Selfishness and Society

[juantoo3]

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

The first step of problem solving is identifying exactly what the problem is.

Agreed.

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

And without doubt the primary problem with capitalism is Greed.

Well, there's a first mistaken assumption.

Greed is in no way limited to capitalism. There are philanthropic capitalists, and there are greedy communists (and assorted alternative "others"). Greed is *not* an invention of capitalism, nor is it limited solely to its confines.

I agree greed is a problem, but I think there is a major distinction that needs to be made here to stop this false commingling of the two terms. What do they call the fallacy? Red herring is it? I see an awful lot of babies being tossed out with the bathwater around this subject by otherwise really intelligent people because of this one fallacy that essentially equates greed with capitalism.

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

Capitalism had no safeguards to protect wider society from ruthless greed.

Operative term here: "had." Business operates under the auspices of the local and national government. No exception. To say that capitalism operates without safeguards is inaccurate to say the least. And any multi-national corporation *must* by law adhere to the laws governing every area in which they operate. Sometimes this means exchange policies, local content and labor quotas, exchange rates, graft and gratuity, and a laundry list of other complicated rules and regulations. So to blithely state "no safeguards" particularly in a climate of multi-national competition is simply untrue. Occasionally the safeguards are ineffective or insufficient, as we have seen quite a bit recently concerning Chinese exports to America, but if there truly were *no* safeguards, the Chinese could and would continue with impunity.

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

that our Governments have come to serve big business rather than the people is a crime.

So, would you rather Big business did not exist, and all those workers were out of jobs and unable to provide decent livings for their families? Or would you rather Government conducted *all* business?

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

I do have answers. Profits made in share dealing should be taxed in such a way that only a modest return can ever be had.

Ah, no advantage for taking risk. So why risk? In other words; no reward, why gamble, why bother to play the game at all? If I am not to be fairly, and potentially handsomely (ie: successfully) compensated for my effort, what inducement do I have to even try? If I get the same *bang for my buck* on a conservative Government issued bond, why should I even bother to start up a company that potentially could provide comfortable livings for 100 or more families? I'll just stick my money in the bank and play it safe like every other slacker.

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

Share issues should be graded according to the social value of the company.

So what? If the only legal return is prohibitively conservative, *no one* (not even "socially responsible") is going to bother. There is no inducement, no motivation. Business is not philanthropy, to confuse the two as an entrepreneur is to invite bankruptcy and collapse. Business is not about establishing or enforcing moral dictums, it is about fulfilling a consumer need or desire. People vote with their money. If you don't give your customer what they want (regardless of what is good for them, morally speaking), they will go somewhere else to fulfill that need or desire, and you will go out of business.

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

Innovative, high risk ventures that may benefit the wider community would offer the highest returns, not those that asset strip, dismantle and outsource.

You contradict yourself here, which tells me you have no genuine understanding of the terms "risk" and "reward" as applied to a business context. You can't have both, high risk and low return (as you stated earlier). Soemthing else I think is commonly misunderstood, there is no real relation between cost to make and selling cost. That is to say, every company in the world is seeking that magical formula of something that costs nothing that can be sold for huge sums with an expansive market clamoring to buy. As a chef, surely you can relate? How much does the average meal you cook cost to make? And how much does it sell for? Why, I think you should sell it for less...much less. Hell, why not do the socially responsible thing and just give your efforts away?

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

Local production too should enjoy a strong bias over import.

Here I agree, and I think you will find that typically in global business this is insisted upon by the host nation's government. For instance, if a US company wishes to import to India, the Indian gov't requires a certain amount of Indian content and / or labor. Sometimes there are loopholes, such as the Japanese pick up trucks shipped to the States without bumpers or some such that were finished here to meet the import requirements (something about excise taxes as I recall, higher on finished vehicles than on parts).

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

Government. Anyone seeking public office must demonstrate that they have broken all business ties, cashed in their portfolios and take an oath to serve the people first. A committee of scrutiny would constantly be looking for breaches. Those seeking public office should be those doing so only because they believe in doing all they can to help their people and country, not because its a fast way to get rich. Anyone in government found guilty of corruption or involvement in ANY other business, in person or by proxy, should face life imprisonment and have all their assets forfeited. In return they would be paid well and each party would have an equal reservoir of capital to mount its campaigns from the state. A condition of operating a media service would be the allocation of equal free time to every candidate.

Such 'career politicians' would propose, draft and implement law. Another house made up of a cross section of society, drawn like a Jury is drawn, would be the ones to vote on the proposals.

