tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38413397.post2324223843603420499..comments2023-12-19T15:10:02.866-08:00Comments on ex cathedra: The individual and the groupUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38413397.post-60175762023397638592013-01-20T07:27:23.451-08:002013-01-20T07:27:23.451-08:00Lao-Tsu: Enneagram 5 ("how does it make sense...Lao-Tsu: Enneagram 5 ("how does it make sense?") is the ready tao, but Enneagram 1 ("how is it right?") is the eternal tao.Jenkinsrmbrhttp://julierrogersi.webnode.com/news/put-an-end-to-snoring-with-this-advice-738263noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38413397.post-43722450674240846982011-10-17T16:49:34.876-07:002011-10-17T16:49:34.876-07:00BTW, the picture for the Individual Plan could sug...BTW, the picture for the Individual Plan could suggest dangerously collectivized 'central plans' etc, couldn't it? It reminds of the old pictures of heroic Communist Man. ... The Group Plan seems to permit for individual_s_.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38413397.post-40664777988213151412011-10-17T13:36:18.697-07:002011-10-17T13:36:18.697-07:00But a liberal takes the easy road of proposing giv...But a liberal takes the easy road of proposing givingness and stop-oppressingness -- which is also a path that requires very little effort from him. Perhaps he pays more taxes than he otherwise would, but he is of the class that is very affluent and very prestigious. He doesn't have to declare that inequality will remain forever because persons are unequal and thus family-members are advantaged or disadvantaged unequallty. His own material and prestige advantages are only temporary, and after all as a liberal, he is using his advantaged position to call for social change and the eventual abolition of all poverty, inequality etc etc. Thus, posting a liberal "like" request on a conservative's page is perfectly polite.<br /><br />Formerly, liberals were 'realistic' about 'human nature' -- Hobbes, Locke, Spinoza, even Kant ("man's asocial sociability"), even up through the revision of Marx's communism by liberals who said that no way everyone would work for the common good, but since everyone has an interest in solving social problems and rich men don't like giving money to the poor when they see that not all rich men give, therefore "social programmes" would be progress.<br /><br />But now liberals scoff at Machiavelli's realistic ridicule of 'imaginary' idealistic principalities. That idealistic intentions may be the path to hell is no longer consider'd a factor needful to consider. Human nature has been irrelevant to public policy considerations since the summer of love at least.<br /><br />... The new liberals were, maybe still are a kind of Fichtean, I guess: for Fichte, human nature is will, and will has no intrinsic contents, therefore we can will any principality we can imagine.<br /><br />Marx: »each Self may hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, do critical critiques after a dinner of earthly not heavenly bread, just as the neo-Islamic traditionalist caliphate's non-ego has a blame-accepting mind.« (German Ideology, Tucker ed. p. 160)<br /><br />We could easily have ended up in the Hell advocated for North America by e.g. Maoist Norman Bethune, but 1950s+ fellow-travellers would have said "Don't blame us, damn you! We had good intentions!" They wouldn't have accepted that they indulged their consciences with easy-payoffs (future equality, future freedom from poverty) in terms of social policy while busily buffing their own career and lifestyle muskets.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38413397.post-41144522540143525882011-10-17T13:22:05.024-07:002011-10-17T13:22:05.024-07:00The God of the Olam's "monster algorithm ...The God of the Olam's "monster algorithm privacy-busting program working the background" perhaps includes the insight that all publicity is good publicity. Who knows but you'll need the sort of work done by this guy's business and you'll contact him because you already know of his business and this saves the bother of searching -- especially the bother of searching for a conservative Republican who offers this business in your town?<br /><br />When a the conscience of a "conservative" is founded not on implicit preference for "Throne and Altar" and such, but by finding fault with the real-world results of liberal idealism, liberal programmes, including support for Communism, the conscience is definitely troubled, guilt-feeling.<br /><br />For after all, one admits that the reason communism etc doesn't work is that one doesn't care about the collective -- one cares much more for oneself and one's own family than about everyone and others all together as created by God or random darwinian movements. _Real_ tribal attitudes did not feel this way; they justify'd, and didn't feel the need to 'justify' their actions with a view to extraneous considerations — and a 'return' to these attitudes would be disastrous for technological society.<br /><br />All this to say is that liberal Democrats aren't troubled by their valuations in the way that conservatives are. Liberals may hate their own origins, as they imagine them, but they don't doubt the validity of that hatred, nor the validity of feeling that calling for social change, progressive education etc.<br /><br />The conservative confronts the liberal trying to get the liberal to agree that in fact we're all 'selfish' (for ourselves and our families) and accordingly public policies should work with, build on that selfishness, rather than proceeding with programmes that imply the poor are benefited by giving back to them the wealth that the rich got by stealing from the poor to begin with. "We need to potentiate self-improvement, not fund dereliction -- however dereliction may have been permitted in some populations while self-improvement may have been promoted in other populations." This is guilt-ridden conservatism.<br /><br />You then hesitate to post on a liberal's facebook page a request to "like" America's taking charge of its southern border: this is an assertion of national selfishness rather than of universal fraternalness, as demanded by every Christian saint, after all -- even if it is also true that a guilt-ridden givingness attitude by liberal Democrats only helps maintain Mexico in a state of economic-social-political dysfunction.<br /><br />So also if one says 'we' (whites) do African-Americans a great disservice by promoting in them the message that they can't use the American system to benefit themselves [e.g. restoring family systems to what they were c.1950] until we stop oppressing them, stop not believing in them, stop not taking from them so that we can have wealth and prestige. This may be false, but no white can feel good about himself if he starts pointing this out. He is saying that he is still more concern'd for his own career advancement than for the career advancement of this or that woman or member of this or that minority group.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38413397.post-12183284682563208812011-10-17T12:45:37.076-07:002011-10-17T12:45:37.076-07:00Lao-Tsu: Enneagram 5 ("how does it make sense...Lao-Tsu: Enneagram 5 ("how does it make sense?") is the ready tao, but Enneagram 1 ("how is it right?") is the eternal tao.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com