Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Obama's Cooked!
I listened to Obama's defining moment a few minutes ago. He never rose to the occasion.
He had to openly state his principle(s). That would take no longer than the Gettysburg address. I cannot tell you how much I wanted him to inspire me to my greater self.
He rambled, stirring his fingers in the minutae of a Marxist explanation of how the world works. He tried to get me worked up by blaming corporate America. He offered socialist shibboleths proven to fail the world over. It took 35 to 40 minutes. I thought is was really boring.
I predict a decrease of interest in Obama.
He had to openly state his principle(s). That would take no longer than the Gettysburg address. I cannot tell you how much I wanted him to inspire me to my greater self.
He rambled, stirring his fingers in the minutae of a Marxist explanation of how the world works. He tried to get me worked up by blaming corporate America. He offered socialist shibboleths proven to fail the world over. It took 35 to 40 minutes. I thought is was really boring.
I predict a decrease of interest in Obama.
Monday, March 17, 2008
The Atlanta Tornado
I was on the phone. In mid-sentence, I said, "What the hell is going on?" The sound increased to a very loud level. I couldn't hear on the phone. Suddenly it went dead and the lights went out. A huge piece of cloth, a temporary covering for a large billboard west of me, was blowing east above the MARTA tracks. The tree outside my window bent every limb in line with the powerful wind. And then it was over.
The electricity returned. I turned on the TV and learned that we had experienced a powerful storm that had ripped a hole in the Georgia Dome, damaged the CNN center, tore the facade off Phillips Arena, sucked or blew some windows out of several hotels and the Georgia Pacific building. The lights went out and after getting bored reading by candlelight, I went to bed.
Saturday morning I saw the pictures on TV of the damage to Oakland Cemetary, the shearing of the top floor from the northwestern building of the Cotton Mill Lofts and the downed trees and ripped off or damaged roofs in Cabbagetown. Later even more became apparent. Apartments and homea north of Dekalb Avenue had been severely damaged, windows had been sucked out of the King Memorial MARTA station and some surrounding buildings. Electric wires were down along with trees to the point that the neighborhood north of Dekalb Avenue was impassable.
After walking around the neighborhood this afternoon, I can see how likely it could have been that this building that could have been damaged. I consider myself fortunate.
The electricity returned. I turned on the TV and learned that we had experienced a powerful storm that had ripped a hole in the Georgia Dome, damaged the CNN center, tore the facade off Phillips Arena, sucked or blew some windows out of several hotels and the Georgia Pacific building. The lights went out and after getting bored reading by candlelight, I went to bed.
Saturday morning I saw the pictures on TV of the damage to Oakland Cemetary, the shearing of the top floor from the northwestern building of the Cotton Mill Lofts and the downed trees and ripped off or damaged roofs in Cabbagetown. Later even more became apparent. Apartments and homea north of Dekalb Avenue had been severely damaged, windows had been sucked out of the King Memorial MARTA station and some surrounding buildings. Electric wires were down along with trees to the point that the neighborhood north of Dekalb Avenue was impassable.
After walking around the neighborhood this afternoon, I can see how likely it could have been that this building that could have been damaged. I consider myself fortunate.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Forget It - The Economy Can't Be Fixed
Where did we get this idea that the economy can be fixed?
Let's think about this for a minute. The economy is the sum of all the economic acts of individual human beings. We each have needs and we have to produce or had to have produced something we can trade for what we need. We take what we have and we go to the market and look around at what is for sale and how much it costs. From that, we make our choice and trade what we have for what we want. That is what it means to take an economic action.
Who can fix that?
There is nothing wrong with the economy. It is doing what it needs to do and has to do. The politicians are essentially saying this, "We fear that you will get angry and riot if you lose money or lose your home; therefore instead of allowing you people to make rational choices, we will pass a law so you will have to make irrational choices." (See Brian Simpson's Markets Don't Fail, 2005 http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_/105-0109764-8601260?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks%3Arelevance-above&field-keywords=Markets+Don%27t+Fail&x=13&y=16)
What this really says is: "We, the government, are incompetent to regulate the proper use of force. If we were competent, we would not fear a riot. We know that had the proper use of force been established, you would know better than to irrationally take your losses out on other people."
The government's purpose is the regulation of force, not the regulation of the economy. We will never be able to trust a politician until he talks straight about his job. When they say they are going to provide these other things for you, we know they are lying. They cannot do it except as a kind of "representation" of what they say they can produce.
So long as we believe that the government can fix the economy, we trade the rational choices of millions of people for the ignorance of a politician who can't do what he says he can do.
What is the solution? Get the government out of the way so we can make the full range of rational choices. In the meantime, vote for the idiot of your choice.
Let's think about this for a minute. The economy is the sum of all the economic acts of individual human beings. We each have needs and we have to produce or had to have produced something we can trade for what we need. We take what we have and we go to the market and look around at what is for sale and how much it costs. From that, we make our choice and trade what we have for what we want. That is what it means to take an economic action.
Who can fix that?
There is nothing wrong with the economy. It is doing what it needs to do and has to do. The politicians are essentially saying this, "We fear that you will get angry and riot if you lose money or lose your home; therefore instead of allowing you people to make rational choices, we will pass a law so you will have to make irrational choices." (See Brian Simpson's Markets Don't Fail, 2005 http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_/105-0109764-8601260?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks%3Arelevance-above&field-keywords=Markets+Don%27t+Fail&x=13&y=16)
What this really says is: "We, the government, are incompetent to regulate the proper use of force. If we were competent, we would not fear a riot. We know that had the proper use of force been established, you would know better than to irrationally take your losses out on other people."
The government's purpose is the regulation of force, not the regulation of the economy. We will never be able to trust a politician until he talks straight about his job. When they say they are going to provide these other things for you, we know they are lying. They cannot do it except as a kind of "representation" of what they say they can produce.
So long as we believe that the government can fix the economy, we trade the rational choices of millions of people for the ignorance of a politician who can't do what he says he can do.
What is the solution? Get the government out of the way so we can make the full range of rational choices. In the meantime, vote for the idiot of your choice.
Friday, March 14, 2008
Distinguishing Empty and Meaningless
Empty and Meaningless, a term familiar to Landmark Education graduates, is the point at which you get in a course where you can now create something new. People go into the course to break through something that has stopped them in their lives. It can be in a relationship. It can be in one's progress in one's career. It can be in any area of life where one feels stuck.
After almost two days of deconstruction of the world that you have built, you come to a place in your mind where you are sufficiently clear of that to create a new future. You have seen where you've erred, interpreted events incorrectly, have taken into your being (i.e., adopted as a basic premise in your knowledge and/or evaluative structure) something that has been stopping you from moving forward.
This place, free of past attachment of any kind, is called "empty and meaningless." As a point to which one gets himself to be free to create something new beyond the way he has been able to create in the past, he has to let go of the meaning that the old way had for him.
The distinction I want to make is this. Life is not, I say NOT, empty and meaningless, and to think that it is has serious consequences. (Those consequences are for a later post.) Life is an aspect of particular kinds of entities - namely living ones. These entities are to be distinguished from stones, tables, books and all sorts of inert, lifeless entities. The existence of these lifeless entities just is. They cannot take action to prolong their life because they don't possess life. They are just "banged" or moved around in the universe based on their own identity and the identities of the entities around them via the law of cause and effect - rather like billiard balls.
Entities possessing life, however, have a completely different situation. They have to constantly take action that keeps their lives in existence. Life is not automatic. It is maintained by action consistent with what the life needs to exist.
In the lower animals, this is automatic in the sense that they act to maintain their life until they are killed or die naturally. But in humans, who are distinguished from the lower animals by the faculty of reason, this is not automatic. A human being can choose at any moment to end his life and take the action to do so. In other words, life, for a human being is something that he chooses to keep in existence or not.
