestorming of Tokyo, which was more devastating in incineration and deaths than Nagasaki.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo
We have to transcend bellicosity for good.
China is fantasising about its ‘Middle Kingdom’ destiny, its empire, its divinely appointed glory. The patient Tiger has awoken.
China’s strategy is long-termism. Ever pushing for gains, consolidation, entrapment of developing states with ‘security pacts’ or ‘pay protection’, and debt bondage.
When the country that doesn’t need a giant port, built by flown in Chinese labour, cant keep up with the onerous debt and interest, China takes it in equity, a new naval base.
Wars are nearly always motivated by a utopian vision. A male one.
China’s Grand Designs are ominous.
They end very badly.
Putin has refreshed the spectre of nukes, MAD. Iran, everybody has to have them, except Oz doesn’t.
Strato and Michael
The arc of justice is infuriatingly snail-paced, but Garland is exactly right to be careful about building an airtight case against an ex-president. This is a unique case. Even the slightest stumble will result in future opposing parties going after presidents, sitting or ex. Mueller gave Congress everything they needed to impeach, but party politics protected Trump. And unfortunately the case being built right now has nothing to do with what Mueller uncovered and documented. That material would have been gold for Garland and his team.
If Trump is convicted, he will (at most) be sentenced to a minimum-security army base. His lackeys might serve regular prison time. Sadly, that is the best we can hope for.
First things first: Welcome to the forum, Tomas! I see you haven’t posted before today, so I thought I’d roll out the welcome wagon, so to speak. I myself haven’t done more than drop in once a blue moon, but that’s just me: the regulars can tell you far more about the site than I can, if you ever want to ask them.
However much you wish to spend, I ultimately hope your time here is enjoyable, or at least mildly interesting.
Anyway, let’s talk shop!
Of course it is: it’s logically possible to do all sorts of things! 😀 OK, fatuous answer aside, this actually has been done historically, so my answer’s a more cautious “yes, but only if…”.
For instance, the issue of heredity was an open question in Darwin’s time. Fleeming Jenkin, a contemporary critic of Darwin, used the concept of blending inheritance to point out that the variation needed for natural selection wouldn’t last long enough. If variants were, after a couple of generations, irrevocably blended with the norm, then they simply wouldn’t be variants anymore: the result would be too dilute to stand out, much less work (for the same reason you can mix black and white paint to get grey, but can’t mix grey and grey paint to get the original two colours). If true, then this would’ve been legitimate counterevidence against Darwin’s theory.
It just so happened that the history of science found something different. Firstly, Mendel’s experiments demonstrated the particulate (discrete) nature of inheritance, which was incorporated in the early Neo-Darwinian Synthesis during the early 20th century (1920s, I think). Back then, the concept of a “gene” would have been hypothetical, as no known physical substance in the body had been found that acted like one. Then later, Watson and Crick (and, to be fair, with Wilkins and Franklin’s help) discovered just such a substance: the DNA molecule. RNA is an important component, as well, acting as an intermediary between DNA and the rest of the cell via protein molecules.
That means that one of the tenets for Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection – that distinct variants last long enough to be selected in the first place – not only turned out to be true, but opened the way for whole new fields in the life sciences, such as genetics and the biochemistry of the cell.
That’s also why I should note that “axiomatic” is more properly used for theorems of logic and mathematics than for scientific theories. That’s what it boils down to, ultimately: the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis could have been proven wrong if we’d discovered something else. It could even, in the future, go the same way as Newtonian physics or Euclidean geometry, and turn out to be, at most, an approximation within a more comprehensive and accurate theory.
The catch is that there’s a lot of work that’d have to be done to find such a superior theory. Not only would it have to explain how complex adaptations evolve, but the distribution of organisms across continents, the action of biochemistry in the cell, microbiological changes such as those of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, DNA relationship trees across species, and, yes, the progressive nature of the fossil record.
Needless to say, if there is one day a successor to the theory of natural selection, I think it most likely a scientist (or team of scientists) will either discover it first or unearth the subsequent evidence for it. It’d be a massive breakthrough in biological science, possibly worthy of a Nobel Prize!
These statements seem a tad vague to me, I’m afraid. You mention “a whole range of new species”…”in a short time (geologically speaking)”, but without examples or numbers, the statement could mean anything from “all species that have ever existed within the last 4.5 billion years” to “whatever archaeologists have dug up among the ruins of human civilization”.
Also, I must admit the “fossil record” criticism sits oddly with your later contention that “Dawkins is always eager to attack the ignorant religious fanatics that can easily be dismissed”, because the creationist “fossil record” criticism is, in fact, one of the most obvious recurring talking points in his books (for instance, when he discusses the Cambrian Explosion in The Ancestor’s Tale, and his discussion of “missing persons” in The Greatest Show on Earth). It’s possible you hadn’t read or remembered those passages, of course, but I should inform/remind you either way that the “fossil record” criticism is not a new one in any case, and I don’t just mean in the context of Dawkins’ books.
More specifically, the fossil record actually supports the predictions of evolution very well, and those of the mechanism of natural selection. For instance, in the earliest rocks you find simpler organisms or precursor lineages to those found in later rocks. Worm-like creatures with primitive backbones (such as Haikouichthys in the Cambrian) give way to cartilaginous sharks and primitive-jawed fish (such as the placoderms in the Devonian) give way to amphibious fish in the Carboniferous, mammal-like reptiles like the pelycosaurs in the Permian, reptile-like mammals like the cynodonts in the Triassic, and so on.
For another instance, you can see the gradual increase in brain size across human ancestors. DNA evidence suggests we shared an ancestor with chimpanzees roughly 7 million to 6 million years ago. After that, hominid fossils become increasingly humanlike, from traditionally ape-like Sahelanthropus and Orrorin to the upright Australopithecus and the bigger and bigger species of Homo in the last two million years. That’s when brain size increases from around 300-600 cubic centimetres to closer to the 1200cc you see in humans today.
Obviously, it would be awesome to have a record of every single creature that existed, but honestly it’s lucky we have any fossils at all. The conditions required for bones – and especially soft tissues like skin and internal organs – to turn into fossils are so airtight that the process can only capture a fragment of the diversity of life around at any given time. But the evidence is solid: what we do have are checkpoints – snapshots across time that show where trends were going and what “fashions” branched off alongside them (for instance, I missed out the Paranthropus, which were more robust contemporaries of Australopithecus and Homo, which suggests that they found a niche in the ecology of Africa at the time eating tough, fibrous plant material).
The same can be said for most of the major taxons in life (the horse and the whale are classic examples, as are the lineages of birdlike dinosaurs and primitive amphibians). We can trace the ongoing trends of vertebrates especially well, since their bones and teeth fossilize better than, say, the soft bodies of flatworms. And keep in mind that these changes range from hundreds of thousands of years (the time since we branched off from other Homo cousins) to billions of years (the emergence of multicellular life from unicellular fossils, though regrettably such fossils get rarer the further back you go).
What would really shake things up would be the proverbial “fossil rabbits in the Precambrian”! If an anachronistic fossil were ever found (say, human bones in the Cambrian era), some scientific field would be radically shaken up, even if only physics (because it might, to pick a radical example, constitute evidence of time travel). But more apparently, this would constitute counterevidence against Darwinian theory because it violates the rule that simpler organisms (such as worm-like Haikouichthys) have to exist before more complicated ones (such as big-brained Homo).
At the moment, though, the fossil record actually works as a neat bonus. A lot of evidence for evolutionary developments exists independently of it: DNA cross-referencing, for instance, has helped build exactly the kind of family tree we’d predict if species branched off and evolved their own separate ways, and this can be measured at the precise level of the DNA alphabet of A, C, G, and T, as well as by comparing the “family tree” of biochemical molecules like haemoglobin.
There’s also direct bacterial evidence of evolution in action (Lenski’s multigenerational cultures are a good example), the history of artificial selection (this was, in fact, Darwin’s starting point to help segue into natural selection as the mechanism humans exploited), and even physical similarities (homologies) such as the mammalian skeleton plan and the features that unite particular orders and families of mammals together (such as the hoofed mammals, the presence of ever-growing teeth among rodents, and the marsupial reproductive system versus the placental versus the egg-laying monotremes).
I regret to inform you that, far from being a new insight, this is also an old and discredited creationist talking point, and one that Dawkins has not only tackled before, but even put front-and-centre in his Argument from Improbability as part of The God Delusion. Briefly put: random mutation and natural selection are two completely different things, a confusion, and a bizarrely persistent one.
Natural selection, as one of its preconditions, works on variation within a species. Random mutation is how that variation happens to arise in the first place. It’s really not that mysterious: note that you, your siblings, your parents, your extended family, and so on are not clones of each other, but differ in all sorts of details. Some will have bushier hair than others. Some will run faster than others. Some can see better in the dark than others. And so on. These traits – especially in animals, where culture isn’t a confounding factor – originate from genetic variations. And those genetic variants come about by mutation.
Note that, at this point, there’s no a priori reason for that mutation to be random. It could have been directed, and indeed some of it might be controlled by other “regulator” genes for precisely that reason. It just so happens that genetic mutations do arise randomly, say from background radiation or the presence of mutagenic chemicals (this isn’t as odd as it sounds: organic molecules, and indeed chemical substances in general, do sometimes change as a response to energy input or the action of nearby chemicals). Some are even generated by simple copying errors, simply because accidents do happen in a complex system (there are whole categories of types of mutations based on how drastic these copying errors are).
But! Mark the sequel! Once a mutation arises and creates at least one variation in the resulting organism, that variant may prove to be more or less efficient than its stablemates. Most of the time, it’ll be less efficient and so get weeded out. Sometimes, it’ll prove to be neutral either way, which means the change in the gene has no detectable effect on the organism (also not as strange as it sounds: some of the amino acids based on the DNA code can come about through more than one code, and are functionally interchangeable). But occasionally, it’ll end up being slightly more efficient at surviving and reproducing in the current environment, and so circumstances will bias in its favour until (barring accidents) it comes to dominate in the population.
The key is that this “improvement” won’t be dramatic, at least not beyond the biochemistry in the cell. At a particular genetic locus (a small section on the DNA strand), it could be as rare as once every million years. But keep in mind that not only is there a ton of DNA across the population doing the same thing, and not only are there a ton of genes also doing the same thing at other genetic locii in the same DNA molecules: there’s a ton of time for it to happen in.
What makes natural selection so special is that it rapidly aggregates all those small changes and variations, which might otherwise wander and meander to nowhere, and cumulatively directs them through a feedback loop of variant=>reproductive bias=>dominance=>variant=>reproductive bias=>dominance=>variant. The result is often towards more and more functional complexity (this isn’t a guarantee, mind: bacteria are still around, after all, because they’re mostly really good at the niches they already occupy).
So instead of waiting around for longer than the universe will ever exist for any human genome to randomly mutate from, say, a Haikouichthys genome, natural selection takes away the random element by biasing, over hundreds of millions of years, a series of functional upgrades. Each fish, amphibian, reptile, mammal, etc. in the lineage is a viable organism in its own right, each – given the right environmental and ecological conditions – an upgrade over its predecessor. Natural selection doesn’t even need to be conscious or otherwise anthropomorphized: the feedback loop logically emerges as a consequence of the preconditions of mutation, variation in reproductive bias, and inheritance from ancestors.
In short, you’re right to criticize randomness as no solution to the functional complexity of biological organisms… but no one believed it was anyway. It’s an old strawman. Natural selection is directional, an automatic consequence of small steps over a long time.
As for the exact numbers of mutations… well, off the top of my head I’m not exactly sure. “A lot” doesn’t do the precise calculations of genetics justice. I do know humans have roughly 20,000-30,000 genes in their genomes, and that we share something like 97% of those genes with our closest living cousins, the chimpanzees. Since our most recent common ancestor existed roughly 7 million to 6 million years ago, that should give you some idea of the numbers involved in genetic change over time (off the top of my head, roughly 600-900 genes over 12 to 14 million years – you double the time because the distance between us and chimpanzees requires you to go back from modern humanity to our common ancestor and then forward again down the other lineage to chimpanzees). I hope this proves a useful starting point for grasping the scales involved.
This seems strangely ambiguous to me. The prior paragraph made it sound like you were discussing the random mutations from DNA, but this phrasing makes it sound like you’re discussing the origin of the “molecule” (DNA) itself? Could you clarify this?
Well, I’ve already discussed how the random mutations of DNA merely produce the variation on which natural selection then shepherds the results in a non-random direction, so in the hopes we both profit by it, I think I’ll tell you what (little) I know about the origin of DNA itself.
Firstly, note that the origin of DNA (and, by implication, life itself) actually IS one of those questions that needs to be addressed, and in fact IS being addressed. There’s a lot of theories in competition with each other – the one I think is most accepted is the RNA World Hypothesis, which proposes that RNA was the precursor to DNA because it combines the information-retention of DNA with the taskmaster properties of proteins (proteins are the molecules manufactured by DNA via RNA, and they are basically the first set of adaptations from which all others – such as cell structures, body tissues, and larger organs and bodies – are manufactured).
But frankly, no one knows for sure what the chemical precursors for life were. RNA might be a precursor to DNA, for instance. Quite apart from how RNA can fulfil both the role of DNA and the roles of proteins, while DNA and proteins can do more specialist jobs more efficiently, which sounds right for the idea that simpler structures get superseded by more complex and more efficient ones… there’s also the existence of RNA viruses, which are the only known definite exceptions to the idea that DNA pervades all life. But there’s no smoking gun evidence either way, not least because there’s hardly any evidence for what life was like back when the Earth was still young.
There are tantalizing clues in space, surprisingly enough: many simple biological molecules occur naturally on e.g. asteroids, some of which form building blocks to DNA. The question is under what conditions we get from those components to DNA itself, and to the basic elements of the cell. We’ve narrowed it down enough to say it’s a chemical phenomenon, but of what kind and under what conditions we don’t know. It may involve a form of natural selection, but nothing says it has to. It could be quasi-evolutionary, or similar to how crystals form regular lattices that repeat and replicate themselves, or linked to some form of catalysis for speeding up chemical reactions (after all, natural selection works a lot like a catalyst in speeding up improbabilities that would take incomprehensibly extreme lengths of time to happen spontaneously: that’s what “improbable” means).
It’s in the same category for biology as dark matter is for cosmology and physics: it’s a needed component in the current dominant model to explain what we find in nature, but nothing yet comes to any solid conclusions as to what precisely it entails. I imagine it’ll be very exciting to find out.
Well, I’ve flapped my lips for long enough. Nice talking to you! I think that covers the most essential points, and it certainly felt good to revisit some of this stuff. I’ve tried my best to be clear, but anyone want to correct my memory and add an update, feel free! I declare open season: I’d learn a thing or two as well. ;D
Lastly, I hope I’ve prodded you in a productive or at least interesting direction. Biology really is great, and even though humans have surpassed its forces in many ways, in a way it’s fitting we can still see and learn from what came before.
I’d strongly recommend checking out some textbooks or study materials for biology, including evolutionary, biochemical (including genetic), microbiological, palaeontological, and historical (as in, the history of biological science). It’s a treasure trove of insights into life’s ingenious tricks and techniques. I guarantee it! n.n
Tomas @ post #88
I would suggest a viewing of Neil Shubin’s series “Your Inner Fish” if you haven’t done so already. The reason I mention it is for this reason, the pattern of “one bone, two bones, many bones” can be seen across a wide spectrum of animals in the evolutionary process. Natural evolutionary process is greatly simplified by the use of a model that could shift to serve many purposes, there was no need to completely reinvent the wheel so to speak. This ability greatly simplifies and shortens the evolutionary complexity in establishing a new separate species.
Michael #100,
Yes it was the great FDR who said it.
In the tradition of the jongleurs, local calypso artist Fritz McLean wrote about FDR’s visit to Trinidad in 1936. FDR was a fan of calypso.
Ry Cooder did it in 1972.
For forumites’ amusement,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MrXXoq6k7A
Hi,
I would like to start a discussion on morality and ethics but from a approach not tried before. Is this the correct forum for this? and if so, how do I initiate the process. It’s to do with metaphysics or deontology (possibly ontology) the nature of reality and appears to provide the mechanisms to resolve many of our ethical issues in the epistemological realm as it were. It appears to realize Kant’s categorical imperative and resolve Humes is-ought issue by providing that logical bridge. It provides the mechanism for attaching a absolute binary logic to intuition as it were. Something philosophers have been unable to do to date. It results in a interesting social contact theory that is on up from democracy.
Zeuglodon Beta #104,
Thanks for your long contribution, a clear synthesis of the essentials on the stupefyingly beautiful subject of the account of life and how living things come about.
Thank you all for your responses. Quick responses – I know this is difficult stuff. And a loooong one from Zeuglodon Beta – thanks very much indeed!
Yes, I have read “the Selfish Gene”, and yes, it is a beautiful treatise. And yes, I have enough scientific background (in medicine, not biology) to know the difference between arguments and answers, and the difference between concepts and facts. Many scientists today apparently take the view that the gene-centred theorem of Dawkins is a simplification that has dazzled readers but in fact hindered development and understanding of the extremely complex functions of DNA, of the genes, the cell, and of the interactions between the various levels in biological life-forms and their environment.
There is no evidence whatsoever for a spontaneous random appearance of a “blind watchmaker” with wonderous capabilities. Not anywhere. What sort of random process would invoke molecules to replicate? It may seem like a minor step as a prelude in a grander context, but it is actually completely impossible to explain.
“No evidence” is what Mr. Dawkins concludes, when he dismisses religious fanatics in various media (some educated persons too, for that matter).
Well, actually it is up to Dawkins to produce the evidence.
Beautiful talk doesn’t constitute evidence. Mocking un-schooled victims in public doesn’t help, it can even be counter-productive.Continuous high-quality (unselfish) science will help discover more about the mechanisms of biologic evolution, I’m sure. And most probably raise even more questions.
Will we ever intellectually understand the nature of the universe? I doubt it. Why is it important? I use science and reason to evaluate, develop and improve treatment algorithms for my patients. I’m perfectly happy to accept the shortcomings of my intellect, and to marvel at the wondrous universe that I am part of. Neither science nor religion add to the sense of awe in face of the wondrous miracle that is the universe.
After all we are apes with a hyperplastic cortex, which helped us survive on the African planes. How did we suddenly acquire the intellectual capacity to solve the mysteries of the universe?
The doctrine teaches us that our bigger brains gave us superior adaptability and thus advantages to better serve as vehicles for the propagation of the selfish little watchmaker. Yes, well, we have certainly succeeded in that respect.
But it also seems that outwitting the blind selfish little bugger was included into the bargain, as a bonus.
Blind, selfish – generous(!) – little bugger.
(I’m joking)
/Tomas Hultgren
Joe M #94,
My introduction to the subject was through Daniel C Dennett and Richard Dawkins, for which I am thankful.
As you may be aware, within these books, Stephen Jay Gould’s ideas were necessarily subjected to critique.
It generated quite a bit of polemic. This gives some idea,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawkins_vs._Gould
Tomas #109,
‘What sort of random process would invoke molecules to replicate? It may seem like a minor step as a prelude in a grander context, but it is actually completely impossible to explain.’
I expect you’re not implying that the gaps in our knowledge to date renders being as yet unable to definitively explain, for example, the process of abiogenesis, Unknowable.
We are constrained by the speed limit of light governing space-time to be able to empirically observe the singularity of the Big Bang or what preceded it.
Again, that’s a very different thing from averring that is is Unknowable.
Christians believe in the ‘God of the gaps’ in our understanding. They need it to be able to defend God.
They must ever retreat further into a tiny preserve as science continues to provide substantive, cumulative knowledge.
Knowledge is withheld. All will be revealed to the faithful when the come into their inheritance of a ‘glorified body and a glorified mind,’
If we can abolish nukes and cooperate to see a fully sustainable future, free to do science, we might discover wormholes, if they exist, or come to create resilient life, a self-replicating macromolecule from chemistry.
Nothing is implicitly unknowable, despite the fact that we exist in a bounded environment.
Life ultimately arises in favourable conditions from the fact that elements, created in a supernova, are reactive. There is dynamism in ionisation. And the sun and electricity provide energisation.
As Strato of Lampsacus (d. 269BCE), head of the Lyceum in Athens, to whom I cannot hold a candle, declared, there is no call to propose a god to explain the universe, it’s origin or sustainment.
Lawrence Kraus in A Universe From Nothing , rather Yiddishly declared, “There’s nothing, and then there’s nothing!”
Meaning there is a roiling dynamism in empty space. There are extra dimensions, 19, according to some of our theoretical cosmologists, doing the fiendishly difficult maths. Universes come into existence and mostly they immediately self-cancel. Some have more matter than anti-matter or vice versa, as did ours, and continue in existence.
But entropy will wind it down to an eventual heat-death, kind of sadly, which is subjective sentimentality from our conscious apprehension of the wonderment of existence, life and consciousness, fellowship.
James Webb is now helping humankind appreciate and understand the stupefying beauty of the cosmos much more, and in new ways.
But I guess the putative quantum strings will just eventually stop vibrating, and the orbital energy will cease, and materiality it gives rise to will thus become non-existent, since the universe is expanding, at an accelerating rate under a repulsive force, apparently, and a Big Crunch, cycling into another Big Bang is looking a less likely possibility.
Life and biological evolution and consciousness it gives rise to is all still subject to entropy, but it’s an interesting detour in getting there.
Tomas,
Welcome.
A few points in your comment #109 that I’m curious about.
Just pointing out that when you start off by saying “Many scientists today…”, I expected you to follow with their names and statements for us to evaluate. Since that was not the case then you place yourself vulnerable to accusations of argument from authority.
From Wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority#:~:text=An%20argument%20from%20authority%20(argumentum,evidence%20to%20support%20an%20argument.
When Dawkins declares “No evidence” in response to religious fanatics, as you say, is he wrong? Is there any evidence to support the stories that the devoutly religious present? Can you consider the possibility that saying “No evidence” is the compassionate answer to that group of people? Can you accept that those of us who exist in the domain of science carry a very high bar for what could be considered evidence? We have a very high bar for that acceptance compared to the general population. If we declare that there is no evidence to support an assertion then why discuss further? What more could there be to say at that point? The conversation usually devolves into mean spirited sniping in a short time. When you think about it, a less patient person could have done much worse with sarcastic, belittling responses at that point. I hope you will consider the response “No evidence” to be neutral and in fact, the least cruel thing he could have come back with.
A few thoughts about those “religious fanatics” that you mentioned. Is there anyone who doesn’t know at least one of them in family or acquaintance? I’d like to hear what you think about the mindset of the fanatics. It’s a common topic here from time to time and as a psych major, I’m always interested in the phenomenon. I feel very sad for them when I’m at a distance but when I’ve had to deal with them in close proximity I always come away from the encounter in a state of aggravation.
The process of indoctrination is pretty well understood. An ideology is introduced usually to children by adults on whom they depend. Once it’s established then it is forcefully reinforced by social pressure and very resilient if it lasts into adulthood. There are many types of ideologies, religion being just one of them. When we see religious fanatics strutting their stuff in person or on media, there we see the strong power of indoctrination right in front of us. People build their whole worldview and self-concept all around the ideology that has been installed in their brains. All incoming information is filtered through the program and the information that is in conflict with the program is denied aggressively. This is what you see happening when Dawkins is in conversation with the fanatics. Their ideology “program” is on red alert and actively blocking the threats that it perceives against it.
What in the world can we do with these indoctrinated religiously devout people? You suggest that the science community would do better to provide “continuous high-quality (unselfish) science. When you say “unselfish” do you mean objective science?
Isn’t that what science is already trying to do? I will say that from our point of view it’s the religious bunch who go to great pains to morph objective science to fit into their own favorite religious framework. Any correction on this inevitably results in an emotionally charged response including a volley of insults or even crying. It’s not unusual unfortunately.
Tomas, as you say, you work in the medical field and so I’ll assume you have the luck in life to have a good education but even the best education does not guard us against the effects of indoctrination. Humans are so vulnerable to the process. It is very difficult to realize that we carry the effects of indoctrination ourselves. Easier to see it in others of course. You present here with some evidence of appreciation of the efforts of scientists but also with a few statements that are common to devoutly religious people as well. It’s not easy to reconcile all of this but I think I represent the regulars here when I say I hope you will continue to review ideas that have been with you since childhood and build the best synthesis that you can possibly create in the development and maintenance of your worldview.
Ok so let’s try this. Justice is based on values. That is why, according to many scholars there will never be a universal theory of justice, as justice is fundamentally based on the protection and preservation of what one values. As every culture that has ever existed has had different values, that is by definition what makes them unique, and by definition a culture, one intuitively will not find, or realize, a universal justice theory. However there is one thing that we all value, it’s for some reason obvious but eluded detection or understanding of its implications since year dot. But it somehow has fundamentally subconsciously shaped the way our society and cultures have evolved. All cultures that have ever existed that is. That is the fact that we all value time. It transcends our species to all consciousness or sentient beings, all value their time. In fact time is the origin or genesis of value. So let’s start off simplistically what do you pay someone for when they work for you? Their time. What does a artist need to create art? Time. A mineral that is Deep underground has no value until someone spends time finding it and more time extracting it. So let’s go a bit deeper into this, when you are sanctioned by your culture what is the worst sanction that can be meted out, the death penalty, they take your time away from you, if the crime wasn’t that bad they lock you up or control your time. And for a lesser infringement they give you community service or a fine, you now have to spend time doing the service or working to pay the fine… so let’s go a bit further into this what is the worst crime you can commit that would be to kill someone or take their time away from them, a lesser crime causes you to spend time on something that you don’t want to. If you are raped you are spending time doing something that you don’t want to do. If someone forces you with a deadly weapon that causes you to spend time on something you don’t want to. Look at slavery it’s unjustly appropriating someone’s time. Time has some very interesting properties, we all have it, and it is the common denominator in everything you do, even when you do nothing you still have to allocate your time to that. You cannot buy more once it’s up it’s up and your off to wherever your believes dictate. It appears to be our connection to this reality. As time as we measure it is just the measurement of that duration of that connection. As Einstein once said time is what a clock measures. Anyhow it’s a interesting paradigm and has its own inherent absolute binary logic that defines morality and ethics or justice os we perceive it. It results in a very interesting social contract theory that’s one up from a democracy… unanimity. It results in the ideal of capitalism but strangely also the ideal of socialism and any iteration of the two. I know it’s a bit more complex, as most things are, but in simplistic terms it results in a social contract where the following logic can exist and be sound. Firstly one must realize that nothing in life is free except your time to yourself and anything anyone gives you of their own free will that they legitimately own. But in simplistic terms it results in a society where the following logic can not only exist but be sound, everyone contributes equally and everyone benefits equally. Instead of the current architecture where contribution is heavily biased towards the productive people and benefit heavily biased towards the unproductive. It results on a justice model that is cognizant of cultural biases as they see fit. And is justice in the true sense of the word. Anyhow it appears to be a universal value theory that births a theory of justice and economic theory that then forms the foundation for a social contract theory with its own theory of government and political theory. But they all have the same maxim and that maxim is that you value your time and therefor have ownership of it, free will. Anyhow it’s something that I am working on a bit still not sure of I can leave a link to my internet post on the value theory of time, hopefully they won’t delete it https://thedefinitionoftime.org/
It is still a bit of a work in progress but any constructive comment or guidance as long as it’s civil and reasonable would be appreciated. Ps I only discovered philosophy about two years ago but have been working on this for many more, had a client who didn’t pay me and had to try figure out what justice was….so it’s been a bit of a steep learning curve this… How do you increase the value of your time, you have to invest your time in yourself by learning stuff it’s a positive feedback loop. Anything else is a fraud, you cannot will or wish a education on anyone, it takes time.
Reminds me of the disagreement between Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace over whether natural selection applied to humans. Wallace maintained that it couldn’t possibly, and as far as I’m aware his tendency beyond that was to attribute it to non-material, spiritual forces. Whereas Darwin at least was willing to entertain the idea that it could manage it via, say, sexual selection.
Here, this Wikipedia extract does it more justice than my quick summary:
(From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Russel_Wallace#Application_of_theory_to_humans,_and_role_of_teleology_in_evolution )
I mean, compare that with the article you cited, more specifically with Sterelny’s conclusions on how Dawkins and Gould apply (or refuse to apply) evolutionary thinking to humanity (I’ve divided it up to stop it looking like a wall of text, but the gist remains):
(From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawkins_vs._Gould)
(Bold emphasis mine)
It always seems to be human exceptionalism in one form or another. Which is fair enough insofar as our cultures and subcultures do advance way too fast for genetic evolution by natural selection to explain their speed (though I think it’s inevitably the explanation for their origin). But there’s a big difference between “we need a good, solid scientific theory to account for this next level of unusual phenomena” and “these phenomena are fundamentally different: they need and must be firewalled from what else we know about reality”.
Which, quite apart from being suspiciously obscurantist in my eyes (and obstructionist in practice), seems to me inconsistent with the increasingly interdisciplinary and coherent nature of science. It doesn’t even seem to correspond with reality: if anything, it looks more like a fallacious “god of the gaps” style of argument from ignorance, minus any actual examination of how the world works.
If nothing else, it just doesn’t seem like a good bet to go from current ignorance to making sweeping claims about impossibility. I mean, how are you supposed to make any headway with that approach?
Strato #111 & 112 & LaurieB #113. I always wonder why individuals like Dr. Hultgren, who, if my research is accurate, I believe is a skilled surgeon, want to come to a site such as this and cast dispersion on such a preeminent scholar as professor Dawkins.
I just became aware of another scholar Professor Andrew Knoll (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_H._Knoll) who has recently written a book entitled A Brief History of Earth, Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters.
While Dr. Hultgren is the guy to go to for surgery, I’ll continue to rely on Prof. Dawkins, Prof. Knoll, and the other scholars mentioned by me, you and others in the last couple days, for information related to the evolution of life on planet earth.
Just gonna stop there for a sec. In the spirit of critical testing, I can think of at least three counterexamples to the universality of this claim that you’d have to consider:
1. People who’d argue that living forever would be a bad thing. On this viewpoint, infinite time, which should (according to the “time=value” argument) be the ultimate boon, is actually not valuable at all past a certain point, which contradicts the idea that time is the ultimate universal value (if only because something else must intervene to devalue it, thereby taking priority in such people’s eyes).
2. Euthanasia arguments. If it’s a choice between “die now” or “suffer first then die later”, some people will ignore the extra time and opt for “die now” to avoid the suffering or humiliation.
3. Suicides. Even if only implicitly, they’re devaluing future time by opting out of it as soon as possible.
On a wholly tangential sidenote: I might be beating a dead horse, but I generally get the impression that people don’t reason logically from Hume’s is-ought distinction.
