Selfishness and Society

[juantoo3]

Originally Posted by Pathless

Sometimes destruction must precede creativity.

How close is this to Kaczynski?

185. As for the negative consequences of eliminating industrial society—well, you can't eat your cake and have it too. To gain one thing you have to sacrifice another.

My point being, Pathless, that either you share more in common with Kaczynski than you are willing to admit...or Kaczynski saw you (and others like you) coming two decades ago.

(Please be sure to read this comment in the context of the previous two posts, thanks)

[cyberpi]

The cake theory that says you can't have a cake and eat it too has holes in it.

The yeast munched on the cake before I did... and the cow and the chicken ate a couple of ingredients before I did... and the wheat and the sugar cane ate a few ingredients before I did... and if I eat the cake (or not) then there is something left behind that is recycled which will be taken up again by something green somewhere else to make again the ingredients all over again.

So in summary the same cake can be eaten over and over and over again if the entire recipe is known. But nobody that eats a baked cake is ever the first to have eaten it... and won't be the last. So I submit the cake theory should really read: You can not eat your cake and be the first to have eaten it... nor the last to eat it.

[path_of_one]

Originally Posted by juantoo3

How close is this to Kaczynski?

How close is it to nearly every religion on earth? And ecological and physical reality?

Destruction is the mechanism that releases what is into the potential of what will become.

It resonates through religion in general...
You die to self to find life eternal (Christianity).
You end suffering by reaching nirvana, an extinguishing of the self (Buddhism).
Many religions have transitional times in which the current world ends to pave the way for the new world (Christianity, Maya, etc.).
Most indigenous traditions recognize that lives must end for the continuity of Life (i.e., prey animals sacrifice themselves for their human brothers to eat and live and we later die to become the stuff that grows plants and that prey animals will eat).
The rise and fall of cultures and civilizations shows that the end of a society yields the building blocks for a new, different society.

Even at its most basic, it is true- this transformation. An artist must destroy the materials s/he works with in its original form (a tube of paint, a block of clay, a pencil) to transform it into a new form...

Destruction and creation are two sides of the same coin. This is evidenced by science. There's nothing particularly innovative about that idea.

[wil]

Originally Posted by path_of_one

Destruction is the mechanism that releases what is into the potential of what will become.

Destruction and creation are two sides of the same coin. This is evidenced by science. There's nothing particularly innovative about that idea.

Sambasada Shiva, sambasada Shiva, sambasada Shiva, jay jay Om

Jay mata, jay mata, jay sri mata jay jay ma

[Pathless]

Originally Posted by juantoo3

How close is this to Kaczynski?



My point being, Pathless, that either you share more in common with Kaczynski than you are willing to admit...or Kaczynski saw you (and others like you) coming two decades ago.

(Please be sure to read this comment in the context of the previous two posts, thanks)

Well, you please be sure to read my arguments in their proper context, as well. Thanks.

Originally Posted by Pathless

Sometimes destruction must precede creativity.

On the other hand, what is practical and realistic about capitalism? I see how it creates large profits for a few who choose to play by its crooked rules, and impoverishes the rest. From where I stand, corporate capitalism in no way engages practically and realistically with establishing meaningful human communities, to say nothing of offering a way that humans can live in balance with the rest of life. To call critics of an impractical and unrealistic, ultimately unworkable way of life themselves unpractical and unrealistic seems to be evading the problem. No sane solutions can be reached within the selfish paradigm. For sane solutions, we will need to broaden our scope from selfishness and even well-meaning self interest at the exclusion of community considerations, to a more cooperative model.

How's that for practical? Cooperation? Community? Concern for others and environment? Or is that too dreamy-eyed?

"You may say that I'm a dreamer/but I'm not the only one."

Speaking of Kascynski, and by implication my posts, you write:

Originally Posted by junatoo3

He is right of course. Few will read his essay. Of those that do, few will remember what they read, their minds bombarded constantly with input from media sources far and wide. But there is another reason people forget his essay. It hits too close to home, and attempts to force them to face matters that are more comfortably dealt with in ignorance.