I appreciate what you are saying, but I don't agree. I think it would narrow the pool too much. Good leaders are difficult to find in the best of circumstances. *Good* business leaders (Jack Welch comes to mind, long time CEO of General Electric until he retired a couple of years ago) demonstrate real world effective leadership. A lot of well meaning and philanthropically motivated people simply do not have the real world experience necessary. The alternative is military leaders...

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

The tax regime has to be overhauled in favour of local production.

The tax regime needs to be overhauled, period. Better yet, keel hauled.

It is outdated, antiquated, leftover from the socialist agendas of the 1910's courtesy of Edward Mandel House and Woodrow Wilson's administration. A simple flat tax across the board would be the most fair and equitable. This bit about tax this and tax that and user fees and impact fees and blah blah blah, and they wonder why some people "go postal" and turn automatic weapons on petty bureaucrats?

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

There are few communities, even urban ones, in the world that are not capable, given the right investment, of producing the vast bulk of what they need on their doorstep. City farms and green rooftops can produce enough to feed most cities. And the efficiency of micro-generation devices has grown to the point where it is now a viable alternative to the power plant.

OK, its a pretty challenging engineering design that both gets rooftop gardens *and* micro-generation devices (I presume solar). Kinda hard to have both in the same space. Ultimately if such is mandated then I see a potential for mono-design (read that as boring architecture). There are only so many ways to plant a garden *and* solar panels on the top of a sky-scraper, and I suspect they would hinder each other. The plants would tend to shade the panels, and the glare from the panels would tend to cook the plants.

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

when we fail to prevent a child dying every 4 seconds from hunger or preventable disease? What use is all the medical technology if the ambulance still drives away from a "bum" thats been torched because its clear he has no medical insurance? I do not believe that the capitalist notion of filter down to be equitable or just. Everyone one is a part of society and everybody should have an equal right to the benefits. As long as we allow the greedy power mongers of big business and their puppet governments to call the shots than we will serve them. Surely that is not the way its meant to be.

There is no such thing as "free." Everything costs somebody somewhere at some point in time. Do you work for free to support your family? Yes, you point up some of the extreme potential for abuse, but by and large humans tend not to treat other humans in such a manner. Even so, the ambulance driver has a right to expect fair compensation for his services, the ER doctor has a right to expect fair compensation for his/her services, etc, etc, etc. It is the profits from the pharmaceuticals that fund and fuel the drive to create more potential cures for diseases. Stepping backwards does not solve the problem, it takes us back to a time when simple childhood disease was a potential threat to life or livelihood. Pneumonia and influenza were a death sentence. Polio was devastating. These things are tackled by resources derived from the profits of drug companies and government taxes. The drug company takes a risk, a huge risk, introducing a new drug. Not everybody invents a new equivalent to penicillin every time they go to bat. Sadly, sometimes the druyg companies even get it really wrong (like Fen-phen, or however it is spelled). That's human error, not any specific fault of capitalism as an economic philosophy.

Besides, if you don't like capitalism, you could always try communism. Of course, I think even the communists realized how great that idea really was after less than 100 years in real world practice.

BTW, barter is essentially a variation of capitalism. That's why its called "trade."


Finally found a really old thread (goes back to about the time I joined CR, one of my first big discussions) that I think may help shed a little light in this general direction:

http://www.comparative-religion.com/...ology-715.html

[Tao_Equus]

Hi Juan,

What do they say about us....two nations divided by a common language?

When I read that reply I feel like you have not understood a word I said. Starting with you thinking I think greed something confined to capitalism....well...I'm lost for words. And ending with these truth shy companies that pump out 100001 pills to soothe the American way, yet let the poorest die a preventable death because of patent protection. A good example of what these industries are like...what came first the cat super-flea...or the cat super-flea remedy. Not amazing that they both appeared at exactly the same time? want another one? Drug the kids when theres no-one else left to drug... ADHT / Ritalin, oooooo yeh our drug companies love us really.

In the middle. Government. A good business lawyer or businessman does not mean he is good at looking after the diverse interests of a nation. If there is no altruism in those seeking public office they are NOT qualified for the job.

As for the share system try reading it again and try to see what I meant not what you think I meant.

Tao

[juantoo3]

Tao, I don't know what to say. For every "bad" example you can show, I can show three or more "good" examples. What I am seeing is lumping the whole together and trying to call the whole thing by one disparaging title. It's simply not true *for the greater part.*

Otherwise, it would be fair for me to consider legendary Scottish frugality as but another example of greed, no?

You want something to complain about? Why do movie stars and athletes make mega millions while working stiffs bust their asses for scraps and crumbs? Phonies and people playing games rake in fat money to entertain us??? Where's the equity and benevolence in that?

And people turn to such as these for political advice??? That's insanity for you!