Because of this fact, everything around a human being is imbued by him with meaning. The basic meaning is, "Is this for me or against me?" "Does this further or hinder my life?"
Man's life and his faculty of reason are part of his nature. His creation of meaning is automatic. He will create meaning regardless. It is said that "Man is a meaning creating machine." That's true, except that he isn't a machine, and he has no choice in this matter. Thus life is not empty and meaningless. On the contrary, life is everywhere filled with meaning.
Given that, the area where you have choice and control is the meaning that you give a particular situation, event or attribute. And the Landmark exercise is valuable in altering the meaning that you give something - especially events and situations that happened in your past.
A person can see a difficult childhood as bad or he can see it as good or some combination. There were things he didn't have and didn't experience. On the other hand, he learned to be strong in the face of that and those ways may lead to success in many areas of life.
The point of this distinction is to not blithely say, "Life is empty and meaningless" as a way to dismiss worrying about something or to dismiss another person's concern. The point is to get in there, take charge of and be responsible for the meaning you create. Each of us, after all, is responsible for this individual human capacity.
After almost two days of deconstruction of the world that you have built, you come to a place in your mind where you are sufficiently clear of that to create a new future. You have seen where you've erred, interpreted events incorrectly, have taken into your being (i.e., adopted as a basic premise in your knowledge and/or evaluative structure) something that has been stopping you from moving forward.
This place, free of past attachment of any kind, is called "empty and meaningless." As a point to which one gets himself to be free to create something new beyond the way he has been able to create in the past, he has to let go of the meaning that the old way had for him.
The distinction I want to make is this. Life is not, I say NOT, empty and meaningless, and to think that it is has serious consequences. (Those consequences are for a later post.) Life is an aspect of particular kinds of entities - namely living ones. These entities are to be distinguished from stones, tables, books and all sorts of inert, lifeless entities. The existence of these lifeless entities just is. They cannot take action to prolong their life because they don't possess life. They are just "banged" or moved around in the universe based on their own identity and the identities of the entities around them via the law of cause and effect - rather like billiard balls.
Entities possessing life, however, have a completely different situation. They have to constantly take action that keeps their lives in existence. Life is not automatic. It is maintained by action consistent with what the life needs to exist.
In the lower animals, this is automatic in the sense that they act to maintain their life until they are killed or die naturally. But in humans, who are distinguished from the lower animals by the faculty of reason, this is not automatic. A human being can choose at any moment to end his life and take the action to do so. In other words, life, for a human being is something that he chooses to keep in existence or not.
Because of this fact, everything around a human being is imbued by him with meaning. The basic meaning is, "Is this for me or against me?" "Does this further or hinder my life?"
Man's life and his faculty of reason are part of his nature. His creation of meaning is automatic. He will create meaning regardless. It is said that "Man is a meaning creating machine." That's true, except that he isn't a machine, and he has no choice in this matter. Thus life is not empty and meaningless. On the contrary, life is everywhere filled with meaning.
Given that, the area where you have choice and control is the meaning that you give a particular situation, event or attribute. And the Landmark exercise is valuable in altering the meaning that you give something - especially events and situations that happened in your past.
A person can see a difficult childhood as bad or he can see it as good or some combination. There were things he didn't have and didn't experience. On the other hand, he learned to be strong in the face of that and those ways may lead to success in many areas of life.
The point of this distinction is to not blithely say, "Life is empty and meaningless" as a way to dismiss worrying about something or to dismiss another person's concern. The point is to get in there, take charge of and be responsible for the meaning you create. Each of us, after all, is responsible for this individual human capacity.
Distinguishing - The Heavy Lifting
The purpose of reason is to know reality - to observe the facts and to draw conclusions in order that one know what to do. Reality consists of the world external to oneself and oneself, the being whose needs are to be met in order to live.
The power one has in this process is known as "distinguishing." That is knowing one thing from the rest of reality such that it becomes distinct in your mind and you are able, therefore, to actually use what you know. I ran into this term in Landmark Education years ago and have been seeing it in other places although it is not highlighted as "distinguishing" as it is in Landmark.
Last night I went to a lecture by Dr. John Lewis, an historian, whose lecture was entitled, No Substitute For Victory. (http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2006-winter/no-substitute-for-victory.asp) The audience of maybe 60 people was mostly Muslim and believe me, he had his work cut out for him to distinguish his thesis, stand for his thesis, and let the light bulbs come on. And, he wasn't exactly calm in this process either. He was intense and I could tell that he had to let the irrationality of some of the comments roll off him. And, they weren't benignly irrational either. They were meant to render him unfit to stand before any group and say what he was saying. The older Muslims were the most vehement in their intention to stop him in his tracks.
His point was that Islam is joined with the state and this is the essential problem. The history of what happens to a country when religion is one of the purposes of the state and the consequences for their people and for other states is voluminous. Furthermore there is only one way to handle this when it becomes a problem for other states: Destroy the government and rebuild a peace which specifically bans any connection between that government and religion. In each case where this has been done, a peace has been created which has been a huge benefit to the people who had to live under the "State as Religion" regime and because of free trade resulted in the prosperity of not only them but their trading partners. (He said he was writing a book about these historical results. Creating a structured peace has happened many times from ancient times through modern times. It just isn't well known or understood.)
Dr. Lewis had to go through this and distinguish his point from many onslaughts. In the beginning, people were identifying as Muslim and since he was saying that the regime in Iran had to be destroyed they naturally thought that he was saying that Islam had to be destroyed. No, he wasn't saying that. Any person is free to be a Muslim if he wants. His point is that it cannot be the function of the state to promote that or any other religion.
Another point he had to distinguish was that the Muslims attacked him although he was only quoting the radical Muslims down through the ages. Any attack on any Muslim was an attack on them and thus they had no power to call any Muslim to account. He used an example that if an Objectivist entered his house and tried to rob him with a gun, he would call the police and have him arrested. In other words, he wouldn't protect him because he was an Objectivist.
One of the widely held cliches held not only by Muslims but by many non-Muslims is "Violence begats violence." He then drew out examples from history where the opposite is true. Trying to get along with violence maintains violence. Squashing it completely and structuring a peace stops it. He gave the example of Sherman marching through Georgia. Had Sherman not squashed the power brokers of the South, we would still be having skirmishes and serious battles between North and South.
Link to an article by the same name by Dr. John Lewis: http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2006-winter/no-substitute-for-victory.asp
One of the fundamental principles of distinguishing is that when there are two positions, one A and one non-A, any bridging between the two or rapprochement with the other side destroys one's ability to make the distinction. In that act, one has lost his case and the other side wins or is, at least, left to fight another day.
A turk illuminated this principle in a very startling and clear way. I have to say that I've appreciated Bush because he has gone after the Muslim Statists, exactly what I think he should do, but, this revelation had me hate him.
Turkey is a secular state, a fact that they are very proud of. There was never a wording about Turkey that suggested they were anything other than a secular state - until Bush got in office. He and the State Department referred to them as a moderate Muslim state. This characterized them as essentially a Muslim state and tied religion to the state. After 9/11 and because the United States blurred the principle of the separation of church and state, Turkey began having religious uprising. Now I don't know if these uprisings were simply due to the victory that 9/11 represented for Islam, or if they were fostered by America's acknowledgement that a religious state is OK. At any rate, because of Bush's Christian background and the importance he places on bringing religion into the state apparatus, he in his seemingly innocuous formulation threw out a basic principle on which this country and any peace is founded, namely the separation of church and state. This is unacceptable.
Here is a link to another case of distinguishing, this time around the subject of Libertarianism. To distinguish depends on knowing and knowing that you know. You have to know something all the way down to its roots in reality in order to be a powerful distinguisher. In this example, libertarianism throws away its roots and starts in midstream, namely with the principle that "the initiation of force against any man or his property is banned from social interaction."
http://www.youtube.com/paulmckeever
A final note. The matter of distinguishing is not just something that is social. If you do not distinguish a particular value in your own mind, you cannot gain it. To gain a value, one must be absolutely clear as to what it is and what it is not. This requires one's ability to distinguish.