And you are right. People don't want to be confronted with the difficult realities. They'd rather be entertained. They'd rather go about their business as usual, and not think too hard about the suffering that underlies business as usual. That's too bad, and makes my work more difficult. I'll just have to work harder at being entertaining, I suppose.

I'll see y'all later. I don't have much more to say, and I'm tired of being (deliberately?) misunderstood by a few here, and being told to change my approach by others. At the risk of sounding like a spoiled badly animated fat kid, I say: "Y'all don't know me," and "Screw you guys, I'm going home."

[juantoo3]

Originally Posted by path_of_one

How close is it to nearly every religion on earth? And ecological and physical reality?

Even at its most basic, it is true- this transformation. An artist must destroy the materials s/he works with in its original form (a tube of paint, a block of clay, a pencil) to transform it into a new form...

Destruction and creation are two sides of the same coin. This is evidenced by science. There's nothing particularly innovative about that idea.

Philosophically I get it. I understand. But when the "artist's medium" is human lives, I tend to hedge and drag my feet. And when the creation is for the pleasure of the artist in deference to the pleasure of the audience, then I must protest. To sacrifice human lives to create a new reality that few want is a gross miscarriage of justice, not a new twist on an old revelation.

[juantoo3]

Originally Posted by Pathless

They'd rather go about their business as usual, and not think too hard about the suffering that underlies business as usual. That's too bad, and makes my work more difficult. I'll just have to work harder at being entertaining, I suppose.

Isn't that the challenge that faces every activist? Waking others up to hard truths...

Originally Posted by Pathless

I don't have much more to say, and I'm tired of being (deliberately?) misunderstood by a few here, and being told to change my approach by others.

Being told to change your approach? Isn't that what you have been doing to others? A little reciprocation isn't appreciated?

There are always at least two sides to a story. Like everybody else, I hear the message about conserve this and save that. I get it, and I do what I can. But telling me I *have to* surrender the lifestyle I have struggled to build within the acceptable norms of my culture, and even telling me that I can expect to die in the coming revolution to overthrow my culture, and I am supposed to simply take all that without resistance? Perhaps I could play dumb, and dismiss the message as that of lunatics and crazies?

Presentation is a huge part of the problem here.

What is more, I think the conclusions need to seriously be revisited and reworked. Yes, technology has a bad side, but it also provides potential good. If there is a solution to be had to provide for billions of people peaceably (meaning not by war or some other mass casualty revolution) then technology is our best hope.

Anything made has a wasteful byproduct. It was the same in the stone age. The difference is in the damage potential of the byproduct. Yes, I agree we need to be more responsible with the waste products of modern production, but a reversal to primitive methods will not erase harmful byproducts. There will always be some degree of offal from production, the trick is to manage that offal and to make that offal as inert or harmless as possible.

Capitalism is not the culprit. Human nature is the culprit. And since humans will continue being humans no matter what revolution (unless they wipe themselves out), it makes sense to me that a change of attitude to one of social and organic responsibility would go much further towards producing the desired outcome of sustainable existance. There is far too great a focus on damning and blame casting, so much so that is has become a game to evade responsiblility. I feel the litigious atmosphere creates this, but liberal social policies only add fuel to the fire. Fostering a global culture of individual responsibility would go a long way to overcome this (which is not likely, because the typical political liberal views individual responsibility as selfishness). It is only when we, each and every one, fully realizes and internalizes *I am responsible* that any progress towards doing away with waste and harmful byproducts will reduce and eventually be eliminated, while new and novel methods to solve existing problems will be brought to light. As long as responsibility belongs to the other, any other, we will continue just as we are, naively and carelessly and ignorantly.

You don't know me either. But I know your arguments are not solutions, merely new problems. So screw you too, I'm going home now.

[Pathless]

Originally Posted by juantoo3

Philosophically I get it. I understand. But when the "artist's medium" is human lives, I tend to hedge and drag my feet. And when the creation is for the pleasure of the artist in deference to the pleasure of the audience, then I must protest. To sacrifice human lives to create a new reality that few want is a gross miscarriage of justice, not a new twist on an old revelation.