[Pathless]

Juan, I find it odd that you try to argue this way:

Originally Posted by juantoo3

Aboriginal tribes viewed concepts of economics, politics and religion differently than modern civil societies, yes, to overstate the obvious. Does that impugne that one is better than the other? That answer is subjective and can only be answered through a personal asthetic. What is beautiful to one person is ugly to another, what makes intrinsic sense to one culture is incomprehensible to another culture. That does not make one better than the other, only different.

When you have so clearly stated your opinion that technological societies are superior to native ones here:

Originally Posted by juantoo3

If hunter-gatherer tribal subsistence oriented economies are so much better, how come they didn't woop tail and force the colonials back where they came from?

Answer:
Technology.
Brought to you by your friendly neighborhood capitalist.

If I'm misreading you, correct me, but you seem to be advocating a very straight-forward "might makes right" values system. By providing the table, one of the things I was attempting to address and challenge is the all-too prevalent assumption that technology is always good, and that it is evolutionarily or divinely ordained that people with a certain kind of technology and attitude/philosophy rule the world.

Skipping ahead a bit:

Originally Posted by juantoo3

I actually agree with a great deal of the words here, although I wonder if we are interpreting things quite the same? I come to a bit different conclusion, and I don't think writing off a significant portion of the world population is necessary.

I am glad that we can find some common ground. I also wonder if "writing off a significant portion of the world population is necessary." Viewing it a slightly different way, an argument could be made that expansionist civilizations such as the colonial system that resulted in the United States (there are certainly other examples, but the U.S. is the most obvious and salient for U.S. citizens like you and me) have been writing off significant portions of the world population for centuries: Native Americans, Africans, Scotch and Irish and German and Japanese (until they are sufficiently Americanized), Mexican, Guatemalan, Iraqi, Iranian, the list goes on and on. We like to tell ourselves that we are actually delivering democracy and progress to people the world over. Yet if we look at it another way we can see clearly that our expansionist ways have always displaced populations of people and forcefully imposed the westernized model onto them. We give them a choice, if you can call it that: become like us, or become completely marginalized and fade away. Certainly if they resist, the American (or western) way is to push them off the land we want or exterminate them.

I guess I'm just tired of that being the way things are. If that is civilization, I want no part of it, which is why I'm interested in looking at alternative models. The Native American model speaks to me as an American and as someone who values relationships, communities, and nature. I guess that is subjective, as you say, but in some ways it seems objective, too: do we want to live balanced lives and treat other living beings respectfully, or do we want to continue in a way that is killing animals, people, and the planet? The latter seems not only selfish and ethnocentric, but extremely short-sighted. I think that the time is upon us where Americans (and other arrogant westerners) are going to begin to see just how damaging the uber consumption-oriented paradigm is. As you've pointed out earlier, this crunch is now beginning to affect us personally in Homeland America. We don't like it. It's hard. It hurts. Life gets difficult. Yet this is the legacy of consumerism, of "progress," and of production and consumption. It's a damn shame that the only way most Americans will ever realize that is when the system falls apart. Hell, even then many Americans will be looking for someone else to blame--China comes to mind these days, and of course there's always theocratic Iran, just waiting to be demonized.

I got off on a tangent, kind of, but I hope that makes clear where I am coming from. And no, I don't advocate starvation, but I do believe that is a very possible scenario, which is why I've mentioned it. I don't advocate starvation, but I do think that the narrow-minded and myopic progress-oriented "me-first" trajectory of "civilization" is sending us into a future where food shortages and energy shortages are a very, very real possibility.

[juantoo3]

Originally Posted by Pathless

Juan, I find it odd that you try to argue this way:

When you have so clearly stated your opinion that technological societies are superior to native ones here:

If I'm misreading you, correct me, but you seem to be advocating a very straight-forward "might makes right" values system. By providing the table, one of the things I was attempting to address and challenge is the all-too prevalent assumption that technology is always good, and that it is evolutionarily or divinely ordained that people with a certain kind of technology and attitude/philosophy rule the world.

Allow me to answer by asking a question. What role do moral values play in the evolution of a species? Is it the just or the righteous or the altruistic that survive? I am not asking, in any opinion, whether they *should* survive or not. I am asking what evolutionary advantage does moral behavior impart to any given species?

Originally Posted by Pathless

I am glad that we can find some common ground. I also wonder if "writing off a significant portion of the world population is necessary." Viewing it a slightly different way, an argument could be made that expansionist civilizations such as the colonial system that resulted in the United States (there are certainly other examples, but the U.S. is the most obvious and salient for U.S. citizens like you and me) have been writing off significant portions of the world population for centuries: Native Americans, Africans, Scotch and Irish and German and Japanese (until they are sufficiently Americanized), Mexican, Guatemalan, Iraqi, Iranian, the list goes on and on. We like to tell ourselves that we are actually delivering democracy and progress to people the world over. Yet if we look at it another way we can see clearly that our expansionist ways have always displaced populations of people and forcefully imposed the westernized model onto them. We give them a choice, if you can call it that: become like us, or become completely marginalized and fade away. Certainly if they resist, the American (or western) way is to push them off the land we want or exterminate them.