The power one has in this process is known as "distinguishing." That is knowing one thing from the rest of reality such that it becomes distinct in your mind and you are able, therefore, to actually use what you know. I ran into this term in Landmark Education years ago and have been seeing it in other places although it is not highlighted as "distinguishing" as it is in Landmark.
Last night I went to a lecture by Dr. John Lewis, an historian, whose lecture was entitled, No Substitute For Victory. (http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2006-winter/no-substitute-for-victory.asp) The audience of maybe 60 people was mostly Muslim and believe me, he had his work cut out for him to distinguish his thesis, stand for his thesis, and let the light bulbs come on. And, he wasn't exactly calm in this process either. He was intense and I could tell that he had to let the irrationality of some of the comments roll off him. And, they weren't benignly irrational either. They were meant to render him unfit to stand before any group and say what he was saying. The older Muslims were the most vehement in their intention to stop him in his tracks.
His point was that Islam is joined with the state and this is the essential problem. The history of what happens to a country when religion is one of the purposes of the state and the consequences for their people and for other states is voluminous. Furthermore there is only one way to handle this when it becomes a problem for other states: Destroy the government and rebuild a peace which specifically bans any connection between that government and religion. In each case where this has been done, a peace has been created which has been a huge benefit to the people who had to live under the "State as Religion" regime and because of free trade resulted in the prosperity of not only them but their trading partners. (He said he was writing a book about these historical results. Creating a structured peace has happened many times from ancient times through modern times. It just isn't well known or understood.)
Dr. Lewis had to go through this and distinguish his point from many onslaughts. In the beginning, people were identifying as Muslim and since he was saying that the regime in Iran had to be destroyed they naturally thought that he was saying that Islam had to be destroyed. No, he wasn't saying that. Any person is free to be a Muslim if he wants. His point is that it cannot be the function of the state to promote that or any other religion.
Another point he had to distinguish was that the Muslims attacked him although he was only quoting the radical Muslims down through the ages. Any attack on any Muslim was an attack on them and thus they had no power to call any Muslim to account. He used an example that if an Objectivist entered his house and tried to rob him with a gun, he would call the police and have him arrested. In other words, he wouldn't protect him because he was an Objectivist.
One of the widely held cliches held not only by Muslims but by many non-Muslims is "Violence begats violence." He then drew out examples from history where the opposite is true. Trying to get along with violence maintains violence. Squashing it completely and structuring a peace stops it. He gave the example of Sherman marching through Georgia. Had Sherman not squashed the power brokers of the South, we would still be having skirmishes and serious battles between North and South.
Link to an article by the same name by Dr. John Lewis: http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2006-winter/no-substitute-for-victory.asp
One of the fundamental principles of distinguishing is that when there are two positions, one A and one non-A, any bridging between the two or rapprochement with the other side destroys one's ability to make the distinction. In that act, one has lost his case and the other side wins or is, at least, left to fight another day.
A turk illuminated this principle in a very startling and clear way. I have to say that I've appreciated Bush because he has gone after the Muslim Statists, exactly what I think he should do, but, this revelation had me hate him.
Turkey is a secular state, a fact that they are very proud of. There was never a wording about Turkey that suggested they were anything other than a secular state - until Bush got in office. He and the State Department referred to them as a moderate Muslim state. This characterized them as essentially a Muslim state and tied religion to the state. After 9/11 and because the United States blurred the principle of the separation of church and state, Turkey began having religious uprising. Now I don't know if these uprisings were simply due to the victory that 9/11 represented for Islam, or if they were fostered by America's acknowledgement that a religious state is OK. At any rate, because of Bush's Christian background and the importance he places on bringing religion into the state apparatus, he in his seemingly innocuous formulation threw out a basic principle on which this country and any peace is founded, namely the separation of church and state. This is unacceptable.
Here is a link to another case of distinguishing, this time around the subject of Libertarianism. To distinguish depends on knowing and knowing that you know. You have to know something all the way down to its roots in reality in order to be a powerful distinguisher. In this example, libertarianism throws away its roots and starts in midstream, namely with the principle that "the initiation of force against any man or his property is banned from social interaction."
http://www.youtube.com/paulmckeever
A final note. The matter of distinguishing is not just something that is social. If you do not distinguish a particular value in your own mind, you cannot gain it. To gain a value, one must be absolutely clear as to what it is and what it is not. This requires one's ability to distinguish.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Can't Be an Affirmative Action President - Reality Won't Permit It
Here is a letter I sent to the Wall Street Journal today.
Dear Editor:
Barack Obama is going to have to decide what it's going to be. Is he going to be the President of the United States, someone that we are called to elect primarily on merit or is he going to maintain the racial justifications for affirmative action? Is he going to actually be the man of change and hope, or is he going to say change and hope, but change nothing thereby yielding no hope?
When Michelle, who I've read makes a great salary and has the best of education, says that we can't get a break around here, do we believe our eyes or her words? Can one make malarky eloquent?
Dear Editor:
Barack Obama is going to have to decide what it's going to be. Is he going to be the President of the United States, someone that we are called to elect primarily on merit or is he going to maintain the racial justifications for affirmative action? Is he going to actually be the man of change and hope, or is he going to say change and hope, but change nothing thereby yielding no hope?
When Michelle, who I've read makes a great salary and has the best of education, says that we can't get a break around here, do we believe our eyes or her words? Can one make malarky eloquent?
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Spitzer, Hitler - What's the Difference?
Given that Spitzer was a brazen ruthless ruiner of men and was elected to his office in a landslide, do we now understand how America can elect a Hitler? And what does this say about the fascist underbelly of the Democratic Party?
I heard a colleague of his defending all the good things he had done in his short term as governor, trying to salvage something, anything, of Spitzer and the Democrats in New York. My ears were in rebellion. I wretched.
This fascist ugliness is just behing the drape in our current political drama. And this, I say, is the primary lesson in this matter. WAKE UP!
I heard a colleague of his defending all the good things he had done in his short term as governor, trying to salvage something, anything, of Spitzer and the Democrats in New York. My ears were in rebellion. I wretched.
This fascist ugliness is just behing the drape in our current political drama. And this, I say, is the primary lesson in this matter. WAKE UP!
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Spitzer, Arrrrggggh
Elliot Spitzer proves one thing. Being a hypocrite, that small potatoes thing that conservatives get entangled in, is nothing . You know what I mean: Advocating family values and damning homosexuality from the pulpit or the elective office and then having sex with a call boy.
Spitzer is worse: He championed the state, justice and the will of the people and advocated prison terms and huge fines to carry them out and did what he damn well pleased in violation of the law. He ran afoul of this moral: "When we the people invest you with certain powers of the state, you are given a privilege. You are to embody that privilige. Violate that and all privilege disappears." We the people then kick him to the curb and pour over his prostrate body at least two heaping dumptruck loads of disgust.
If the laws didn't criminalize victimless crimes, Spitzer would have found another way to violate his privilege. He is insufferably arrogant and flaunting - just to see if he can get away with it. Personally, I could barely stand to see his wife standing beside him. On TV, to puncture his pretentiousness, she should have bopped him up side the head and said, "You should have had a V-8, you bastard."
Given that Spitzer is a Democrat and given that the liberal Democrats eschew morality whenever possible (fearing dogmatic moral judgment in itself and fearing that is the only kind of morality there is), it is interesting to see them portray this as a human tragedy rather than a moral failing. Psychology is cited. Where is accountability?
Spitzer is worse: He championed the state, justice and the will of the people and advocated prison terms and huge fines to carry them out and did what he damn well pleased in violation of the law. He ran afoul of this moral: "When we the people invest you with certain powers of the state, you are given a privilege. You are to embody that privilige. Violate that and all privilege disappears." We the people then kick him to the curb and pour over his prostrate body at least two heaping dumptruck loads of disgust.