On the face of it, the claim entails outright moral nihilism, since nothing that exists (is) can ever produce a viable basis for “ought“. That includes anything to do with humanity, whether or not you think it’s supernatural or “beyond science” (if I remember correctly, Hume originally deployed the argument against religious apologists jumping from some god-given state of reality to making moral prescriptions based off it).
Yet the impression I get is that the same people who invoke Hume’s argument end up running foul of it anyway, such as by following moral/cultural relativism or subjectivism (after all, and according to the argument, no statement about how a culture “is” or about what a person’s experience “is” logically entails an “ought” either).
Is this most people’s experience, or is it just me?
In #116, instead of the phrase “ cast dispersion,” I should have written “cast aspersions” (to criticize someone or someone’s actions or character) harshly or unfairly. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cast%20aspersions%20on)
Michael
Maybe they want a little of that to happen too!
;-D
For post 117
People who live forever probably won’t value time as there will always be more.
Euthanasia should be a choice we should all have some don’t want their loved ones to go through their suffering as well.
People should have absolute ownership of their time, that would almost equate to free will, if they choose to end it because their time going forward is just not what they desire. It’s freedom of choice, if your culture has a problem with it then respect your culture but don’t impose your will or culture on others without their consent, that is unjust. People need to take responsibility and be accountable for their actions, the only way to do that is for them to be given absolute ownership of their time. Subconsciously it appears that that is what we assume anyhow, it’s how intuition appears to working . The logic is that if you have absolute ownership of your time you can only blame yourself your parents or your culture for where you find yourself in life. The logic is reasonable and sound. But possibly one should rather thank them…😊
Strato #110: Thanks for the link. I am ordering Sterelny’s book. After reading Gould’s mighty tome “The Structure of Evolutionary Theory” for the second time, I have the following to say about punctuated equilibrium:
Gould and Eldredge find that the fossil record, rather than containing gaps representing missing data, in general shows periods of stasis in evolution (speciation) punctuated by periods of “normal” rates of speciation (adaptive radiation). The punctuations are actually really slow, in terms of human perceptions. The stasis is the exception, not the punctuations. Way back in 1963, in high school biology, Mr. Maxwell taught that evolution is mainly the tracking of the environment, or steady maintenance of adaptation to the niche (selective elimination of significant deviations), with adaptive radiation when triggered by the environmental changes that result in opening of niches. I don’t think that Gould and Eldredge had a new idea here.
I must remind you that your premise is that time is a universal value. That means the argument can’t allow a scenario where it doesn’t behave this way – for instance by somehow becoming less valuable the more you have of it – because then you’re admitting that it’s not a universal value and that some other factor is involved or kicks in under certain conditions. The price of claiming universality is that you can’t then admit of exceptions: otherwise, it’s common but conditional at best.
Incidentally: by definition, an infinite amount of a valuable thing is – all else being equal – infinitely valuable. I don’t know about you, but it seems the easiest fix for infinite time would be to spend it on an infinitely long activity that one enjoys. The creative arts would be a stellar example, but I’m veering off topic…
Personally, I think “time” is at best an instrumental proxy for other values: for instance, that people really want – say – companionship or money, and time is just the physical arena they operate in to get either. You yourself bring up “choice” as another example. In any case, you rarely hear people say things like “I really value time itself” or “I really value breathable oxygen”. Not consciously. At best, these preconditions are a means to an end (that’s why I brought up those counterexamples: sometimes, a different “end” requires wholly different “means”).
Admittedly as a partisan who is skeptical, I certainly disagree we have “ownership” of our time. I’d say we don’t own it: we get relentlessly given it without consultation. Time keeps going and that’s it: it doesn’t do tricks on request, otherwise I personally would ask it to slow down and stretch out a bit.
I don’t want to be too hard on you, but I think you’re barking up the wrong tree with this particular deontological angle. Claiming universal values is regrettably harder than it looks.
to 123
it’s strange but the fact have it in limited amounts is what makes it valuable. It is the common denominator in everything you do even when you do nothing you still spend time doing it. You would be hard pressed to find a conscious mind or sentient being that doesn’t value it. It appears to be a law of nature. It’s the “home” of the fight or flight mechanism. When a conscious mind realizes that that it’s time going forward is going to be negatively affected, or threatened, it will take action either to run away or fight. It appears to be the protocol for recourse in the natural world. One just needs to understand how it works there is a reasonable logic one can attach to it. It’s why you can train a animal. You would be hard pressed to find a person or any animal that doesn’t value their time, if you can they can let me have all their time and work for me for free…. Not many of those around. Look at all our laws they punish those that abuse others time. Murder, slavery, rape, forced labour, stealing stuff people have spent time earning. Subconsciously we have tried to centre morality and ethics around it without understanding it. As mentioned it appears to be a law of nature. The more time you or your culture spend on something the more you value it if you value your family or, your pets, or in some cultures sun worship, I know this is not correct forum but religion, and that is fine as long as you don’t impose it others who value different things and would rather spend time on that. Some people value money and will convert their time to that by educating themselves and working. Please tell me how you tagged a portion of my comment to attach to your post.. it’s not that obvious. Time is weird you even have to spend time on just thinking about something, and when you think about it you invest time in it and attach value to it, that appears to be where the woke culture goes tilt.
It appears to be more moral realism. Time along with a few other things, matter, or what constitutes matter, being another, consciousness also appears to be one, these, among others, appears to be fundamentals of reality. We all have time or a relationship with it and it appears to be the common denominator in everything one does as mentioned you cannot do anything without investing time. Even just to think requires the investment of time. Even to do nothing you still spend time doing it. You have to spend it on something even if that something appears to be nothing. But that should be your choice, free will. It appears to define what we perceive as free will. When you are spending time doing what you want to do that is a state of free will or a just state for yourself. When you are being forced to spend time on something that is against your will and is a unjust state. Reflect on that a bit and think about your justice system and it’s definition of injustices. Every law that you would consider just protects your ability to spend your time as you see fit, as long as you don’t negatively affect others that would constitute a injustice towards them. There is a absolute binary logic in there that defines morality and by definition justice.
The interesting thing about having a property like time define morality is that it has no biases. It has no race religion culture or any other property that can introduce a bias. We all have it in equal measure one lifetime. It’s value to you is infinite, or you have to assume it is, I cannot dictate the value of other peoples lives to themselves, it’s your life. But it’s value to others is relative as to how much time you can save them through your productivity, this productivity is directly related to your ability to perform as required by the other person. To increase your productivity you have to learn to do stuff, or invest time in yourself, to learn to do stuff that others find value in, you cannot will or wish ability it comes with investing productive time in yourself through, generally educating yourself. Anything else appears to be a fraud.
It is what it is… but not necessarily what it appears to be.
Interesting idea, It.
I like the attempt at trying to find better, deeper metrics for concepts like Wealth (I propose “problems found and their solution”) and Value (time preserved perhaps?).
But I am more than a little worried by your starting point about justice and “doing time” for the crime. This all comes across as a bit conventional, justice for Religio-Libertarians, an hour for an hour.
As someone concerned with neuro-personal development I am duty bound to note that our development is both staged and stratified. The right stimulus and nurturing at numerous stages in a young brain’s life can cripple future capacities to be that Libertarian fantasy “the Omni-competent Human”, able to appropriately invest their time wholly productively in themselves.
The real crimes, the real injustices, are all committed on the young, who asked nothing of their lives, but were wired by evolution merely to be copiers (until shown how to be otherwise) and victims of the myriad impoverishments in investment in them most are still heir to. Grownups, by contrast, are their own fault.
Time’s value, particularly has peaks through an early life as our neonate brain grows from 28% to 100% adult mass and 1% connected to 100% connected by mid late twenties. There are time-critical windows when new mental mechanisms are laid down and if these windows are missed or fudged, dire consequences can result for the rest of the superstructure. Plagued by ill-formed attachments, under-cultured empathy, high levels of anxiety and stress hormones suppressing neural development, this will fill our prisons whatever metric of value we use.
Also for adults, there are other time-critical windows like, starting a family, seeing your kids morph into sentient beings, with astonishing capacities for giggles and gob-smacked delight. Laying down memories that’ll ease you through into your dotage. These are the experiences that make grown-ups more likely to get the fundaments of societal morality right, helping all children to be richly invested in, rather than less deserving grown-ups. (Its no accident that the explosion in UK performative culture in the nineteenth century followed a 400% jump in Enlightenment spending on kids, with general education rather than dynastic training, toys and educational and engaging books.)
What worries me about this blunt metric is that it is not fundamental enough. The moral computations (earnestly) are no simpler it turns out. But I do fear justice configured in some eye-for-an-eye Libertarian mode. Every time a “Villain” is in the dock, the society that manufactured him, should be in there also. Real morality would make fewer villains.
Nevertheless, I think “time” is a useful and intriguing metric. Thank you. I think, though, it leads me on to consider a metric based on capacities, a must have, and nice to have scorecard of these.
Phil: good to see your post. Either later today or in the next day or two, I’ll post my notes about The Mind is Flat. I’m so glad you recommended it, and I’ll be interested to see if you think my analysis is correct.
it is what it is #114,
“Instead of the current architecture where contribution is heavily biased towards the productive people and benefit heavily biased towards the unproductive.”
That is to say, ’There are makers and there are takers,’ I take it.
I have some real difficulty with this. It does smack of libertarianism as a purported moral philosophy.
It’s how the likes of Charles Koch would have us see human value and relations.
I don’t subscribe to the work ethic myself.
I envisage a universal basic income.
You wrote,
“Some people value money and will convert their time to that by educating themselves and working.”
In a UBI future, one can still work for more money if they like but I think education can be an end in itself, totally justified.
Also there’s education and there’s education.
An MBA isn’t the same as a Master’s in the Social Sciences.
In an MBA course one might read Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, economic psychology, but in the Social Sciences one has to weigh up the merits of differing theories and viewpoints in the polemics in a given subject in economic, political and social history for instance, and demonstrate critical thinking in a succinctly argued and synthesised essay in the endeavour to earn a high distinction.
SS is where one can lose their religion. It’s dangerous like that.
Also, respectfully, I’m not going to let that aspersion at the ‘woke’ go through to the keeper.
Call it ‘enlightened.’
Studies have found that those with arts degrees tend to incline to the left politically. They have likely thought about all the different kinds of justice there are, and I’m indeed, injustice.
They tend to value democracy. And learning for its own sake. They might be altruists.
They may tend not to be incurious, which is hardly a flaw.
And so they seek out real journalism, for instance, and read, likely non-fiction, and discourse.
Think about it a bit more it appears that a moral action is one that doesn’t affect anyone else’s time going forward negatively. It must either not affect them or affect them positively. The same goes for a immoral action, it is a action that forces someone to spend time on something that they don’t want to. And I’m not saying something like work, I’m talking about where you don’t have a choice. If you are raped or if you are murdered or enslaved or hijacked or have stuff stolen. Something that you cannot walk away from without either you being harmed or your property or possessions being negatively affected without your consent. That debate about what makes murder objectively wrong, it’s objectively wrong if the person being murdered doesn’t consent to being murdered, it’s that you affect someone’s time negatively without their consent, and you need to follow the reason and logic here, your relationship with time appears to start when your are conceived and that relationship continues until you pass on, then your consciousness moves on or progresses to wherever your beliefs dictate. But while you have that relationship your conscious mind is always in one of two states. It’s either in a state of free will, or against its will. There is no grey area most people spend their whole life in a state of free will, albeit abiding by many laws that make it appear not so, but essentially you chose through your forefathers to adopt the norms of your society.. getting off topic, but essentially if you spend without a literal “gun” to your head you are in a state of free will and that’s a just state. If you don’t have a choice without suffering negative consequences then you are not in a state of free will it’s against your will and a unjust state. It’s absolute and binary and defines morality. This appears to be the trigger for the flight or flight mechanism in nature. It’s natures recourse we have just not understood it and it was not fit for purpose so we in fact all cultures tried to recreate in in the various iterations of justice models that different societies created and moulded. None are as efficient and exoteric as the natural one or law of nature. Most progressive societies or cultures, generally democracies, subconsciously try to recreate it but in a very inefficient way. One needs to understand the reason and logic and the protocols then one can asses it and possibly modify the portions that are unacceptable and possibly substitute in acceptable protocols and see if a viable model can’t be arrived at. One that is acceptable to all moral reasonable people. The problem with the bill of rights is that if you have more than one right it creates the reality where they can collide or come into conflict and contradict each other. Also a moral right should be a end in itself how can a right for one create a obligation for another. Also when you have a right to a education who decides what a education is? Is it a traditional Xhosa education? Or a Zulu one? Or a traditional bushman education? What about a more eastern one or western one? Who decides? And who is obligated to provide it? Surely it’s up to the individual culture. Same with a right to a house? Who builds you the house? And what is a house? Is it a traditional Xhosa or Zulu house, what about a traditional koi-San cave. Maybe it’s something Elon musk lives in? Again who decides and what gives them the right. What give one culture the right to dictate to another that what they consider a house is unacceptable. Surely it’s up to the culture. How can one culture dictate to another. It appears that rights that create obligations on others without their consent are unjust fights. A moral right appears to be a end in itself, in other words it shouldn’t place obligations on others. The right to one’s time appears to satisfy all conditions that create issues with the current bill of rights. The right to your time places no obligations on anyone else. It is a end in itself and appears to be the genesis of value. It appears you cannot create value without the investment of time. If you know how please fill me in this going to work everyday is getting a bit tedious… I would much rather spend my time on permanent holiday spending money than having to spend way more than half my life earning it. But to earn it you have to make others lives or time easier or more pleasant somehow.. anyhow thanks for the rest of the comment it’s a bit above me but I’m sure correct. It’s a bit like Einstein’s theory of relativity there just seems to be a logical disconnect somewhere. But when one thinks about it it sort of fits in here somewhere. As the speed of light is absolute but also relative to the observer the absolute value of time to a individual is generally infinite. I wouldn’t consent to someone killing me not for all the money in the world if I knew I was going to suffer for the rest of my life and pass on in a painful way I may let someone pay to take my life. But that should be my choice. As it stands I want to live even with going to work everyday. But to others my time is only as valuable as they perceive it to be of use to them. A nuclear physicist looking for a job as a herd boy in a rural African setting is not going to be paid the same as if he went to work for rostrom in Russia. It takes a bit of mental gymnastics but it’s all a fairly exoteric logic and reason.
One must look at the logic that becomes available if the reasonable assumption is made that time defines value. The logic for a social contract could be that everyone contributes equally and everyone benefits equally. Instead of contribution heavily biased towards the productive and benefit heavily biased towards the unproductive. What do unproductive people normally have loads of, time. So the architecture of the social contract needs to be rehashed to realize this value. Everyone has some value to their culture they cannot be that useless. Even if it’s to pick up litter in the neighborhood. Anyhow the logic must first exist and be sound then one can look at how it can be realized… sorry waffling on a bit here. But keen for more input and interaction here please. Excuse my spelling and grammar in places. Auto correct helps a bit but sometimes puts in totally the wrong word 🫣just trying to get a grip on morality and justice here.
It would appear that nothing in life is free except your time to yourself and anything anyone gives you of their own free will. A universal basic income places a obligation on others to provide that income. Someone has to create the value for the universal basic income. I agree some form of universal basic income if adopted should be made available but it must be extremely basic. Only to buy the very basic food for existence. Others have to spend their time making their time valuable or being productive so they can pay contribute or pay tax why can’t the person requiring the basic income do the same. They should have some value to their culture. Even if it is a woke culture they must surely see value in each other. If not there is possibly something wrong with the culture and they need to address it. The architecture of the social contract as it is at present doesn’t recognize the value of time. It needs to be rehashed to realize that value. What do unemployed people have loads of… time. So if the architecture of the social contract can be designed or rehashed to allow it to tap into that value and realize it somehow. This is a bit of a paradigm shift in one’s understanding of the reason for a social contract. Surely a social contract where everyone contributes in equal measure is a fair and just one. Why must it be unfairly biased towards the productive that is unjust. People must be able to be as productive as they see fit. If they can add value to peoples lives good for them and they should reap the rewards. Elon Musk has not stolen any money or cheated people out of it he was proactive and earned it by supplying a service that others see value in. This concept is a bit paradoxical in a way it’s the simplest concept yet it’s also the most complex one to digest properly. It results in a ideology or philosophy that is the ideal of capitalism and also the ideal of socialism. And any iteration of the two. What does capitalism have that socialism needs or is in short supply of, capital, and what does capitalism need that socialism has loads of, compliant labour. They are somehow perfect bedfellows.
It is what it is #131,
Two articles well worth investing the time and application,
https://watchesbysjx.com/2020/07/time-consciousness-and-discipline-industrial-revolution.html
https://www.sv.uio.no/sai/english/research/projects/anthropos-and-the-material/Intranet/economic-practices/reading-group/texts/thompson-time-work-discipline-and-industrial-capitalism.pdf
It is what it is, #131,
Who ultimately adjudges by the metric of contribution or productivity to assess the individual’s value, or worth, or indeed, worthiness? (Right to live? Gad!)
I am plugging away at Power and Thrones: a New History of the Middle Ages, Dan Jones, 2021, recommended by others here, which I then purchased. Now I can recommend it. And I have new understandings which has intrinsic value in itself.
And those understandings can be shared as education value.
Actually, every time I reflect upon it I conclude that education goes a very long way toward solving the word’s multifarious problems.
But after this beautiful tome I have lined up, Bullshit Jobs: the Rise of Pointless Work and What We Can Do About It, David Graeber, 2018.
On the table I also have, Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay: the Case For Economic Disobedience and Debt Abolition, the Debt Collective, foreword by Astra Taylor, 2020.
I can recommend the Guardian for a fine, indeed noble news outlet with its long history and editorial philosophy. There’s a lot going on to know about.
And I do make use of my online subscription.
Did you know that student loan debt in America was $1.7 trillion in 2020? $1trillion, 2012; $200 billion, 2000; $0,1960?
62% of bankruptcies in the US are linked to illness and health care costs.
‘As a result, nearly 3\4 of Americans are now in hock. Between 1980 and 2007 household debt doubled as a percentage of GDP, with most of the growth in residential mortgages, although auto, credit card, student loan, medical, and criminal legal debt also grew precipitously. In the first months of 2020 as the pandemic took hold, household debt rose to $14.3trillion, $1.6 trillion higher than the record set in the middle of the financial crisis. Today, more than 40% of indebted households use credit cards to cover basic living costs, including rent, food and utilities. Some 62% of personal bankruptcies in the US are linked to illness and health care costs.
In 2019, US students graduated from college with an average of $32,000 in debt. Those without access to a bank account are harshly penalised. Ten percent of families spend money on alternative financial services such as check cashers (outlets that cash checks for a fee) and payday lenders (lenders whose high interest loans trap borrowers in endless cycles of debt). You might think that school children would escape the horror of debt, but you would be wrong. A 2019 report showed that the median amount of debt incurred by children whose families cannot afford their school lunches has increased 70% in the last few years’ (p. 15).
Clearly ‘neo-con’ neo-liberalism/libertarianism isn’t working. It’s dystopian. Selfish.
The pitchforks are coming or civil war of all against all. There are way more guns than Americans.
The Democrats were finally able to legislate for the project to replace the lead pipes in places like Flint, Michigan. That lead will go toward meeting the public demand for ammunition. They can’t get enough.
One hopes America can shake off its ideal of ‘rugged individualism’, ‘rich or poor, you deserve your status.’ It’s maladaptive, dysfunctional.
‘Socialism’ has been historically demonised.
Democratic socialists like Bernie Sanders in fact have the solution.
A voice crying in the wilderness. Tucker Carlson gets listened to instead. Ron DeSantis and the like. Greg Abbott.
It sort of does my head in a bit. But I just keep reading. Can’t help it.
I’d love to know what it will be like in 3022 but I’m mortal and I’ve already lived most of my life now.
It is what it is, #131,
Who ultimately adjudges by the metric of contribution or productivity to assess the individual’s value, or worth, or indeed, worthiness? (Right to live? Gad!)
I am plugging away at Power and Thrones: a New History of the Middle Ages, Dan Jones, 2021, recommended by others here, which I then purchased.
Now I can recommend it. It’s awesome, a cracking read.
And I have new understandings which has intrinsic value in itself.
And those understandings can be shared as education value.
Actually, every time I reflect upon it I conclude that education goes a very long way toward solving the word’s multifarious problems.
But after this beautiful tome I have lined up, Bullshit Jobs: the Rise of Pointless Work and What We Can Do About It, David Graeber, 2018.
On the table I also have, Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay: the Case For Economic Disobedience and Debt Abolition, the Debt Collective, foreword by Astra Taylor, 2020.
I can recommend the Guardian for a fine, indeed noble news outlet with its long history and editorial philosophy. There’s a lot going on to know about.
And I do make use of my online subscription.
Did you know that student loan debt in America was $1.7 trillion in 2020? $1trillion, 2012; $200 billion, 2000; $0,1960?
62% of bankruptcies in the US are linked to illness and health care costs.
‘As a result, nearly 3\4 of Americans are now in hock. Between 1980 and 2007 household debt doubled as a percentage of GDP, with most of the growth in residential mortgages, although auto, credit card, student loan, medical, and criminal legal debt also grew precipitously. In the first months of 2020 as the pandemic took hold, household debt rose to $14.3trillion, $1.6 trillion higher than the record set in the middle of the financial crisis.
Today, more than 40% of indebted households use credit cards to cover basic living costs, including rent, food and utilities. Some 62% of personal bankruptcies in the US are linked to illness and health care costs.
In 2019, US students graduated from college with an average of $32,000 in debt. Those without access to a bank account are harshly penalised. Ten percent of families spend money on alternative financial services such as check cashers (outlets that cash checks for a fee) and payday lenders (lenders whose high interest loans trap borrowers in endless cycles of debt). You might think that school children would escape the horror of debt, but you would be wrong. A 2019 report showed that the median amount of debt incurred by children whose families cannot afford their school lunches has increased 70% in the last few years’ (Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay, p15).
Clearly ‘neo-con’ neo-liberalism/libertarianism isn’t working. It’s dystopian. Selfish.
The pitchforks are coming or civil war – all against all.
There are way more guns than Americans.
The Democrats were finally able to legislate for the project to replace the lead pipes in places like Flint, Michigan. That lead will go toward meeting the public demand for ammunition. They can’t get enough.
One hopes America can shake off its ideal of ‘rugged individualism’, ‘rich or poor, you deserve your status.’ It’s maladaptive, dysfunctional.
‘Socialism’ has been historically demonised but democratic socialists like Bernie have the remedy for America’s malaise.
‘A voice crying in the wilderness,’ as it were.
Tucker Carlson gets listened to instead. Ron DeSantis, Greg Abbott and the like.
It does my head in a bit but I keep reading. Can’t look away.
I’d love to know what it will be like in 3022 but I’m mortal and have lived most of my life.
Would we want to be born then? We have to make it as though we would, along with those who will be, hopefully.
Sorry there, I see that post doubled up. What a massive waste of pixels!
The second version is the finest.😄
It’s tricksy composing, posting and editing on your iphone. They’re as touchy as Trump. Mine is one of the older, smaller ones. Size matters.
I guess I’ll have to wait longer, invest time, which waits for no one. It’s a hard task-master.
These are all deepities (see Dan Dennett).
Please remember it’s the logic that we are assessing here. If the contribution is say 50% of you income. So that the logic of when you benefit everyone must benefit equally remains sound. So you have to contribute 50% of the value you gain. Those who are not capable of creating much value must have the option to contribute time if they want to participate. When you pay 50% as a tax you are effectively giving half your time to the social contract but in the iteration it has taken as money. So a beggar on the side of the road if he earns say $10 half goes to tax. Everyone pays at the same rate without exception. The logic is simple, the money is pooled and then split up equally amongst all the members and certain things deducted for the maintenance of the system then paid back to them. But the beggar cannot get more than he contributed less the maintenace of the system. The individual determines his value by how much he contributes. That is what his culture deem his value to be. The productive people will obviously have contributed way more than they get back but they will have a credit albeit a bit reduced that they can then use to employ anyone they deem fit or they can cede it to a political group of their choice to pay people to do stuff that political parties want to do. Supply services etc. that is a basic concept of the logic. It’s obviously a tad more complex but also not really. It reverses the flow of capital instead of it being injected at the top and having to get it to filter down through corrupt politicians only to be stolen or misappropriated on the way to where it should be going, it is paid in at the base and then possibly work it’s way up to a political party if you feel they are doing the correct thing for you. The architecture removes the need for elections and political parties as one currently requires them. They can exist you can support them if you wish but they cannot steal your money unless you give it to them. Make political parties useful and functional and accountable to their members. It’s a bit like the federal system in America but with a bit of a twist, it creates the reality where we are all equal before the law. One can do that if one values time, which I do and I’m sure all of you do as does everyone I know. Any reasonable person should be comfortable to subscribe to this philosophy. In nature it appears that every conscious mind subscribes to it. It’s subconsciously how we live and how any reasonable person intuitively perceives or determines morality, anyway I am just pointing it out. Took some serious mental gymnastics to figure this out.. ps I don’t read much so if there a YouTube clip I’ll watch that, figured this out from first principals as it were, it was a very interesting process that evolved into this. This philosophy assumes we are all equal before the law something every progressive constitution claims but then goes on to create positions that are not and exceptions for a “king” here there is no king instead a suitable one is realized when required, that would be when a injustice has occurred and then once the injustice is resolved he vanishes. It puts the sovereignty back in the hands of the individual until he feels a injustice has occurred then it is placed by him in a reasonable peer of his choice. The logic here is that when he finds you guilty and sentences you you cannot claim a injustice or bias, you chose him even if he imposes the death penalty.
Use paragraph breaks guys.
It is what it is #136,
Tax the rich.
FDR had the right idea. No Democrat has the guts to revisit it.
We are getting more and more automated. The idea of machines to supplant human labour and increase productivity must also be to fund our existences and our fundamental needs, our orientation to self-actualisation.
Are you going to read these essays I recommended?
I reread them today. On my awesome, useful iphone.
As I said and can say again, time very well spent.
https://watchesbysjx.com/2020/07/time-consciousness-and-discipline-industrial-revolution.html
https://www.sv.uio.no/sai/english/research/projects/anthropos-and-the-material/Intranet/economic-practices/reading-group/texts/thompson-time-work-discipline-and-industrial-capitalism.pdf
I read the first one and it seems manly concerned with the measurement of time and it’s influence on the workplace. I can understand where they are coming from. Time appears to be constant it’s the bridge between conciseness and the material world. We appear to have divided that up into useful units. First using the sun, into days and later when they were developed more useful units hours with sundials and later even smaller units. As we all appear to value time many ancient civilizations appear to misplaced origins of that value of time and refocused that value in the belief that the sun was the origin of time after all its cycles constantly and uniformly…let’s try keep everyone happy here.
just barely passed English at school so please bear with me here… my grammar is also atrocious at the best of times. But I’m sure you’ll get the gist of it. I can’t help feeling that we’re getting sidetracked here.
Although the article is about time it’s fairly concerned about the measurement of time, or more accurately being able to portion it up. And it appears that the reason we are so keen to measure time, or portion it up, is that we value and want to sell it, so to be able to realize that value fairly we need to measure it accurately and justly.
I am however more concerned or, interested in, the universal truth or claim (the more I think about it the more it appears to be a metaphysical claim, in other words a fundamental claim about the nature of reality) that I’m making that every conscious mind values time and that it, time, is the fundamental origin of value. And as it appears, on reflection, that morality or justice as the individual, or in fact any conscious mind, or sentient being, perceives it, morality or justice that is, is the protection and preservation of what that individual values, (in India they value cows, so cows feature in there concept of morality or justice. Go hit a cow in someone’s house in India and see what happens to you), look at religions they value their gods, and morality, or justice, to them is the protection and preservation of those gods, that is their choice and should be their right, one should respect it, as long as they don’t impose it on others. So that creates a interesting set of circumstances. If morality or justice is the protection and preservation of what one values, and if we all value time that opens the door to a universal value theory. That then opens the door to the possibility of a exoteric universal theory of justice. The law of the universe that should be reasonable, logical (exoteric) and acceptable or applicable to all sentient or conscious beings that value time. In other words ones that have a finite life or existence. If you live forever or cannot die, it stands to reason you possibly wouldn’t value time as there would always be more… getting sidetracked here this is not important as we don’t appear to live forever. What happens when one passes on is whatever that individuals beliefs dictate. Shit forgot about the paragraphs again ..🫣 also typing on a mobile device is not the simplest,
Sorry looked at the second article but to many pages. I’ll go through it at some stage. There isn’t possibly a YouTube video that gets the gist across…
It is what it is, #136,
How does a worker on starvation wages pay 50% tax?
I’m right into the requirement for Bezos or the Waltons who own Walmart paying 50% tax, except it should be 90% and they should actually pay their workers.
They buy the politicians to give them huge tax breaks.
Giant corporations hire a team of artful accountants to see they pay zero tax.
Bezos drives the pickers in his ‘fulfilment centres’ ( it’s meant to sound almost New Age), gigantic warehouses, like automatons to achieve quotas. If they can accomplish that, he increases it.
Monitors check on how long a worker is away at the bathroom, or a minute late back from lunch.
There have been reports of workers peeing in bottles at the work station. People have died of stress and overwork with fellow workers too busy and focussed on their tasks to even stop and check.
I presume the economic system you envisage is a democracy?
Iiwii, I shan’t commit myself to this discourse. Keep pondering though, but be prepared to critique and perhaps abandon pet ideas. Seeking to falsify them is a good approach.
The second article I offered by EP Thompson is about the Industrial Revolution, with much on the enforcing of productivity and onerous time demands on the proletariat by the industrialist capitalists.
It’s also about the ‘protestant work ethic’, the Puritan moralist obsession with sloth and idleness.
It’s a seminal essay.
I do encourage you to engage with text. It does get easier eventually. I have become addicted to it. An autodidact is one who is self-educated. That’s not a bad aspiration and pursuit.
You are correct one cannot ever make exceptions there may be what appear to be exceptions but on closer examination one ends up explaining them. Just as a example.. Why does smoke to rise? Gravity is supposed to be a force of attraction but smoke rises… we all know why it due to other influences.