How very odd, Juantoo. You didn't seem at all concerned with these human lives earlier.

You tried to argue a certain way and I engaged you on that level. I even gave you the benefit of the doubt after you called dispossesed third-worlders pissants. But I think what this comes down to is that you believe that Americans are a special breed, and deserve special treatment. I don't see any indication from your words that you really care about starving people across the world. What I see are a lot of opportunist arguments, taking words out of context, and then after all of that failed to succeed--because I met you each time with a counter-argument that you could not deny--you brought in Theodore Kaczynski and juxtaposed his arguments with mine. You repeatedly classified me along the same lines, even after I dissociated myself from him and denied the similarities that you see. And all the while you denied that was what you were doing:

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?

Further:

Originally Posted by juantoo3

I have not compared anybody to anybody other than the madness associated with genius.

Oh really? What is this, then? All those little excerpts of Kaczynski's pretentious unabomber manifesto, followed by:

Originally Posted by juantoo3

Is any of this sounding famliar?

and

Originally Posted by juantoo3

How close is this to Kaczynski?




My point being, Pathless, that either you share more in common with Kaczynski than you are willing to admit...or Kaczynski saw you (and others like you) coming two decades ago.

It's all bullshit, man. You have not attempted to respond to many of my posts since about May 4th; instead you have been rather obsessed with this whole Kaczynski affair, trying to draw some kind of parallel between my posts and the Una-frickin'-bomber and thereby avoid addressing the issues that I have brought up while at the same time discrediting my posts as irrelevant or somehow sociopathic.

You want to associate me with Kaczynski? I could just as easily call you an uncaring, elitist American bigot who hides behind a hypocritical moral shield when it suits him to do so.

Originally Posted by juantoo3

So, who is bitchin' about the rise in food prices, and the diversion of grain from the food stocks? It is those we *give* the stuff too, because now we're in a bind ourselves and don't have it to send, they are bitchin' that we aren't sending enough. There are nations with their hands out blaming us because we don't *give* them what they want.

Piss on 'em. Let 'em grow their own. If they could.

It's not enough that I can't hold on to enough of my own earned money to keep my own head above water, I have to contribute to some inconsiderate and ungrateful pissant who *won't* grow his own food? Not can't, won't. And has the audacity to get pissed at me because I won't give to him, when I'm teetering on the edge of bankruptcy my own damn self? And some bleeding heart who isn't standing in my shoes is gonna tell me I've got a bad attitude, that I have "swallowed the hype?"

Who is bitchin' indeed? You were doing a fair amount of it right then.

No, you weren't concerned about the starving masses, then. Those are lesser people, pissants you called them. Now you didn't come out and say let them starve, but your attitude towards them is that of a superior to lesser beings, and from that I got the sense that you just don't give a sh1t about those people. So why are you all the sudden so concerned about starving people, and to peg me with wanting people to starve, and so quick to take the moral high ground?

Know what I think? I think you don't like what I have to say because you recognize that there is some truth to it. But that's not convenient for you, and it makes you feel bad about yourself or your society or some of the choices you made along the way. You don't want to think that maybe those pissants that can't grow their own food becuase their land was taken away by the same goddamn corporate system that you've embraced--you don't want to entertain the thought that they might be people, too; people with families like yours, friends like yours, thoughts and emotions and needs and wants like yours. So you abstract them, project laziness and stupidity and feelings of entitlement onto them. They must want to starve. They're lazy. They must be, because they are not growing their own food or working in a sweatshop or climbing the corporate ladder. I don't think they are feeling entitled, but I think you might be. Did you get used to having things your way, juan? And now you are upset because the outsourced wage slaves of the third world are unable to produce for you because the economy turned bad and they don't have food? But screw them, because you're an American, and you're the one that's got it tough, and Americans are the ones that matter out of all the people in the world, because Americans are generous and technological and oh so democratic.

Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit.