If the laws didn't criminalize victimless crimes, Spitzer would have found another way to violate his privilege. He is insufferably arrogant and flaunting - just to see if he can get away with it. Personally, I could barely stand to see his wife standing beside him. On TV, to puncture his pretentiousness, she should have bopped him up side the head and said, "You should have had a V-8, you bastard."
Given that Spitzer is a Democrat and given that the liberal Democrats eschew morality whenever possible (fearing dogmatic moral judgment in itself and fearing that is the only kind of morality there is), it is interesting to see them portray this as a human tragedy rather than a moral failing. Psychology is cited. Where is accountability?
Monday, March 10, 2008
Our Current Crisis
We all sense that things are going awry in some way. People are factionalizing into angry groups. Instead of people looking to reason to work things out, they are just getting angry and retreating into their most comfortable groups be they their race, their gender, their ethnic group or, in some cases, their country. If this process goes to its endpoint, the only people you will be able to trust is your family and you will definitely worry about some of them.
This is the breakdown of reason that Kant started (see my previous post entitled "Who Started This") in his Critique of Pure Reason in 1781. A consequence of undermining reason is that people look to their feelings for guidance. Intuition, gut reaction, passion (emotional fervor) and other expressions of feeling become important. Without reason as one's guide, one returns to the places where one "feels" comfortable. Thus race, ethnic groups, and other groups become important. With reason, one crosses these barriers and expands outward. Without reason, one shrinks and moves inward.
With this increased dependency on the group, politics becomes everything. We are seeing this process happening in this country. In 1920, the only contact you were likely to have with the Federal Government was the Post Office. Now the Federal Government is into every part of your life - your food, your medicine, your buildings, your finances, your means of transportation, your personal behavior, everything. Everything has become political and you have to decide whether to acquiesce or fight. Hence our current state of affairs.
Everything being political gravitates to socialism. In other words, if we have to have the government decide everything, then the government has to have the power to cause their decisions to be real. But there is a problem. Socialism has failed on every front, both in theory and in practice. All that is left now is the emotional love of socialism propelling people into action but no reason for them to be propelled into action. This is the mob mentality.
Stephen Hicks in his book Explaining Postmodernism writes several paragraphs on this crisis. It always gets crystallized by the intellectuals first and then it spreads to the society. I quote:
"As modernists, socialists argued that socialism could be proved by evidence and rational analysis, and that once the evidence was in, socialism's moral and economic superiority to capitalism would be clear to anyone with an open mind.
"This is significant, because so-conceived socialism committed itself to a series of propositions that could be empirically, rationally, and scientifically scrutinized. The end result of that scrutiny provides another key to explaining postmodernism.
"Classical Marxist socialism made four major claims:
1. Capitalism is exploitative: The rich enslave the poor; it is brutally competitive domestically and imperialistic internationally.
2. Socialism, by contrast, is humane and peaceful: People share, are equal, and cooperative.
3. Capitalism is ultimately less productive than socialism: The rich get richer, the poor get poorer; and the ensuing class conflilct will cause capitalism's collapse in the end.
4. Socialist economies, by contrast, will be more productive and usher in a new era of prosperity.
These propositions were first enunciated by socialists in the nineteenth century, and repeated often into the twentieth before disaster struck. The disaster was that all four of socialism's claims were refuted both in theory and in practice.
" In theory, the free-market economists have won the debate. Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Milton Friedman have shown how markets are efficient, and they have shown, conversely, how socialist top-down command economies necessarily must fail. Distinguished Left-wing economists such as Robert Heilbroner have conceded in print that the debate is over and that the capitalists have won.
"The empirical evidence has been much harder on socialism. Economically, in practice the capitalist nations are increasingly productive and prosperous, with no end in sight. Not only are the rich getting fantastically richer, the poor in those countries are getting richer too. And by direct and brutal contrast, every socialist experiment has ended in dismal economic failure -- from the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, to North Korea and Vietnam, to Cuba, Ethiopia, and Mozambique.
"Morally and politically, in practice every liberal capitalist country has a solid record for being humane, for by and large respecting rights and freedoms, and for making it possible for people to put together fruitful and meaningful lives. Socialist practice has time and time again proved itself more brutal than the worst dictatorships in history prior to the twentieth century. Each socialist regime has collapsed into dictatorship and begun killing people on a huge scale. Each has produced dissident writers such as Alexander Sozhenitsyn and Nien Cheng who have documented what those regimes are capable of.
"These points are well known, and I dwell upon them in order to project the depth of the crisis that this meant for Left-socialist intellectuals. By the 1950s, the crisis was being felt deeply.
"Instead of having collapsed in the Great Depression of the 1930s, as both the collectivist Right and the Left had hoped, the liberal capitalist countries had recovered after World War II and by the 1950s were enjoying peace, liberty, and new levels of prosperity. World War II had wiped out the collectivist Right - the National Socialists and the Fascists -- leaving the Left alone in the field against a triumphant and full-of-itself liberal capitalism. Yet while the liberal West's recovery and its rising political and economic prominence were distressing to the far Left intellectuals of the West, hope was still offered by the existence of the Soviet Union, the 'noble experiment,' and to a lesser extent by communist China.
"Even that hope was brutally crushed in 1956. Before a worldwide audience, the Soviets sent tanks into Hungary to stifle demonstrations by students and workers -- thus demonstrating just how strong was their commitment to humanity. And, more devastatingly, Nikita Khrushchev acknowledged publicly what many in the West had long charged -- that Joseph Stalin's regime had slaughtered tens of millions of human beings, staggering numbers that made the National Socialists' efforts seem amateurish in comparison.
"From The Manifesto of the Communist Party of 1848 to the revelations of 1956 was over a century of theory and evidence. The crisis for the far Left was that the logic and evidence were going against socialism. Put yourselves in the shoes of an intelligent, informed socialist confronted with all this data. How would you react? You have a deep commitment to socialism: You feel that socialism is true; you want it to be true; upon socialism you have pinned all your dreams of a peaceful and prosperous future society and all your hopes for solving the ills of our current society.
"This is a moment of truth for anyone who has experienced the agony of a deeply cheerished hypothesis run aground on the rocks of reality. What do you do? Do you abandon your theory and go with the facts -- or do you try to find a way to maintain your belief in your theory?" (Stephen Hicks, pp 86-89)
So we have our current crisis . The evidence is in and the Left is unwilling to give up its long cherished belief. So we are seeing this vacuous hope and the anger of its frustration play out. One of the expressions of this is Obama's Hope and Change campaign.
This is the breakdown of reason that Kant started (see my previous post entitled "Who Started This") in his Critique of Pure Reason in 1781. A consequence of undermining reason is that people look to their feelings for guidance. Intuition, gut reaction, passion (emotional fervor) and other expressions of feeling become important. Without reason as one's guide, one returns to the places where one "feels" comfortable. Thus race, ethnic groups, and other groups become important. With reason, one crosses these barriers and expands outward. Without reason, one shrinks and moves inward.
With this increased dependency on the group, politics becomes everything. We are seeing this process happening in this country. In 1920, the only contact you were likely to have with the Federal Government was the Post Office. Now the Federal Government is into every part of your life - your food, your medicine, your buildings, your finances, your means of transportation, your personal behavior, everything. Everything has become political and you have to decide whether to acquiesce or fight. Hence our current state of affairs.
Everything being political gravitates to socialism. In other words, if we have to have the government decide everything, then the government has to have the power to cause their decisions to be real. But there is a problem. Socialism has failed on every front, both in theory and in practice. All that is left now is the emotional love of socialism propelling people into action but no reason for them to be propelled into action. This is the mob mentality.