Time to oneself always has infinite value it is one’s life. That is a reasonable assumption others must make when they maliciously and deliberately want to appropriate it. However when you sell it to others with consent, it’s value to others varies depending on your ability to assist them, how productive you are, and what they require you to do. It’s all relative in a strange way Einstein’s theory of relativity seems to strangely somehow have some commonality of concept. Your relationship with time in this reality, and in your current incarnation as a person, starts when you are conceived or born depending on your beliefs. And ends when you pass on you then move on to where your beliefs dictate or not, I’m not sure. But while you are here that relationship is very absolute and binary you either have it or you don’t you are dead or alive. It doesn’t get more binary than that. While you are alive your consciousness appears to always be in one of two states, I think I put this in one of my posts above. You are either doing what you want to do with your time, in a state of free will, or you are being forced to do something with your time, that would be against your will. Again it is absolute and binary, there is no grey area. When you are in a state of free will that is a just state, and when you are in a state of against your will that is a unjust state. That is how a individual appears to perceive morality. The old moral argument about what makes stealing immoral. It’s the fact that the person who has had his stuff stolen has to spend time to deal with the fact that his stuff is stolen, and he can’t do what he wanted to do with his time. If he wants to get himself back into the position he was in, he now has to invest time or value against his will. It is a injustice. The value of your time to others is dictated by your culture and how much time you can save them or if you can make their time more pleasant for them. And it is generally proportional to the amount you spend or invest in yourself through learning stuff appropriate stuff that aides your culture or community. As such your parents generally contribute or lay the foundation towards that dynamic. They need to invest time in you and teach you to do stuff, or pay someone to, that makes you able to integrate productively into your culture. At that stage you reach what your culture would deem the age of consent. At that stage you get released into society. Sorry probably not well articulated. Time as I see it is constant it appears to be the connection between our consciousness and this physical reality. Time that we measure is just the units of measurement of that connection. If you want to slow your time down put flat batteries in your watch, or increase the length of the pendulum.
the same way that Newton’s force theory of gravity resolved or provided many logical and reasonable answers to problems in the physical world. This is a value theory of time and it appears to do the same with ethics. I don’t think you will find reasonable person or any conscious mind or sentient being that doesn’t value their time. I am going to discuss this with Prof David Benatar he has his philosophy of anti natalism so it may be quite a tricky sell I will see him at the next philosophical society meeting at University of Cape Town in two weeks time. It is a bit off topic for the meeting but he has shown interest to engage on the subject a bit… love to get his input comment. Thanks I really appreciate the comments.
Tax is the contribution to the social contract surely in a just society everyone should contribute equally. Why must the architecture be such that contribution to the social contract is heavily biased towards the productive members. Surely a architecture where everyone has the ability to contribute equally in some way shape or form is way more fair and just. Tax everyone equally or as close to that as possible. We all need to ideally agree to a social contract and one where everyone has the ability to contribute is reasonably way more just that one where only a few contributors. Any reasonable person should be comfortable to contribute if they know everyone else has to do the same.
It is what it is #142
”…………..as close to that as possible”
And so the whole theory breaks down!
Simon Tisdall is a foreign affairs commentator. He has been a foreign leader writer, foreign editor and US editor for the Guardian.
Tisdall has prescience. This latest piece again conveys the graveness of the situation for all of Europe, for its cohesion, with the usual straight talking.
Tisdall is certainly no hawk. But his call that Putin is playing nuclear blackmail is surely correct.
He describes the coming emergency, how this will eventuate, transpire, unless Europe and Nato really go to war and terminate this otherwise permanent, unfolding horror.
Putin never was socialised, nor could he be. The man is a psychopath, a most problematic disability, that, especially when they get handed the power, are subordinated to. For they are so sure of themselves, and menacing, and hungry for it. Putin sure is focussed.
When Putin encounters someone like Trump, or Xi, or one of his generals, he weighs up how he could kill them in three judo moves. It’s automatic in the mentality.
But could he actually deploy his 6,257 nukes, if he would?
And indeed, the 4 minutes 18 seconds of Plan A wonderfully concentrates the mind. Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jy3JU-ORpo
Simon Tisdall’s latest piece,
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/17/putin-is-already-at-war-with-europe-there-is-only-one-way-to-stop-him
It,
You’ve played Monopoly, right?
You know how the earning power of money (as a rentier, say) is proportional by some factor to the amount of money you have? Wealth begets wealth above a certain critical level and the cost of living progressively strips the potential for economic betterment through wealth below that level?
What’s the Libertarian perspective on dynastic wealth, the heritage of robbed, Robber Barons? You plan to start everyone off equal?
And the Guardian editorial on the evolving crisis, and what it must incur in terms of collaboration.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/13/the-guardian-view-on-europes-energy-crisis-facing-down-putin-will-not-come-cheap
phil rimmer #145,
Excellent. The quandary laid bare in short order.
Egalitarian notions are silly ‘woke’ sentiments.
I don’t think it does everyone has time so everyone can be taxed. The productive members of society just convert their time to other forms of value, money, and that gets taxed. But essentially everyone has time. No breakdown still sound I think.
hi Phil I like your questions or statements. yes that is correct. But the architecture that comes out of this creates the reality that everyone is in effect a 50% shareholder in everyone else’s “business” as it were so it’s in the best interests to make them work as profitably as possible. It’s a strange dynamic as mentioned it’s a bit of a paradigm shift in one conventional thinking. It’s got a interesting logic, when one benefits all benefit, you just have to severely limit k influence of a central government in fact it can probably be dispensed with or replaced with a token figurehead. You see it’s the underlying logic that must first exist and be sound.
the logic is that everyone is that in a ideal world no one would contribute as we would all be able to look after ourselves and everyone must benefit from a just society while they exist. Now as some appear to be incapable of converting their time productively into other forms of value it is problematic. So one can look at a slightly modified logic, this is its very basic form. But the logic that everyone must contribute towards a social contract equally and everyone must benefit equally can reasonably be regarded as a fair and just logical statement that just needs to be made sound. It is not sound because traditional as you have pointed out many have no value to contribute. It is made sound by realizing that time appears to be the genesis of value. As mentioned mentioned it is a bit of a paradigm shift in one’s understanding of reality. But subconsciously we appear to value time as our society is moulded around it look at the laws that exist and your intuition. You know intuitively that something is bad but what is that mechanism. That mechanism appears to be that that action is going to affect someones time badly or negatively. Look at murder and theft and rape and slavery. Our society appears to have evolved around that intuitive reality.
Again I really like your interactions they are very helpful to me. I am looking for someone to poke a fatal hole in this. But it appears to be based on a natural construct that every sentient or conscious beings all value their time. So it’s going to be challenging for you I think…. But let’s see how it goes… No generational wealth is value created by one’s forefathers and is left alone you cannot take things from people without their consent. Everything costs something except your time to yourself and anything anyone gives you of their own free will. That would include any inheritance. But essentially every conscious mind is created equal all it is born with is time. It’s up to you, your parents and their culture as to how you realize that value. No one else you are in essence the master of your own destiny as it were. If one’s parents or culture made inappropriate decisions that now affect you that you can only blame them for. But instead of blaming them thank them rather for the opportunity to experience existence and enjoy life, well as much as possible but unfortunately to have lots of wealth you need to be productive and useful or provide value or a service to others… look at Elon Musk he is a great example of what can be done. A bit batshit crazy but I really enjoy his ways. I have huge respect for his accomplishments.
It is what it is, #141
” You are either doing what you want to do with your time, in a state of free will…”
One could be procrasturbating.
I’m such a ridiculer and a curmudgeon. I richly deserve payback (self-flagellates).
The putative attribute of ‘free-will’ is not a settled fact. Do we really have free-will?
Dan Dennett in ‘Freedom Evolves’, says “We have the kind of free-will worth wanting.”
I’m not into professor David Benatar’s antinatalism, though. Nihilism.
Existence is bad because, suffering. Sounds rather Buddhist to me.
If there were no humans included in the set of sentient beings, there would be no understandings, such as evolution. Indeed there would be no life to engender the contemplation of how it arose and of how speciation occurs, the extended phenotype, or all that grounds for wonderment.
There would be no understanding of the fabric of the cosmos, no theoretical cosmology, no quantum physics, no James Webb telescope, no field of psychology, indeed no science at all.
No concept of time. No curiosity, No art. No naughtiness. No Redemption. No satire.
How dismal. A dictatorial, universalised Freudian death wish. Just like the idealisation of, and yearning for nirvana, some kind of experience of unqualified emptiness, the transcendence of, indeed the cessation of the self.
I think the Tibetan buddhist exposition of emptiness is actually describing the subjective phenomenology of deep trance meditation. There is No Time. How Deep.
The capability to go into that state is perhaps explainable by the heritable ability to hibernate remaining from deep in our ancestral past.
Or it’s self-hypnosis, all of which warrants explaining, scientifically. So reductionist. Consciousness Explained, Daniel C Dennett. Wonderful book.
You wrote,
“Your relationship with time in this reality, and in your current incarnation as a person, starts when you are conceived or born depending on your beliefs.”
Beliefs don’t determine what is, or isn’t.
If there is no substantive, empirical evidence for reincarnation, or for non-physical existence, the supernatural or spirit realm, it’s better not to posit it. That’s what William of Occam would counsel.
Toward the end of the seminal essay, Time, Work Discipline and Industrial Capitalism, E.P. Thompson, 1967,
“. . . the Nuer have no expression equivalent to “time” in our language, and they cannot, therefore, as we can, speak of time as though it were something actual, which passes, can be wasted, can be saved, and so forth. I do not think that they ever experience the same feeling of fighting against time or of having to co-ordinate activities with an abstract passage of time because their points of reference are mainly the activities themselves, which are generally of a leisurely character. Events follow a logical order, but they are not controlled by an abstract system, there being no autonomous points of reference to which activities have to conform with precision. Nuer are fortunate.”
(Nuer, people who live in the marsh and savanna country on both banks of the Nile River in South Sudan. They speak an Eastern Sudanic language of the Nilo-Saharan language family.)
It is what it is #148
Like a single mother with two or three jobs?
Why not have everyone earning the same as well?
It is what it is #148,
In your envisioned State with its premium placed on productivity, and where citizens are valued on their productivity, (whatever qualifies for that, or fails to), what do you do with such individuals as ascetic-renouncers like Simeon Stylites who shunned society, acquisitiveness, economic gain or participation in it and took to living atop a tall pillar for 36 years? He had a project, a purpose. It was to flout the trappings of ordinary life, its vanities, diversions, dissipations and distractions in order to devote himself to being closer to God.
He shunned being ‘gainfully employed’ as such, although prominent elites came to him for words of wisdom and knowledge or for his ‘piety’ to rub off on them, superstitious as they all were back then.
What would you do about him if you were in charge of the State you envisage?
It is what it is #148,
In your envisioned State, wherein you may well be Caesar, where citizens are valued according to ‘productivity’, (whatever really qualifies for that, or fails to), what do you do with such individuals as ascetic-renouncers like Simeon Stylites?
The guy shunned society, as distracting, with its vanities, diversions and dissipation, gossip, small talk, competitiveness, status-seeking, fornication.
He shunned acquisitiveness, economic gain or participation in such activity and took to living atop a tall pillar for 36 years in Aleppo, Syria around 400CE.
In your envisioned State with its premium placed on productivity, what would you do with such an unwashed, dreadlocked drop-out?
Isn’t he an undesirable?
‘Useless as tits on a bull’, as we say in Australia.
‘Wouldn’t work in an iron lung.’
Although elites did come to him for wisdom and council since they drew the conclusion Simeon was holy, such was the pervasive superstition in the early Middle Ages.
But meeting such perceived needs for others, them being so touched wasn’t how he justified his existence.
He likely believed nothing justified his existence but to work at devotedness to God through privations and trials, plugging away at mortifying the flesh.
Maybe it’s really just indulgence in a weird sort of way.
You could say that if he did think he was useful as a spiritual guide, it was just another example of a ‘bullshit job’, serving fools.
He lived on handouts, probably drawn up in a bucket. He was exposed to the elements 24/7 year in, year out.
Was he a bad example to a society inculcated into industriousness as the standard of virtue, by a career commitment to wasting all of his precious time?
I would love to engage someone like Dan Dennett and get his comment. Also David Benatar, his idea of anti natalism is interesting it has a sound logic. I think we are trying to resolve the same problem but from different angles, that problem appears to be the amount of injustice in the world. His approach or philosophy, is to stop brining more consciousness into existence, his reasoning is that if you don’t bring more into existence, it’s less conciseness to experience the injustice and then by definition less overall injustice. If you already exist then you need to live as good life as possible but please stop brining more in. The reason and logic are sound, but it somehow just doesn’t sit well.
What my approach was to the problem was, is to fundamentally try determine what a injustice is, and then try find a solution. Something possibly a bit more generic, as it were, so essentially I think we’re on the same “quest to reduce immorality” as it were. But my philosophy would be that you should always have a choice. So if you feel a particular ideology, anti natalism, or any other one, is good for you then that’s what you do. You can pitch it to me, and others if you want, but don’t impose it others without their consent. I am sure everyone feels the same… I just read the rest of your post…. and a core tenet of this philosophy is that we are all fundamentally equal there is no “king”. Sovereignty is placed in the hands of the individual. When you feel a injustice has occurred towards you, you have recourse through a reasonable peer of your choice. So in a dispute you choose your king, the logic here is that if you choose your “king”, when he finds you guilty and sentences you, you cannot claim a injustice or bias, you chose him. Even if he sentences you to death. The logic is sound and reasonable. Remember it’s just the logic one needs to consider.It’s a social contract theory based on the value theory of time.
The logic is that when every conscious mind is created, they are essentially created equally. When I say created, that could be conceived, or become sentient, or at whatever stage you believe they begin to exist. The only thing they have at that stage is time or a “relationship with time”. But that’s when all equality ends from then on it’s up to you, and your parents and your culture to prepare you for a life within the community that your culture created for you to spend your time in. As far as I’m concerned no culture has right to tell another culture how to behave, as long as you don’t negatively impact those outside your culture, and don’t try impose it on others without their consent. A reasonable condition surely. Sidetracked again… Back to the relationship with time, that relationship continues until you pass on effectively to where your beliefs dictate, and if they don’t dictate then you need to figure it out. They are your beliefs.
So essentially time appears to be the one constant in everyone’s life. It has some strange properties. As mentioned it appears that we all value it. It’s the common denominator in everything you do, even when you do nothing you still have to spend time doing it. Even just thinking about something. Another interesting property is that you have to spend it on something, but that should be up to you, your choice, its your time.Sorry I must apologize the message disappeared and I had to retype so it’s possibly a bit disjointed. And dyslexia doesn’t help either. Listen I’m just trying to figure this out myself. It’s a interesting paradigm that exists with a exoteric logic and needs some unpacking. So being argumentative doesn’t help it should be figured out as it appears to define morality somehow. Possibly once it is fully understood, portions of it can be introduced in some way shape or form. The philosophy appears sound but I need some help trying to find if there are any fatal flaws. Apart from the occasional person that says they doesn’t value their time.. does that not mean they have no self respect? .. just a thought. It appears that to value ones time may be a categorical imperative or law of nature as defined by Kant. Also thinking about it it should be your right, if you have ownership of your time to not value your time, it’s yours. But you should not be allowed to impose that ideology on others, you should be allowed to even cede that ownership to another party if you wish. As mentioned, freedom of choice. Anyhow thanks for the comment I work during the week so probably won’t comment much… that should put a smile on your dial as it were…sorry if I offended anyone but this forum seems like a good place to bounce this philosophical stuff around a bit…
It is what it is ## 153-54-& 55. They say hindsight is 20/20 and that is all too true when rereading one’s own posts. A little trick, though, is to retype the post and email it to the moderators. They are only too happy to repost your submission for you. The moderators on this site are the best!
Thanks for that, I thought I could delete it on my profile but apparently not. Anyhow I thought because it’s a philosophy that places time at its core. And it appears that it’s in our nature to value time, I was thinking of calling the philosophy inournature-ism… just seems appropriate. So what you are saying is if I send the moderators a revised email and they will substitute it. Thanks that’s a great piece of advice, and service by the moderators. But I think I need someone to proof read my posts befor I post, far easier for others on the forum, so it’s going to go a lot slower from here on out. They can delete posts 153 and 154 if they wish I have delete them on my profile, I thought that would remove them from the thread.
David Benatar’s antinatalist philosophy suck as.
There is no meaning to existence. We make our own meaning.
I asked my daughter when she was seven, “What’s the purpose of existence.” She replied straight away, “To live your life.”
Quite so.
Elements created by fusion in a supernova are reactive. When conditions are right they not only bond into molecules, but they give rise to life.
We are stardust.
Life tends to proliferate. It is fecund.
In sentient animals there is the instinctive quest to live, to survive, and indeed all organisms that exist are descended from ancestors that successfully reproduced viable offspring.
It’s intuitively repugnant to aver that life, existence, is an evil. It’s nihilism, heresy. We should all get sterilised as a matter of urgency.
A death wish. Freud’s term, I think. A disorder.
David Benatar’s desire, indeed purpose is to universalise his attitude to existence, to life, to bring about total extinction, to negate it.
I could recommend he read, The Ancestors’ Tale or Appetite for Wonder. I’ll bet he’s pretty clueless about the evolutionary account of life, thinks he knows it, but he doesn’t grok it. He has some reading to do.
Why does he advise that we who, like him, do exist, unfortunately, should be moral, at least do no harm, I suppose he means?
Why have values, why philosophise or concern yourself with morality, with others’ wellbeing, or rights?
I’m not interested in his defence of same.
It Is What It Is #157 (now #155)
You have a 10 or 15 minute window in which you can delete or edit your own comments here on the thread (including inserting lines between paragraphs if necessary), but if you spot any typos after that, yes, you can email us with your corrections.
You wrote earlier that you’re writing on a mobile device, and we know that makes things more fiddly, and harder to spot any errors too. If your device has any kind of text editor on it, though, we’d advise composing your comments (certainly any that are longer/more complex) there and then copying and pasting them into the thread here once you’re happy with them. It’s just easier to spot and correct any issues with the post that way, and it also means you have a copy of it in case the disappearing-post-gremlin strikes again.
The mods
Strato and It
Strato #152
I too would fall foul of It’s proposals for their new productive world order. At least my younger self would have fared very badly.
I was seriously aspie well before the term Aspergers was created by Lorna Wing in the late sixties. I stammered and was called “Professor Brainstorm” by one of the teachers aged seven. I was frequently taken to the headmaster to show how I “flowed” when talking about internal combustion engines or astronomy. I went to university to do physics maths and electronics.
However, I discovered Lorna Wing’s books on autism and began a process of fixing myself. At fourteen I fell in with a bunch of actors (students) and realised this was how I could learn to be a real boy rather than something freaky. It worked (well, enough…). and for 15 years this was my real life and became the basis of a new social, aesthetic and happy me.
I was, however, the despair of my relatives and bank manager, careless of what I’d been trained for and very happy to live off the state later for five years or so, creating art that the world “needed” to see. (The group sprouted a major novelist and two film directors.)
The ghastly prospect of an “economically productive” imperative for all utterly fails to grasp the potential of rich investment in people, finding a happier version of themselves, of finding problems they want to own. Like all Libertarian systemising of complicated people it demands single metrics and makes most of the same mistakes as neoclassical economics, with too many externalities quite outside of its theories.
I now work mainly in eco-tech and write on neuro-science and physics and I greatly appreciate what “It” is trying to do. I was that systemiser. (Dyslexics have much overlap with Aspies, failing to gate their attention automatically, they need to be systemisers also, to manage the sensory overload.) Such neuro-cognitive diverse folk can become pivotal movers and shakers, but they need to find ways to accommodate (learn!) all the stuff that falls outside of their first-pass theories.
“It”,
I guess I’m not a fully house-trained aspie even now, talking about you in your absence. Apologies. I absolutely wish no offense, only encouragement. But… I am vaguely horrified by your proposals.
I, conversely, believe in a huge state where we are all civil servants informally or actively and that this be posited on Institutions of Excellence, accumulating wisdom for those after us, for the creation of public policy, along with epidemiological assessment to better inform us of policy performance and allow its evolution through intelligent design. Ownership may fall away as a useful concept to be replaced by Obliged Stewardship. This is an essential if we are to mange The Commons for those that follow and wish to continue our adventure of discovery.
My day job is entirely about putting putting people out of demeaning work and creating fully sustainable, circular economies. “Productive work” is a Victorian concept that needs an update.
“Work” that will never be shaved away by smarts, however, is taking care of each other, and that, I claim may prove the most productive of all.
Strato (again),
Graeber’s slightly flippant “Bullshit Jobs” is getting more and more pertinent.
He get just about all of it back.
It appears to be one up from a democracy not sure what that would be called unanimity. The advantage is one doesn’t need elections.
You can do what you want as long as I don’t have to contribute or involve myself I suppose.
Correct but if you believe something then you believe it. That should be your business.
If you have children that was your choice, unless you were raped. Choices entail responsibility and accountability for those choices. You make choices in life take responsibility for them they were your choices no one else’s. If someone, or your culture, want to aide you that is their choice and should not be interfered with.
There is no envisioned state it is a social contract based on what appears to be a law of nature. No premium is placed on productivity the architecture can be allow for a situation where you can live your whole life being unproductive but don’t (a type of universal basic income, that is by definition unjust to the society at large) expect others to contribute to any luxuries.
He can do that if he wants freedom of choice in this weird culture of today he can probably charge people to observe him. Isn’t that typically what influencers do today?
Is that a belief you hold? In my opinion the meaning of existence is up to the individual mine is to enjoy life or existence. You only live once if you are going to spend life looking at what others have and lament not having it yourself you will probably not have much fun but that is your choice.
As everything in the universe.
Exactly what I’m trying to get across its a categorical imperative, or law of nature.
I don’t think that’s his desire, his desire as I understand it is to eradicate injustice. I will ask him if and when I see him if I remember…
I can’t talk for him but I assume he values existence or life that already exists and desires it to be moral, but he seems to have resided in the knowledge that injustice, somehow, will always exist.
To live in a immoral society can’t be much fun, unless you are the one being immoral, as we have all seen. Look at Putin and his immorality. Its as evil, if not worse than Hitler but he seems to be having fun. I don’t think for much longer though when his people realize they will need to pay for his actions, he is their proxy they elected him and must be accountable for their actions.
The value, economic, political and government theory, was a unintended result of trying to resolve the issues of immorality and injustice in society. I would probably also, but i have realized that people pay you to add value to their lives either through entertainment or saving them time or anything else that makes their lives more “livable” as it were. So possibly if they realize any of these concepts they can compensate me in some way. Ethical capitalism, the driving force for innovation everyone’s a winner.. All my friends have some sort of second income this could be mine…Go big or go home…. seems like a appropriate motto.
Sorry had to look it up, you seem very able so great for you if that’s the case, I’m well impressed.
Reflect on then a bit. It’s a social contract theory where everyone, even the dishonest and corrupt can thrive, albeit in their own community that condones their immorality. Even the lazy who want to do nothing can do so in a peaceful environment. The dishonest and corrupt can also exist but they will need to form their own community and be dishonest and corrupt amongst themselves.
That is exactly what I am trying to achieve. But you have to accommodate those that don’t aspire to this. The philosophy I’m proposing accommodates everyone even the dishonest. They must just keep their immorality it amongst themselves.
That is the one problem here, you can create a society of likeminded people, but be careful of dishonest ones, they tend to create a bit of havoc. You can have a society of 10000 people and they can live a harmonious life add one immoral person, or bad apple as it were, and suddenly you need thousands of laws. The laws, or cost of implementing them, should be applicable to only him.
No work should be demeaning. Being a prostitute is somehow sometimes considered demeaning but its a service that many pay money for. I would never do it but as long as all concerned consent its a easy way to make money. Especially if you are good looking and intelligent. But somehow its frowned on.
Here’s a logic for you, you know they say crime must not pay, or does not pay. Somehow they have got it wrong because it obviously pays, if it didn’t there wouldn’t be crime. As such the architecture of the social contract must use this reality, and not fight it. The saying should therefor be “crime MUST pay”, but it must pay for everyone and especially the person exposing it, except the criminal, and anyone else aware of it. It will put a whole new dynamic on criminal activity. Make then hand each other in… but the architecture needs to allow for this.
Again getting sidetracked I’m trying to get a understanding of the possible definition of time, as it pertains to value and its implications. The value theory of time. It seems sound and a metaphysical claim need to get a philosopher’s opinion
It is what it is #159
“Reflect on then a bit. It’s a social contract theory where everyone, except the dishonest and corrupt can thrive. “
This and the answer you gave to me in the same post!
That is exactly how it started whether you want to go the evolutionary route or the religious. Those that are honest and productive survive It didn’t take long to realise that things are not that simple. Being a single mother can happen for more than one reason. Pegging down blame is not possible you then have to give concessions here and bi-laws their in order to allow for these complexities. You then end up where we are today in the world. You are really trying to reinvent the wheel. We do not need to restart but learn and become better
No you don’t if the father was murdered then the person who murdered him needs to account. If the father passed on then there are many mechanisms available, provision should have been made, bad or no planing cannot become the problem of others. If you own a car and don’t insure it, that is your choice, that cannot become my problem. If you are in a accident, and it is your fault, you should be forced to pay for any loss that anyone has suffered. If you don’t have insurance that’s your problem, if you are a single mother ( I don’t know why you make this a gender issue, surely it’s applicable to any single parent). Nothing stops you from forming a group of likeminded people or a club and you can subsidies each other. But isn’t that just insurance… you see sidetracked again. It’s the overarching logic I’m wanting interrogated. That must be sound then one can look at the outcomes of that logic on the individual situations. We are looking at individual situations here. The laws all still exist, they just appear to be more of a guide. There are enough laws in the world the unjust ones that force people to do stuff that they don’t want to need to be looked at. Ones where people have to add value but don’t get any return. They are in effect unjust laws. Bad planing by some should not become problems for others. People need to take responsibility and be accountable for their actions.
Especially if they result in forcing others to spend their time, or add value without their consent. That is a injustice. If a single parent is a single parent because of the actions of others. Like when a rouge immoral unethical leader who you didn’t choose attacks you in your sovereignty country and cause you to spend time on stuff you didn’t want to, they need to pay. If that person was elected to that position he is a proxy for his people and the people will need to account. It’s only fair and just. So yes a single mother ( I’m only being sexist here because you seem to think it’s only single mothers who have a hard time) who is that way because her husband was killed protecting his sovereign country from a attack from immoral evil narcissist, should have a claim against the narcissist or at least those that enabled him. But if a person just spits out babies and expects others to pay for those actions that is immoral and unjust. Take responsibility for your actions, if you don’t why should others. Having children is a privilege and a honor and must not be taken lightly. The responsibility associated with that choice must not be underestimated, and definitely not imposed on others who didn’t make that choice.
It unfortunately gets a bit worse if you have children and you don’t instill morality in them, and they commit immoral actions and cannot account, you should still need to account, it was your choice to have them and not discipline them, you cannot spit out immoral children into society and think it’s fine for others to have to deal with them. Sorry waffling here a bit.
As mentioned in my first post this is a post about getting a understanding of morality and ethics. But it seems to go from being general, or generic, to focusing on specific instances.
If every instance needs to be addressed it’s going to be quite a long process.
The claim I’m making is that time appears to be the origin of value, that is a metaphysical claim. Or a claim about the nature of reality.
We are now down one level at the epistemological implications of that claim. Or it’s effects on the nature of knowledge, specifically the nature of morality or ethics and it’s implication on our existence.
I’m happy to explore these individual issues but they generically all appear to get resolved in the architecture of the resulting social contract.
It’s a bit of mental gymnastics but once one gets the hang of it it’s a exoteric logic. It’s the same logic that appears to define intuition. So as a example and now I’m going to do it, use a specific example. Murder is wrong, why is it wrong? you intuitively know that. The logic is that you are affecting or appropriating the persons time without their consent. As time appears to be the origin of value, and morality, or justice, appears to be the protection and preservation of what one values. It is therefore a injustice to negatively affect, or appropriate, the time of others. There that’s the logical reason or causal chain that explains the injustice.. now if time doesn’t define value the link link or causal chain is broken.
Hope that makes sense.
You will find the same or similar causal chains for all morality or justice. It makes morality objective.
There needs to be a protocol for recourse when that happens, it is currently the justice system, but it is very cumbersome and inefficient, that is because currently it is a bit subjective.
If one can objectively define justice it’s a completely different kettle of fish, or another paradigm, as it were.
It opens the door to a far simpler protocols for recourse, the only problem is it assumes we are all equal in the eyes of the law. There is no elected king who has universal immunity, the only immunity is from those who regard him as their leader. So Putin has immunity from his people as they have elected him he can treat them as immorally as he wishes, they elected him. But he cannot do what he is doing to the Ukrainian people, he is not their leader, that is fundamentally immoral and he will need, or should be made, to account, same as Hitler. Same with North Korea his people elected him and regard him as their leader, it is their choice he should be left alone. But if he impacts anyone outside his country. It’s open season on him, as they say in hunting lingo. Very simplistic but I’m sure you get the idea.
Reflect on that a bit.
You see the interesting thing about having time as the maxim in a social contract is that it has no biases, no race, religion, color, culture or any property that is, or can introduce a biased. The only biases appear to be introduced by the species, the individual, his/her parents and culture of the individual under consideration but that only your parents and their culture can address, don’t impose it on others.
Also everyone has time in equal measure one lifetime, if you are unhappy with your apportionment blame whoever you believe gave it to you. And if you don’t believe anything blame your parents they created you. But instead of blaming them you should rather thank them as life can be very entertaining if you don’t suffer to many injustices. Toleration and respect of others..
listen to strato’s daughter about the reason for existence.
They are both 100% correct that would possibly entail reasonable people to enjoy life as much as possible without causing others to suffer.
It is what it is
”….blame whoever have it to you…”
At what level? Have they provided all conditions, perfect conditions, so that I can protect myself and family against all conditions? Who is responsible for that? Am I responsible for full employment. Am I responsible for food distribution, inflation, mine mum wage etc? These are collective issues that bring shared social responsibilities. If I am to be a full member then I expect others to do their part. If I am ill to not drop that responsibility. Otherwise you describe a life of internal torture. A Wild West where life means nothing. Even an imagined all powerful god has to answer for why this is not a perfect existence in which time is the only factor.
Phil #158
Thank you, Phil! I can’t express how much I rely on observations from this site as a counterbalance against some of the glaring headlines that creep into my feeds.
I am trying to understand what your saying here. This philosophy allows you to be as creative as you want with your time and if others see value in your creativity they will reward you as they currently do. As a artist or musician if you produce work that others appreciate it has the same mechanisms to rewards you. But only if it adds enjoyment or pleasure to your life. I’m not going to buy a CD of music I don’t like or buy a art work that I don’t find aesthetically pleasing. I’m not sure what the problem with this is or I’m just missing it somehow. Can you please explain in language that a 5 year old can understand just so that I can respond appropriately and not have any misunderstandings or venturing down the wrong path here.