I may be on my way out the door of CR, but I couldn't let it stand the way I left it earlier tonight. I let you off too easy, then. I just wanted to stop back in and make sure that I am understood: I think that the way you have tried to discredit my arguments and statements by posing me with Kaczynski--all the while denying that you are doing any such thing--is pathetic. I think that your petty little railing against those pissants in the third world who are cheating you out of cheap gas and causing food prices to rise because they need to eat is pathetic. And I think your allegation above that, "Capitalism is not the culprit. Human nature is the culprit," which I've just read, is horribly cynical and pathetic.

Seeya.

[juantoo3]

Originally Posted by Pathless

I may be on my way out the door of CR, but I couldn't let it stand the way I left it earlier tonight. I let you off too easy, then. I just wanted to stop back in and make sure that I am understood: I think that the way you have tried to discredit my arguments and statements by posing me with Kaczynski--all the while denying that you are doing any such thing--is pathetic. I think that your petty little railing against those pissants in the third world who are cheating you out of cheap gas and causing food prices to rise because they need to eat is pathetic. And I think your allegation above that, "Capitalism is not the culprit. Human nature is the culprit," which I've just read, is horribly cynical and pathetic.

You are right. Posing you with Kaczynski was not a nice thing for me to do. When I commented to Path of one, I hadn't yet. As I reread the manifesto so many things kept jumping out at me, things I have heard you say many times. Maybe it wasn't cool, but it was a hard truth.

So hard you are leaving? That would be unfortunate. I'd rather not see you leave, I'm sure others here would rather not see you leave.

This is why I don't care for this board and tend to leave it alone. Tao makes a disparaging comment, and I responded emotionally. You jumped in, I had time to tone down, Tao hasn't been around and you are leaving. Because I disagreed? With emotion? If it would help any, I will exit this conversation, and leave you to it.

[cyberpi]

Kaczynski choked on the golden rule. He completely disregarded it or never even learned it. He did to others what he would not want others to do to him. There are other paths available to him to contend with those who he so strongly disagrees with. I wonder how would Kacyzynski have preferred others to contend with and disagree with him?

Is selfishness and the golden rule fully opposed?

[Tao_Equus]

Tao has been around.

You say it was a disparaging comment about the US or the capitalist way that kicked all this off. Wrong. It is the mindset of so many US citizens and capitalist ideologues around the world that wallowing in the complacency of their own luxury think everything is the way it should be. There are two hard facts about the American way of life you seem to completely fail to comprehend. Its is artificial and unsustainable. For decades American wealth has not, as you seem to believe, been built upon homegrown technology, innovation and production but on the exploitation of the global resource and slave labour. Without the stolen resources the US procured from around the world by bribery, coup and the trickery of their trade agreements the average American would be an average consumer. Currently the average American still consumes twice that of the nearest rival. The average American does not work twice as hard as the miner in Brazil, nor twice as long as the factory worker in Chongqin and gets far more than twice the income of the rubber worker in Bolivia. Yet the American demands that he can buy a car with a ridiculously oversized engine built on the sweat and labour of all these people for maybe 80%, 90% or more of net lifetime income of any of those without whom that car could not be built.
Poverty exists in this modern era because it is carefully nurtured. Not because of lazy pissants. It is nurtured for you to enjoy that car, television, dvd, walk in fridge full of ridiculously cheap produce flown in from around the world.

Again above I see the word liberal used in slanderous, pejorative tense. Do you know what it means? When I see it written as you wrote it Juan it does not speak of progression as it should it speaks of an entrenched mindset of the individual using it, abusing it, for their own self justification. It shows an ignorance and laziness and worst of all the arrogance of blind political dogma. Only right wing Americans ever do this, the Republican underhand, dirty trickery of turning a good word into a bad one. If you can demonise your 'enemy' by creating a misunderstanding it saves the trouble of having to waste time with logic.

Pathless is more than capable of holding his own in any discussion but here I feel I have to rally to his support. Something I am loathe to do because I consider you both friends here. Losing Pathless would diminish the light I find in coming here and for this reason I state that I do find your fixation with labelling what he was saying to the manifesto of the Uni bomber more than a little underhand. You know back in the Weimar republic the Nazi's went around deliberately seeking out ways to associate everything wrong with German economics to the Jews, the gypsies and anyone else they felt did not support their supremacist ideology. So is it fair because you seek out to associate Pathless with the Uni bomber that I do likewise and call you a Nazi? What would you do with these loathsome Pissants? Gas them? Is that your final solution? Now if I come back post after post declaring that you are indeed a Nazi its going to irritate you. So I understand why Pathless is pissed off.