I understand your concern. Certainly there is a growing movement of awareness, but it takes time. In the meantime, it is hard to fault a leopard for being born with spots. Yes, America was created out of the colonial kettle. American government was founded to be the new manifestation of Rome. Empire as a patriotic ideal is ages old, America became the most recent heir to that legacy. Yet America is also instrumental in bringing about a new paradigm, a shift away from colonial empire. But it takes time, generations even, to complete the change.

I have a dual ancestry that forces me to face the challenge from both sides. My heart is Native American, my head is English and Irish. But I am only a typical working class American stiff. Do Native Americans have a tough go of things? Yes, conquered peoples sometimes do. You call them marginalized. Keep in mind that should any desire, they are quite free to leave the reservation and join the modern world. What marginalizes them is their determination to cling to the old ways. Here I will not say better or worse (even though I feel the evidence speaks for itself). The Native way is the teepee, wigwam or hogan. The American way is the house or apartment. The Native way is taught quite differently than an American school, but which education is valued more in society and abroad? The list goes on...

Native Americans have made valuable contributions to American society, once they decide to enter American society. They make excellent warriors (I wonder why that is?). They are superb athletes. They have made contributions is science and medicine, once they decide to participate.

Participation is the key here. I see this a lot when dealing with civil rights issues. Minority groups everywhere want all of society to meet them on their own terms. That's not how it works, and not how it should work. Mohammed must go to the mountain in practical terms, because the mountain cannot go to Mohammed.

Originally Posted by Pathless

The Native American model speaks to me as an American and as someone who values relationships, communities, and nature. I guess that is subjective, as you say, but in some ways it seems objective, too: do we want to live balanced lives and treat other living beings respectfully, or do we want to continue in a way that is killing animals, people, and the planet? The latter seems not only selfish and ethnocentric, but extremely short-sighted.

It is a beautiful model, one I admire for a variety of reasons, but it is not something the average civilized person is going to relate to or jump right in to. The American legacy as you pointed out has been 500 years of suppression and marginalizing the Aboriginal way of life. It is hard to let go of that kind of legacy. There is a shift of attitude as a certain charm is discovered, kinda like the way Europe is infatuated with its Celtic past. But I really don't think the average joe is ready to run around in a loin cloth shooting arrows at rabbits and the average jill isn't ready to learn to skin and cook that rabbit, let alone chew the hide to make it supple to make the next loin cloth. Yes, there is a certain romantic attraction to "living with the land," but there is also a great deal of hard physical labor with little reward, and that's just a normal day. Soap operas, shopping malls and bonbons are not a part of this paradigm, which might or might not be a good thing, but try selling it that way to your girlfriend and see how far you get with it.

Originally Posted by Pathless

I got off on a tangent, kind of, but I hope that makes clear where I am coming from. And no, I don't advocate starvation, but I do believe that is a very possible scenario, which is why I've mentioned it. I don't advocate starvation, but I do think that the narrow-minded and myopic progress-oriented "me-first" trajectory of "civilization" is sending us into a future where food shortages and energy shortages are a very, very real possibility.

I want to believe we are not so stupid as to destroy ourselves in such a short sighted manner. What we do to salvage the Social Security system will be a pretty good barometer I think...but that one is a political "third rail." Progress and business are actually pretty intutitive...business gets better all the time at being able to keep up with trends. Yes, to be effective there must be a profit motive for business to respond to. If it is more cost effective to be "green," business will become green. It is not as simple as mandating green by law, although that is one tact to take, but it ends up costing the consumer in the long run when it is done that way. This is on top of inflation...ever wonder why the prices of things are outpacing the growth of your paycheck? As we are seeing now, when it is cost effective to produce ethanol instead of gasoline, business will step up and produce ethanol instead. When the farmer gets a better price for his corn to sell for fuel instead of food, he will sell for fuel. And the cycle goes on... We want our cake and eat it too. We don't want to pay the piper, but the piper *will* be paid...one way or another. And the result is unexpected ancillary costs in other areas we failed to realize were connected in the marketplace. There are other less painful ways to improve, but they require time and patience, something that seems to be in very short supply these days.

[juantoo3]

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

I feel like you have not understood a word I said. Starting with you thinking I think greed something confined to capitalism

Tao, I've wrestled with this all night, and I am still at a loss for words.