Iiwii,
You do seem rather certain and also also dogmatic about free-will as a capability we all possess and can fully exercise.
You consistently speak of choices and owning the consequences for them, or of deserving, say the wealth we might acquire, if we do pursue wealth (and power?), as if we all can win in the presumed competition, and that we deserve penury for poor choices.
Your stance smacks of moralism a bit.
The old christian absolutist belief in free-will is the rationalised basis for retributive justice in the penal code still subscribed to in many states of America today, where even the death penalty is till on the statute books.
Solitary confinement is included for prison ‘offenders’. Louis Theroux has helped to bring this arcane system and its thinking to our notice, for, it is hoped, revision.
About exploitative work in American prisons. Inhumane. Damning,
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/13/us-prison-work-breaks-bodies-minds-for-pennies
The alternative philosophy to retributive ‘justice’ in theory of justice is rehabilitative justice, through education, socialisation, helping the offender to gain a healthy moral sensibility about right and wrong and of universal rights, self-concept, insights, self-understanding, anger and impulsivity management, psychology; in short, help.
A learned friend, a barrister, perhaps now a judge, remarked, “Capital punishment brutalises a society.”
The populace of North Korea did not choose Kim Jong-un for their leader, as you assert.
It’s like his grandfather Kim Il-sung took George Orwell’s novel, written in 1949, describing the ultimate dystopian totalitarian state, Nineteen-Eighty-Four, as a manual for how to manage, control a state. ‘War is peace,’ an example of Orwellian ‘Double-speak.’
The North Korean people are profoundly uneducated, politically, and generally. Censorship is total. The internet is blocked by a firewall. All they have ever heard is propaganda cooked up and propagated from ‘The Ministry of Truth.’
And it works. Such leaders are hugely popular, indeed, loved. ‘Big Brother. Is Watching You’, the theme in Orwell’s classic.
The same model applies for China, rather worryingly, of ‘The People’s Republic’s’, or the CCP’s, and the ‘People’s Liberation Army’s’ growing might and bellicosity as a superpower.
But what do the Chinese people need to be ‘liberated’ from, indeed, except from the regime itself? The message the CCP reinforces to the people is that, “China can’t do democracy. It would cause disintegration. Indeed democracy is feeble. Just look at America’s, or the UK’s political dysfunction.”
Putin is trying to establish the same model in Russia, and to own Europe. Elections in Russia are totally rigged, farcical. Show trials of dissidents are the norm, as it was under Joseph Stalin, Putin’s hero, along with Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great, who expanded Russia.
The Russian citizen can still access outside information on the internet via a VPN, but one has to be bothered enough to want true information, and to pay, as the rare curious, motivated type of person, and to be able to read say, German or English.
The masses watch state television, read state media, are like mushrooms, kept in the dark and fed on bullshit.
But they deserve democracy, the truth, and not to live under a corrupt kleptocracy with the deranged dictators’ evil militaristic grand designs.
Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialism is a moral philosophy base on the obligation to make ‘authentic’ choices, to own the freedom one is burdened with, being human. He was atheist. But it is again based in the presumption of free-will as a human endowment.
Free-will is not the implicit given that is presumed. Neo-Darwinian Philosopher Dan Dennett says “We have the kind of freewill worth wanting.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joCOWaaTj4A
And for a longer coverage on the notion of free-will by Dennett,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGPIzSe5cAU
Just further to David Benatar’s nihilist philosophy. I suspect it is a reflection of, or reaction to, the social and political milieu in South Africa with its legacy of colonialism and apartheid. It’s certainly pessimistic, utterly. If he came to this view at age 15, perhaps it’s time to rethink his world-view, his Weltschmerz.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weltschmerz
someone surely has to control your will it might as well be you.
I think it’s possibly moral realism
in essence justice is simple don’t take want your haven’t paid for, and don’t hurt anyone. And although it’s got nothing to do with justice, being friendly and tolerant of ignorance helps. If you can’t get that correct you deserve to be excluded from a moral society. If your culture or community finds it tolerable to steal then fine but keep it within your culture or community. Same with hurting people, keep it in your culture or community if they find it acceptable you are free to do that. Why did your grandparents always say “Say please and thank you” when you ask or get something. Manners and respect something most children today find foreign concepts. Something to thank the woke culture for, how they are going to rectify that is going to be interesting to watch.
I tend to think immoral members of society brutalizes society.
Cool someone who references YouTube posts I’ll watch them. I think Dan Dennett is great, would to get his opinion, but he probably doesn’t have much time for us regular people… I have watched a few YouTube posts that he has been party to. Great philosopher.
I think you are a bit presumptuous about the philosophy of David Benatar as I understand it he is not a nihilist. He has a logical argument that is sound. It’s probably more like a form of moral nihilism.
But it’s consequences are possibly a bit drastic or possibly boring to have no consciousness in existence. He is trying to realize a world with less injustice. That is a good intention, but not such a great outcome. I do see your point.
This philosophy of mine is strange it’s quite paradoxical as everything changes but everything stays the same. It appears to be the architecture of the “law of nature” that I’m trying to define. It appears to be how we subconsciously do what we do. And it almost appears to unlock another level of consciousness, a “level” that defines ethics and morality. Moral realism that is applicable to all conscious minds. It’s extremely basic but seems to work, and fits the bill, pretty much all the time. It’s why you swat a mosquito, why a lion will chase a zebra and why the zebra will run away from the lion. So it transcends us as a species, that appears to be why it’s going to be tricky to poke a hole in it. It’s a law of nature or categorical imperative, as described by Kant.
It’s the reason way we act the way we do.
Anyhow that’s why it apparently seems so familiar but not quite. Look at the sayings “don’t waste my time” or “time is money” they eluded to the fact that we all essentially value our time.
“Idle hands make devils work”
Its been done for thousands of years. If you fall from grace then you will be punished by god, at the hands of man. Work houses, orphanages with little charity. High walls to keep the clean from the unclean. Robin Hood, The Return, to defend against the modern Sherif of Nottingham. Madness.
It is what it is #167, you wrote: “someone surely has to control your will it might as well be you.”
I just read Nick Chater’s The Mind Is Flat — you may have read my post in the Book Club 2022. The entire book is about how our brain is a master illusionist. Chater refers to the left hemisphere of the brain as “the interpreter._The interpreter invents stories to justify the choices that we have made. Chater wrote: “So while we may imagine that our justifications for our choices merely report the inner mental causes of those choices… perhaps we should consider another possibility entirely: that our justifications for our choices are ‘cooked up’, in retrospect, by the ever-inventive left hemisphere interpreter… The speed and fluency with which we can often generate and justify thoughts is impressive. So quick, indeed, that it seems that at the very moment that we ask ourselves a question, the answer springs to mind – so fluent that we don’t realize we are making it…The left-brain interpreter constructs our thoughts and feelings at the very moment that we think and feel them.” He concludes the chapter:
“If mental depth is an illusion, this is, of course, just what we should expect. Pre-formed beliefs, desires, motives, attitudes to risk lurking in our hidden inner depths are a fiction: we improvise our behaviour to deal with the challenges of the moment rather than to express our inner self. So there is no point wondering which way of asking the question (which would you like to choose, which would you like to reject) will tell us what people really want. There are endless possible questions, and limitless possible answers. If the mind is flat, there can be no method, whether involving market research, hypnosis, psychotherapy or brain scanning that can conceivably answer this question, not because our mental motives, desires and preferences are impenetrable, but because they don’t exist.”
So, I think whether or not we have “free will” is a question about which we can keep an open mind but Chater very convincingly demonstrates that we have all been victims of a hoax, perpetrated on us by our own brains. “Our brains are spectacular engines of improvisation that can, in the moment, generate a colour, an object, a memory, a belief or a preference, spin a story, or reel off a justification. And it is such a compelling storyteller that we are fooled into thinking that it is not inventing our thoughts ‘in the moment’ at all, but fishing them from some deep inner sea of pre-formed colours, objects, memories, beliefs or preferences, of which our conscious thoughts are merely the shimmering surface.”
It is what it is,
If you were thinking of writing a book, you might call it, “On Time: The Human Subjective Experience of Time and the Valuation of the Fourth Dimension.”
Obviously time isn’t the chief factor in the concept of value.
Money represents elements in the ground, mineral ‘resources’, or hydrocarbons sequestered underground over geological time since the Carboniferous Era, work to extract, transport and process it. Work and fabrication represents skill, which requires education, human resources, designed and manufactured machinery.
Money represents the Sun’s energy, enabling plant life to lock up carbon, which constitutes fossil fuels and the food we consume. The higher up the food chain, the more energy and ‘work’ required, is invested in it.
It represents organisation. It represents investment.
I’m not sure that time is the reductionist universal unit of value. Life, relationships, experience, consciousness is more than time. There is obviously value which can’t be quantified monetarily.
You are also talking about justice. I’m not sure how time relates to this theme.
One can’t force theories as like revelations to fit as a key to everything when there is plain incongruity.
Also one has to ensure that one’s ideas are original, haven’t been proposed and critiqued before. That requires much study. One has to refer to the preexisting literature to show originality, something new and insightful, a new synthesis.
There is a plethora of books on the topic,
https://www.google.com/search?q=book+on+time&oq=book+on+time&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i512l7j0i22i30l2.6456j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
I’m no cultural relativist. I think there are better and worse cultures. I subscribe to the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Dec 1948.
Practices like female genital mutilation (FGM), for one example, cannot be tolerated or justified.
Michael #169
Was there any mention of quantum computers?
I am not sure I understand any of this but I ask because a few years ago I read an article stating that quantum computers know the answers before the question is asked. Something didn’t seem right with this but of course the answers are there before the question! It’s just about asking the right question. So I am also uncomfortable with our brains creating illusions or more accurately, unhappy about the language that describes what happens. I have recently read that quantum computers can’t even give direct answers but only possibilities (not that I fully understand what that actually means?). If I am thinking along the right lines, we are given options, just like in quantum computing and we decide which way to go. Random scenarios are played out and we may only have a split second to decide. Is that an illusion? We can assess the results afterwards and decide whether to do the same or something else the next time. Where is the illusion?
You see the rules of this philosophy are simple a child could even fit in, they must just be friendly and respect each other. Even the woke can fit in as long as they are friendly, something they appear to find a bit tricky though. It’s only unfriendly people who affect your time negatively, without your consent, who find it a cumbersome. As mentioned it’s a exoteric logic that appears to define reality as we subconsciously experience it anyway.
No, you got to think bigger, go big or go home seems appropriate, it appears to be applicable to all sentient beings, not just humans, and it appears to be objective not subjective, they all value their time. So it transcends us as as species. It appears to be a law of nature as described by Kant. A categorical imperative, he saw it but couldn’t put his finger on it. Same with Hume and his is-aught gap, or logical leap of faith, this appears to provide that logical bridge. More recently philosophers like Marx also saw it but couldn’t connect the last few dots. He was stumped by only attaching value workers labour he could get his head around to see value in everyone even employers. So he stumped himself. John Rawls in his book “Theory of justice” he comes up with a interesting concept, that any just social contract needs to be designed from behind a “veil of ignorance”. Time is the perfect veil of ignorance. It has no biases. It’s relationship with us is ultimately absolute you either have it or you don’t you are either dead or alive. It is very absolute and binary there is no grey area.
Here’s a thought experiment. Imagine you are sitting in your kitchen at the table. You are immobile, and have within reach the following, any document that you may deem is the supreme document with the answers you need next to you. Some may choose, the constitution, others the Koran, or a comedian may request a Archie comic, whatever blows your hair back, as they say, you can even have a iPhone to browse YouTube for advice, anything that you believe has the ability to provide you with a reasonable protocol to provide answer for justice and recourse for yourself, the Bible if you think that what’s required. It’s your choice all within easy reach. Now imagine the following hypothetical situation. There is someone coming to your door, it is open. That person has something in his one hand that you attach much value to, that thing was alive awhile ago but is now dead, in the other hand he has the weapon that he used to kill that something. It is obvious to you he killed what you dearly valued. He has serious malicious intent in his demeanor. He is very obviously going to kill you if he can and that’s made obvious to you. If you want to know how you know, his got the t shirt on that says so, sorry just trying to introduce a bit of humor here. Anyhow you have a button that you can press to end that persons life, what do you do? Now if you are a reasonable person you would say “press the button”. Now logically if you don’t press the button he will kill you and you will leave this world, but worse than that you will have left the rest of us to deal with this maniac, thank you for nothing, and no one would thank you for that. Now any reasonable person would at least give the person a reasonable chance to explain himself, a reasonable person would not just press the button, but rather say stop, cease and desist, as it were, and if you have the opportunity, you could warn him that if he doesn’t stop you will blow him up. Even though it obvious his going to kill you give him the opportunity to explain, if you have the opportunity. Even though you shouldn’t have to he is obviously trespassing on your property. If he just continues, after that you press the button as any reasonable person would, it would be nice if you had a gun, you could possibly shoot him in the leg, but you don’t. Any reasonable person would be 100% happy to exist in a society with someone like you. In fact others should and would be proud to live in a community with you. Even though you are technically a murderer, you see murder can be moral. Now let’s unpack that a bit. What was he going to do that was so bad. He was going to stop you from being able to spend your time going forward. By blowing him up you have stopped him from being able to allocate his time. More specifically, to be able to allocate time to kill you. You, end his relationship with time, so he has moved on to wherever his beliefs dictate, and no longer has the ability to allocate time to harming you and others going forward. It appears to be how the law of nature works. It appears to be cause of the fight or flight, mechanism, that all sentient beings seem to possess. If you are going to affect another sentient beings time negatively going forward, expect recourse as that sentient being sees fit. We have just with the evolution of our justice systems provided our species a protocol for morality and recourse albeit very cumbersome slow and ineffectual even unjust at times. The only we created and evolved our justice models is only because “jungle justice” or the law of nature, as it were was never understood properly. It appears that once one understands how it works one can see if there is a very basic underlying logic. There appears to be, but that logic is only available once one understands that it appears to be based on what Kant defined as a categorical imperative. That is that we all value our relationship with time. It’s a law of nature like gravity you can ignore it but it appears to be universal. This appears to be the realization of that concept of a categorical imperative. It’s based in pure reason. Not sure if I’m articulating this well.
It appears that you are created when your sentient or conscious being starts to experience time that can be whenever you believe. You continue to have that relationship with time your whole life. Until you die then your relationship with time in this reality ends and you move on to wherever your beliefs dictate. If you believe in nothing then that’s what you believe. Time appears to be a universal constant, sorry just thought that I would just throw that in there. While you are alive you have to spend time on everything you do, whether you like it or not. Even when you are doing nothing you still have to spend time doing it. It appears that you always have to spend it on something. But that should be your choice, free will. If you don’t feel like spend more time on yourself, you can always end it. But again, that should be your choice. It’s your relationship with time, others have their own. Time has a few interesting properties, we all have it. We all have it in equal measure. We all value it. It is what it is, I suppose 😂😂 I just realized the humor of the saying in this context with regards to my pseudonym …side tracked again, back to the point.
Like I say it appears to be a very interesting philosophy. It assumes we all equal and has a interesting logic that allows any culture or religion to exist as long as they respect the right of others to also exist. It even creates the ability for cultures that are controversial, what some would possibly consider horrific, to exist as long as they don’t impose that culture on others, or expose others to those cultural practices without their consent. Controversial cultures,or sects, should be allowed to buy a piece of land to practice their culture in privacy, without affecting others, no matter how controversial to others. If your culture respects others and you are friendly and it’s rituals are expressions of cultural prowess and beauty and show a appreciation for the arts I’m sure you will be free to practice it openly without hindrance. Look at those impressive eastern, Japanese and Chinese cultural festivals, some are hugely impressive by any measure. Look at the Rio carnival or the culture of New Orleans, they are cultural expressions that are proud, friendly and peaceful expressions of self respect and respect for others. Albeit a bit of a drinking fest for some as long as they are friendly. Anyhow sidetracked again. This philosophy has or unlocks a interesting logic that appears to allow for a interesting architecture for a social contract. That logic and reason appear to be intrinsically linked to how consciousness perceives or interacts with time. Anyhow it needs to be interrogated by people way more clued up on this than me. If it’s found to have any merit that should not be ignored. Surely?
Olli, I don’t think Chater specifically discussed quantum computers, but the final chapter discusses a few ideas about artificial intelligence. Chater noted that the secret of intelligence is imaginative interpretation, rather that cold logic. I think this theme was developed further in The Language Game. But here, in The Mind is Flat, he wrote:
“To those who, like me, are fascinated by the possibilities of artificial intelligence, the moral is that we should expect further automation of those mental activities that can be solved by ‘brute force’ rather than mental elasticity – the routine, the repetitive, the well defined. This is part of a trend that started with the development of stone tools in the Olduvai Gorge in present-day Tanzania, more than two and a half million years ago and accelerated spectacularly in the Industrial Revolution: people and technology can achieve far more than people alone. It is a continual source of amazement to us that tasks that seemed to require the full power of human ingenuity can be solved, often far more efficiently, by processes of standardization and mechanization: the flexibility and dexterity of human hand-weaving could, in many cases, be replaced by the precision achieved by the hand-loom, and then the steam-driven Jacquard loom, controlled by punched cards around 1800, and on to the phenomenal productivity of the computerized power looms of today. At each step, the environment is made more precise and more standardized; and more of the task can be handed over to machines”
Computers can perform tasks at incredible speed, and while they are very good at games like chess, I think Chater would argue that computers suck at charades. He wrote: “To those who fear the march of the machines, this should be of some comfort. If imagination and metaphor is the secret of our intelligence, then that secret may, perhaps, be safely locked away in the human brain for centuries and perhaps for ever.”
iiwii,
Ah! Libertarian judge jury and executioner.
No balanced human being is that certain outside of an instigated personal attack. Schizophrenics are certain. In tests I always interpreted looks of lust or come-hither-ness as looks of hate. I’m partially inclined to prosopagnosia. I may have missed out on a lot.
Your dog was run over and clearly distressed. This kind stranger put him out of his misery, but is devastated by the experience. His look, his look, reflects both horror in his kind actions and dread at facing you. Does your head really put it together right?
These are not useful moral arguments when certainty is artificially imposed…
As I tried to explain at the outset, time is hugely elastic in value, the theft of a few weeks of critical experience from a child may devastate a whole life. But that is not observable until later in that life.
Others, with dull parts of their life (perhaps because they were poorly educated about finding delight) want nothing more than to kill time, rush through periods of isolation, under-stimulation, not knowing how to find satisfying stimulation it for themselves.
There is no transactable metric I can see here. Its formal and blunt imposition would create moral chaos in my view, smearing over personal value. I think Proust would be appalled at time as a uniform metric of value. His whole schtick was about the transcendent potential of the moment.
I really enjoy listening to intellectual debate.
Here’s one that you should find interesting it after all features your sites namesake Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris it is very interesting and telling.
https://youtu.be/Mm2Jrr0tRXk
So the trolley problem is a bit tricky let’s rehash it a bit first.
Let’s say you are force to push a button X to kill one person or button Y to kill 5. What would you do. You would press none. Now you are told that you will be killed and everyone you care about will also be killed if you don’t make the choice. Reasonably one could expect you to sacrifice one to same many but that choice was forced on you by a immoral agent and essentially he is the immorality not you. All things being equal and you don’t know the people any reasonable person would press the button X. But if things are not equal and you know anyone involved and they are someone who shares your values in life, then you would not press the button that would kill them.
But essentially the person who designed the experiment needs to be killed so that this situation won’t then arise. He is the designer and cause of this evil or immoral situation to exist, and be imposed on you without your consent.
If you are in that same dilemma now with the train carriage. It depends on your perception of the people involved. If there is the opportunity to push someone onto the tracks, let them make the decision if they want to save any people, you cannot affect people negatively without their consent. So if he is happy to sacrifice his life by throwing himself onto the tracks and possibly save people that now is his choice. But surely you can just throw yourself onto the tracks, or at least argue that if you both did you have more chance of derailing the train if you feel that way inclined. Now you are sacrificing two lives for one, and what if that one life you saved was Hitler or Putin. The whole story just has to many, loose ends, as it were.
Richard’s story about sacrificing one to save four is also a bit strange. One would leave the healthy person, unless he is so unhappy with life that he wants to die and is happy for his organs to be used, but I doubt that would be the case. So any reasonable person would tell the four that they are all going to die if one of them doesn’t sacrifice his life slightly prematurely to save the other three. Those in favor can roll a dice, or draw straws and exclude those that don’t want to be involved, but if your not involved you cannot benefit either. Why should a perfectly healthy person who has nothing to do with this be sacrificed? That is a injustice… what is a perfectly healthy person doing at the doctor anyway? Again to many loose ends, I suppose that’s why their hypothetical . So while we’re into hypothetical situations that generally cannot exist, look at my totally hypothetical example in my post above ☝️ that has a few less improbabilities, although I’m somehow sure it has more chance of ever occurring in reality.
Back to the debate they point out some very interesting truths about morality and ethics and the way we perceive it. It appears that the value theory of time resolves pretty much all these issues.
Hi Phil
Just saw your post now when I posted this. I will read it reflect on it a bit and comment later, possibly this evening. At work so got other stuff to do right now. But listen to the link in my post above and listen to what they are saying. They are trying to figure out morality as well. But just can’t quite nail it down.
It is what it is,
Kant’s Categorical Imperative is the Golden Rule, ‘do as you would be done by.’
People in traditional societies are task oriented. They don’t concern themselves with time as a valued resource to be save or foolishly and imprudently squandered.
But I don’t implicitly romanticise traditional societies. I like books, for starters.
The Puritan christians who became captains of industry, overseeing their ‘dark satanic mills’ as William Blake called the textile factories from 1750, were owners of the timepiece, punishing the oppressed workers for robbing him of time and productivity.
They were obsessed with sloth and idleness. They were against fun, levity. Wesleyan Methodists. Capitalists.
Christians chasing wealth.
The articles I linked by EP Thompson describes cyclical time and task orientation in the cottage industry life and economy before the rural people had to abandon their generationally sustainable life and go to the city to work in the mills. No more spinning and weaving by hand at home, a few hours a day, before milking the cow, gardening, mending clothes, shoes, teaching children.
Life was meaningful, before. They certainly came to reflect on it that way when they lost it.
It is a most enlightening essay.
I do guitar repair, neck resets, tweak or install truss rods, make bone nuts and bridge saddles, set up with truly perfect intonation and action, fret dressing, total refret jobs, do internal repairs, like fix splits, loose braces. I have many special luthiery tools and jugs from Stewmac, Ohio.
I do it until it’s unimprovable, done.
I am a perfectionist and an altruist. I have perfect relative pitch. It can get pretty intense and physical, filing, retensioning strings, tuning, just to keep checking progress. A balancing act.
You can easily go too far. Start again. Concentrate.
I do it for the customer. I can’t do ‘rough is good enough’. It can be pretty mentally consuming. My rates are very reasonable.
Busy workshops are into productivity to make the money.
I can sure dig that.
I transcribed back upthread, post #149, from the Thompson essay, the paragraph at the end, describing the Nuer of South Sudan and their task-oriented life, not concerned with time at all.
And so they are one with whatever they are doing. No rushing.
But they recently have had serious floods and the men are warring at present. It happens when resources are scarce, as has happened from the flooding.
China and Russia are flooding guns and other weapons into Africa.
Michael #173
I feel it arrogant to think that we can imagine to understand the workings of the universe but put our minds on an unreachable pedestal Michael. It wreaks of religion to me. The human being at the centre of the universe again trying to look interesting and unsolvable in case a passing super intelligent being happens by 😉
Olli #177
”….in case a cute super intelligent being happens by”
To put it bluntly, this idea sounds worse than useless. It’s basically a blank slate concept (“you can do anything if you have no preconditions!”), and Steven Pinker pointed out the number one problem with blank slates: they don’t do a damn thing. If you take away all the underlying machinery of the mind, you wouldn’t somehow get a protean magical substance: you just get a useless lump of flesh inside your skull.
It doesn’t even agree with how neural structures are forged and maintained in the brain as encoded memories, as well as the established circuitry of hundreds of billions of neurons, each of which may have up to ten thousand connections. To say nothing of the need to explain where the subset that form our conscious experiences themselves originate in all this massive data-maintaining machinery.
Waving it all off as “illusion” just strikes me as a lazy non-explanation that can conveniently wave away whatever the brain does. That’s not remotely a falsifiable scientific theory, let alone a tenable one in the current circumstances of the mind sciences.
So excuse me if I continue to use concepts such as “the subconscious” and “mental depth” without a twinge of guilt.
This too. I’m generally suspicious of any theory that revels in human exceptionalism, because that’s usually a massive red flag for obscurantism and, in extreme cases, obstructionism. There’s a big difference between treating the unexplained aspects of cognition as a technical challenge to work on and demystify (pragmatic), and treating them as Wonderful Mysteries To Revel In Because We’re So Much Better Than Computers, Take That You Soulless Scientists (romantic).
To paraphrase Sir Fred Hoyle from Man in the Universe (1964): these people who ask “can computers think?”… what on earth do they think they themselves are? More complex organic computers, to be sure, made after hundreds of millions of years of evolution, but still ultimately computers.
Anyway, back to a prior topic of about three, four days ago…
For one thing, I’m still not seeing where the suicides, the anti-immortals, and the advocates of euthanasia fit into this. I.e. people who do not value time, the whole time, and nothing but the time.
For starters, your point about smoke and gravity assumes what you set out to prove: that those confounding factors are merely compatible with the theory in question, whereas my point is: what do you do with counterexamples that contradict the theory?
You can’t claim “time to oneself always has infinite value it is one’s life” as a “reasonable assumption” when there exist people who not only don’t care about time, but either actively go out of their way to counter it or say, “yes, but only this far, and no further”.
For another thing, one of your answers to the counter makes no sense. A few days ago, you responded to my “people who don’t want to live forever” claim by saying that people who have an infinite amount of what to you is an “infinite value” suddenly won’t value it, on the grounds that… what, an infinite amount of an infinite value equals zero? That’s not even mathematically sensible, let alone basic common sense.
Tangentially, how anyone is supposed to “sell” something like “time”, which is completely indifferent to whatever we puny humans plan to do in it, I don’t know. That sounds more like you’re unwittingly making an equivocation between “time” and “labour/work” to me, which are wholly different things.
But let’s go bigger here.
See, the first and most obvious trouble with this “common denominator” argument for time valuation is that it is bland and non-insightful, if not outright unevidenced. I’ve been reading what you’ve written, and a lot of it looks like twisting a lot of disparate ideas into a framework not really built for them, or even with them in mind. I’ve seen you use “time” as a stand-in for “life”, “labour”, “work”, “self-control”, “choice/free will”, “ownership”, all kinds of things. Yet the confusion hasn’t added anything collectively that those concepts apparently can’t explain or weren’t explaining on their own anyway.
The way you’re using it, “time” can basically be substituted for any “taken for granted” basic property of reality, and we are enlightened not one jot. We could value “3D space”, or “breathable oxygen”, or “nerve impulses”, or “organic matter” – every single one of which operates from birth till death for everybody – or just cut out the middlemen and go for “life”, “consciousness”, “soul”, “being”… whatever abstract thing you like. You claim it’s objective and free of bias, but that’s confusing “time” (which is) with “our valuing of it” (which, frankly, I don’t think it is).
And this is yet another major reason I think you’re on a hiding to nothing. You’ve just opened up your own reducio ad absurdum. It’s one thing to talk about humans valuing time, who at least can notice and discuss it, but how on earth would you ever get any evidence that animals – a group as varied as jellyfish, ants, and aardvarks – have anything going on in their heads that even comes close to “valuing” time, as opposed to just operating in it (like, say, every piece of matter in the universe does) or measuring it for its own purposes? Or are you going to go further and declare that DNA “values” time, somewhere in all those adenines, guanines, cytosines, and thymines?
Therein lies the problem. You don’t seem to make any distinction between “time is just objectively there, so obviously an organism would evolve to measure and exploit it” and “time is everything’s secret unconscious wish fulfilment”. And that’s significent because “time” by itself, like “heat”, “light”, and “3D space”, doesn’t tell an organism what to do with it. It neither has goals of its own nor automatically generates any. It’s the environment in which the organism seeks out its own goals, the things it can be said to actually “value” in any sense.
But because of such a confusion, you end up with what appears to be a theory that explains everything and nothing at the same time, while also apparently being “objective”, “without bias”, and so seemingly irrefutable.
“Time.”
See, it’s a non-starter, isn’t it?
To put it bluntly, this idea sounds worse than useless. It’s basically a blank slate concept (“you can do anything if you have no preconditions!”),
Zeuglodon Beta: I probably didn’t represent what Chater wrote very well, but I don’t think he’s talking about the mind being a blank slate. The quote below, which I think summarizes his thesis, is from the epilogue of the book.
“So we are not driven by hidden, inexorable forces from a dark and subterranean mental world. Instead, our thoughts and actions are transformations of past thoughts and actions, and we often have considerable latitude, and a certain judicial discretion, regarding which precedents we consider, which transformations we allow. … we are astonishingly inventive ad hoc reasoners, creative metaphor-machines, continually welding together scattered scraps of information into momentarily coherent wholes. … This does not mean that anything goes – but it does mean that the construction of our lives and our society is an inherently open-ended, creative process, and that the standards by which we judge our decisions and actions are part of that same creative process.”
See also my full reveries in the book club 2022. Again, I apologize if I didn’t explain well enough what I read in Chater’s book.
PS, Chater didn’t say that the brain is not a computer, he just said the organic processors work differently than computational computer processors.
Fair enough: I’ll revise my position based on that instead.
Mm, I still find myself unconvinced. For one thing, a lot of these “ad hoc” phenomena seem to be accountable under existing cognitive biases, which have two qualities opposite to the ones proposed here. The first: they’re systematic, not random, and betray a tendency towards certain modes of thought (most obviously the self-serving biases). The second: they’re usually committed without any conscious awareness, to the point that even educated people trained to spot them can still end up committing them without noticing.
For another, if he’s going to deny the subconscious “dark and subterranean mental world”, then where does he think the past thoughts and actions and precedents and pre-existing metaphorical options – the raw materials for transformation – are going to come from? The spinal cord? That kind of data at the very least demands a roughly accurate memory, which can’t exist all at once in the conscious. Things happen backstage that don’t get noticed onstage (most obviously all the memories you’re NOT drawing upon at any given moment). To say nothing of the really weird phenomena like blindsight. Sooner or later, you need a subconscious or equivalent concept to account for them: something that takes notes and stores data even when you yourself aren’t aware of it.