Stephen Hicks in his book Explaining Postmodernism writes several paragraphs on this crisis. It always gets crystallized by the intellectuals first and then it spreads to the society. I quote:
"As modernists, socialists argued that socialism could be proved by evidence and rational analysis, and that once the evidence was in, socialism's moral and economic superiority to capitalism would be clear to anyone with an open mind.
"This is significant, because so-conceived socialism committed itself to a series of propositions that could be empirically, rationally, and scientifically scrutinized. The end result of that scrutiny provides another key to explaining postmodernism.
"Classical Marxist socialism made four major claims:
1. Capitalism is exploitative: The rich enslave the poor; it is brutally competitive domestically and imperialistic internationally.
2. Socialism, by contrast, is humane and peaceful: People share, are equal, and cooperative.
3. Capitalism is ultimately less productive than socialism: The rich get richer, the poor get poorer; and the ensuing class conflilct will cause capitalism's collapse in the end.
4. Socialist economies, by contrast, will be more productive and usher in a new era of prosperity.
These propositions were first enunciated by socialists in the nineteenth century, and repeated often into the twentieth before disaster struck. The disaster was that all four of socialism's claims were refuted both in theory and in practice.
" In theory, the free-market economists have won the debate. Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Milton Friedman have shown how markets are efficient, and they have shown, conversely, how socialist top-down command economies necessarily must fail. Distinguished Left-wing economists such as Robert Heilbroner have conceded in print that the debate is over and that the capitalists have won.
"The empirical evidence has been much harder on socialism. Economically, in practice the capitalist nations are increasingly productive and prosperous, with no end in sight. Not only are the rich getting fantastically richer, the poor in those countries are getting richer too. And by direct and brutal contrast, every socialist experiment has ended in dismal economic failure -- from the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, to North Korea and Vietnam, to Cuba, Ethiopia, and Mozambique.
"Morally and politically, in practice every liberal capitalist country has a solid record for being humane, for by and large respecting rights and freedoms, and for making it possible for people to put together fruitful and meaningful lives. Socialist practice has time and time again proved itself more brutal than the worst dictatorships in history prior to the twentieth century. Each socialist regime has collapsed into dictatorship and begun killing people on a huge scale. Each has produced dissident writers such as Alexander Sozhenitsyn and Nien Cheng who have documented what those regimes are capable of.
"These points are well known, and I dwell upon them in order to project the depth of the crisis that this meant for Left-socialist intellectuals. By the 1950s, the crisis was being felt deeply.
"Instead of having collapsed in the Great Depression of the 1930s, as both the collectivist Right and the Left had hoped, the liberal capitalist countries had recovered after World War II and by the 1950s were enjoying peace, liberty, and new levels of prosperity. World War II had wiped out the collectivist Right - the National Socialists and the Fascists -- leaving the Left alone in the field against a triumphant and full-of-itself liberal capitalism. Yet while the liberal West's recovery and its rising political and economic prominence were distressing to the far Left intellectuals of the West, hope was still offered by the existence of the Soviet Union, the 'noble experiment,' and to a lesser extent by communist China.
"Even that hope was brutally crushed in 1956. Before a worldwide audience, the Soviets sent tanks into Hungary to stifle demonstrations by students and workers -- thus demonstrating just how strong was their commitment to humanity. And, more devastatingly, Nikita Khrushchev acknowledged publicly what many in the West had long charged -- that Joseph Stalin's regime had slaughtered tens of millions of human beings, staggering numbers that made the National Socialists' efforts seem amateurish in comparison.
"From The Manifesto of the Communist Party of 1848 to the revelations of 1956 was over a century of theory and evidence. The crisis for the far Left was that the logic and evidence were going against socialism. Put yourselves in the shoes of an intelligent, informed socialist confronted with all this data. How would you react? You have a deep commitment to socialism: You feel that socialism is true; you want it to be true; upon socialism you have pinned all your dreams of a peaceful and prosperous future society and all your hopes for solving the ills of our current society.
"This is a moment of truth for anyone who has experienced the agony of a deeply cheerished hypothesis run aground on the rocks of reality. What do you do? Do you abandon your theory and go with the facts -- or do you try to find a way to maintain your belief in your theory?" (Stephen Hicks, pp 86-89)
So we have our current crisis . The evidence is in and the Left is unwilling to give up its long cherished belief. So we are seeing this vacuous hope and the anger of its frustration play out. One of the expressions of this is Obama's Hope and Change campaign.
Friday, March 7, 2008
California, The Fascist State
Homeschoolers' setback sends shock waves through state
Bob Egelko, Jill Tucker, Chronicle Staff Writers
Friday, March 7, 2008
sfgate
(03-07) 04:00 PST LOS ANGELES --
A California appeals court ruling clamping down on homeschooling by parents without teaching credentials sent shock waves across the state this week, leaving an estimated 166,000 children as possible truants and their parents at risk of prosecution.
The homeschooling movement never saw the case coming.
"At first, there was a sense of, 'No way,' " said homeschool parent Loren Mavromati, a resident of Redondo Beach (Los Angeles County) who is active with a homeschool association. "Then there was a little bit of fear. I think it has moved now into indignation."
The ruling arose from a child welfare dispute between the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services and Philip and Mary Long of Lynwood, who have been homeschooling their eight children. Mary Long is their teacher, but holds no teaching credential.
The parents said they also enrolled their children in Sunland Christian School, a private religious academy in Sylmar (Los Angeles County), which considers the Long children part of its independent study program and visits the home about four times a year.
The Second District Court of Appeal ruled that California law requires parents to send their children to full-time public or private schools or have them taught by credentialed tutors at home. (Read: The State Will Control the Curriculum of those that teach your children. SCB)
Some homeschoolers are affiliated with private or charter schools, like the Longs, but others fly under the radar completely. Many homeschooling families avoid truancy laws by registering with the state as a private school and then enroll only their own children.
Yet the appeals court said state law has been clear since at least 1953, when another appellate court rejected a challenge by homeschooling parents to California's compulsory education statutes. Those statutes require children ages 6 to 18 to attend a full-time day school, either public or private, or to be instructed by a tutor who holds a state credential for the child's grade level.
"California courts have held that ... parents do not have a constitutional right to homeschool their children," Justice H. Walter Croskey said in the 3-0 ruling issued on Feb. 28. "Parents have a legal duty to see to their children's schooling under the provisions of these laws."
Parents can be criminally prosecuted for failing to comply, Croskey said.
"A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare," the judge wrote, quoting from a 1961 case on a similar issue. (Read: We have the right to indoctrinate your children. SCB)
Union pleased with ruling
The ruling was applauded by a director for the state's largest teachers union. (Of course. Ever seen a union that liked competition? SCB)
"We're happy," said Lloyd Porter, who is on the California Teachers Association board of directors. "We always think students should be taught by credentialed teachers, no matter what the setting."
A spokesman for the state Department of Education said the agency is reviewing the decision to determine its impact on current policies and procedures. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell issued a statement saying he supports "parental choice when it comes to homeschooling."
Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute, which agreed earlier this week to represent Sunland Christian School and legally advise the Long family on a likely appeal to the state Supreme Court, said the appellate court ruling has set a precedent that can now be used to go after homeschoolers. "With this case law, anyone in California who is homeschooling without a teaching credential is subject to prosecution for truancy violation, which could require community service, heavy fines and possibly removal of their children under allegations of educational neglect," Dacus said.
Parents say they choose homeschooling for a variety of reasons, from religious beliefs to disillusionment with the local public schools. Homeschooling parent Debbie Schwarzer of Los Altos said she's ready for a fight.
Schwarzer runs Oak Hill Academy out of her Santa Clara County home. It is a state-registered private school with two students, she said, noting they are her own children, ages 10 and 12. She does not have a teaching credential, but she does have a law degree.
"I'm kind of hoping some truancy officer shows up on my doorstep," she said. "I'm ready. I have damn good arguments." (Sorry, an argument ends at the point of a gun. SCB)
She opted to teach her children at home to better meet their needs.