Pathless,

I get so pissed off here too sometimes. Its your call, always, but losing you would be a sad loss. Hope that you dont go, that you can find some reason to continue. You know the hole there is here with Flow absent, well thats what you would leave here. You would still be visible by your absence. Much better to be visible by your contribution dont you think?


Tao

[Tao_Equus]

Originally Posted by cyberpi

Kaczynski choked on the golden rule. He completely disregarded it or never even learned it. He did to others what he would not want others to do to him. There are other paths available to him to contend with those who he so strongly disagrees with. I wonder how would Kacyzynski have preferred others to contend with and disagree with him?

Is selfishness and the golden rule fully opposed?

Kaczynski simply let his anger and frustration get the better of him. When I hear my mild mannered father talk of wishing there was a way from him to suicide bomb our Parliament over the overt corruption and nepotism within it combined with the ridiculous taxation of the the citizenry I hear Kaczynski. He had the balls or the stupidity to do what so many say in front of the TV watching the evening news bulletin.

Golden rule....my arse...like to see where the Golden Rule applies in any of the plethora of wars the US has propagated.

Tao

[cyberpi]

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

Golden rule....my arse...like to see where the Golden Rule applies in any of the plethora of wars the US has propagated.

I don't think any war obeys the Golden rule. It is fought between governments where the population who fights for it doesn't even get to know their alleged enemy... or alleged ally. I could easily be convinced that it was a huge, giant mistake that the USA joined in and propagated WWI and WWII... and the Korean, and Vietnam, and every involvement in the Middle East. Those giant expenditures of funds, resources, and lives. One thing is for certain... Europe would have a very different face on it today. Who knows maybe living under Hitler more individuals like yourself would admire the Americas.

Do we agree... war is fully opposed to the Golden rule?

[path_of_one]

Originally Posted by juantoo3

Philosophically I get it. I understand. But when the "artist's medium" is human lives, I tend to hedge and drag my feet.

Me too, with the caveat that all beings are equal in my eyes. I don't see it as just "human" lives, but all lives. That's why I work toward social and environmental justice as much as I can. But I recognize that doesn't change the sustainability issue or the way Nature operates. We can soften the blow, but only through change.

Trying to change the current trends of capitalism, war and empire-building, and so forth is an attempt to prevent the destruction of many, many human and other lives.

And when the creation is for the pleasure of the artist in deference to the pleasure of the audience, then I must protest.

With regards to natural and social transformation, I think it is not for the pleasure of the "artist" (whoever that may be) or the audience. The artist is the audience, and vice versa. It is not that some people want this and others want that, but rather that Nature can sustain only some social structures over the long haul. We can either get on board and figure this out, and change willingly, or Nature (through war, famine, disease, etc.) will do the job for us and we will suffer.

To sacrifice human lives to create a new reality that few want is a gross miscarriage of justice, not a new twist on an old revelation.

I can't speak for others, but I am not proposing to sacrifice human lives. On the contrary, I propose to sacrifice consumerism on the altar of humanity- to sacrifice the reality many Americans want to preserve the human lives of those who are currently exploited for our greed.

I think the operative issue in this last sentence of yours is who gets to decide what reality is wanted, and is that reality sustainable. If the "reality" so many want (huge house, lots of crap, etc.) is not sustainable or able to be evenly distributed for all, and comes at a cost of exploitation and poverty for the majority... now THAT is a gross miscarriage of justice, and a stupid way to make decisions. If reality is not sustainable, then it is only a short-lived dream.

[path_of_one]

Originally Posted by cyberpi

Do we agree... war is fully opposed to the Golden rule?

Maybe, considering that war tends to perpetuate more wars, it does operate according to the Golden Rule, but just in a negative sense.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

A nation that sells weapons and participates in war, later reaps what it sows in more war and those weapons being used against it.

At least, that is the trend I've seen...