And while this one’s more a personal gut feeling than a solid criticism, for all the talk about wonderful open-ended inventiveness, this theory makes humans sound more like deliberate spin doctors. Or worse, random chaoticians. I mean, when even “the standards by which we judge our decisions and actions are part of that same creative process”, it’s hard not to wonder why it wouldn’t “mean that anything goes”.
On the whole, as presented and as I understand it so far, I’m personally not sure this is going to take off as a viable theory of the mind. Quite apart from the extremely useful concept of the subconscious mind as neuroscience and psychology unearth stranger and stranger mental phenomena we’re not even aware of… well, sheer creativity and metaphor doesn’t by itself seem to satisfy as an explanation likely to get far in the mind sciences, any more than random mutation could explain adaptational complexity in biology. It looks like it needs something else, something more unambiguously directional or functional.
“This makes humans sound more like deliberate spin doctors”. That’s exactly what our brain is. And we are victims of the grand illusion.
Ok so let me try a different approach here. For a bunch who are supposed to have the ability to be able to see reason and logic this is a bit like having your teeth pulled. But it good I need that robust criticism as long as its based in some sort of reason and logic, in other words reasonable.
So let’s try something different here, Heidegger’s approach, he had a concept of Being and Time. I haven’t read anything about it but watched a few YouTube clips to try get the gist of it. Being is your Being, the individuals experience of time, whereas time is common or the universal experience of time. Now it appears that every conscious mind values its being, or its experience of time and wants that to be as pleasant as possible. It’s something a five-year-old or my pet Jack Russel understands, so it should be easy for you guys. If you ask a five-year-old to touch a electric fence he will touch it. When he is shocked his Being, or experience of time, is unpleasant and he will let it go. Now ask him to do it again. This time it will be a bit trickier. He doesn’t like being shocked so he will instinctively say “no I don’t want to” he has made the connection that to touch it is unpleasant, and he will have to allocate some of his time or being to do something he doesn’t want to do, get shocked, or have a unpleasant Being (time) going froward. Now you can force him to do it if you are a Hitler or Putin by saying if you don’t shock yourself, I’m going to punish you. (same as what Putin and his people did to Ukraine). The child now has a dilemma acting against his free will, to do what he want to do, not touch it does exist but he isn’t given that option, so for him that option, doesn’t exist. He has to act against his will, and his Being or experience of time going forward is going to be unpleasant, the option for him not experience unpleasantness exists, but his access to it was taken from him by another sentient or conscious being without his consent, a injustice has occured. Now this is where contract law comes in. Let’s say you have the same situation as above except after the child has shocked himself and is aware of the consequences, I say to the child please touch the electric fence again (he may be a sadomasochist and he says OK, but that is seldom the case and if so, he is doing it of his own free will). I can always up the consequences a bit by asking him to jump off a 1000m cliff with no parachute, side-tracked again…. If you reward the child with a bag of sweets the prospect of touching the electric fence becomes more of an option again if he regards the pleasure that the sweets will bring his Being outweighs the unpleasantness of the shock, then he may well be willing to experience the shock again. Free will or freedom of choice. You will always choose the option to make your Being more pleasant and that is your choice.
The same with my Jack Russel if I ask him to sit and he does he gets attention and for some reason he likes that, many sentient beings seem to value attention. But normally he gets a treat or to go for a walk. If something has his attention its sometimes a bit tricky as he sees more value in the paying attention to something else. If, however I had trained him with negative reinforcement a shock collar he tends to be way more eager to be compliant with my will.
You see Heidegger also almost got it, he just didn’t make the connection that Being and time, they are essentially the same thing. Being is just the individuals experience of time and time as we seem to currently regard or experience it is the universal experience of the measurement of Being, or your allocation of Being to something and is measured with a watch. Free will appears to be your control of the Being. And when the Being is not in a state of free will that is an injustice. Look at all your laws where you loose control of your time they are regarded as injustices, murder, rape, enslavement, forced labour, to replace something someone has stolen from you. They all affect your time going forward negatively without your consent.
Does that articulate it a bit better. Even a five year old and my Jack Russel subconsciously understand it. Surely you guys can reason it out for yourselves I’m new at this. That’s what makes us different from the rest of the animals we appear to have a higher capacity to reason. And this is very basic reasoning. In simple terms we all value our time, as I keep saying it appears to be a law of nature or as Kant described it in his work on “groundwork of the metaphysics of morals” or Kantian ethics as a categorical imperative.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative
In nature it has its own mechanism for justice. The fight or flight mechanism. Once one understands the logic, its very basic and exoteric, it must be, a mouse subconsciously understands it, even a fly. Once one can look to make use of it if one wants to. Its subconsciously common to all conscious minds. We have not understood it or the logic but once you understand it it’s obvious. It wouldn’t have worked prior to globalization. But times have changed, and the reality is now more defined, the earth is not infinite as most animals probably think, and rightly so, we also did, until whoever it was figured out it was a ball. Anyhow as we evolved it appears that we moulded morality around the protection of what we value, a strong leader for protection of our Being. Without consciously knowing that value fundamentally was about time or Being.
I challenge any one of you to show me how I can create wealth or value and not just monetary value but friendships or relationships or anything you attach value to without investing time. (but as I mentioned in one of my previous posts, if any of you have a mechanism for creating value, in monetary terms, that doesn’t require the investment of time, please let me know, I have been working for more than thirty years and I would much rather be on holiday, but that somehow seems elusive.)
Does that articulate it any better?
Here’s a thought try to steelman this argument.
It is what it is #185
I am sitting here as time ticks away and I haven’t made a single friend in the last hour. Seems I need to invest much more than just time.
iiwii
or making friends, etc.,
All transitions happen in finite time even down to the tiniest of events in physics.
This utterly misses the point of time being a useful metric, that can be used reliably in applications like justice. It is even being rooted out as being a good enough measure of work, results (problems solved) increasingly coming to replace it, as automation saves us from the merely mechanical.
Say something to support the idea of it being a reliable and consistent metric of universal human value. Everyone gets that its a metric.
Love at first sight
Your doing what most people appears to do, being lazy, not only that being lazy and expecting results, a common problem many workers seem to have. Just sitting there is to be lazy you need to invest your time productively. Invest your time in those you want to befriend make their lives interesting. If you do that they will want to be around you and you have befriended them. All it takes is proactivity and a investment of time in others.
To sit there and enjoy one’s time and be by oneself is great, it’s good to get away from it all, as it were. We all need “me” time where you can contemplate stuff or just do nothing. The only reward appears to be time for introspection if you don’t value that, then that’s your problem. If you want to make friends be proactive and use your time to go meet them. It’s your time do with it what you want but remember if you affect others negatively or are immoral towards others you won’t easily make friends… or at least good real moral friends.
It is what it is #188
That is the point. I am not very good at the maths but every time you post, the equation gets longer. An equation with just “t” is not an equation and it needs a whole lot of other representative letters and a heap of pluses and negatives.
First you called me lazy then covered by adding value to that time as contemplative. The “time” sheet you provide, in order for me to get paid, seems easily manipulated in its over complexity and draconian demands. I may be ill! Do I get some co pay? How long for? What about holiday pay, for contemplation? My boss doesn’t think so as long as he controls the noose around my neck. He books in his whole twenty four hours because he thinks his time is worth more than mine whatever he is doing although he is just stealing my time and calling me lazy. We could play this too me consuming game all day I suppose but what are we producing?
Hi Phil,
Possibly that metric is value, not just monetary value, but anything that you determine or deem as valuable
(Olli values sitting doing nothing, just to pass time, and thinks he may make friends that way, that is his right it’s his time, if it works for him then it works for him, but he has indicated that it doesn’t. He didn’t make any friends. He should possibly reassess how he is investing his time, so as to get the desired results. Instead of just sting there, being lazy, appears to not work, being friendly and helpful to others is a good start, but that’s just my opinion. Possibly a bit hash to say lazy, you are busy typing stuff and interacting with me so there you have possibly made a friend. In fact if I think about it you are helping me get a grip on this quite nicely thank you 😊 really appreciate it Olli.)
that could be friendships, religion, family anything that you deem valuable, exactly as you currently do. Nothing changes just one’s understanding of reality. You can spend it on anything that you would have done anyway. If loads of money is important you need to make you time valuable to others who have money, so you can take it off their hands.
It’s units are what we measure as time. When you pay someone what are you paying them for? Their time and it’s ability to add value to your life. In the example above why would I ask or pay the child to touch the electric fence? I wouldn’t but it’s to prove a point here. But if I did maybe I’m a enjoy seeing people get a shock I don’t know there could be a myriad of reasons. Why won’t a cow stand against the electric fence?
in the example above with a child and the fence. When you force the child to touch the fence against his will, that appears to effectively be the origin or genesis or foundation of criminal law. When you pay the child to touch the fence and he consents, that appears to effectively be the genesis or foundation of contract law.
Hope that makes sense.
iiwii #187
Oops! That escaped before finishing editing. I meant…
“This utterly misses the point of justifying time being a useful metric, that can be used reliably in applications like justice.”
It is what it is,
What you have come up with and are expounding is called a ‘conceit.’
It became a trope many millions of pixels upthread when it was critiqued for not being the multifaceted jewel of wisdom you fancy it to be or wish it to be, and are forcing it to be, and are almost imperiously defending as such.
It is formulaic, simplistic. Indeed, that is its beauty for you.
The ‘jewel of wisdom’ is a symbol used to refer to the formulaic construct and teachings, or dogmas, of buddhism.
Religions are formulaic. Once the first presumption is admitted to (such as, we have a soul, in say, christianity, islam, hinduism) then everything else follows and can’t be readily debunked, either.
Such as, if one is good or bad in life according to one adhering to and observing the rules and morals as enunciated in the religion, then it will go well or badly for one in the afterlife, and very much so.
Swallowing assumptions uncritically can have profound consequences for the individual, society and history.
Religion is like an intellectual and existential straight-jacket. One has responsibility for what we teach the young, the credulous, the hapless unlearned.
We teach them not what, but how to think.
Please understand, ‘There is no polite way to tell someone they have devoted their whole life to an illusion.’ (Daniel C Dennett)
So here I’m suggesting, be cautious about what you invest in, as in, how it determines your intellect, your self image, your reputation among those who have the tools for thinking, about what you are having to defend as your pet thing.
We can fall in love with our own notions. We then likely may get offended when others devalue them. There is personal and emotional investment at stake, pride.
My advice would be to form philosophies or conclusions tentatively, in case you come to learn better, later on, from critical reflection, reading or having your ideas critiqued as has happened here, although you don’t seem to have been receptive or to engage with said critique.
Your conceit isn’t a grand unified theory of everything.
You could as readily have reduced everything to gravity, or the physical laws of attraction and repulsion, tension and release, potentiality, or Hume’s ‘sympathy.’ Or John Lennon’s, All You Need Is Love, or understanding, or subjectivity, or relative interrelatedness, actualisation or something less abstract, like suffering or entropy, or money.
Time is certainly a factor among many to do with existence. Indeed it is essential for existence, as we know it.
I think there will come a time when time ceases with the final heat death of the universe.
Not to say it can’t come into being again, along with the emergence of consciousness, Darwinian understandings, the arts and sciences.
iiwii
…to solve a problem.
That is correct because you don’t have the time or ability to resolve it yourself, or it could be for a service or for entertainment or for something of beauty they have created, a artwork that appeals to you. When you interact with friends or like minded people you are happy to give them your time, or value, for free, it’s called friendship and respect and as one’s parents or grandparents, say it is earned. It’s why your friends and likeminded people like you. You attach value to the relationship without expecting to be paid. The payment is their friendship or their time. But that’s your choice or prerogative to give it for free.
I’m at work so it’s a bit tricky I’ll chew on it a bit and respond later. But it appears I’ll have to look up some of those words. Not sure what they all mean. Barely passed English at school hence the lack of punctuation… how I came up with this was a interesting story, didn’t even know what philosophy was… but it’s a paradigm that should be explored. Appears to make morality objective somehow…just so you know it wasn’t 5 mins been mulling it over for the better party of many years…
For those across the pond, what is your take on the two finalists in the running to replace BoJo?
And is there any trepidation that he’ll leave office with a scorched earth flair?
iiwii #194
So, are we agreed, time is not the universal metric?
Ah, I see you are deploying the sarcastic passive-aggressive approach to criticism response. An interesting move.
Well, I at least commend you on your willingness to accept a kind of “peer review”, of a sort (of course, we’re not a committee of scientists, so scare quotes are advised here).
OK, I think even you should have paused and wondered about a claim this extraordinary. What, did the Jack Russel bark “I! VA! LUE! TIME!” at you? Did you scan their brain for evidence of “time concept” and “valueing”? Because to me it now looks like you’re just twisting basic “carrot and stick” logic and its variations into some “evidence” that everyone has a Freudian-esque time-wish, on par with a Freudian sex wish and a death wish. And that is not even a rational claim, let alone a scientific one, not least of all because it’s overreaching, going beyond what little evidence is there.
Well, before we go any further, I want to see any source for this claim that an animal has a concept of time we humans would recognize, let alone any actual desire for it (as opposed to the alternatives I’ve already mentioned, which is that they all automatically operate in and sometimes exploit it). Because this is a hair’s breadth from claiming you have psychic subconscious-wish-seeing powers.
And in simple terms, we actually don’t value it. No one invests time, they invest in other things (like effort) that take time to do. We explicitly value other things, which you keep bringing up as though it’s some kind of revelation instead of old news, and time is the arena in which they occur. To say nothing of the conspicuous exceptions I keep bringing up of people who are more than willing to turn down any more time in their lives, such as suicides, euthanasia advocates, and people who think living forever is a really bad idea.
I’m not sure even you understand what you’re saying here. Responses to threats have a very obvious biological rationale behind them: an organism can’t survive and reproduce efficiently if it doesn’t have some kind of adaptive, functional strategy to deal with obstacles to those two major goals, even if it’s only expressed via the organic chemistry of a single cell (say, the classic bacterium with the universal lipid bilayer cell membrane designed to keep out unwanted substances). Organisms that don’t have such strategies straight-up get weeded out, or outcompeted by rival organisms that do or that have more efficient ones.
Adding the concept of natural justice contributes nothing to this discussion except to moralize it without any better justification than because you really, really want to stick a round peg into a square hole. You can’t just shove the two concepts together and claim the best glue is “time”. I mean, for starters you’ve got an uphill struggle just proving that flies have a subconscious “categorical imperative” module somewhere in their tiny brains, and that’s the least problematic claim you’ve been making in your post.
The closest I can think of to any kind of “natural justice” in, say, animals is the logic of reciprocal altruism as exemplified by Axelrod’s game-theoretic concept of Tit For Tat… and even that doesn’t work the way you want it to, because it’s still ultimately a self-serving conditional individual strategy under amoral natural selection for survival and reproduction. It is NOT some kind of time-based universal moralistic panacea, most obviously because it’s a fallacious move to project human morality onto amoral nature in the first place.
Why? Your thesis is that time is the ultimate meta-ethical foundation upon which all our ethical judgements will be put, conveniently objective and free from bias. All this “challenge” proves is that time is an inescapable natural phenomenon regardless of what you do.
I’m with olli at #189: you keep switching between an equation with just “t”, which explains nothing, and a constantly shifting equation where you’re having to smuggle in a lot of other concepts to do the work while simultaneously claiming it’s all “t” really. Honestly, my first recommendation would be to do a bit more research than a few Youtube clips on Heidegger and Kant, because you’re trying to make grand sweeping statements for meta-ethics, ethics, and morality, biology, economics, human psychology, and social philosophy. These are not subjects that can be conveniently summed up with a dubious Freudian-esque statement like “every living thing values time, even if only subconsciously”.
I’ll second Vicki’s comment #195. I’m trying to keep up with the BoJo replacement and worrying about the very high heat situation on the whole other side of the pond.
It is what it is,
There are those for whom all their interactions are transactional.
In such a mentality and dealings, people are evaluated according to their usefulness, and quantifiable in terms of cost/benefit.
And not just drug cartel bosses or the Mafioso betray this extreme utilitarian mindset regarding others.
Your economics of time is looking like entries in a ledger in terms of investment, expenditure, tangible cost and reward, including concerning human interactions.
I’m not asserting that you are as clinical and calculating as your philosophy looks to be, or could be construed to be.
Yet the justice component I find a little odious.
I can see the wisdom in the sentiment of the altruist, believing, really because they can’t help it, that it’s ‘love makes the world go ‘round,’
Although that gets widely mocked as rather naïve, infantie.
It clearly doesn’t cut it in the Kremlin. And it’s not just Putin who has ice water in his veins.
And indeed, I rather think there are no saints, and many martyrs.
But the altruists of the Underground are quietly tending to their own genes and memes for the grand project of seeing humankind realise full humanisation, ‘self-domestication’ as Richard Wrangham calls it.
Waiting to take over the world and enforce kindness for the hell of it, replicate their idealism universally, and fairness. Like the Wobblies.
It’s like Pepperland in the Beatles’ movie Yellow Submarine I watched whilst tripping, in the art film house in Sydney, 1969.
The Blue Meanies were seen off by the power of love and grooviness as with the Scourging of the Shire, Right is Might.
RD addresses altruism atblength, as something of a Good Trick in his seminal first book The Selfish Gene, 1975, 2015.
At least it can survive in the human gene pool.
My English mother (a Sussexer and a war bride) was your classic altruist.
My dad used to say to me, “Your mother is very kind.”
Meaning she could suffer for her kindness and never grow hard-bitten. The milk of human lovingkindness for its own sake. Beautiful.
A battler and a christian to the last, although I didn’t recognise the consolations of religion at the end.
Thank christ for the mercies of terminal palliative care.
Hi Phil,
So as a example if you want something done, like paint your house, and you can paint it yourself. But you may have other things that take up your time, maybe you are a doctor you then pay someone to do it.
Or maybe you are a painter and need a operation, you then pay the doctor for his time so he can operate on you.
The first instance is when you have the ability but don’t have the time the second is when you don’t have the ability or time to gain the ability. Although to operate on yourself could be a bit tricky…
Many things
This is a bit longer I’ll have to chew on it a bit this evening, when I have some free time, after work, I don’t have the time right now, at work.
Zuglodon Beta # 197,
’Beer review.’ 😄
The good ol’ pub test.
It is what it is!
I would leave philosophy alone and in the hands of those who know the science and can make sense of the ancient fuzzy thinking. I am still coming to grips with the science but am lucky to know bull shit when I see it 😁
It is what it is,
Are the ultimate quantum components of matter, if they be strings, simply packets of time?
I’d say not, myself.
Or is the ‘arrow of time’ really but one dimension relative to the others, albeit equally necessary in our universe?
Necessary for existence to obtain but not the magisterial quintessence subsuming all else, space, matter, the three other dimensions, in our bounded universe.
The doctor in your example is more than her time, in the accounting of value, obviously?
It’s reductionist.
I am also dubious that animals conceive of time, let alone concern themselves with the Overseer Time.
Yet I do think animals certainly can have a sense of justice and injustice.
In literature, Balaam’s fictive donkey.
“Why have you beaten me these three times?”
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Numbers%2022%3A21-39&version=NIV&interface=amp
The horse in Raskolnikov’s dream in Crime and Punishment is looking at her cruel masters and saying,
“Why are you beating me to death?”, surely.
‘The scene describing drunken peasants beating a mare to death in Part One of Crime and Punishment is one of the most famous scenes in all of Russian literature. It is the scene that Dostoevsky often chose to read in his public readings of the novel. Coming early in the action, before Raskolnikov commits murder, it foreshadows that murder, while illustrating all the horror of the act in the divided mind of the main hero, and presenting the conflict between good and evil that is at the center of the book.’
I haven’t looked up the science literature on the subject of sense of justice or injustice in animals.
My cat displays deep attachment to me, purrs her head off in response to kindness. She trusts me.
This cat does threat assessment quite a bit. They do that.
She sees her reflection in the glass door and spits. Pretty nasty, these top tier predators.
She doesn’t kill our birds, busy sucking nectar out of the masses of orange flowers in the wall of tecoma.
FWIW, iiwii, #200,
after decades of experience in some areas of human endeavour, I am an expert. I get questions directed to me by people with problems. My expertise allows me to solve those problems (sometimes) off the top of my head, where a younger Phil Rimmer might have taken days of research and still got it wrong.
“Yes,” I might say. “PETG is the right material for that biological use.”
Was that worth 35seconds of listening time and 5 seconds of talking time or, perhaps, rather more? And…
are we agreed, time is not the universal metric?
Vicki and Laurie B.
I was going to reply, but then I came across this online, by the wonderful Joshua Seigal, and honestly, it says it all:
CHOICES, CHOICES, CHOICES
Truss or Sunak, Sunak or Truss
Shot from a cannon, or hit by a bus
A mug of bile, or a cup of sick
Smacked with a bat, or jabbed with a stick
Death by fire, or suffocation
Mauled by a Pitbull, or a hungry Alsatian
A lava jacuzzi, or an acid shower
Drowned in the sea, or pushed from a tower
Naked at work, or trapped in a drain
Jump off a bridge, or a moving train
A vest in the snow, or a scarf in the heat
Slapped with a fish, or a slab of meat
Impaled on a spike, or trampled by cows
Lashes cut off, or losing your brows
Internet down, or battery dead
Kicked in the crotch, or bashed on the head
Sharing a bath with a frisky BoJo,
or climbing a mountain in just a kimono
Pubic lice, or a cyst full of pus –
Truss or Sunak? Sunak or Truss?
How could anyone improve on that?
But while I’m here, Boris Johnson is a disgrace, obviously, and utterly unfit for public office of any kind, let alone the highest and most powerful in the land, but I have spent quite a lot of my time over the last few months warning people who were desperate to see him booted out as Tory leader to be careful what they wished for, and that his successor was likely to be even worse. And I have seen nothing in this leadership contest to persuade me otherwise.
The most obvious thing, listening to all the candidates, is that the present-day Tory party has been entirely taken over by the UK equivalent of the Tea Party. There wasn’t a single one of them arguing for old-school, one-nation Toryism. It’s neoliberalism all the way: a contest to see who can transfer the most public wealth and power into the corporate sphere.
Beyond being hugely relieved that Kemi Badenoch has been knocked out of the race (she’d be very much at home in the loonier fringes of the US Republican Party, a real outlier even by rabid present-day Tory Party standards), I honestly don’t care very much whether Truss or Sunak wins it. They are both unfit and will both be disastrous. Truss will be actively dangerous, since she’s clearly the puppet of the ERG, the most right-wing, pro-Brexit, anti-climate-action faction within the Tory Party; Sunak will be a dead duck at best, because the ERG, who are now THE driving force in the parliamentary party, will be out to get him from day one.
I cannot begin to tell you how screwed the UK is.
Sorry, Vicki, I missed this bit:
There is, yes. In the form of taking what is already the least democratic legislative chamber in the supposedly free world and stuffing it even fuller of Tories with lifelong tenure to ensure that only Tory policies can get through:
https://www.itv.com/news/2022-07-15/revealed-secret-plan-to-pack-lords-with-tory-loyalists
There is also a lot of speculation that, Johnson being Johnson, he will do everything in his power to undermine whichever of the two dogs’ dinners replaces him, with a view to being reinstated as leader himself.
The chances of him simply stepping down with grace and dignity and professionalism? I don’t need to answer that one, do I?
Marco
I’m not sure if I should thank you for the reply, Marco, as the picture you’ve painted is even gloomier than I imagined. But I was hoping you’d weigh in, so thanks.
GB hasn’t had a liberal PM for a long, long time. Am I correct in thinking the Liberal party is more center than the ‘righter’ Tory and the ‘lefter’ Labour?
(Excellent piece of dark humor by Seigal)
Hi Phil,
That information is useless to me, it was worth reading to see if there was anything of value, but essentially it has no value to me. However, to someone looking for advice on that subject it will possibly have value to them. As you said, you are the expert, you have invested much of your time to become a expert, and can now charge people who are looking for that expertise or info. A consultant, or specialist consultant, in that field. That’s then what you choose to do with your time to earn money. You can do anything but if you have a speciality that you have spent time on then that’s generally the obvious thing to do. Nothing essentially changes. Unless you have been fraudulently extracting value, or misrepresenting yourself. It becomes a bit tricky for you. That process is not universalizable as in Kants third formulation of the categorical imperative. While we’re on that, it also seems to realize Kants second formulation. The first one was dealt with in a previous post.
On the same note. If I’m a consulting engineer I can’t just assume others need my expertise. They will request it, or employ me, especially if you have a good reputation for being correct and giving good advice. Another engineer may not be as competent, or do poor quality work, he will somehow not be able to charge as much, or possibly way more competent and provide a exceptional service he should be able to charge more, as they currently do.
I other words any maxim must be a end in itself. For you to value your time places no obligation on anyone else. And for them to value their time places no obligation on you. Except respect. You don’t need to like anyone you can be as miserable as you like you won’t have many friends and your family, if you can find a wife, may not respect you. But that is your choice.
That is your right to choose to do that. No one can force you to spend time on things you don’t want to. I think I covered that with a thought experiment above using a 5 year old and the electric fence. Or was I unclear about that? This philosophy assumes we are all equal. There is no leader. There is only a king when you feel you have a injustice committed against you. That king is then a reasonable peer of your choice, possibly a lawyer, he appears, and once the issue is resolved he is gone again. Sovereignty is placed in your hands but taken away from you when you perceive or experience a injustice.
Sorry, Vicki, I just typed a l-o-n-g reply but then my laptop developed a gremlin (definitely not the site this time) and I lost the whole thing.
Don’t have the heart to write it all out again just now, but I will, though it may not be for a few days.
It is what it is #208
A five year old boy and an electric fence or bedtime and the slipper.
Are the rules for the justice written and by who? Can they be revised? Can they withstand the test of TIME? In a world with large population even “god” doesn’t go away. The prayers and needs go on every second and think there must be a backlog.
Er… rereading my posts here, I have to ask: am I being rude and aggressive in tone? To Michael 100 and It is what it is… especially.
It seemed like minor colourful stylistics at the time, but in hindsight, I think it reads too mean-spirited in places. In which case, I must apologize to both of you for my poor judgement.
No not at all I was just responding to you long post no 197 and then lost my whole response somehow so going to try retype it quickly. I’m looking for criticism especially if it’s reasonable. I have no issues with a bit of humor or sarcasm thrown my way. I can take it on the chin. listen I’m trying to figure this out. I do notice though when my iPad goes from landscape to portrait the post sometime goes tilt and gets lost.
This paradigm is interesting it allows for a interesting logic to exist and be sound. one just needs to understand it properly. The strange thing is everything stays the same, but everything changes. Its the architecture of a portion of reality that appears to get defined. I know its a bit unsettling, but it appears to deal with immorality or morality as the observer perceives it.
Zeuglodon Beta # 211, Like Comrade It Is what It Is, I don’t think you were being rude and/or aggressive. I’m a big kid, and don’t mind being challenged on anything I post. If I’m wrong about something, I want to be the first to know. On the other hand, if I didn’t make myself clear, I’ll try to clarify.
Attempt at Humor hope no offense taken.
Almost, his got a T shirt that says so. That is why I can teach him to do stuff. Because he apparently values his time, he learns that if he listens to me his time going forward will be more pleasant. He will either get a reward or he wont be punished, positive or negative reinforcement. Either way his time going forward will be more pleasant for him. It appears that any sentient or conscious being is the same. That’s why you can domesticate some animals easily. It’s the same mechanism that triggers the fight or flight mechanism in a wild animal. If they feel that their time going forward is going to be negatively impacted or they are going to loose the ability to choose what they do they will either attack or run away. Its why a snake will bite you, it doesn’t want to eat you, but it also doesn’t want to be stepped on. It will also generally hiss at you first, a warning to stay away and don’t stand on me. It will never hiss at something that it’s going to eat. It’s why you swat a mosquito or fly they irritate you and possibly make your time going forward slightly unpleasant. It’s why a zebra runs away from a lion and why a lion chases a Zebra. They both want to enjoy more time going forward. The lion needs to eat to live another day and the Zebra doesn’t want to be eaten to live to see another day. Corner a wild animal and limit its choices chances it will attack you or run away. The fight or flight mechanism. Its why you would voluntarily swim with a great white shark in the water. It may eat you and that’s not what you planed for your afternoon swim, you value your time and want to be able to live another day.
Nope just observe living things and how they behave and it appears to be obvious. Why does a criminal do what he does. Because its far easier to steal than to invest time to create value yourself. Crime pays else they wouldn’t do it. If he gets away with a simple crime and his moral compass is a bit wonky he may well, like my Jack Russel learn from that and try it again.
If you can find people who don’t value their time and they don’t want to waist it, they can let me have it and they can work for me. As they don’t value their time they will give it to me, I wont need to pay them for it.
When you feel that your time is going to negatively impact those you love. You should have the right to choose to end it. That is a very personal decision some may feel that the pressure placed on them by the society we live in is to much. It should be their choice, one should help them if you care about them especially if its only a phase. To end ones life is a very absolute and binary and once achieved not reversable. where you go to is up to your beliefs if you have any. Living forever would mean that your perception of time would change, If you can’t die, or live forever, there will always be more time and if you will value, or cherish, it as much, only those who live forever will be able to answer.
Its “jungle justice” or the law of nature or mob rule. They all appear to have the same underlying logic. Once one unpacks it and understands it, one can possibly make use of it somehow. That is how I stumbled across this. It was the first thing I figured out, that’s a weird story but for another day.
Time appears to be the genesis of value, it appears to be universal. not only to us but all sentient beings. Justice in any culture appears to be the protection and preservation of what that culture values now because every culture has different values, that by definition is what makes them, or defines, a culture. It stands to reason that you cannot find a universal theory of justice. Listen to Micheal Sandels lectures on justice he eludes to this fact in one of them. As do many other philosophers of justice. So if one can find a universal theory of value that opens the door to a possible universal theory of justice, as well as a economic theory. those then possibly opens the door to a political and theory of government. In short a social contract theory that as yet needs to be fully unpacked and assessed. Listen nothing is going to change unless people see a benefit. As far as I can se this benefits every moral person who respects other right to exist. It doesn’t mean you can’t eat meat or animals. They eat each other. Just have respect.
Your value in society is determined by your culture and community. As it currently is, everyone must have some value, especially within their community and especially within their culture, they surely cannot be that useless. Their culture then needs to do some introspection. Also if someone want to exist and just sit on the beach. that option must be available to them, they just aren’t going to be able to buy much as one commentor mentioned a very basic universal basic income. But that’s a privilege and not a right, someone has to be productive to create the value for you.