The ruling, Schwarzer said, "stinks."
Began as child welfare case
The Long family legal battle didn't start out as a test case on the validity of homeschooling. It was a child welfare case. A juvenile court judge looking into one child's complaint of mistreatment by Philip Long found that the children were being poorly educated but refused to order two of the children, ages 7 and 9, to be enrolled in a full-time school. He said parents in California have a right to educate their children at home. The appeals court told the juvenile court judge to require the parents to comply with the law by enrolling their children in a school, but excluded the Sunland Christian School from enrolling the children because that institution "was willing to participate in the deprivation of the children's right to a legal education."
The decision could also affect other kinds of homeschooled children, including those enrolled in independent study or distance learning through public charter schools - a setup similar to the one the Longs have, Dacus said. Charter school advocates disagreed, saying Thursday that charter schools are public and are required to employ only credentialed teachers to supervise students - whether in class or through independent study.
Ruling will apply statewide
Michael Smith, president of the Home School Legal Defense Association, said the ruling would effectively ban homeschooling in the state.
"California is now on the path to being the only state to deny the vast majority of homeschooling parents their fundamental right to teach their own children at home," he said in a statement. But Leslie Heimov, executive director of the Children's Law Center of Los Angeles, which represented the Longs' two children in the case, said the ruling did not change the law. "They just affirmed that the current California law, which has been unchanged since the last time it was ruled on in the 1950s, is that children have to be educated in a public school, an accredited private school, or with an accredited tutor," she said. "If they want to send them to a private Christian school, they can, but they have to actually go to the school and be taught by teachers." Heimov said her organization's chief concern was not the quality of the children's education, but their "being in a place daily where they would be observed by people who had a duty to ensure their ongoing safety."
Bob Egelko, Jill Tucker, Chronicle Staff Writers
Friday, March 7, 2008
sfgate
(03-07) 04:00 PST LOS ANGELES --
A California appeals court ruling clamping down on homeschooling by parents without teaching credentials sent shock waves across the state this week, leaving an estimated 166,000 children as possible truants and their parents at risk of prosecution.
The homeschooling movement never saw the case coming.
"At first, there was a sense of, 'No way,' " said homeschool parent Loren Mavromati, a resident of Redondo Beach (Los Angeles County) who is active with a homeschool association. "Then there was a little bit of fear. I think it has moved now into indignation."
The ruling arose from a child welfare dispute between the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services and Philip and Mary Long of Lynwood, who have been homeschooling their eight children. Mary Long is their teacher, but holds no teaching credential.
The parents said they also enrolled their children in Sunland Christian School, a private religious academy in Sylmar (Los Angeles County), which considers the Long children part of its independent study program and visits the home about four times a year.
The Second District Court of Appeal ruled that California law requires parents to send their children to full-time public or private schools or have them taught by credentialed tutors at home. (Read: The State Will Control the Curriculum of those that teach your children. SCB)
Some homeschoolers are affiliated with private or charter schools, like the Longs, but others fly under the radar completely. Many homeschooling families avoid truancy laws by registering with the state as a private school and then enroll only their own children.
Yet the appeals court said state law has been clear since at least 1953, when another appellate court rejected a challenge by homeschooling parents to California's compulsory education statutes. Those statutes require children ages 6 to 18 to attend a full-time day school, either public or private, or to be instructed by a tutor who holds a state credential for the child's grade level.
"California courts have held that ... parents do not have a constitutional right to homeschool their children," Justice H. Walter Croskey said in the 3-0 ruling issued on Feb. 28. "Parents have a legal duty to see to their children's schooling under the provisions of these laws."
Parents can be criminally prosecuted for failing to comply, Croskey said.
"A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare," the judge wrote, quoting from a 1961 case on a similar issue. (Read: We have the right to indoctrinate your children. SCB)
Union pleased with ruling
The ruling was applauded by a director for the state's largest teachers union. (Of course. Ever seen a union that liked competition? SCB)
"We're happy," said Lloyd Porter, who is on the California Teachers Association board of directors. "We always think students should be taught by credentialed teachers, no matter what the setting."
A spokesman for the state Department of Education said the agency is reviewing the decision to determine its impact on current policies and procedures. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell issued a statement saying he supports "parental choice when it comes to homeschooling."
Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute, which agreed earlier this week to represent Sunland Christian School and legally advise the Long family on a likely appeal to the state Supreme Court, said the appellate court ruling has set a precedent that can now be used to go after homeschoolers. "With this case law, anyone in California who is homeschooling without a teaching credential is subject to prosecution for truancy violation, which could require community service, heavy fines and possibly removal of their children under allegations of educational neglect," Dacus said.
Parents say they choose homeschooling for a variety of reasons, from religious beliefs to disillusionment with the local public schools. Homeschooling parent Debbie Schwarzer of Los Altos said she's ready for a fight.
Schwarzer runs Oak Hill Academy out of her Santa Clara County home. It is a state-registered private school with two students, she said, noting they are her own children, ages 10 and 12. She does not have a teaching credential, but she does have a law degree.
"I'm kind of hoping some truancy officer shows up on my doorstep," she said. "I'm ready. I have damn good arguments." (Sorry, an argument ends at the point of a gun. SCB)
She opted to teach her children at home to better meet their needs.
The ruling, Schwarzer said, "stinks."
Began as child welfare case
The Long family legal battle didn't start out as a test case on the validity of homeschooling. It was a child welfare case. A juvenile court judge looking into one child's complaint of mistreatment by Philip Long found that the children were being poorly educated but refused to order two of the children, ages 7 and 9, to be enrolled in a full-time school. He said parents in California have a right to educate their children at home. The appeals court told the juvenile court judge to require the parents to comply with the law by enrolling their children in a school, but excluded the Sunland Christian School from enrolling the children because that institution "was willing to participate in the deprivation of the children's right to a legal education."
The decision could also affect other kinds of homeschooled children, including those enrolled in independent study or distance learning through public charter schools - a setup similar to the one the Longs have, Dacus said. Charter school advocates disagreed, saying Thursday that charter schools are public and are required to employ only credentialed teachers to supervise students - whether in class or through independent study.
Ruling will apply statewide
Michael Smith, president of the Home School Legal Defense Association, said the ruling would effectively ban homeschooling in the state.
"California is now on the path to being the only state to deny the vast majority of homeschooling parents their fundamental right to teach their own children at home," he said in a statement. But Leslie Heimov, executive director of the Children's Law Center of Los Angeles, which represented the Longs' two children in the case, said the ruling did not change the law. "They just affirmed that the current California law, which has been unchanged since the last time it was ruled on in the 1950s, is that children have to be educated in a public school, an accredited private school, or with an accredited tutor," she said. "If they want to send them to a private Christian school, they can, but they have to actually go to the school and be taught by teachers." Heimov said her organization's chief concern was not the quality of the children's education, but their "being in a place daily where they would be observed by people who had a duty to ensure their ongoing safety."
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Who started this?
It seems that everyone is lamenting. We lament the state of political corruption and abuse of role. If you bring up someone's character, people look at you blankly. There are injustices everywhere and it's ho-hum. You think you have a point and can demonstrate it. Who cares? It's all beside the point. Who started all of this?
Depending on how far you want to go back, you can pick your starting point. I pick the point after the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution had gotten started and their successes were rubbing against the traditions and institutions of the past. The Enlightenment was centered in England. France got on board to some extent. But German intellectuals hated it. They liked faith, duty and ethnic identity. And that is where the problem started - particularly with the philosopher Immanuel Kant.
Philosophers were wondering how we actually could know reality, the basic premise of the enlightenment. Hume, the empiricist, and the rationalists had raised questions. Kant was smart enough to see the opportunity in this, so he point blank stated that we could never know reality. He then erected a philosophical system to support his thesis.