I cannot see your face, I have no tone of voice, no eye contact, no inflection...all I have is what you have written. And I do habitually try to take single comments into consideration of the whole post and subject, but I am not a psychic mind-reader from thousands of miles away.

If I were to make a comment like: "Without doubt the primary problem with Scotsmen is Stinginess," how should I expect that to be received? Even in a greater context? It's not *some* Scotsmen, it is Scotsmen. It is not stinginess, it is Stinginess.

Of course, whatever you interpret it to mean, I meant the other...can you see what I am up against? You habitually use great logic to get your point across when you leave emotion out of it. On this subject though I can't help but wonder where the real Tao and his logic went?

[juantoo3]

Here is an interesting term for you, Pathless; "Neo-Luddism." I found it reading up on Ted Kaczynski. If you haven’t read his stuff, I highly recommend it, it is right in line with everything you have been saying.

Neo-Luddism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Here’s a bio of Ted Kaczynski. Fascinating guy, really.

Theodore Kaczynski - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

He attended high school at Evergreen Park Community High School. He did well academically, but reported some difficulty with mathematics in his sophomore year. He was subsequently placed in a more advanced math class and mastered the material, and then skipped the 11th grade. As a result, he completed his high school education two years early, although this did necessitate a summer school course in English. He was encouraged to apply to Harvard, and was subsequently accepted as a student beginning in the fall of 1958. He was 16 years old. While at Harvard, Kaczynski was taught by the famous logician Willard Quine, scoring at the top of Quine's class with a 98.9% final grade. Also, he participated in a several-year personality study conducted by Dr. Henry A. Murray, an expert on stress interviews.[6]

According to an article by Alston Chase for the June 2000 Atlantic Monthly, students in Murray's study were told they would be debating personal philosophy with a fellow student.[7] Instead, they were subjected to the stress test: an extremely stressful and prolonged psychological attack by an anonymous attorney. During the test, students were strapped into a chair and connected to electrodes that monitored their physiological reactions, while facing bright lights and a one-way mirror. The "debate" was filmed, and students' expressions of impotent rage were played back to them at various times later in the study. According to Chase, Kaczynski's records from that period suggest that he was emotionally stable at the start of the study. Lawyers for Kaczynski attributed some of his emotional instability and dislike of mind control to his participation in this study.

In 1962, Kaczynski graduated from Harvard. After graduation he attended the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, earning a master's degree and a Ph.D. in Mathematics. Kaczynski began a research career at Michigan but made few friends. One of his professors at Michigan, George Piranian, said: "It is not enough to say he was smart." He earned his Ph.D. by solving, in less than a year, a math problem that Piranian had been unable to solve. Kaczynski's specialty was a branch of complex analysis known as geometric function theory. "I would guess that maybe 10 or 12 people in the country understood or appreciated it", said Maxwell O. Reade, a retired math professor who served on Kaczynski's dissertation committee. In 1967 Kaczynski received a $100 prize recognizing his Dissertation, entitled 'Boundary Functions', as the school's best in math that year. At Michigan he held a National Science Foundation fellowship. While a graduate student at Michigan, he taught undergraduates for three years and published two articles related to his dissertation in mathematical journals. After he left Michigan, he published four more papers. None of his papers were with a coauthor.

In the fall of 1967 Kaczynski was hired as an assistant professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley. Kaczynski's aloofness and reserve made students rate him poorly. In 1969, Kaczynski resigned from his position without explanation, despite pleas from the department staff. Calvin Moore, vice chairman of the department in 1968, said that given Kaczynski's 'impressive' thesis and record of publications, "he could have advanced up the ranks and been a senior member of the faculty today".

After resigning his position at Berkeley he held no permanent employment. In the summer of 1969, Kaczynski moved from Berkeley, California to the small residence of his parents in Lombard, Illinois. He then moved into a remote cabin he built himself in Lincoln, Montana where he lived a simple life on very little money, with no electricity and no running water, feeding himself as a hunter-gatherer. Kaczynski also worked odd jobs and received financial support from his family (including purchasing his land and, without their knowledge, funding his bombing campaign). In 1978, he worked very briefly with his father and brother at a foam-rubber factory.