As i mentioned earlier this is or appears to be a metaphysical claim. With epistemological implications. For someone who didn’t even know what philosophy was a couple of (3) years back. this is a extremely wild and bold claim. But it appears to hold true. The potential implications are a way more just society. Any religion can exist within it. No matter how moral or immoral others perceive it to be, as log as they keep controversial rituals and practices within their culture or community. It allows freedom of choice.
Even a alien could just seamlessly fit in. As long as he contributes the same as everyone else. You know the old saying death and taxes…
And I’ve been wondering what that was. I think I now understand. It appears to be logical ligo… I am a bit out of my depth here but let’s give it a go.
Your conscious mind is always in one of two states there is no grey area, it’s either free will sat t(fw) a just state or against your will t(aw) a unjust state so
t=t(fw)+t(aw)
t=value or v so
v=sum t(fw) + sum t(aw).
Another possible area of confusion is I am in no way advocating replacing money with time. Money is a record (or generally the first “incarnation” or iteration) of the historical value others placed in you time. It then progresses on to whatever you spend that money on.
so it appears that t(fw)=sum[t1(fw)+t2(fw)+t3(fw)….tn(fw)]
Where tn is the value others lace in your time.This is my first attempt at trying to represent this this way. Is that the sort of format that was requested?
I have a bit of a organogram that I put on my web page that will possibly go a little way to help understanding this, it was done a year or so ago and may need some revisiting though…not sure if I’m allowed to link it.
to Zeuglodon Beta
is that the sort of format or “syntax” , not sure if that’s the correct word, you were looking for? If so it may still require some additional thought or consideration, to reach its final logical conclusion or iteration.
It is what it is,
I’m categorically not into the punishment philosophy and praxis to get animals or children to conform, or behave, or to be trained, as you seem to believe in, along with deploying the carrot, reward.
I declare that shock collars for dogs should be banned.
Regarding electric fences to keep animals penned, well is it really necessary to eat animals?
Foot and mouth disease and African swine fever, along with avian bird flu, H5N1 might force us to go veg, soon enough, which would certainly help retard climate breakdown. All that land could be returned tovl revegetation, habitat, the commons, as the estimable George Monbiot recommends be done.
Although my boots are made of leather. They’re Berghaus boots. I’ve worn only those for over fifteen years. They look pretty classic. I’ve had to reglue and tie the soles back with elastic bands a few times lol. I’ll wear them until the soles wear right through. I’ll walk to the supermarket tonight with the backpack, a 6klm walk.
Why drive?
Regarding adults convicted of crime, they should forfeit their freedom, yes, and indeed their time, through imprisonment and to remove them from society, if they present a clear and present danger, or are practising lawlessness, antisocial behaviour as an orientation.
This presumes the laws are based in Enlightenment thinking, are fair, reasonable and are actually necessary for the collective good.
Otherwise one might have a duty to disobey them, defy them, such as the students in Tiananmen Square did.
Now that officially never happened in Orwellian China.
We make the laws and we can change them if they prove oppressive, unjust, unjustified.
Monetary fines are to induce offenders to conform, civic compliance.
A speeding notice says payment demanded is ‘expiation’ for the state’s (representing society’s) opprobrium.
It’s termed a penalty. It isn’t called ‘punishment’ although that may look like a technicality, is to put a nicety upon the semantics.
But all this is nothing new. It’s how it is already in say, Britain, or Australia, and hopefully we are becoming more progressive ongoing.I think the approach of punishment, retributive justice in jurisprudence is arcane, draconian. The aim is to enlighten, even if it means living with regret until someone like Putin, dies in prison.
But I think it is just that he should be isolated, to help him understand and never forget his guilt, the death and suffering he has wilfully caused.
I have huge difficulty with solitary confinement, even for Putin. But contact should be minimised.
Again, your conceit regarding time as the master key to everything is a trope. It is forced. It’s sounding like a broken record. Surely you can discourse on other subjects.
If you won’t seek to falsify it, or won’t consider the multiple critiques offered by others, then it’s getting boring and it looks like you just want to control the conversation, garner followers.
To
Zeuglodon Beta
The above
should be
it’s either free will, say, t(fw)
t is your time.
I need to think about this a bit, but please let me know if I’m sort of on the correct track here. As a matter of interest how do you see t? How does it feature in your mind, what do you currently perceive t to be.
t=?
It will help me understand what I need to produce….
The one thing I’ve learned over the last few years is that to explain the obvious, is obviously not a simple task… 🧐🤪🤯🤕…😂
But responsibility and accountability for your actions and the consequences of them rests with you no one else. How can others be responsible for your actions. If you buy a pet dog and it gets out and kills a child who is responsible? If the dog kills another child the next day again who is responsible? The dog? You chose to get the dog it was your choice. The dog was doing what it does.
Agreed, it was a thought experiment don’t have a nervous breakdown. But they are very efficient at guiding your dog. However I must say my previous Jack Russel would at the drop of a hat chase a bike or motorbike irrespective of the implications. I couldn’t take him out or let him sit in my front garden. I made use of a shock collar for less than 5 mins and got a friend to go buy with a bike. It took one 1 second jolt to refocus his attention. But then he obviously didnt know what it was. But as soon as he showed interest in the bike again, that took all of about 2 seconds, he got another one. He lost interest in chasing bikes in fact all vehicles. He spent the rest of his life happily roaming in the front garden and park across the road. Never showed any interest in chasing bikes or motorbikes. It works. He values his time and wants it to be as pleasant as possible.
I’m keen to see you try to explain that to a lion or a great white shark or a eagle. May be a bit tricky possibly a shock collar? (Just a joke).
If people learn or are forced to be responsible and accountable for their actions, including bringing children into a world that we all have to live in, they will have less children. If your child is wayward, you chose to have him (him is generic), if he cant account for his actions then you will have to pay. No one forced you to have a child, unless you were raped, and even then you technically still have a choice.
It saves you time. But correct, I walk lots, we have a nature reserve that I often frequent to spend time enjoying the nature and solitude. Its good for the soul, or well being, as it were.
Just societal laws are a bedrock of any civilized modern society. But a law is there to protect your rights ( essentially your right to your time), and the safety of others in your community when you exercise your rights.
I think to cause injustice is arcane ( did you mean something like archaic) and draconian. When you commit a crime expect the same to be done to you. There is a interesting logic that can be made sound, Crime must pay but it must pay for everyone, especially the person uncovering it, and except the person committing or party to it. That is a interesting concept. Reflect on it a bit. The logic is exoteric and sound
Prison is fine but then the person in prison must pay for it why should it cost others that is additional injustice. If you go to prison you must pay for it, the architecture of the social contract should somehow make that reality exist.
The person commits a injustice towards you, then you have to work to create value to pay for his stay there… who is actually in prison here… He gets to not work, and you get to work extra hard to pay for him to have that privilege. The current logic is a tad warped. esoteric…
Putin affected many peoples lives negatively he will need to account. If he cannot account, the people who enabled him need to, the Russian people they will be paying for many generations, unless those whose actions (electing Putin to be their proxy) are forgiven by those who putin’s actions, negatively affected. If I was a Russian I would not support this the potential consequences of his actions are horrific.
That is incorrect, the result is a just society, no one is a leader, so how can I want followers. You in any case take responsibility for them and are accountable to them as they are to you. look at Putin you need to be very brave to walk that road. I just want to obey the moral laws and do what I want to do, if I hurt anyone or steal from them I must expect recourse from them as they see fit. Whit in reason, that’s why recourse is always not as you see fit, as it appears to be in nature, jungle justice, but through a reasonable peer of your choice who is cognizant of other cultures and their values…that’s the logic its obviously would have acceptable protocols…that could be a possible second option for justice. Justice or recourse effectively should be as you see fit as long as both parties agree. If you put forward a proposal for recourse and justice and it is accepted by the other party surely that should be binding. A flip of a coin, a duel at twenty paces, poker game. The first person to pick up a chick, or guy, in the bar. Whatever floats your boat as long as both parties agree. If you can’t agree its off to a lawyer and judge and possibly a injustice anyway, as the case could possibly be to do with something in a field that they have no clue about. And there are no consequences for them getting it wrong but could have huge consequences for you.
It is what it is
I was put in prison for stealing a loaf of bread for my starving sick child by the punishers voted into the position when said they would provide full employment but couldn’t. They have immunity from prosecution. My child died anyway.
Thought experiment!
It is what it is,
Instead of subjecting others who engage here to your schemata, regarding Justice, Law and the basis for economics and absolutely everything, perhaps actually studying say, Law might instead be a better way to go.
One doesn’t have to go to a law library every day to get the fundamental understandings of the law and its rationale in justice, morals, ethics, equality, rights.
We have the webz. One can go quite in-depth, but formal education is always the way to go. Academic guidance with set courses.
One can study off-campus at many institutions, one subject or unit at a time. You have to get accepted in.
If you approach essays as a platform to promulgate your pet theories, your folk philosophy, you will fail.
You get to do that when you do your doctoral thesis after six years of learning what has already been laid down, and critically engaging with the literature, to be marked and assessed on your understanding and ability to communicate it.
I personally remain cognisant of my ignorance and my need to address that. I will be doing it until I lose my wits but I would like to end it at that point, before I have no control over my further existence.
Healthy skepticism is warranted at times, which I, and others have applied to your schemata.
I am glad you are not the lawmaker. You are unschooled, but opinionated.
Frankly, it smacks of Dunning-Kruger.
‘The less people know, the more certainly they know it.’
There are many such observant statements, made in the past, to find. Darwin remarked on the tendency.
iiwii,
You need to write less on what you have now claimed many, many times, and more engage in the questions directed at you,. You rather seem to see them as an opportunity just to restate your initial premise.
In #208 you roll out my exact point which demonstrates that time-cost assessments of value are deceptive and that a more effective measure of value, lies in seeing a problem solved. (Also note that, whilst you would charge for expertise at every occasion [from your discussion] I always don’t charge when dispensing expertise informally like this, but then unlike you Libertarians, I champion Open Source, because everyone wins.)
On other matters, free will is a pretty useless Religio-Libertarian concept. Dennett’s (evolved) Free Choice (from a set of equally good alternatives) is just an attempt to say we don’t actually have anything like libertarian free will but without frightening the horses. It is enough for serviceable morality to have a social contract that says you take ownership of your own actions or claim coercion from others, parental upbringing, brain tumours etc. which doesn’t get you off the hook but will lead, more often (and decently), to therapy.
The truth is Will is Constrained… and by just about everything, but most especially by your early enculturation, the which you will never be able to shake off, unless psychopathic. Because individual minds are substantially made by the culture they are nurtured in and cultures are the aggregate effect of a plethora of minds, Free Will is a concept better describing culture than individuals because only culture is the product of its own constituent parts.
You’ll need to do much more with the Kant material to turn it into a point that’ll fly here. Moral dogma qua dogma is pretty pernicious per se and the stuff used by the coercive religio-libertarians. Any moral imperative that cannot be destruction tested then rebuilt from the remaining fabric of a functioning and nominally fair society, deserves oblivion. Morals evolve with cultures and the progressive revelation of previously hidden/neglected harms is its main selective pressure.
Nice and tidy work Mr Rimmer.
V. kind, Strat.
A lot of ink is being spilled that manages to be both mono-minded and scatter-shot.
I had hoped for some substantive stuff regarding time valuation, that might come out of noting that in early mind/character-forming periods when young, these might get scaled in the same way that perceptual scaling can rescue a lot of Utilitarian, net good, net harm ideas. (We perceive always in logarithmic fashion. A light or sound that we consider twice as loud is actually as a physical stimulus many times more powerful.) Also sensation depletes. Thus a million dollars making us yea happy needs to be ten million for the same effect next time. Used to make 10 people richer rather than just one twice as happy, tells you how net wellbeing is most efficiently got.
So, too, we might imagine time perception as relative to age, so a sixth birthday is a 20% deal to a five year old and the sixtieth a 1.69% deal to a 59 year old, a year devalued perceptually by 12 fold.
Also ideas of being “ready to die”. Though there is a huge amount I want still to do, in many ways I’m happy with what I have achieved already and that my kids are happy, off and running. If someone with a stopwatch and a clip-board sidled up and said. “Sorry, mate. Times up for you.” I wouldn’t be half as devastated as twenty years ago. Etc., etc.
Then the issue of key, foundational moments, peak value time. Etc., etc..
The time metric might have some modest value in moral deliberation when other key values are absent or a wash.
Phil and Strato. At the risk of piling on, I have tried my best to understand what It Is What It Is is saying, but I haven’t figured it out. I second your recent remarks.
Ok you see it allows the following logic to exist for a justice model. Justice is through peer of your choice.
The underlying logic is that if you choose your presiding officer you cannot claim bias or injustice, and you have to abide by his ruling, it is final and binding, you have no choice, even if its the death penalty, so chose your peer wisely, he is there to Judge you, not the other person, if the other person is uncomfortable or feels any bias he can get his own peer to judge him, that’s how it works it removes all cultural bias you choose the culture to judge you not the other person. There are obviously procedural protocol to be in place but that’s the gist of it. A universal common law or law of the universe. Your culture must be happy with you. But it only works well I think if we all value time.
chew an that for a while.
Er, no. This is just going backwards. A jury of 12 is selected to have no-one objectionable to either party and a wide variety of folks, reflecting the diverse interests of society and any concerns it has in the matter. Because society is very much the overall interested party in how crime manifests itself.
Why?
Look, sorry. I was going to ask,… how old are you?
Me? I’m really old and that gives me (we?) an unfair advantage possibly, ‘cos we here have discussed this kind of stuff for decades in our various groups. One thing I can say is that being prone to having exciting ideas is probably going to mean you will have many more exciting ideas and they may well dislodge many of the earlier ones.
Feel free to chew on that. And best wishes to you.
I’ll be eager to hear any new stuff, even on this…
We evolved from a plant called the Humped bladderwort, one of our last common ancestor’s, so why or how did the mind body problem arise from this? .
I think LUCA so far has been identified as an extremophile from the archaea or possibly a DNA Virus. (Bui not RNA.)
But, I claim to have no mind-body problem in my experience of reality unlike an American atheist who thinks me mentally ill because of it. I claim I feel entirely embodied. I claim the separate mind “problem” is a cultural artefact.
To
PR and PR said in 226
Er, no. This is just going backwards. A jury of 12 is selected to have no-one objectionable to either party and a wide variety of folks, reflecting the diverse interests of society and any concerns it has in the matter. Because society is very much the overall interested party in how crime manifests itself.
You can have twelve if you want going to cost you. Though, if you have one and he is your choice and he is reasonable he should not be objectionable to you. and as he is apparently reasonable, you chose him, he should be able to appreciate the cultural biases that may exist. If he is unreasonable and doesn’t, or intolerant of others and their cultures, then you have a unreasonable peer who is then also going to be judged and will need to sentence you. A scary thought having a unreasonable person judging and sentencing you, but you chose him, you can choose twelve if you want, you can have thirty, freedom of choice. But you chose them you are going to pay for them. You only need one as long as you consider him reasonable. If he is reasonable the other party will accept him as his judge. As soon as the party who you claim has committed a injustice, perceives any bias in the process. He is entitled to get his own peer who he considers reasonable to judge him and his actions in the process. If you are intolerant of other culture it allows for that as well. You tend to isolate yourself. And depending on your level of intolerance, or the strictness of your culture, that determines your level of isolation. As a example look the Mennonite community, they keep pretty much to themselves they have morals that are a bit hectic for many. But it’s their choice and their right to be moral as they see fit, they don’t come into your community and impose it on you, they create their own, I, for one have respect for that. Take it a step further look at North Korea they are more intolerant and more isolated but again that is their choice. And they should have a right to choose that. No one can’t force a culture on another but you need to at least be tolerant. To take it even further and up another extreme level of intolerance, look at the sentinelese if you put foot in their space they kill you. No questions leave them alone they don’t want to interact with others, again that is their right. Don’t go there. You know the consequences. Leave them alone to practice their culture, it’s theirs not yours as long as they don’t come into your community and kill you, especially on your property, and as long as they respect you and your culture when venturing out of their cultural space they should be left alone. Don’t go there they will kill you and you need to respect that. I’ll give you a example of a issue many can relate to a problem neighbor. That seems like a reasonable problem that many can relate to. Just give me a few hours it a bit early for me now. It’s the logic of the philosophy that must be reasonable. You see it accommodates any culture without exception. The problem here is that there are no exceptions that why people find it a bit scary but it’s moral.
iiwii, #229
That is the choice of an oppressing tyrant not the people. Their apparent conformity of views is entirely coerced. Love our life or die, creates compliant folk with no choice, that have not even Dennett’s shallow “Free-Will-Lite”. Folk make the best when born into oppression and denied access to confounding experience. Mennonites too.
Violent crime is of profound interest to everyone. How do we arrange ourselves to lessen our feelings of threat and uncertainty going about our daily lives? It is on behalf of society that the expert state institutions prosecute violent crime when the aggrieved may well be afraid or dead. Also, the process must assuage the fears of society that the job is done correctly, that the innocent (them! one day) are not blamed allowing all guilty of other crime to breath easier.
Libertarian Justice, if this is what it is, fails badly in its duty to society and the mechanisms it could have offered for legal/moral betterment.
Richard J R Miles #227
The Humped Bladderwort is really interesting from a genetic perspective, appearing highly stripped back and efficient, thanks…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utricularia_gibba
I don’t see that making it an in-line, antecedent relative of animals and therefore brains… Do they relate to placozoans? Care to elaborate?
La Truss is the worse choice showing little rational function and maximum ideological cleavage (never good or wholesome).
She is a “devout Christian”. Just sayin’.
The Tories seem intent on buffing up that “Nasty Party” epithet and tapping the apparently vast deposits of under-utilised, aging, public (English!) bile.
Run, Scotland, run!
Hi Phil
Ok I think I can safely say I’m a newbie at this, so with your advantage (real or possibly only perceived, but that’s possibly a wild unfounded accusation on my part) you are going to be a challenging nut to try crack as it were. But let’s see how it goes I’m up for a challenge. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong 😑 and I’ll have to buy you a beer sometime. Remember to I live in a ineptocracy so your post about
is a bit hollow. I just need to frame or word it correctly. Please remember it’s the logic of the concept that I’m going to illustrate. But a common problem is a problem neighbour, and everyone has a neighbor most multiple neighbors. But this solution also applies to a problem you may have with your neighbors neighbour. I’ll try introduce some humor so please don’t take offense it’s only a thought experiment. As mentioned I just need to frame it correctly so it attempts to maintain its generic properties.As mentioned I like your challenging input I just need to look up most of the terms you use. I am not well read as it were. If you would prefer me to just stop say so but I think I’m onto something here.And this is a platform for reason logic and science is it not? I’ve taken your advice and moved on from the value/time issue I will continue that on another forum. I don’t want to waste your time with it anymore, I know it’s valuable to you 😉. I’ve progressed to justice or morality… change of topic.
[EDITED BY MODERATOR AT USER’S REQUEST]
It is what it is,
Apart from everything else, to assert once again that the individual North Korean or the society chose the leader and the system they exist under is rather wet behind the ears, don’t you think?
It was pointed out to you above that propaganda, censorship, conformism, surveillance and the cult of personality is total under Kim’s despotism.
Non-conformism means hard labour on the the rock pile or you are disappeared.
And it is hard to turn on the thinking so totally inculcated into you all your life, reinforced all around you, and through state media.
Access to information, outside media, free-thought, free inquiry, exposure to other cultures or systems is denied.
It is Orwellian, presuming you know what that alludes to.
And it works. For the people to love Kim, they must have collective Stockholm Syndrome.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome
Compare existence in the euphemistically titled, the ‘Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’ (DPRK) totalitarian dictatorship, with life in South Korea.
The two peoples are genetically identical. Their realities are polar opposites.
I don’t think people defect from South Korea to North Korea, much.
I alluded to the Dunning-Kruger effect, paraphrased as,
‘The less one knows, the more certainly they know it.’
The observation has been expressed many ways in literature.
And might this apply to you? You do get rather imperious.
Others might be entitled to find that a little obnoxious, or amusing.
You haven’t conceded the merits of any of the critiques of your schema, your trope, freely offered.
As a rule, with the Dunning-Kruger effect, the converse also obtains,
‘The more one knows, the more one realises there is more to know about.’
I feel pretty sure you didn’t look it up, so here is the wiki entry on the findings,
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect
And there is also the ‘sunk cost fallacy.’
There comes a time when abandoning pet projects, including intellectual ones, that we have already invested so much into, but aren’t working, or are not rational, betray contradictions, is the wiser course of action instead of investing ever more because of loss-aversion, or pride, and so continuing to whip a dead horse and trying to make it go, which is a fools errand. Don’t you think?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost
iiwii #234 (now relabelled 233)
Good luck with your project. (And anyway you had me at “beer”.)
Don’t presume we aren’t going to think about things. You needn’t add those slightly condescending “chew on thats”. A little humility (and offers of beer) work wonders.
The site goes back to 2006, though early material has been lost. It might not hurt to peruse the discussions on justice, morality, free will and Kant and such?
Power Point is something much reviled by business users, but as someone who still retains many of the cognitive skews of Aspergers (Autism Lite), I find it great to bullet point my ideas in a list so that they stand as clear, single concepts, said once and not repeated. I can then better treat them in a linked chain of ideas with their major dependencies sequenced, and the overall sequence then titled in some descriptive manner.
This isn’t for most people, but dyslexics share surprisingly much with we aspies in not gating their attention and making earlier and later acts of cognition jumble up rather. Having thinking tools to help tease out stuff makes it much more tractable for me. I often write in Power Point before putting it back into something more colloquial. Maybe give it a try? A new mate of mine (clever, inventive bloke) is dyslexic and a fellow PP user.
Cheers!
It is what it is,
I was composing while you were posting.
I see you have defenestrated Time and are hoping to direct the discussion to your suppositions on Justice and Morality.
With the advent of the internet, where everyone is online, having a keyboard is taken as the invitation, indeed one’s democratic right, even duty, to make shit up,
One likes to have one’s views to be seen as authoritative, valid, even conspiracy theories, to share or assert one’s notions or opinions on any subject, is invited because they have a keyboard. It’s the immediacy, the urgency.
It’s actually what’s driving the crisis of democracy, I do think.
It’s not uncommon for people to carry prejudices, bigotry, sentiments, beliefs. Memes seem to have a will of their own.
We originally thought the internet, particularly social media, would make democracy irresistible the world over.
How naïve.
We would much rather impart our opinions, and notions, our conceits, to influence, really, than to study.
Time spent doing that is missing out on the interaction.
Mostly people busy posting on Faecebook aren’t actually connecting as they think they are.
And not all opinions and notions have equal merit, or deserve attention.
There is a pervasive and troubling unwillingness to read.
It probably ever was thus, but now that is having most serious consequences.
Behold, Trump.
Strato
I would like to now invite all to watch the series The Boys on Amazon Prime. At least as much ch as you can stand. It shows how corporations and religious organisations can use each other, often treading on each other’s toes, and how morality is also a commodity that can be exchanged for the big bucks that developed countries must bow to. When morality strikes to change leadership for the good of its own people, money making corporate despots follow and don’t crate how far the change should go which is not always there the good of the indigenous peoples. That has been my complaint all along.
Phil #228. When I read Mr. Miles’ #227 — mind/body problem — I immediately began to formulate a response, but I think your response (the separate mind “problem” is a cultural artifact) hit the bullseye. I only repeat it here for emphasis.
olli #237,
Yes, opportunists all. A convenient symbiotic relationship between the religious and business corporations.
Even the career virgin/brides of christ white nuns and Jesuit brothers in east Africa are really after something.
To make catholic converts, clones. They are missionaries, after all. It’s not all about, ‘It is better to give than to receive.’
The photo of getting the indigenous people to take the eucharist under the tree looks so good and prestigious in the catholic mission/charity magazine Caritas, ever after donations.
Donors storing up ‘riches in heaven.’
We all seek reward. Even they. Missionaries seek demonstrable results, even posthumous canonisation, not just heavenly reward, christ’s praise for being a ‘good and faithful servant.’
They’re not exactly there to create free-thinking atheists, to teach Darwinism, a master-key of an understanding.
As if they have any clue of that. It’s the ‘doctrine of demons.’
From the 18th century, through the 19th and into the 20th, zealous missionaries from the private schools of England and Germany, Belgium went into say, Africa, first, then the colonisers.
‘Whatever happens, we have got
The Maxim gun, and they have not.’
Missionaries would go into the jungle with their bibles and essentials in a coffin, carried by porter-recruits. They didn’t expect to survive the diseases, the climate or the hostility of the benighted heathen.
The cost of carrying the cross. Martyrs for the gospel.
China and Russia are vying for central Africa, the Sahel.
All those mineral deposits, gold, diamonds, exotic timber for exploitation. Super-cheap labour.
Russian mercenaries, the Wagner Group, are all across the region, utterly barbaric, ruthless.
Russia is flooding the region with weaponry, profiting mightily from the male predilection for fighting, and raping, controlling the rival warlords for the plunder.
Except I’m doing this, I am reading Powers and Thrones: a New History of the Middle Ages, Dan Jones, 2021, recommended by others here.
Talk about violence! Sheesh! Not much has changed, biologically.
Maybe, under Pinker’s ‘civilising process’, other traits than violence can now be eligible in sexual selection, and so Wrangham’s ‘self-domestication’ is advanced.
It would be our salvation. But Putin has 5,257 nukes and one sees plenty of barbarism still in the Russian, Chechen gene pool.
War, especially modern industrialised war culls fighting men. That’s counter-evolutionary.
But nature isn’t sacrosanct.
One of David Hume’s revelations was, “You can’t make an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’.”
Goodness, another tangential rant.🙄
Phil #228, Michael #238,
That is a liberating thought. No mind-body split.
And Descartes’ deux ex machina, the ‘ghost in the machine’, the little homunculus up in the cranium pulling on the levers attached to the cables, was indeed predicated on the a priori notion of the soul, I believe.
So is there no such thing as a ‘head stone’, as distinct from a ‘body stone’, after all?
Just another delusion I accepted uncritically by those who seemed authoritative on the phenomenology of highs.🙄
But Dennett caricatures the ‘Cartesian theatre’ as an analogue of consciousness.
But we can do introspection, or reflection, more correctly, think about ourselves thinking. I think.
Yet maybe that’s once again, actually just human exceptionalist bulldust.
Thanks, Michael #238
Its really interesting that the atheist who thinks I am mentally unwell for thinking the free floating mind idea is a cultural construct is one of the most prolific posters on onlyskymedia, migrating like I did, from Patheos. Whilst we agree an 95% this teacher and astronomy buff (v. good) have stunning disagreements on most aspects of psychology. He is a 1980s genetic essentialist and doesn’t begin to grok the new research. Its very frustrating. His only route out of my insistence on the duality matter is that I must be mad.
For me as a child (and an aspie one at that) I never encountered religion except as a weird thing a few people do. I had my brain explained to me early on by my Dad (crudely) but in good detail by Richard Gregory from about 13 (Eye and Brain). (Just before Lorna Wing at 14). I fitted perfectly inside my head and all the lovely quirks and illusions were the result of having to fit it all in my head. Aspie me was dead against being somehow scattered around.
Must rescan Chater! Sry. Ah, Zeug might have something to say… Excellent.
Then I want to talk about the three possible modes of conscious experience and why Chater might be simplifying the argument for flat then 3D, then flat. Topographic conscious experience, the experience of modelling our animal self in space, to better exploit sensory data; Social conscious experience, the experience of modelling our mammal self within a social hierarchy and; Cultural conscious experience, the vivid, biggie using all those cultural thinking tools and a contingent self model to better predict the future and rehearse our responses to different outcomes and start a rich autobiography.
I must say, this Brexit serial seems to be proving more and more constipating.
#241 was latterly directed to you too, Strato. Looks a bit rude without that acknowledgement.
The post was delayed in moderation. Then I saw your interest, linked you but in a post that mostly wasn’t needed which then got removed,
Strato #239
Free Coke and cigarettes in Vietnam and outside schools in Africa were part of the reason for me giving up smoking at least! Coca-Cola is having a longer effect. Glass houses are not climate proof.
Phil #241
“the experience of modelling our animal self in space, to better exploit sensory data”
My new car can do that. I keep looking for that droid equipped with camera flying over head when I am parking perfectly between the two white lines.
Then why “ought” I to care about what he says? 😉
If Russia was all alone in its ability to wage war, it would rule the world, wouldn’t it, and we’d all be speaking Russian. As it happens the USA has similar nuclear firepower. France, China, UK, Israel, Pakistan, India, North Korea also have these barbaric weapons. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which committed the signatories to non-acquisition of nuclear weapons, and disarmament for nuclear weapons powers, came into force in 1970. Except for Israel, Pakistan, India, North Korea, pretty much every nation, 191 in total, has signed. Agreed but not fulfilled the agreement.
Barbarism, I suggest, is not to be measured by supposed innate racial characteristics, but by actions. Inflicting or planning widespread death, destruction and suffering qualifies as barbarism, don’t you think? In that respect, ‘the good guys’, ourselves we might think, are also guilty. Evil as the enemy might be, the Allies in WW2 killed, destroyed and inflicted suffering on a huge scale.
The formation of the UN was meant to address the issue of war and provide a framework for settling international disputes peacefully. It has not had a degree of success that gives hope that we will avoid WW3. In the aftermath of nuclear bombardment, the survivors may be more convinced of the need for peace than the world is now. I wouldn’t count on it. History has been called the record of the crimes, stupidities and misfortunes of the human race. An epitaph?
Dear mods,
I just spent a good half hour responding to aldous, and my post wouldn’t upload.
Usually, when I click the back arrow on my phone, it will reappear in the composing box and when I hit ‘post comment’ that second time, it will upload and I can then format it and edit it.
Yet there’s no guarantee that it will reappear.
Would you now have it in your files?
Thanks.
hi Zeug
Because you are seemingly reasonable, Hume’s point was even rational, and you have a limbic system.
“Ought ” is a reason plus emotion. Not all reason’s are rational, but on this occasion it seems so.
This inclusion of (a coercing) emotion appears a category error in logic.
I can imagine an expanded logic that could become akin to complex numbers with a second orthogonal factor enfolding emotional heft and that expands dimensionally into a more humanly descriptive logical space, like colour space, that singular apprehension from multiple simultaneous sensed factors.
Sadly, it is also like David Chalmers’ solution to the Hard Problem of Consciousness, explaining vivid experience and qualia with a second physical substance property in Panpsychism.
I might just have wasted your time here. Sry.
olli, #245
Heh!
Worry, once your car passes the mirror test.
What did ya get?