But what does Kant have to do with us, you ask? "We live in a postmodern philosophical era. Just as the Enlightenment re-shaped the entire world, postmodernism hopes to do the same. Forming such an ambition and developing the arguments capable of mobilizing a movement to realize that ambition is the work of many individuals over several generations. Contemporary second-tier postmodernists, when looking for philosophical support, cite Rorty, Foucault, Lyotard, and Derrida. Those figures in turn, when looking for heavy-duty philosophical support, cite Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wiggenstein, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Karl Marx -- the modern world's most trenchant critics and its most prophetic voices about the new direction. Those figures in turn cite Georg Hegel, Arthur Schopenhauer, Immanuel Kant, and to a lesser extent David Hume. The roots and initial impetus of postmodernism thus run deep. The battle between modernism and the philosophies that led to postmodernism was joined at the height of the Enlightenment. Knowing the history of that battle is essential to understanding postmodernism." (Explaining Postmodernism: skepticism and socialism from Rousseau to Foucault by Stephen R. C. Hicks, 2004, p.21-22.)
Hicks, cited above, explores why Kant is the turning point away from the Enlightenment. Here is his explanation: "Kant was the decisive break with the Enlightenment and the first major step toward postmodernism. Contrary to the Enlightenment account of reason, Kant held that the mind is not a response mechanism but a constitutive mechanism. (That is that we make it all up. SCB) He held that the mind -- and not reality -- sets the terms for knowledge. And he held that reality conforms to reason, not vice versa. In the history of philosophy, Kant marks a fundamental shift from objectivity as the standard to subjectivity as the standard.
"Wait a minute, a defender of Kant may reply. Kant was hardly opposed to reason. After all, he favored rational consistency and he believed in universal principles. So what is anti-reason about that? The answer is that more fundamental to reason than consistency and universality is a connection to reality. Any thinker who concludes that in principle reason cannot know reality is not fundamentally an advocate of reason. That Kant was in favor of consistency and universality is of derivative and ultimately inconsequential significance. Consistency with no connection to reality is a game based on subjective rules. If the rules of the game have nothing to do with reality, then why should everyone play by the same rules? These were precisely the implications the postmodernists were to draw eventually.
"Kant was thus different from previous skeptics and religious apologists. Many earlier skeptics had denied that we can know anything, and many earlier religious apoplogists had subordinated reason to faith. But earlier skeptics had never been as sweeping in their conclusions. Earlier skeptics would identify particular cognitive operations and raise problems for them. Maybe a given experience is a perceptual illusion - thus undermining our confidence in our generalizations; and so on. But the conclusion of those skeptical arguments would be merely that we cannot be sure that we are right about the way reality is. We might be, but we cannot guarantee it, the skeptics would conclude. Kant's point was deeper, arguing that in principle any conclusion reached by any of our faculties must necessarily not be about reality. Any form of cognition, because it must operate a certain way, cannot put us in contact with reality. On principle, because our minds' faculties are structured in a certain way, we cannot say what reality is. We can only say how our minds have structured the subjective reality we perceive. This thesis had been implicit in the works of some earlier thinkers, including Aristotle's, but Kant made it explicit and drew the conclusion systematically.
"Kant is a landmark in a second respect. Earlier skeptics had despite their negative conclusions, continued to conceive of truth as correspondence to reality. Kant went a step further and redefined truth on subjective grounds. ... If our minds are in principle disconnected from reality, then to speak of truth as an external relationship between mind and reality is nonsense. Truth must be solely an internal relationship of consistency." (Hicks, pp39-41.)
This is as clear a statement as to what is going on in the postmodern world and when the shift ocurred as I've read. Now we can see why people don't care whether something is true or not. We don't have to prove anything. All we have to do is enroll others into our point of view and go from there. Never mind whether it corresponds to reality or whether it will produce the result that you want. It's all beside the point. This captures the great cynicism of our age.
This blog is about exploring this, among other related topics, and being a force for transforming this point of view.
You are real. The world is real and there is a lot of it out here. Figure out what is going on. Strap on your wings and fly. Take what you want and pay for it.
Depending on how far you want to go back, you can pick your starting point. I pick the point after the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution had gotten started and their successes were rubbing against the traditions and institutions of the past. The Enlightenment was centered in England. France got on board to some extent. But German intellectuals hated it. They liked faith, duty and ethnic identity. And that is where the problem started - particularly with the philosopher Immanuel Kant.
Philosophers were wondering how we actually could know reality, the basic premise of the enlightenment. Hume, the empiricist, and the rationalists had raised questions. Kant was smart enough to see the opportunity in this, so he point blank stated that we could never know reality. He then erected a philosophical system to support his thesis.
But what does Kant have to do with us, you ask? "We live in a postmodern philosophical era. Just as the Enlightenment re-shaped the entire world, postmodernism hopes to do the same. Forming such an ambition and developing the arguments capable of mobilizing a movement to realize that ambition is the work of many individuals over several generations. Contemporary second-tier postmodernists, when looking for philosophical support, cite Rorty, Foucault, Lyotard, and Derrida. Those figures in turn, when looking for heavy-duty philosophical support, cite Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wiggenstein, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Karl Marx -- the modern world's most trenchant critics and its most prophetic voices about the new direction. Those figures in turn cite Georg Hegel, Arthur Schopenhauer, Immanuel Kant, and to a lesser extent David Hume. The roots and initial impetus of postmodernism thus run deep. The battle between modernism and the philosophies that led to postmodernism was joined at the height of the Enlightenment. Knowing the history of that battle is essential to understanding postmodernism." (Explaining Postmodernism: skepticism and socialism from Rousseau to Foucault by Stephen R. C. Hicks, 2004, p.21-22.)
Hicks, cited above, explores why Kant is the turning point away from the Enlightenment. Here is his explanation: "Kant was the decisive break with the Enlightenment and the first major step toward postmodernism. Contrary to the Enlightenment account of reason, Kant held that the mind is not a response mechanism but a constitutive mechanism. (That is that we make it all up. SCB) He held that the mind -- and not reality -- sets the terms for knowledge. And he held that reality conforms to reason, not vice versa. In the history of philosophy, Kant marks a fundamental shift from objectivity as the standard to subjectivity as the standard.
"Wait a minute, a defender of Kant may reply. Kant was hardly opposed to reason. After all, he favored rational consistency and he believed in universal principles. So what is anti-reason about that? The answer is that more fundamental to reason than consistency and universality is a connection to reality. Any thinker who concludes that in principle reason cannot know reality is not fundamentally an advocate of reason. That Kant was in favor of consistency and universality is of derivative and ultimately inconsequential significance. Consistency with no connection to reality is a game based on subjective rules. If the rules of the game have nothing to do with reality, then why should everyone play by the same rules? These were precisely the implications the postmodernists were to draw eventually.
"Kant was thus different from previous skeptics and religious apologists. Many earlier skeptics had denied that we can know anything, and many earlier religious apoplogists had subordinated reason to faith. But earlier skeptics had never been as sweeping in their conclusions. Earlier skeptics would identify particular cognitive operations and raise problems for them. Maybe a given experience is a perceptual illusion - thus undermining our confidence in our generalizations; and so on. But the conclusion of those skeptical arguments would be merely that we cannot be sure that we are right about the way reality is. We might be, but we cannot guarantee it, the skeptics would conclude. Kant's point was deeper, arguing that in principle any conclusion reached by any of our faculties must necessarily not be about reality. Any form of cognition, because it must operate a certain way, cannot put us in contact with reality. On principle, because our minds' faculties are structured in a certain way, we cannot say what reality is. We can only say how our minds have structured the subjective reality we perceive. This thesis had been implicit in the works of some earlier thinkers, including Aristotle's, but Kant made it explicit and drew the conclusion systematically.
"Kant is a landmark in a second respect. Earlier skeptics had despite their negative conclusions, continued to conceive of truth as correspondence to reality. Kant went a step further and redefined truth on subjective grounds. ... If our minds are in principle disconnected from reality, then to speak of truth as an external relationship between mind and reality is nonsense. Truth must be solely an internal relationship of consistency." (Hicks, pp39-41.)