And finally, his well known if little read Manifesto:

Industrial Society and Its Future - Wikisource

Contents

1 Introduction
2 The psychology of modern leftism
3 Feelings of inferiority
4 Oversocialization
5 The power process
6 Surrogate activities
7 Autonomy
8 Sources of social problems
9 Disruption of the power process in modern society
10 How some people adjust
11 The motives of scientists
12 The nature of freedom
13 Some principles of history
13.1 First principle
13.2 Second principle
13.3 Third principle
13.4 Fourth principle
13.5 Fifth principle
14 Industrial-technological society cannot be reformed
15 Restriction of freedom is unavoidable in industrial society
16 The 'bad' parts of technology cannot be separated from the 'good' parts
17 Technology is a more powerful social force than the aspiration for freedom
18 Simpler social problems have proved intractable
19 Revolution is easier than reform
20 Control of human behavior
21 Human race at a crossroads
22 Human suffering
23 The future
24 Strategy
25 Two kinds of technology
26 The danger of leftism
27 Final note
28 Notes
29 Diagram: disruption of the power process

Of course, trying to avoid the tempting ad hominem, yet reminded of the consequences of getting lost in one's own mind chasing the nature of infinity...where has this path taken Mr. Kaczynski?

[Pathless]

Originally Posted by juantoo3

Allow me to answer by asking a question. What role do moral values play in the evolution of a species? Is it the just or the righteous or the altruistic that survive? I am not asking, in any opinion, whether they *should* survive or not. I am asking what evolutionary advantage does moral behavior impart to any given species?

I think that if we are looking at it short term, it may seem that the selfish/individualistic paradigm of colonial/capitalist expansion has the upper hand "evolutionarily." Highly technological, socially fragmented/specialized, and centrally governed (from representative democracies to dictatorships) societies are certainly the dominant power at the moment, and have been for hundreds of years, pushing as they have into every corner of the globe and into outer space.

But is this really evolutionarily advantageous? Time will tell. If there is to be an acute energy crisis and a breakdown of industrial infrastructure, then it would seem that what seemed to be a "natural evolution" of humanity, or the state, or society, was actually an aberration. In such a case, it may begin to look like more subsistence-oriented communities are more advantageous, and the "evolution" that you are referring to might be nothing more than a rapid development along a massively destructive path for not only humanity, but the entire Earth, threatening and in many cases extinguishing the large diversity of life present on the planet.

The evolutionary argument you are making is a species-centered one. You are only considering the "cream of the crop" in humanity itself, and apparently not giving other animal, plant, or mineral life an equal value. You may argue that it is not "evolutionary" for humans to be concerned about other animal species, and argue along some distorted survival-of-the-fittest lines. Yet humans need animals, plants, and even minerals to live. Also, an argument could be made that natural balances in ecosystems indicate that most animals, as evolutionarily dominant as they may be, do not hunt other species to extinction or engage in other environmentally destructive practices to the extent that modern humanity has.

I think that this concern for the Earth as a whole versus your stated or implied concern for the evolution of a technological human society at the exclusion of not only the individual human but also the animal, vegetable, and mineral worlds is a fundamental difference in our approaches.

Originally Posted by juantoo3

I have a dual ancestry that forces me to face the challenge from both sides. My heart is Native American, my head is English and Irish. But I am only a typical working class American stiff. Do Native Americans have a tough go of things? Yes, conquered peoples sometimes do. You call them marginalized. Keep in mind that should any desire, they are quite free to leave the reservation and join the modern world. What marginalizes them is their determination to cling to the old ways. Here I will not say better or worse (even though I feel the evidence speaks for itself). The Native way is the teepee, wigwam or hogan. The American way is the house or apartment. The Native way is taught quite differently than an American school, but which education is valued more in society and abroad? The list goes on...

Well, this is simply another way of saying what I have already said, only from your vantage point, which normalizes and justifies the current political/social paradigm simply because it is. This is the way things are, so people have to accept it, right? Well no, not necessarily; and simply because it is the way things are certainly does not make it necessarily okay or correct.

Originally Posted by Pathless

Yet if we look at it another way we can see clearly that our expansionist ways have always displaced populations of people and forcefully imposed the westernized model onto them. We give them a choice, if you can call it that: become like us, or become completely marginalized and fade away. Certainly if they resist, the American (or western) way is to push them off the land we want or exterminate them.

Your take on this is that it is the marginalized groups' decision to remain as they have been or as they are--Native, Queer, Black, Mexican, whatever--that is responsible for their mistreatment. I don't agree. The mistreatment is visited upon them by an assimilationist and expansionist society that devalues their very existence, unless and until they agree to enter the expansionist society and abandon their identity. I don't think that's right.

Furthermore, the value of dissent in a democracy or any political system that allows for it is that it should help that society to reconfigure maladaptive and destructive behaviors. By engaging my right to question the status quo and criticize hypocritical and destructive values, I am supposedly playing a civic role, albeit an underappreciated and potentially irritating one.