So sorry, Strato, no. Sometimes the system removes posts for some reason after they’ve reached the database, in which case we can restore them. But occasionally they vanish before reaching the database, in which case there’s nothing we can do, unfortunately. We’re very sorry, we know it’s frustrating. It has been looked into, but for the time being it remains a bit of a mystery.
Waiting until the page has FULLY completed reloading before refreshing the page or navigating away from it after you’ve posted a comment reduces but doesn’t totally eliminate the risk, so for now we strongly advise always taking a copy of comments before trying to post them, or composing them elsewhere (eg. Word on a computer, or Notebook or other text app on a phone) and then copying them in here, so that at least you can quickly and easily repost them if the gremlin should strike.
Apologies again.
The mods
Thank you.
An opportunity to manifest priceless patience and contentment.
aldous #247,
It is easy to traduce America as we expect America to demonstrate that which we somehow don’t expect from Russia, China, and yes, America has so much military capability.
But America’s military expenditure isn’t the cause of Russia’s or of China’s, or North Korea’s militarism or of that of anyone else who hates, and is frankly jealous of, America.
Their claiming the need to arm up against America and Nato is just a hollow pretext, as we all know.
Nato is a mutual defence organisation, upholding international rule of law. It’s not an aggressor.
Japan is debating changing the constitution wherein the foreswore militarisation, so that they can help keep China at bay. Better hurry up.
China is looking to soon be the preeminent superpower, as we witness America declining, and where we can’t expect America to protect rule of law elsewhere, ongoing.
Trump killed the nuclear non-proliferation agreement.
What would Ron DeSantis do? Hate to think about it.
Staunchly ‘America First,’ methinks.
Admittedly, America doesn’t submit to the Haig.
Gratifyingly we see America sending billions in materiel and financial assistance to help Ukraine survive and push back Putin’s Russia with its unspeakable barbarity.
We expect this of America. Imagine the outcry if they didn’t help redoubtable Ukraine!
Afghanistan was an imbroglio. It couldn’t be rescued. Its men made sure it reverted back to the dark ages of absolutist theocratic patriarchy as soon as it could.
The Women’s Ministry was replaced with ‘The Minustry of Virtue and Vice.’
Profoundly despotic.
Of course there are those saying, “That’s their way, who are we to try and change them? Look at how spectacularly the war in Afghanistan failed.”
I agree Bush’s ‘war on terror’ was always wrong-headed, he and Blair’s militaristic christian crusade, retributive justice.
Some Afghani men and women and kids were rescued from the fiercely patriarchal dystopia. Women tasted liberties. It would be almost better they never had.
I’m personally not right into cultural relativism. I think women everywhere should have full autonomy.
Education is a universal right.
We don’t see America invading Mexico or Canada. We don’t contemplate such a possibility.
We do see America in late-stage capitalism, with its very democracy under serious threat. They have worrying internal problems. Overturning Roe v Wade and what next, LGBTIQ rights? Contraception? Most likely.
America has a lot of progressivism to lose, to backslide out of, because of religion, rightwing
libertarianism. Women and gay people, Blacks, Latinx, Asian people will lose rights, will be oppressed.
I read brilliant, and troubling articles by Americans every day. And books. I yearn for America, as do they.
Republicans who still preach Trump’s Big Lie do so with impunity. They are at enmity with democracy, hijacking it.
I am worried for America, and thus for the rest of us. We need America to remain fully involved in Nato, to keep Russia and China in check.
Xi has learned from Russia’s mess in Ukraine that he has to build overwhelming capability to take Taiwan.
But he will move soon enough.
Now fiercely patriarchal islamist Iran is covenanting with Putin’s Russia. Iran craves the bomb so it can destroy the infidel, decadent west, and Sunni Arabia and Israel. Russia can help them acquire that capability.
Now that is a worry.
And yes, the allies bombed Germany. Nazi fascism was defeated. And Japan’s opportunistic imperialist gambit.
What was otherwise to be done?
Simon Tisdall whom I always read declares Nato should terminate Putin’s revanchist campaign now. Otherwise the cost will be multiplied.
Putin won’t stop with regaining all that comprised the USSR. He wants a European empire.
He is playing nuclear blackmail.
Call his bluff.
Of course there is a chance that his penchant for killing and destroying, seen in his callous prosecution of violence upon Ukraine’s citizens, will override his personal self-preservation instinct, and that he would go nuclear if he got mad enough or was really getting threatened from without and within.
But I concur with Simon Tisdall,
https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/17/putin-is-already-at-war-with-europe-there-is-only-one-way-to-stop-him
Hi Phil,
See if this makes sense to you, appears to respect cultural identity.
So, it works something like this.
If you feel that you have no other option available to you, and if you are unsure of the process or local law, you can approach what you would consider a reasonable peer who you consider cognoscente of the local laws and/or customs to start the process. Everything has a app these days so a app can be developed. Once you have approached the peer the process is triggered for you, there are going to be consequences for you either way, you could possibly be a obsessive litigant, but somehow I don’t think so, this protocol possibly resolves that issue, but just in case if your peer invoices you, or he approaches the defendant, a case is now on your record, the date and time are noted, easy with a app. Your peer now also has access to your historical record and any precedent that may apply to you. (This makes sense later on) So your peer, or judge, once he is in agreement with you that a injustice has occurred, through his perceived knowledge of the local laws/customs, has to approach the defendant. He must inform him of the charge, as well as to get his side of the story, he has no choice. It is one time that a person does not have free will, when you are accused of a injustice, apart from as and when he or his culture dictates.
(Just FYI, any reasonable injustice generally involves affecting your time or your time going forward negatively. Freedom of speech is a universal right, including what some may consider hate speech. You know the saying sticks and stones…. But speech that encourages, or involves incitement to commit crime, that is to take or damage what is not yours and/or hurt someone without their consent, is a crime).
If he has a valid reason then that is the case, it is still recorded on everyone record and he is compensated for his time. If not, he is informed of the negative impact and consequences of his actions, and that if he doesn’t cease and desist, he will be subjected to a sanction. That sanction will be as the local laws, or his (the defendants) culture dictates for that injustice. He will additionally also be liable for any costs and inconvenience incurred due to his actions, in other words, with costs.
If he reoffends, second strike, the sanction is imposed.
He is then informed that if he transgresses again, third strike, he will be subjected to a sanction of a order of magnitude greater 10x. And a additional sanction that the victim, sees fit as long as it is considered reasonable by the victims culture.
If at any stage, if he feels that he is being unfairly treated he can claim a injustice is being committed against him and he can get what he considers a reasonable peer of his choice.
His peer now has to judge and sentence him, the peer has to “judge” his clients claim of a injustice. He must be careful, the possibility exists that his culture, or peer, has a default punishment that is worse than the local laws dictate. His peer can impose that on him if he feels strongly about it. His peer is in effect his “king” with regard to the particulars of this case. But he must first serve, or comply, with the sentence of the presiding officer, unless the presiding officer waives that requirement.
His peer must firstly see, or determine, if he is indeed guilty, according to the local laws, and, secondly to see if the protocol for recourse was followed. That would include that the sanctions are valid and reasonably considered. In other words, to ensure the spirit, or intent, of the process is being adhered to.
If his peer feels that the protocol is not being followed and is indeed unjust, due to a injustice resulting from a biased, or unreasonable, presiding officer, he needs to point it out, and get the presiding officer to either reconsider that issue, for a more reasoned course of action. If he feels for some reason the presiding officer is being totally unreasonable, he can claim that the presiding officer is not competent and cannot be considered reasonable.
As this protocol for recourse is one of many the including the traditional one, a final arbiter is selected from the existing justice system. A protocol for sanctioning and rehabilitating a unreasonable peer can be implemented. But all this goes on their record.
Possibly a final arbiter that is neutral is identified for this eventuality when the defended appoints his peer. This final arbiter can have the same culture as both parties if they want to retain any cultural biases, or could be from a culture that is not closely associated, or neutral, to both parties if cultural biases do not need to be retained or considered.
That’s the gist of it. It’s fair and just as far as I can tell.
It’s recourse through a peer of your choice. But your peer is there to assess you, and your ability to reason not the other party/ies. You cannot change him. He is your king with regards to this issue.
Phil if you would like 12 you can have them it’s your choice, they are there to judge you.
There is obviously a protocol for recording this process on your record. It is for future peers to see if a trend is being followed. This is to identify habitual offenders and create laws unique for them. Precedent, as it should be, not as it currently is. That stays with you for the rest of your life. Take responsibility and be accountable for your actions. The same is recorded on record of every party involved, to prevent any future corruption of the process or historical record. Even the person who claimed a injustice, whether real or not. As well as the presiding officer/s.
It the reason and logic that needs assessing, I would love your comment. and any others who can offer constructive criticism or comment
Wow Strato! So people like Chomsky are 100% wrong?
What’s so special about the emotional and limbic systems? That whole thing’s still an “is” statement, and therefore not exempt from Hume’s own dogma. No amount of psychological or philosophical insight will ever surpass the status of “is”, and therefore there is nowhere from which an “ought” can legitimately spring, because what’s left when you remove all things that exist (“is”) is anything that doesn’t exist (“is not”).
So you’re down to two alternatives. Either Hume’s “is/ought” dogma is incorrect and there are facts of the world that give rise to “ought” statements, or the dogma is correct and there are flat-out no legitimate “ought” statements, because there’s nowhere for them to come from. Those include the ones about logic and rationality (after all, why “ought” we to care about logic and rationality when that “ought” can’t be substantiated either?), and therefore raise the possibility that nothing about Hume’s statement “ought” to affect our behaviour. Ergo, it’s a self-contradictory principle.
Personally, on the subject of consciousness especially, I remain skeptical. The physical side of the brain, from the atoms of its neurons up to the gross organization of the lobes and gyri, is effectively accounted for. There’s simply nowhere to hide any “spooky stuff”, and no need to either if the grand theory being wheeled in is physically indistinguishable from a world in which it’s not true. That’s a major problem because untestable and redundant hypotheses are a handicap in scientific investigation.
I don’t think any problem of consciousness is going to be solved by inventing whole dimensions of physics that are inconveniently unfalsifiable, or rephrasing the problem by packaging it and putting it in a black box (an undetectable black box, at that). I think we’ll only make progress once we drop the idea that consciousness is some super-special substance separate from physical reality, or shoved into its own custom dimension alongside it, or whatever “othering” technique is deployed. It seems more plausible to me that it’ll end up a categorical error of another kind, akin to touring all the buildings of Oxford University and then asking, “Yes, but where’s the university itself?”
To me, consciousness smacks more of a hypercomplex adaptation than some kind of physical side effect that happens to lodge in the brain. The fact that some people take it for granted as “simple” is a massive red flag that we’re projecting our own individual (evolved?) assumptions onto reality: after all, we tend to think that walking, talking, and eating are simple, and they’re really, really not once you scratch the biomechanical and biochemical surface.
I think it goes without saying I’m skeptical of this suggestion as applied to ethics too. If ethics has a genuine real-world basis, then it has to be at the very least incorporated into at least one adaptation similar to how reason, aerodynamics, or the principles of optics are incorporated into body organ systems: something which comes with its own standards, regardless of whether people misuse or abuse it conventionally (and trust me, they do), as soon as any animal is even remotely designed to exploit it. Or to put it bluntly: that you can get an “ought” from an “is”, and adaptive evolution by natural selection is a major step of the way*, just as it’s the main way to get any complex functional design in nature.
*I say “major step of the way” because, even if natural selection could have supplied more than the basic foundations, you could argue what actually happened was that cultural evolution of some kind continued the job from there in reality.
(Personally, I think the whole “is-ought” distinction is self-contradictory, incurious, ignorant, obsolete – Hume was speaking way, waaaay before it was even possible to understand humans as evolved entities, never mind to understand the physical basis of psychology and other mind and social sciences – and uninsightful, but hey, maybe I can be persuaded to the contrary).
olli #255,
Hi. Yes, I have watched many clips of the more recent Chomsky, interviews with progressive hosts where he imparts long answers. I love the guy.
Eximious.
He has a ton of critical analysis of America.
He lives out in the healthy dry air of Arizona, engages in interviews from his study, online, a wall of books behind him.
I totally concur with his democratic socialism, his sense of justice, his detestation for anarcho-capitalism.
But is he a pacifist? He’s Jewish I would think. What does he think of deeply historic antisemitism in Europe, culminating in the Holocaust and ongoing with ‘Great Replacement’ ideology?
If he is a pacifist, then Putin and Xi are not.
Would he survive a theoretical invasion by telling the invaders that he’s on their side; aver that he also hates America? No.
I think he knows they would not be interested or amenable to reason, that they don’t subscribe to the sentiment, ‘Right is Might.’
And that it would be extermination.
If he is a blanket pacifist, declaring that we should never take up arms, then that tells me about Chomsky, not about the imperative of adopting such a position.
But I haven’t looked up his views on Just War theory. But I will. It’s important. Chomsky is a giant, a national treasure.
And America has committed grave sins, or their leaders did. Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, as no one disputes.
And in Latin America. The CIA has some dark secrets. We know about waterboarding.
John Bolton divulged, boastfully, stupidly, that he has been involved in several plots with the CIA to effect coups in South America. A rusted on hawk.
Gringo bullies ever and interlopers, to the people.
Hitchens wrote, The Trial of Henry Kissinger.
Henry, with the usual heaviness remarked, “I find it contemptible.”
Noam rightly expects more, much more of his country, much about which he probably loves.
I think he loves his interviewers. Many are bright young ladies, fellow progressive Americans who are well qualified to engage with him. He finds that gratifying, I’m sure.
He deplores corporate greed, Wall Street bankers and rampantly bigoted, self-interested, sold-out politicians, the whole sordid game.
He wants wealth distribution.
I’m sure he thinks, regrettably and frustratingly, ‘You can point the working people to education, but you can’t make them think.’
Another thinker I have followed is Chris C Hedges. He gives addresses, comments on Twitter, has written many books.
Formidably erudite and forthright. commentator, ex war correspondent for the New York Times during the Serbo-Croatian conflict, among the action, getting the people’s real take on things.
I recommend his address, American Anomie. Many of such calibre.
Hedges also takes interviews from his study with bright young progressives. He has much to say. So lucid. He teaches prison inmates studying for degrees, with his courses.
Hedges is an ordained presbyterian minister in the line of the Reformers, but one who doesn’t believe Jesus existed.
One of a kind. I couldn’t hold a candle to him, or the real, original Strato either.
Hedges certainly has integrity, takes the authentic life very seriously. Eloquent with the language. He declares he has a pessimistic view of humankind. Very sane.
Another I have followed if you hadn’t encountered him is Richard D Woolf, his fine online not lengthy addresses. A natural born educator.
He also has much deep criticism of America. Of course.
A Marxist. Wonderful, informed, enlightened thinker, analysing current developments.
Trash law and rules and America will descend into the usual appalling violence of ‘all against all,’ as Thomas Hobbes envisaged.in Leviathan.
With the country awash with guns, very few would be left. I think many fantasise about it.
Something like 60% and growing of Republicans say political violence can be warranted.
Another thought that occurs to me:
“Why is there something rather than nothing?” is an inherently doomed question. “Why is there X rather than Y?” presupposes at least two states of the world, and implies that a third one Z is the reason X rather than Y occurs. But note that requires three parties. “Why is there something rather than nothing?” only posits two, and presupposes that the second one is even possible. It assumes without even checking whether the assumption is viable.
In any case, what could possibly work as a satisfying answer to it? If you hear “Why is there something rather than nothing?” and posit something to explain the difference, the question just regresses. “OK, so why is there that something rather than nothing?” And then if you posited another something to solve this one: “OK, so why is there that other something rather than nothing?” Ad infinitum.
Given that it’s A) a loaded question, assuming something that’s not proven viable, and B) one that formally has no terminable answer because it’s built to infinitely regress and swallow any answer proposed, I’m not convinced it’s a legitimate, sensible question in the first place.
Strato #257
Have you seen this one?
https://youtu.be/vRbnPA3fd5U
I very often doubt my ability to understand what is going on in the world Strato but it feels like Change most has gotten into my head and read my thoughts and understanding. I see time and again that leaders are suddenly pronounced as being insane or set to destroy the world on a whim like some sort of bad James Bond movie and the pattern sticks out to me I wonder why people can’t see it. What I don’t understand after all it seems is why people sleep through it not what’s really going on, when I listen through Chomsky. “Ukraine will become a threat to itself…” from seven years ago while. I think the crime is installing a leader in a country that will take it to war against a country it has no hope of beating and have people say standing behind them, way back behind, and supplying them with weapons is supposed to be noble and or heroic. It seems s planned murder of thousands of civilians in order to try to get some concessions.
Concerning ‘Hume’s Fork’, ‘You can’t make an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’’, I think that even applies to evolution.
Mother nature is pretty fecund and a wonderful designer, with no purpose or plan, no ‘paragon of animals,’ the final, perfected life form.
Elvis.
Trump.
But ‘nature’ isn’t sacrosanct.
We have been practising artificial selection on organisms useful to us for millennia.
Evolution by natural selection clearly works beautifully.
What a patronising understatement. Contemptible.
It’s how life proliferates, ‘complexifies,’ how speciation occurs.
It’s the way life will get started and flourish anywhere in the universe.
Until science and technology arises. Or arrives.
Sexual selection also obtains, choice.
Now we can clone. New pharmaceuticals are being created all the time. We have contraception, safe abortion, surgery, vaccines,; we are developing pharmaco-genetics.
But antibiotics could be doomed, through unwise overuse.
Now we can clone, do gene splicing, genetic modification.
Perhaps some billionaires will become Noah Yuval Harari’s Homo Deus.
Hooked up to the ‘internet of all things,’ getting the continual upgrades, live forever. I don’t dig the thought.
Because only the elite could obtain it.
But any other repugnance for the idea, or its prospect is probably merely based in sentiment.
Would they be benign? Would it matter?
Perhaps ‘might is right,’ after all. It seems to be in nature, wherein there is much competition for existence, a main driver of diversity.
Universal human rights is an ‘ought’ statement, based on the scientifically-based recognition that we are the same species and that there is no inherent, ‘natural law’ or divine law dictating racial or gender relations.
And so, we reason, that universal human rights is a good idea, respecting life and the pursuit of happiness. The social contract is another good idea, based in reason, not ‘natural’ or ‘divine’ law.
Micronutrient plugging wellness influencers seem to believe that ‘natural’ is really sacred.
However, we are living outside the environmental means, creating climate breakdown and lethal pollution, like toxic ‘forever chemicals,’ per-and-poly flouroalkyl substances, like Teflon.
Nevertheless, ‘nature’ isn’t sacrosanct, even though it ‘is’ ‘a priori,’ as it were. Yet neither is technology ultimate.
Nothing is sacred.
Hume was an iconoclast. The Antichrist.
Yet how does Hume’s Utensil edict apply to, say, the rules of logic, mathematics, or how substantive knowledge is acquired and accumulated, by Hume’s own empiricism in philosophy of science, and under Popperian falsifiability which by default, if a hypothesis can’t be falsified, this allowing for tentative verifiability of said hypothesis? ( Gad! What a sentence! Sorry about that.)
Or to Hume’s maxim itself, as Zeuglodon Beta impertinently already asked #256?
What we expect from America is exactly the same as what we expect from every other country. That is the principle of law. It applies to all, equally, without discrimination in favour of or against any national or ethnic group.
This is using ‘expect from’ in the sense of the obligation to follow universal rules, the principles of international law, as set out in the UN Charter. To save humanity from the ‘scourge of war’, to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours, and to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, and to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest, (UN Charter)
What we actually expect is that the ‘rules’ that will be applied are not those of peaceful co-existence, but those set by the United States to support its global supremacy. This means violating international law when it clashes with this policy and weaponizing it, when the opportunity arises, to attack our enemies. As Noam Chomsky says,
We own and run the world. So we don’t have to ratify anything. We establish what writers of foreign policy will call the “rule-based liberal order.” We do support that because we set the rules. So, therefore, we want the rule-based international order, not this old-fashioned, UN-based international order where we don’t set the rules. That’s no good; that goes out the window.
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/04/noam-chomsky-on-how-to-prevent-world-war-iii
Unfortunately, you might say, there are challenges to US global supremacy, by states that also have a ‘nuclear deterrent’. The UN system has not worked and the American ‘rule-based system’ leads to nuclear war and the extinction of homo sapiens. Perhaps some unpredictable event will turn up to save us from the outcomes of international discord and climate change.
olli #259,
Thanks for that. I watched it.
Chomsky is too correct, meaning necessarily radical as against the status quo, to be allowed to be a government chief advisor on international policy.
Dangerous to the powers that be, a thorn in their side.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vRbnPA3fd5U&feature=youtu.be
aldous #262,
“Perhaps some unpredictable event will turn up to save us from the outcomes of international discord and climate”
Tweedledum and Tweedledee
Agreed to have a battle;
For Tweedledum said Tweedledee
Had spoiled his nice new rattle.
Just then flew down a monstrous crow,
As black as a tar-barrel;
Which frightened both the heroes so,
They quite forgot their quarrel.
(Lewis Carroll)
aldous #262
Your link is terrifying in two ways. One, the history of events and two, that I can see what has been going on and I have no education or names and references to quote.
The other thing I have noticed is the lack of televised front line footage. Sure we see the odd building blown up and the aftermath and women, elderly and children before my interviewed, even a few missiles being launched but where is the front line stuff? We really are sleeping here while Ukrainians die. I am so ashamed. Being involved in the Cyprus issue I have seen it happening on a smaller scale but this really is frightening.
So Murdoch dumps Trump. A big deal?
Nothing changes.
Murdoch still tells his giant consumer base what their opinion is on everything, how they will vote.
It would punish Trump more now if he didn’t get sent Upstate for a holiday. He could then at least be a deeply sympathised-with martyr-saint.
Now his fall will simply be ignominious.
Murdoch, addressing the Australian Press Club, said that determining the outcome of elections is what motivates him. I happened to be watching TV, and there it was. I never heard another word about the admission.
‘Murdoch is God,’ not Clapton, another libertarian, actually.
It would be almost amusing to watch how Tucker Carlson will now go about redoing his jive talk, re Trump.
Cringe factor of 11.
No doubt one will read about this volte face in the ongoing farce that is the Carlson schtick.
How he must hate Murdoch for controlling him.
Carlson relishes believing that he controls the masses’ attention and opinions, day in, day out.
The gift of the gab. Handy, that, if you don’t like working with your hands, or being real.
But he regularly gets the ego bubble-bursting reminder that Murdoch owns him, tells him what the spin is to be, the script.
Carlson can’t quit because he would be unemployable anywhere else.
And NewsCarp* is too big to just forsake, to renounce. He is addicted to the theatre and the glory, not to mention the dosh.
He would perish from Relevance Deprivation Syndrome in any afterlife scene.
One wonders if he is somewhat closeted, candidly.
It’s strictly transactional in that dystopian, amoral rightwing media-hype universe. ‘Nothing personal.’
Trump himself will wither from RDS now. You watch.
“Sad”, to quote Trump himself, doing public schadenfreude against his many media critics, and political opponents, at his rallies.
The press, cordoned behind a cage, “Enemies of the people!”
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/jul/25/new-york-post-trump-murdoch-wall-street-journal-fox-news
*European carp were released into Australia’s Murray-Darling river system by some clueless eejit in the 1960s.
They account for 80-90% of the biomass.
They nearly wiped out the beautiful long-living Murray cod which can attain to great size. An ecological disaster.
Herpes virus has been introduced as a measure to eradicate them, but it won’t. A massive tragedy.
And they’re inedible.
Vicki #207 (belatedly!)
You are, yes. From left to right, it goes Labour, Liberal Democrats, Conservative (Tories). But the Overton Window of UK (well, English) politics has lurched pretty dramatically to the right in recent years, so none of the mainstream UK parties are quite what they used to be.
The Tories have been completely taken over by ultra-neoliberal, EU-hostile, public-sector-hostile, ultra-nationalist, anti-immigrant ideologues who basically want to engineer a corporate takeover of the British state and will happily destroy our freedoms, protections, safeguards, rights and the central pillars of our democracy in order to do so.
Labour and the Lib Dems, meanwhile, are still reeling and still trying to reinvent themselves for a world in which an extreme form of Tory ideology has won.
The Lib Dems have had to abandon what used to be their best-known policy, which is support for the UK’s membership of the EU. Before the 2019 election they said that, if elected, they would revoke Brexit without even holding a 2nd referendum; by January 2021 their leader was saying that they wouldn’t campaign to rejoin the EU; and now they’re saying they’ll campaign to rejoin the EU Single Market (though not the EU as such). I’m not knocking them: saying they want the UK to rejoin the EU would be la-la-land politics right now. Incidentally, back in 2010, when there was a hung parliament, the LDs chose to go into coalition with the Tories rather than Labour; now they’re saying they wouldn’t consider another coalition with the Tories, only with Labour. Which tells you quite a lot about how both Tories and Labour have shifted in recent years.
As for Labour, my view is that they’re struggling to interpret their own traditional voter base right now. The north of England has always been traditionally Labour, but voters there voted strongly for Leave in the 2016 EU referendum, and for the Tories in the 2019 general election. Was that because Boris Johnson was promising to “Get Brexit Done”, whereas the then Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was perceived as sitting on the fence about it? Or was it because Corbyn was seriously left-wing by British standards, too much so even for many Labour Party supporters? Either way, Labour were trounced in the 2019 election, and the left-winger Corbyn was replaced as leader by the far less left-wing Keir Starmer, whose main pitch appears to be that he’d be a more efficient implementer of Tory policies than the Tories are. (I’m being a little unfair: of course he wouldn’t pursue a full-on neoliberal agenda, wouldn’t sell off the NHS, etc. But neither would he pursue the transformative left-wing one that I believe is so urgently needed. And of political necessity he is now talking like a Brexiteer when, as an erstwhile Remainer, he knows perfectly well that’s all bollox.)
It’s all part of the British tragedy that any political party openly espousing the four things the UK needs most desperately right now – EU membership, major investment in public services, urgent action to tackle our horrendous social and economic inequality, and an end to the corporate rip-off – would be committing electoral suicide.
Or would it?
One of the really interesting developments over the last few weeks has been the very significant public support for the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) in their strike action against proposed cuts to railway service provision and a real-terms cut in pay. It’s not that the RMT had that public support from the start, but that its two most prominent spokespeople, Mick Lynch and Eddie Dempsey, have practically become folk heroes as a result of their brilliant, ultra-clear, no-holds-barred expositions of all that is wrong with the corporate-led system. Lynch and Dempsey are speaking out and actually educating people about the structural unfairness in the system in ways that Labour leader Keir Starmer simply does not dare to do. Indeed, for a while, until he saw that the RMT actually had very significant public support, Starmer even threatened to sack any of his front-bench MPs who joined an RMT picket line. Imagine that! The Labour Party is supposed to be the party of the workers! Meanwhile, there is this huge sense of relief over here that SOMEONE, at least, has the guts to tell it like it is.
Check out these clips on Twitter. Literally NO ONE in mainstream UK politics would dare to say these things, and yet there is clearly a real hunger to hear them:
Eddie Dempsey: https://twitter.com/IrvineWelsh/status/1548250287634145280
Mick Lynch: https://twitter.com/Angry_Voice/status/1541103794846633985?s=20&t=_dPW0cXkSI-FpKs4iT14HA&fbclid=IwAR3frk5tWXljcQCbAXEVPelSHm0pri7nk4EuKC7YoGAQ4iSICZjqL-KOHVs
aldous #/262,
“What we actually expect is that the ‘rules’ that will be applied are not those of peaceful co-existence, but those set by the United States to support its global supremacy. This means violating international law when it clashes with this policy and weaponizing it, when the opportunity arises, to attack our enemies.”
If I haven’t met my quota of self-loathing for the day, I feel quite ripped- off. But I can remedy the deficit with a healthy session of self-flagellation with the cat-‘o’-nine-tails fitted with the two dozen lead barbs.
Sorry mate, I’m being facetious. But I rather don’t concur with the above.
If we abandon rule of law, what is the alternative?
Is it implicitly understood that Russia is benign and is actually Africa’s or say, even Ukraine’s, saviour, since it is so religiously anti-western?
Anti-western is righteous; it is to be necessarily autonomous.
Why isn’t Russia a democracy? Is democracy to be shunned?
Why would Ukraine want self-dererminism, to aspire to remain a progressive liberal society?
Was voting in Volodymyr Zelensky, an abomination? Is he an evil leader?
Is Ukraine provoking Russia? Posing a threat? Did they start this war, and deserve this invasion and to be pulverised, raped, summarily executed, dispossessed, enslaved and ultimately, liquidated?
I think it’s the case that Russia’s and China’s autocrats and their propagandist and censorship apparatchiks have their own people and those of Africa and the Pacific poisoned against the west, for their own power, and pecuniary interests.
There are no saints, including among the anti-western state regimes or even Noam himself.
And yes, of course, Noam is a peaceful, educated man. An educator.
But also, we all like to influence, to have our views endorsed. We do it all the time.
And so we are political animals.
One can also game the masses, the gullible, those who think with just their feelings, as does the Murdoch hireling, like Tucker Carlson, man of the people. He of the poison tongue.
Sergei Lavrov, Putin’s mouthpiece, heavy, horrible bastard, games the uneducated, the power-hungry illegitimate big-men of Africa and the vulnerable.
And what of the Wagner Group, Putin’s mercenaries? Or of Ramzan Khadyrov, Chechen dictator, murderer and rapist, alpha male, doing what he does best in Ukraine. He calls himself, “Putin’s attack dog.” A zealous muslim.
I read the long wiki entry on the individual. It’s not an easy account to read. One wants to just look away.
How would a fool such as I go, living in Russia?
At Deakin uni, off-campus, I studied rather intensely, ‘Imperialism: the Expansion of Europe’ and then, ‘Imperialism: The Clash of Cultures.’
Africa, New Guinea, the Pacific peoples, the indigenous people of Australia.
I know something of the history.
India is backsliding out of democracy, gained from the west, now embracing hard-rightwing, moralistic, patriarchal, nationalistic, militant hinduism, under Nahendra Modi, authoritarian.
This is the kind of thing I will read,
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/25/sergei-lavrov-africa-tour-russia-foreign-minister-analysis
Open letter to Noam Chomsky on the Russia-Ukraine War
signed by
Bohdan Kukharskyy, City University of New York
Anastassia Fedyk, University of California, Berkeley
Yuriy Gorodnichenko, University of California, Berkeley
Ilona Sologoub, VoxUkraine NGO
https://www.e-flux.com/notes/470005/open-letter-to-noam-chomsky-and-other-like-minded-intellectuals-on-the-russia-ukraine-war
Marco #267,
Awesome, Eddie Dempsey and Mick Lynch. They know their stuff.