This is as clear a statement as to what is going on in the postmodern world and when the shift ocurred as I've read. Now we can see why people don't care whether something is true or not. We don't have to prove anything. All we have to do is enroll others into our point of view and go from there. Never mind whether it corresponds to reality or whether it will produce the result that you want. It's all beside the point. This captures the great cynicism of our age.
This blog is about exploring this, among other related topics, and being a force for transforming this point of view.
You are real. The world is real and there is a lot of it out here. Figure out what is going on. Strap on your wings and fly. Take what you want and pay for it.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
If Obama Were Great
Some people hold out the hope that Obama is a "racial healer." Part of the reason, they say, is because he is of mixed race - black and white. It is clear that although he has identified himself as black, he has attracted many whites. This is a good start.
But I'm not hopeful. Obama's history is that of a community organizer in South Chicago. I'm not aware that a community organizer has ever healed anything. Their means are usually guilt, victimhood, threats, extortion and raw power to get what they want. Obama's mentor was Saul Alinksy. Saul and his followers were/are "concerned with social justice without having socialism thought to be their primary agenda. Alinsky promoted greater awareness of community organizing in academic circles, and those affiliated with Alinsky trained a generation of organizers, including César Chávez."
All the socialists I know who rose to the heights of political power ended creating an "out" group of people that they either imprisoned or murdered. I'm not saying that Obama will go to this extreme. It's just that his background is not good for racial healing.
If Obama were a healer, I would expect something like this:
"Since the days of Civil Rights, we have labored to take our place in American society. Laws were passed that removed discrimination and laws were passed that gave us access to economic benefits that we did not have before. Although this was deserved and in some cases generous, we still labor under second class status. Today, I say, we are ready to step up and take our place, shoulder to shoulder with the rest of American society. We can. We want no more special privileges implying we aren't up to full participation and competition. We are ready to earn our way, not have it handed to us on a polite plate. And we can. We are, by the declaration of our independence, EQUAL and FREE."
"FREE AT LAST. FREE AT LAST. THANK GOD ALMIGHTY WE ARE FREE AT LAST."
Imagine the immediate shift that would take place in society. That tacky victimhood would be over. New challenges would open up. Respect would be present; before it was absent. However scarey for black and white, the fear would not last. The effect of such leadership would be enormous. Obama would be a great man.
One more thing: No white man can do this. The way for the black man's equality in every and all respects has been paved for over 40 years - with government discrimination being removed from the laws of the land. The final step, the step into his own power is something he must give himself. There is an old saying, "Take what you want and pay for it." Obama would grant a new moral sanction for every black man, woman and child. This would be an enormous gift and an enormous achievement not just for the United States, but for the entire world. This, in essence, would complete the racial struggle and the effect would roll down through the generations.
Using this as a standard, is Obama a "racial healer?" I am not hopeful.
But I'm not hopeful. Obama's history is that of a community organizer in South Chicago. I'm not aware that a community organizer has ever healed anything. Their means are usually guilt, victimhood, threats, extortion and raw power to get what they want. Obama's mentor was Saul Alinksy. Saul and his followers were/are "concerned with social justice without having socialism thought to be their primary agenda. Alinsky promoted greater awareness of community organizing in academic circles, and those affiliated with Alinsky trained a generation of organizers, including César Chávez."
All the socialists I know who rose to the heights of political power ended creating an "out" group of people that they either imprisoned or murdered. I'm not saying that Obama will go to this extreme. It's just that his background is not good for racial healing.
If Obama were a healer, I would expect something like this:
"Since the days of Civil Rights, we have labored to take our place in American society. Laws were passed that removed discrimination and laws were passed that gave us access to economic benefits that we did not have before. Although this was deserved and in some cases generous, we still labor under second class status. Today, I say, we are ready to step up and take our place, shoulder to shoulder with the rest of American society. We can. We want no more special privileges implying we aren't up to full participation and competition. We are ready to earn our way, not have it handed to us on a polite plate. And we can. We are, by the declaration of our independence, EQUAL and FREE."
"FREE AT LAST. FREE AT LAST. THANK GOD ALMIGHTY WE ARE FREE AT LAST."
Imagine the immediate shift that would take place in society. That tacky victimhood would be over. New challenges would open up. Respect would be present; before it was absent. However scarey for black and white, the fear would not last. The effect of such leadership would be enormous. Obama would be a great man.
One more thing: No white man can do this. The way for the black man's equality in every and all respects has been paved for over 40 years - with government discrimination being removed from the laws of the land. The final step, the step into his own power is something he must give himself. There is an old saying, "Take what you want and pay for it." Obama would grant a new moral sanction for every black man, woman and child. This would be an enormous gift and an enormous achievement not just for the United States, but for the entire world. This, in essence, would complete the racial struggle and the effect would roll down through the generations.
Using this as a standard, is Obama a "racial healer?" I am not hopeful.
Monday, March 3, 2008
Is This the Best Our Society Can Do?
On and on it goes - how we must take care of the poor and the weak and the least among us. Hillary and Obama focus on and emphasize this in every speech.
Here's the killer in the whole thing. They play on our authentic generosity and empathetic feelings and yet are willing to force every one of us to do what they want done. Hillary got into an argument over fining someone if they didn't have healthcare and had to be admitted to an emergency room. I can see the emergency room scene now: "Do you have government healthcare? No? You're under arrest! They'll fix that leg in jail." And this was right out there for all of us to see. She's not even interested in hiding her fascism. She's completely comfortable with it. Never mind the plans you had for your money or your time. You belong to Hillary. Shut up. Her dictator instincts, all justified by her concern for the "crisis ridden" populace and because she, and Obama, want to put nice-to-touch cat furr on everything, doesn't mean that the hardware isn't beneath the surface.
All in the name of the public good? I say, TO HELL WITH THE PUBLIC!! DON'T TREAD ON ME!!
Think of a better way. Those who care will create institutions to take care of these problems. No one has a duty to do it. Everyone has the right to do it.
"They won't do anything," you say?
Then maybe there is something we should stop pretending about human being. Are we willing to put up with the force so we don't have to face the fact that we don't give a damn? So, do we all really hate human beings at root? If you believe that, all I can say is that you are a product of the society of force not a reason for it.
How disgusting. Heave the tomatoes. Get the rake and drag them off the stage. Bring on someone who understands individual human dignity and the distinction that is America. These cats ain't it!!!
Here's the killer in the whole thing. They play on our authentic generosity and empathetic feelings and yet are willing to force every one of us to do what they want done. Hillary got into an argument over fining someone if they didn't have healthcare and had to be admitted to an emergency room. I can see the emergency room scene now: "Do you have government healthcare? No? You're under arrest! They'll fix that leg in jail." And this was right out there for all of us to see. She's not even interested in hiding her fascism. She's completely comfortable with it. Never mind the plans you had for your money or your time. You belong to Hillary. Shut up. Her dictator instincts, all justified by her concern for the "crisis ridden" populace and because she, and Obama, want to put nice-to-touch cat furr on everything, doesn't mean that the hardware isn't beneath the surface.
All in the name of the public good? I say, TO HELL WITH THE PUBLIC!! DON'T TREAD ON ME!!
Think of a better way. Those who care will create institutions to take care of these problems. No one has a duty to do it. Everyone has the right to do it.
"They won't do anything," you say?
Then maybe there is something we should stop pretending about human being. Are we willing to put up with the force so we don't have to face the fact that we don't give a damn? So, do we all really hate human beings at root? If you believe that, all I can say is that you are a product of the society of force not a reason for it.
How disgusting. Heave the tomatoes. Get the rake and drag them off the stage. Bring on someone who understands individual human dignity and the distinction that is America. These cats ain't it!!!
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