Your arguments seem to stem from an attitude that the status quo is, and that we should all accept it and work from within those boundaries, but I cannot agree to that. If everyone worked within the boundaries of what has been established and what is, change would be minimal and insignificant. People who step outside of the established order and accepted social mores play a fundamental and important role in the effort to improve culture/society, often along moral lines.

Originally Posted by juantoo3

Native Americans have made valuable contributions to American society, once they decide to enter American society. They make excellent warriors (I wonder why that is?). They are superb athletes. They have made contributions is science and medicine, once they decide to participate.

Did you realize that the very foundations of the representative government of the United States probably owe a huge debt to the Haudeoshonee/Iroquois?

Check it out:
The Six Nations: Oldest Living Participatory Democracy on Earth

Originally Posted by junatoo3

... Soap operas, shopping malls and bonbons are not a part of this paradigm, which might or might not be a good thing, but try selling it that way to your girlfriend and see how far you get with it.

You obviously don't know my fiance. She'd be insulted by your sexist assumptions.

[Pathless]

Originally Posted by juantoo3

Here is an interesting term for you, Pathless; "Neo-Luddism." I found it reading up on Ted Kaczynski. If you haven’t read his stuff, I highly recommend it, it is right in line with everything you have been saying.

Neo-Luddism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yes, I'm familiar with the term, and don't really mind it being applied to me. Anarcho-primitivist is another one that resonates with me right now. Please realize though that I retain the right to change my thinking and ideas in the future, and seem to elude categorical definitions that some people like to apply. Labels don't stick well to me, is what I'm saying.

I read a little bit of the link to Kaczynski's essay, or Manifesto if you want:


Industrial Society and Its Future - Wikisource

and I have to say that although I'm not sure that I'll read all of it, and while I don't agree with a good bit of what I've read of his perspective so far--which seems fairly androcentric and privileged--I'd say that his description of the over-socialized individual describes fairly well my experiences being raised in so-called civil society:

Industrial Society and Its Future - Wikisource--Oversocialization

26. Oversocialization can lead to low self-esteem, a sense of powerlessness, defeatism, guilt, etc. One of the most important means by which our society socializes children is by making them feel ashamed of behavior or speech that is contrary to society's expectations. If this is overdone, or if a particular child is especially susceptible to such feelings, he ends by feeling ashamed of himself. Moreover the thought and the behavior of the oversocialized person are more restricted by society's expectations than are those of the lightly socialized person. The majority of people engage in a significant amount of naughty behavior. They lie, they commit petty thefts, they break traffic laws, they goof off at work, they hate someone, they say spiteful things or they use some underhanded trick to get ahead of the other guy. The oversocialized person cannot do these things, or if he does do them he generates in himself a sense of shame and self-hatred. The oversocialized person cannot even experience, without guilt, thoughts or feelings that are contrary to the accepted morality; he cannot think "unclean" thoughts. And socialization is not just a matter of morality; we are socialized to conform to many norms of behavior that do not fall under the heading of morality. Thus the oversocialized person is kept on a psychological leash and spends his life running on rails that society has laid down for him. In many oversocialized people this results in a sense of constraint and powerlessness that can be a severe hardship. We suggest that oversocialization is among the more serious cruelties that human beings inflict on one another.

[wil]

Namaste Pathless,

The oversocialized. Now you would know better than I but this seems like yet again a way to put someone in a box, take away their personal responsibility for their life and blame society as a whole. I see this as quite pervasive today, "I've got this issue because..." because whatever, my parents, my neighborhood, taxes, genetics, gender, gender preference, etc. Where in reality we can take any of those perceived negative influences and find tons of people that have overcome one, two and a dozen of them to become quite productive, quite influential, quite whatever your criteria is.

The whoa is me is a choice, and we can choose to take on labels and wallow in it or choose to change.

Appropriate to our topic was a book recommendation I received today.

I've almost finished a first read of the fascinating book "The
Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity and the Radical Remaking of Economics", by Eric D. Beinhocker.

As a physicist, I've never given much thought about social problems, and at best I had a belief that the solution would come chiefly from physical technological progress. That book informed me that I was entirely wrong, and its contents, which have been brewing in the multidisciplinary work of social scientists and economists ultimately via physics, are revolutionary. At the core is an understanding that the economy and other social phenomena are a (very) complex evolutionary adaptive system. What that means is fairly complicated, though relatively straightforward for a physicist or biologist to
grasp, but the implications are very far reaching.

How can one summarize the key results from this book in a few key
sentences? To me, the last chapters are the most inspiring: how the role of markets, governments and other social constructs play off each other, and what rules of thumb make individuals, organizations and societies survive and thrive.