Inspiring.
Thanks, love your work.
Thanks Strato – I’m pretty impressed with yours, too!
Marco #269,
Thanks.
That’s powerful! They gave him a talking to indeed.
No hyperbole there.
I hope professor Chomsky will do introspection and prove to be teachable under chastisement.
He is looked up to, with his long legacy, and so he has responsibility, bears an onus.
Serious business.
‘First, do no harm.’
Phil et al
In an attempt to look away for a short time from the horrors happening in this world right now, a link below, that I am still reading, (in hospital for kidney stones again, they got the little buggers this time) that has introduced another cog in my brain in trying to understand why our little dog is now up to nine toys she recognises by name.
It makes sense to me that pre-language, an ugg or a grunt here and a finger pointing there was just as powerful as the “full on” language of today but, accepting that detail is needed, maybe, for technology to advance. Can we say ugs’ and grunts were the binary of the day?
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2019.0046
Phil, sorry if this is what you have been trying to explain all this time but I did not get it. Love to hear your thoughts but please be gentle with me in the language department 😁
As for which car we finally went for, it’s a Mercedes’ 300d. Not a “do no harm” car, as there is no such thing out there, but a “do as little harm” as possible given my needs. As you know, I did a lot of research into full electrical and hybrid cars and found that they are no way near ready for me and my budget. Others who have money to throw about will have to fund the research needed to make them so. Our trip to Cornwall had the car doing over sixty miles to the gallon with a clever psychological gadget that gave me bonus miles gained for the way I was driving and the terrain I was driving on, going down hill etc. My friends hybrid is doing nothing like that too the gallon and a boy gives him an advantage in congestion charging zones monetarily. The build quality and technology to run as efficiently as possible was a decider too as we keep our cars a long time. This might, if things don’t change dramatically, last longer than me and will be the last car we buy. If it becomes worthless before it’s time then I will take the hit. Maybe a smaller car, this is not a big car, can drive more to the gallon but my health would suffer big time. I am not in a position to walk or cycle everywhere but we did ninety thousand miles in eighteen years with the beamer so the car will sit outside our house more often than not anyway and having retired the van is no longer needed either.
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The mods
Mods, good call. I just changed my profile icon in order to comply.
Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialism is predicated on the presumption that as humans we have freedom, as a birth-right, more a burden.
We are faced with making decisions and, so, of either maintaining our freedom, being ‘authentic,’ or relinquishing our freedom, in mauvais fois, ‘bad faith’, ‘failure to exercise integrity and autonomy in one’s basic life choices.’
In avoidance, escapism, denial, prejudice, ignorance, bigotry in all its manifestations, and all, we fail to be, or to remain, free adults, to the best of our lights.
If we come to realise, or be shown that we have been living in bad faith, we can change. We are free.
Of course it implicitly assumes we have free-will. It must.
Actually, Dennett’s ‘kind of free-will worth wanting.’
Sartre says other people can put up resistance when we seek to effect intellectual, behavioural, relational change for the sake of our authenticity, or our growth.
This can make making such changes harder.
‘Hell is other people.’ They can tend fix one. In a box as such. We can do that.
Sartrean existentialism happened to be in the philosophy course when I took social sciences.
For what it’s worth, at the time, it was an effective remedy to the christianity I had admittedly fallen victim to, with its fixed view of what we are, its teachings, our need of salvation, sanctification, its proscriptions.
Sartre was an atheist. Dangerous. There have been christian existentialists.
I just looked at Sartre. I wasn’t into trying to accommodate it into the faith.
Then I sought out that doctrine of demons, Darwinism, Dawkins, and ‘neo-Darwinian’ philosopher, Daniel Dennett. And I consumed a fair bit of Hitchens, ‘the Hitch.’
Apostasy! Out.
‘New atheism’ just happened to be happening at the time, fortuitously.
I have been thinking about Noam. I have to ever remain teachable, even if it comes from my young adult ‘kid.’ She’s doing uni. Humanities.
Strato #277
Fantastic! I’m always delighted to hear of people studying the humanities. They have so much to offer, open up so many different ways of understanding the world and so many routes to empathy, and I fear they are increasingly under-valued in our relentlessly profit-focused, not to say philistine, world.
Marco #278,
Absolutely.
The ousted Scott Morrison Liberal (our conservative) government radically hiked up fees.
The rationalisation was an economic one, typically, unimaginatively, or indeed a christian one, and one draws the conclusion the Blue Meanies intend to minimise the number of informed, pinko-leaning critical thinkers emerging in the midst, in the ranks.
And yet, despite that calculated disincentiviser, the old arts course still remains popular. Which engenders hope for us.
I don’t know if the Labor government the demos demonstrated the wisdom to elect will restore the fees for humanities studies. I wouldn’t be surprised.
The daughter is onto Murdoch. He better get with the program. The times are changing.
The Sydney Morning Herald (not Murdoch-owned), article, at the time,
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/no-change-arts-courses-still-popular-despite-113-per-cent-fee-hike-20210210-p571bg.html#:~:text=Under%20the%20changes%2C%20the%20cost,a%20year%2C%20up%20from%20%2411%2C355.
I’m feeling really frustrated. What is the Department of Justice waiting for? How many high crimes does someone have to commit before an indictment has been brought. It’s all over the news today that Trump is going to Washington to deliver a speech to the America First Policy Institute (according to The Hill “a think tank formed by a band of former Trump administration aides to promote Trump’s policies”). Trump’s policies? His policies are to destroy democracy. Time and time again, Trump has, in broad day-light, committed crime after crime, all with no consequences. I wonder if he even pays overtime parking tickets, let alone be held accountable for inciting a mob to march on the capitol with the expressed intent kill the Vice President. And yet the instigator is free to travel to Washington and plan another campaign. People have put their lives on the line to expose his skulduggery, and yet he may soon announce another bid to do more damage. I just don’t get it.
olli #273,
Thanks.
I read the Royal Society article you linked to. How interesting.
Strato #279
Goodness, what an incredibly depressing policy, but how cheering that it so far seems to have failed in its purpose. Let’s hope it continues that way, though I find it hard to see how it won’t ultimately be a serious disincentive to studying the Arts if not revoked by the new govt: not only are the fees way higher than for law and commerce studies, but law and commerce graduates are likely to earn significantly more than Arts ones at the end of it all. At this point I can feel waves of “But that’s precisely why people shouldn’t study the Arts” coming at me through my wifi router (though not from you, obviously!). And the very fact university study has come to be seen as only having value if it is, in effect, a form of job training, is one of the many tragedies of our time.
Michael 100 #280,
Yes, the vandalisation of democracy and its institutions, law. America’s malaise. Hard to fathom it.
Impulsivity.
The digital age. An age of induced short attention span, ADD.
All one can do is keep accessing, and supporting real, serious journalism and talk about it in forums such as this one, I guess.
I don’t know of the silent readership.
Surely there is one.
Michael #280
Excruciating, isn’t it? It feels as if the evidence is all there for all to see, and meanwhile, he’s still out there strutting his stuff and spreading his poison.
I’m just hoping the delay is down to them wanting to wait until they don’t just have some evidence, or enough evidence, but until they have every single bit of evidence they can possibly lay their hands on so that the case, when it finally comes, is utterly unanswerable, no wriggle room whatsoever – so much so that even a sizeable proportion of Trump supporters (it will never be all, obviously) have to admit it. There must be a real fear of another Jan 6-type insurrection when he’s put on trial; maybe by waiting until we’ve all seen an absolute avalanche of evidence against him, they are hoping to reduce the risk and/or scale of that? That Cassidy Hutchinson testimony was really powerful – maybe they know there’s something even more powerful to come?
My real fear, though, is that that fear of violence and insurrection will scare them off acting against him at all, or at least, as forcefully as they should. I don’t think that will happen – I was actually very impressed with the way your democratic structures held up, even under Trump; and we could all kiss goodbye to democracy if he was let off the hook. So I think my fear is probably unfounded, but that doesn’t stop this waiting period feeling distinctly uncomfortable.
Michael, #280
I feel the same way. I do understand that the legal bunch needs to have their ducks in a perfect row but the longer this drags out the more molecules of cynicism accumulate in my brain.
Do the hoi polloi already believe he’s getting away with the whole debacle?
Trump supporters may believe he’s not charged with crime because as they’ve been told, he never committed one. Trump haters may believe that here we go again, a la Nixon, crimes have been committed but in the end the big wigs never face consequences like us ordinary folk do.
I remember Pres. Ford saying that a pardon for Nixon was the right thing for him to do so that the country could move on in a positive direction and avoid national drama. (paraphrase). What if this happens again?! I can’t stand to think about it. If that rich despicable pig and his repulsive grifter children get off free and clear then it won’t be just a molecule of cynicism in my brain, it’ll be a conglomeration of them the size of a grapefruit.
I feel like the bullies are winning and thinking back to the old playground, You can probably guess what I want to do about it. Ha.
Marco & Laurie B., 284, 285: I also hope that DOJ is waiting for a totally ironclad case to be built to charge Trump. However, I constantly fear that something insidious is going on, where Trump has control of not only the Republican Party, but also the Democratic Party and the news media. I repeatedly message my Congressmen (who include McConnell and Rand Paul), as well as other government officials including the Attorney General, and also news agencies and individual reporters and editors. I receive no substantial replies, just weasel-words (my apologies to the Mustelid family) or nothing at all. What I have been telling them is to read Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and do what they can to see that its directives are carried out, the Constitution being mandatory, not optional. The words of Section 3 are as follows:
“Disqualification for Rebellion
Amendment XIV, Section 3
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”
This section does not require an impeachment, nor a criminal trial, nor an act of Congress for a determination of ineligibility. It has to be applicable to an incumbent, with no immunities or executive privilege, otherwise what good is it? In my opinion, a ruling by a federal judge would suffice, and appeals should not succeed. But it seems that nobody but me is reading the Constitution or thinking about this. Trump is not eligible. Did he, or did he not, engage in rebellion, or support the attacking enemies of the Constitution? I grieve for America.
Michael/Laurie/Joe
It’s terrifying how quickly the very basis of our democracies can be destroyed, isn’t it? Can you even imagine having this kind of conversation, these thoughts, these concerns 10 years ago? Or any time before 2016? Even if, as I very much hope, the DoJ does its stuff and deals with Trump as he deserves, the Trump years, and the months following the election especially, have changed everything. And not just in the US, either.
Marco # 287. What you say is so true, and I’m sure it’s why Christer Sturmark cited Stefan Zweig in the opening paragraph of his book. I’m just writing about The World of Yesterday for another project and I think his most important message is exactly what you say in #287 — how fragile democracy is, how quickly it can be destroyed. Sometimes reading Zweig, I just shudder to think how close we are. Right now, I’m just reading about the Storm Troops, and I think of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers and the like. I only hope the Department of Justice acts quickly — and that the American people wake up before it’s too late.
Democracy is not just fragile, it’s not an absolute and few countries, not including the USA, are rated as fully democratic by objective measures. For example by the influential British weekly, the Economist.
Michael/Laurie/Joe
Seems that Republican opinion is beginning to turn against Trump, though not as dramatically as you might expect; and also, just because a sizeable percentage of them they don’t think he should run again in 2024, it doesn’t necessarily follow that they won’t vote for him if he does, of course:
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/cracks-appear-trumps-standing-among-republicans-after-jan-6-hearings-2022-07-21/
Joe, I have just re-read the extract from the Constitution that you quote at #286, and it really is very powerful indeed. Pretty clear that, if Trump does stand in 2024 (as seems likely, assuming he’s not wearing an orange suit by then), someone’s going to try to use this to stop him, and it’s also hard to see – surely? – how any such attempt could possibly fail. The section you’ve quoted is wholly unambiguous and, while it’s pretty obvious he himself incited the insurrection, we already have undeniable evidence that he “[gave] aid or comfort to the enemies” of the constitution. His failure to issue orders that only he could issue is clear enough.
And Michael (#288), I continue to be delighted at how much you’ve got in to Stefan Zweig this year, and how relevant he has been to so many of the subjects we’ve been discussing. It’s always so satisfying to find connections between things, and to be able to delve deeper on the basis of them.
Merrick Garland’s responses to NBC’s Lester Holt, probing the Attorney General on whether the DOJ has any reticence toward the potentiality for convicting Trump (Person #1), and also undertaking on it, were he to be charged, are pretty reassuring.
Martin Pengelly, the Guardian,
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/26/garland-charge-trump-capitol-attack-jan-6-doj
The case to charge has to be as exhaustive as possible, indisputable, were the findings to require that action.
Which obviously has to be the case, as everybody has always known, though many of his fans just won’t allow themselves to admit it.
They will be embarrassed, in the end.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump’s defence were to plead diminished responsibility on account of his mentality, narcissism, his intelligence deficit.
How humiliating for Trump, were he to have to consider that gambit to get off, or reduce his sentence.
Cognitive dissonance is the awareness, albeit subconscious, of the disconnect between what one believes, and reality itself. There would be better definitions.
I think Trump believes he can create reality by speaking it into existence, and believing it, doggedly holding steadfast to that claim, actualise his own reality.
Name it and claim it.
He is astonishingly vengeful, into reprisals.
Given his cognitive decline, yet he will always remember his enemies.
How many million more neurones would Trump need for the mortifying revelation of his cluelessness and ridiculousness, his mentality, to attain to conscious awareness, to hit home?
I know that’s pretty ableist cynicism.
Yet there is no sound case for the man’s enormous culpability to be put in question, at all.
I just told the Beloved about what I opined above, previous post.
She’s a clinical psychologist (Yikes!) Like a mind-reader.
She said, “It won’t happen.”
She does have acuity.
Whether it does or doesn’t there will be reverberations.
It’s like America is at stake.
That profoundly affects the world.
Evil is vying for supremacy, such as to decide who lives and doesn’t, or how they live, and think. ‘Might is right.’
No.
Yes and no. As a principle of international relations, it guides the foreign policy of many nations and they spend billions on building their military forces and seek allies to increase their collective firepower. But it cannot be a moral principle. If you accept that a principle is not moral if it does not apply universally, without discrimination simply on grounds of ethnicity, nationality or political opinion.
The essence of the ‘might is right principle’ is that it does discriminate in this way, dividing the human race into allies and enemies. In international relations, with the advent of weapons of mass destruction, ultimately this is a suicidal position for homo sapiens.
Wiki:
And this is a prospect for the United States presidency? What, again?!
Yet he might have to go to the Bluestone College.
And Trump’s not the only one with superstitious beliefs in this the 21st century, in the west, where we all should jolly well know better.
In China, following ‘heterodox teachings’ such as Falun Gong might well be a display of healthy non-conformism.
And opportunity for grifters.
Strato #292
“It” being the idea that his lawyers will plead diminished responsibility, presumably? Not the promise that he’ll be treated equally before the law?
I’m reasonably confident of the latter. Not totally, but reasonably. More confident than I would be if we were talking about a UK equivalent.
If she meant the former, then I agree with her. If his lawyers ever even dared suggest it to him, he’d rip them apart with his own teeth. No way would his ego allow that. If his narcissism has the upper hand at the time, he’ll go into the court and put on the performance of a lifetime, the whole “No one in the whole of history has ever been as persecuted as I am” schtick, also probably a less-than-subtle appeal to his supporters to storm the court and break him out. He’d love that. On the other hand, if his instinct for self-preservation is uppermost at the time, I could see him just absconding while he still can. Then suddenly turning up somewhere hot and rich and golfy that doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the US: Saudi Arabia, perhaps, or the UAE, or Oman, or Kuwait. But letting anyone publicly make him out to be mentally not all there? No way! He’s a very stable genius, don’t you know! 😀
So relieved to hear Trump had his apartment Feng Shui’ed, btw, Strato (#294)
It might have looked a bit tacky otherwise 😂
aldous #293,
I’m sure you agree, the ‘might is right’ doctrine doesn’t quite apply to the ‘western alliance,’ militarily, or economically, although I would also wish for Africa, for one, to fully share the prosperity, education, be thriving, stable, autonomous liberal democracies.
‘Liberal’ in the progressive American sense of the term.
Capitalism has to work ‘for the many, not the few,’ as Robert Reich titled his book on ‘saving capitalism.’
‘New Keynesian’ economist Joseph Stiglitz writes and advocates for such wealth distribution, for genuinely helping developing countries.
I don’t think Russia shares that sentiment concerning Africa nor does China, for Africa or anywhere.
The Belt and Road Initiative is actually an Offensive.
The western alliance is about defence of rule of law, sovereignty, preserving democracy, against states antithetical to all that and who seriously threaten you and I, militarily, subverting us with propaganda, surveillance and by every possible means, regrettably, for ultimate domination.
For them, existence is always competition.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stiglitz
I should also mention my appreciation for economist, Yanis Varoufakis, longstanding member of the the Greek parliament and also leader in the Progressive International.
On the Greeks, the ancient Greeks, and the provenance of the ‘Might Makes Right’ doctrine, 416BCE, during the Peloponnesian War,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Melos
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yanis_Varoufakis
Marco #295,
She meant he won’t be prosecuted.
I agree with your fair confidence he will be.
There will be reverberations, death threats, demonstrations, god knows, but justice must be done; the impartiality of the law cannot be compromised or shirked, out of fear.
The real and present danger from the right exists, but it could be subdued when reason is seen to prevail.
The metaphorical Sword of Damocles hangs directly over Trump’s head, suspended by a maiden’s single hair, and he is just acting like it’s not really there.
Yes, there will be theatre at the Trial, indeed.
Outside there will be the mob, trying to get up another go at timocracy, Plato’s term for mob rule.
The National Guard will be called in I expect. There will be Trump loyalists in the ranks I also expect.
Historical times, for sure.
Marco #296,
Strike me purple!
That’s on a par with Putin’s palace by the Black Sea, for sterility, conspicuous consumption display overkill.
He’s in separate legal trouble over lying about all that, too. Bigly.
I think Terryln Hall, her sister and their uncle, have come to the enlightened view, intuitively, it seems. They have understanding.
She says, “We can’t play God.”
She says she has long thought, and prayed about her position on the death penalty pronounced by the state of Alabama on her mother’s killer, and without articulating it that way, ‘retributive justice’ doesn’t accord with her sensibilities, by my inference.
Of course doing this deed won’t humanise Alabama.
Obviously that’s not the state’s ethos, or aspiration. That’s for ‘liberals.’
“Capital punishment brutalises a society,” a friend stated.
It’s the OT, “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and a life for a life.” (Exodus 21: 23-27)
‘Reciprocal justice.’
“Vengeance is mine, saith the LORD, “I will repay.”
Morality, and justice as propounded by the propagandists of a bellicose tribe in an obviously warring Bronze Age environment, justified as mandated by their severe, absolutist god, Yahweh.
Conform.
Commit genocide. You have my blessing to. I am righteous. Obey.
There is no mention of promoting mutual accommodation in the policy concerning neighbouring societies within all those pages.
’The wages of sin is death.’
The New Testament is tempered somewhat with neo-Platonism but it seriously backslides at the last in the Book of Revelation by ‘John the Divine.’
Nor will executions diminish homicides at all. Homicides in America are much higher in states that practise capital punishment.
So what purpose is served by executing Joe Nathan James?
What does it satisfy?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/28/alabama-to-execute-convicted-killer-despite-opposition-from-victims-family
Your claim to hold an enlightened view is just preaching.
If the victims don’t want it then perhaps it satisfies nothing. But if they do, then it may satisfy them at least.
My gratitude Dr. Dawkins. I am one of your followers and have read some of your wonderful books. My greetings and appreciation. Eddie.
Strato #301
Couldn’t agree more, Strato.
You only need to think of the sheer number of miscarriages of justice that have emerged over the years; the inherent racial and class bias within so many justice systems (the US one especially) that renders people of colour far more likely to face prosecution in the first place and to have the severest penalties imposed if found guilty; the track record of certain US states executing people of sub-normal mental capacity who simply do not meet any humane threshold of criminal responsibility; the reluctance of juries (outside the US, at least) to find defendants guilty where there is a risk of the death penalty being imposed, with the consequent increased risk that serious criminals will walk free; plus the demonstrated fact that the most powerful deterrent to serious criminal activity is not the risk of the death penalty, but the risk of being apprehended.
But in addition to all that, there is something deeply shocking and horrific about the full machinery of state power stirring into life to deliberately, knowingly kill an individual in cold blood.
The death penalty has been renounced by the vast majority of civilised countries around the world as deeply regressive, inhumane, flawed and inherently at odds with the right to life and the right to live free from torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. In fact, a quick glance at a list of countries that still retain it (https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries-with-death-penalty) shows the US to be keeping the most tyrannical company.
has-a-mass #302,
Well I do say enlightened. A perfectly apposite term.
I’m pretty sure the validation for the death penalty in states like Alabama is from conservation of the historical religious mindset, still pervasive.
Now I see the governor of Alabama didn’t stay Joe Nathan James’s execution. Either he believes in it, or he didn’t want to upset the populace, countermand the norm, from political considerations.
wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_Australia
In the UK,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_the_United_Kingdom
Of course not all countries, or states have a religion-based validation for maintaining capital punishment, such as China, where the annual rate is actually on the decline.
Worldwide,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment#:~:text=Most%20countries%2C%20including%20almost%20all,United%20Arab%20Emirates%2C%20and%20Thailand.
Countries which have abolished the practice haven’t reverted back to it, permanently. That can only be construed as evidencing more progressive, more enlightened thinking, the civilising process.
In those states of the US that still practise the death penalty, there is the quest to get the deed done in a less grisly, or anguish-inducing manner. Why? People are allowed in to watch behind glass. Now they are looking into nitrogen hypoxia as the new method.
One can choose not to read up on the subject, with an attitude of being open to being educated.
If we don’t seek to be informed, we capitulate to letting others decide policy for us, our thinking.
Public opinion doesn’t persuade my personal opinion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment
Capital punishment is quite rightly a focus of the wider issue of respect for life. Few would argue that killing is never justified in any circumstances. When, therefore, is killing justified. The essay on this site by Richard Dawkins on abortion is relevant “They Think It’s Murder”
If the premise that abortion is murder is accepted, then punishments that apply to murder have to be considered for those who commit the crime of abortion. That would include death for the offender where capital punishment is in force.
And murder is not the only crime subject to the death penalty. Sexual offences and offending the local god are also included in some jurisdictions.
So, in the argument about when, if ever, killing our fellow human being is the right, or the justifiable, thing to do, we have to decide on what premises a moral conclusion may be reached. I would say that it is not sufficient that there is a sincere belief that death of the offender satisfies their moral principles.
As Dawkins says in his essay on Roe vs Wade “we have to target our arguments directly toward their fundamental premise: the illogical, or at least dubious, premise that personhood begins at conception.”
What are the facts? What ought to be done follows from what are presented as the facts on which moral principles are based.
Marco #304,
Well said.
aldous #306,
Yes, there is a deep contradiction in the rationale for banning abortion and also supporting the death penalty, from the grounds of religion.
I think the essential religious grounds for banning abortion is that ‘ensoulment’ occurs at conception.
The soul is held to be the non-corporeal essential self, which is immortal. No-one attempts to explain how it connects to the biological person, their brain and mind and body, their genes.
There is also the tripartite view: mind, soul, spirit. Even worse.
Of course it’s all conveniently exempted from empiricism and falsifiability, the criteria which all other claims to existence, or hypotheses are subjected to, if they are to not be automatically discounted as vacuous.
The belief is that God invests a soul into the biology at conception, and so the ‘person’s,’ soul’s eternal destiny is then in God’s hands alone, to be judged according to their response to God’s spirit and the gospel in a lived life.
No-one, especially, and notably, the mother, has the right to terminate that ‘person.’ That person dies in God’s time, when He decides they have to ‘meet their Maker.’
The rationale of ‘God’s timing,’ ‘in the council of his own wisdom,’ regarding deaths during random situations like war, earthquakes, is something we are expected to simply accept as predetermined, by an act of faith.
Reason is inimical to faith. Dubiety is the worst sin.
And yet by some sophistry these same authorities deem it righteous for the state to terminate a life in executing the death penalty, and so, are actually ‘robbing God.’
So Terryln Hall, who’s mother Joe Nathan James murdered when she was 6, graciously averring the state is ‘playing God’ is good enough in this context, apart from all the other ethical arguments against the death penalty.
They are contradicting themselves.
All hypocrisy. And based in meanness.
Religious people will argue about issues in religious terms. But justifiable killing is a far wider argument than abortion or the death penalty. It’s implicit in laws that allow possession of deadly weapons to the general public. And on the largest scale of all, it’s applicable to the resistance to disarmament by national governments.
China, I believe, has the largest number of executions of any country and it’s not for religious reasons. A communist government, or a secular government such as the USA has, does not enact laws on a religious basis. The justifications for war and preparations for war come from across the ideological spectrum.
But, if we are opposed to killing on rational grounds, shouldn’t we be as much opposed, in principle, to war as to capital punishment and gun laws that favour homicide?
The, ‘in principle’, is crucial. Because if we are attacked, we will exercise the right of self-defence, if not pacifists of the most absolutist sort. However, if we are opposed, in principle, to war, we will argue and act for putting in place the infrastructure for its prevention and the peaceful resolution of international disputes.
This is a position which makes those who advocate it subject to widespread derision and attack, Noam Chomsky being the most prominent individual victim and individuals and peace movements, unprotected by fame, treated much more harshly, even in countries quite high in the democracy rankings.
One more try. The last two times I tried to post a comment, when I clicked on Post Comment, my comment disappeared. I did not try anything unusual like copying text or including links or anything fancy. I waited for the page to reload, as instructed. This time I am trying an edit to see if that works as well.
Joe
When this has happened to me in the past I use my back arrow to see my previous page and sometimes I find my comment sitting there in the comment box. I copy it and go back to a refreshed comment box and paste it in there.
Strange but true. 😀
So sorry, Joe M #310
Waiting until the page has fully reloaded before refreshing it or navigating away after posting a comment certainly reduces the risk of the comment disappearing, but it can still happen, unfortunately, so it’s really important to make sure you have a copy of your comment before trying to post it – that way, if the worst comes to the worst, it is quick and easy to to post it again.
Including copied text and/or links in your comment shouldn’t make any difference to whether it posts or not.
The mods
aldous #309,
Regrettably, final removal of the problem of armed conflict looks to be only an ideal, a dream.
In the early 60s, the folk movement was underway, Greenwich Village.
I too was strumming my guitar and singing ,
‘I’m gonna lay down my sword and shield
Down by the riverside, down by the riverside…
Pacifism is for those who don’t have the innate, inherited self-preservation instinct, strangely. Well, they must devalue it, relinquish it to serve an ideal, world peace, or the ‘Prince of Peace.’
George Orwell fought against General Franco the Spanish fascist. He copped a bullet in the neck. He related that he had had a bead on one of Franco’s soldiers, running, with his pants half down. He couldn’t shoot a man with his pants half down.
And perpetrating war and the having to defend against aggressors is absurd on every level.
Quakers were and are pacifists, if there are any left.
The fighting orientation is in the male.
I am still reading Powers and Thrones: a New History of the MiddleAges, Dan Jones, 2021.
The main theme is wars. For plunder, territory, enslavement, or just for the hell of it, for glory, to kill, and indulge in butchery, when the adrenaline and other hormones are surging.
Religious zeal drove the ludicrous crusades.
Deus vult! ‘God wills!
While Saladin and the Muslims cried, Allahu akbar! ‘God is the greatest!
The 1500-years account in Powers and Thrones is largely about the doings of ‘fighting men.’
The Battle Hymn of the Republic.
Men invent weaponry, and manufacture it. Now we have hypersonic missiles.
https://theconversation.com/how-hypersonic-missiles-work-and-the-unique-threats-they-pose-an-aerospace-engineer-explains-180836#:~:text=All%20of%20the%20intercontinental%20ballistic,second%20at%20their%20maximum%20velocity.
Of course, America isn’t driving bellicosity in the world, nor the arms-race.
The cause is biological; it’s in the male nature.
Harvard professor Richard Wrangham concludes that as a species in general we have only half undergone the ‘self-domestication process’ compared to our cousins the Bonobos.
We have to promote the ‘civilising process’ as professor Steven Pinker, also of Harvard, describes it in The Better Angels of Our Nature. His subsequent books have that objective, through education. Education will advance self-domestication by according mating eligibility for males exhibiting other traits than the fighting, dominance orientation, or capability.
Of course we have to promote negotiation, programs for disarmament, peace accords, recruiting the most skilled and credible diplomats to help realise the sane objective of peace and security, reciprocity, of promoting enlightened thinking.
Because modern warring capability just looks unsustainable in the long-term. It’s mad.
Chomsky himself says he is not an unequivocal pacifist. Yet pacifism will always exist as an ideal, world peace as a concept.
It’s a main basis for creating the United Nations.
Chomsky’s father left for America to escape military service. Chomsky, to his great relief, I imagine, was exempted from it because he had produced an important doctoral thesis.
Unfortunately not everyone hungers and thirsts for the peaceful intellectual life like Noam does.
He has laboured all his life to promote the intellectual life, understandings, and as a leftist, equality, human rights, real democracy, open acess to genuine information, as against propaganda upholding the status quo, and he has promoted peace.
He did work at MIT for the Pentagon, as a linguist and in developing computer language. They had deemed that it was easier to program their computers in the underground bunkers during nuclear attack to ‘understand’ English, than to teach the generals to program, and so they contracted Noam. And he had to eat.
How’s this?
The religious right’s concerted plan to destroy separation of church and state in America.
Christian nationalism.
The strategy Arwa Mahdawi calls, “exhaust and inure.”
https://religiondispatches.org/project-blitz-seeks-to-do-for-christian-nationalism-what-alec-does-for-big-business/
Recommended reading.
For, ‘democracy dies in darkness.’
It was linked to in this piece by Arwa Mahdawi,
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/30/republicans-abortion-punishable-by-death
So is religion bad?
The America First Policy Institute (AFPI) has revised its strategy, having gained lessons from the Trump chaos.
The nihilism of its agenda remains, Republican anarchy. The rightwing assault on democracy is just getting started. The biosphere is collateral damage in their business model,
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/30/america-first-trumpism-beyond-trump
For once something very encouraging in American politics.
Lucas Kunce.
Standing in the tradition of the original populists before the identifier got hijacked to refer to the Republican cult of personality, the charismatic, what sociologist Max Weber called ‘illegitimate’ leadership.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/31/lucas-kunce-populism-missouri-senate-democrat-primary
The original populists,
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Party_(United_States)
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