Another book recommendation by a friend who visited was Amazon.com: Bamboozled: How Americans are being Exploited by the Lies of the Liberal Agenda: Angela McGlowan: Books

I was enthralled with this book! "Bamboozled" is an in-your-face expose` of programs, platforms, and politicians that have run amok in American society. Reading it reminded me of a song by Roberta Flack (loosely paraphrased). The author was: "Strumming my pain with her pen, telling my life with her experiences, and enlightening me, softly, with her words.

One of my dearest friends said to me, in a heated discussion: "That is so white of you!" Unfortunately, this is a position too many of us take when having to deal with an opposing point of view. Everything becomes Liberal or Conservative, Democrat or Republican, and black or white. "Bamboozled" reminds us the correct approach should be ... right or wrong.

I beseech those of you with personal agendas, not to disparage this important read without first exploring its contents. The book is well researched, and filled with information sure to astonish many that are not yet brainwashed ... by certain points of view.

Those who ask: "What have Conservative Republicans done for the country, women, and minorities?" will discover a better question is: "What have they not done?"

If you are disgusted with politicians taking your vote for granted and making empty promises (I know, I am) -- you should abandon the ranks of the bamboozled. Buy this marvelous book and join the march to personal responsibility, self-reliance, and independent thought.

Reviewed by Reginald V. Johnson, Upper Saddle River, NJ

[Pathless]

Yes, wil, you are right. I would know better than you about that. I never said that I was letting "oversocialization" keep me in a box. I did say that the description resonated with me, and I meant it. It's not "woe is me" of me to honestly say that "oversocialization" has been my experience. That's facing facts.

You are assuming that I am letting my previous experiences keep me down, when actually the exact opposite is true. Yes, I've dealt with a lot of negative feelings about myself throughout my life, and yes, I trace them back to messages from society that interfaced with my own personality and sensitivity to result in an overwhelming amount of self-loathing, anxiety, internal conflict, flat-out depression: a numb, incapacitated sort of existence.

If you have an issue with me claiming my experience and assigning the appropriate responsibility to social factors outside of myself rather than continuing to loathe and blame myself for not fitting in or living up to harsh, unachievable standards of perfection, then bluntly, wil, you can go copulate with yourself. You can take your advice about choice, responsibility, and self-determination and deliver it to a six year-old kid overwhelmed by a cross-country move and culture shock and school; to a latchkey kid; to a thirteen year-old trying to make sense of war for oil while the petty drama of high school unfolds around him. What I'm saying is, I understand my power now; as a child in those formative years, overwhelmed by socialization, I didn't have the resources.

Seriously. Often you imply in these forums that I need to get off my ass or work harder at changing the things that I dislike rather than complaining or criticizing--here's a recent example:

Originally Posted by wil

The whoa is me is a choice, and we can choose to take on labels and wallow in it or choose to change.

I do know about emotions as choice, believe me; I've done more work than most to deal with my emotions, and cognitive therapy has figured prominently. So has taking action. When it comes down to it, wil, you know nothing about me except for the words that I type in these forums. Please please please do not assume that I "wallow" in anything. Do not project your own conceptions of a critic or complainer on to me. I'm sick of being the object of your well-intentioned, yet very condescending advice.



Okay, deep breath.

And on to tea and breakfast.

Have a nice day.

[wil]

Originally Posted by Pathless

Have a nice day.

Sorry you took it so personally brother, didn't mean it that way. It is just all this hype creates hypochondriacs, yes that is my problem.

I wasn't giving you advice, more just stating things as I see them. I am also fully aware that not one person on this planet was born to live upto my expectations, not even my children. Nor am I squeaky clean or have ultrahigh ideals as you intimate.

And I'll have a nice day everyday, as that is my choice.

[Pathless]

Juan.

Originally Posted by juantoo3

I found it reading up on Ted Kaczynski. If you haven’t read his stuff, I highly recommend it, it is right in line with everything you have been saying.

Of course, trying to avoid the tempting ad hominem, yet reminded of the consequences of getting lost in one's own mind chasing the nature of infinity...where has this path taken Mr. Kaczynski?

Ad hominem indeed. Who said you avoided it? Perhaps you avoided something else, though.

An ad hominem argument, also known as argumentum ad hominem (Latin: "argument to the man", "argument against the man") consists of replying to an argument or factual claim by attacking or appealing to a characteristic or belief of the person making the argument or claim, rather than by addressing the substance of the argument or producing evidence against the claim. The process of proving or disproving the claim is thereby subverted, and the argumentum ad hominem works to change the subject.
It is most commonly used to refer specifically to the ad hominem abusive, or argumentum ad personam, which consists of criticizing or personally attacking an argument's proponent in an attempt to discredit that argument. It is also used when an opponent is unable to find fault with an argument, yet for various reasons, the opponent disagrees with it.