Social Responsibility
I think it is possible for us to have a stimulating conversation about the outcomes of individual lives within our current economic and political system. I believe relevant points of entry in this discussion are individual responsibility, collective responsibility, and the nature of hierarchies with the current system. For the sake of understanding, we can have this discussion be based around western democracies.
Comments (69)
Sometimes, as with Rockefeller, Carnegie, and J.P. Morgan in the latter half of the 1800s.
Thanks for your input, I agree it can be a mixture, although I did vote for the illegitimate one, because I believe the majority of those with power earned it by some method of exploitation.
McDonald's raised wages, but lessened the workers; I went to one of the newer ones, where they had no cashiers, but did have one person to help people figure out the kiosks and then bring them their food, via a number taken and put on their table. Now the cooks in the back have to be somehow gotten rid of. I could never cook there, with all those beepers going off all the time.
There has been for quite some time an obsession with power and looking at everything through the lens of power, domination and exploitation. This narrative sells so well. Especially to young students.
Things like the practicality and usefulness of organization when it comes to huge societies isn't something that is at all tolerated by this "Power-play" crowd, who see "Master-slave" situations everywhere. Typically these people believe in their view of the World so much that they would be the worst kind of leaders you can find.
what you say is true enough. The current crop of students (and maybe the theorists from whom they get ideas) seem to think that power comes by way of race and gender. Power iS connected to race and gender, but the source of power remains exploitation of resources--mineral, plant, and animal--including our esteemed animal selves.
I think there is plenty of evidence to justify what I view as exploitation, and you would probably disagree with my definition. For example, we are told we live in a meritocracy, however, the majority of the Forbes' billionaire list inherited their income. They started on 3rd base so to speak. I would categorize this as an "exploit," or a way to game the system in a way. Like using a game shark on a video game. The rules are set up to supposedly "reward merit" yet some hack in cheats and appear claim to be meritorious.
Economic mobility has decreased since the middle class has begun to diminish, which is directly related to the adoption of neoliberal economic policies. This exploits working populations by expropriating would be benefits to them in the form of tax cuts for the rich. Exploitation, and this generates massive wealth at the top.
The idea of a kind of economic determinism, is powerful in our society. This means there are feedback loops, spiraling up and down. This simply means the trajectory you are set on early in life has the biggest impact on where you end up as an adult. That's why the greatest predictor of wealth of an adult is the income and education levels of their parents. This is all a type of exploitation, and when we maintain a narrative of rugged individualism, and meritocracy, this become perniciously exploitative, in my opinion.
As I said I think where we will diverge is how we define exploitation, with my definition being much broader than your's I would imagine.
In my opinion this trend is only going to continue which is why I advocate for reimagining the idea of labor for income. As automation increases, aggregate demand will be displaced enough that the owners of corporations, as their consumer base loses buying power, will begin to use their political power to engineer some sort of baseline for the displaced workers. Their bottom line will demand it.
I disagree with this option.
No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. JOHN DONNE, 1572 -1631
You understand, of course, that "man" is the generic for humankind, which includes men and women.
Certainly, individuals play a part in their becoming; we are not automatons. "Fate" is a really old-school concept; Fate deprived the individual of ultimate autonomy. (Or in the words of the Roman poem, La Fortuna, "Fate crushes the brave".) Our 'fate' for better or worse was determined by The Fates – or Moirai – who were a group of three weaving goddesses who assign individual destinies to mortals at birth. Their names are Clotho (the Spinner), Lachesis (the Alloter) and Atropos (the Inflexible).
The 'self-made individual' is a fiction of the narcissistic personality, the rugged individualist, the deluded loner.
We are social creatures, and without society and everything involved in society, we are no more than wolf-children, clods.
Exploitation is a recurrent feature of human behavior -- whether it is exploiting the land, the sea, the air, animals, plants, or other humans. It's what we do; it is a feature of our species, not a bug. So, as much as we depend on collective society for our existence, we also can count on probably getting screwed by our society. No one is exempt: one is either a member of the small group of beneficiaries of past and current exploitation (rich people) or one is the object of exploitation (that's most of us).
Now, despite all this verbiage about collectivity, it is also the case that individuals, singly and in combination, are critical drivers of society. Being a driving force doesn't mean one wasn't affected by membership in the collective community. Indeed, their particular community is where individuals learn how to be drivers/leaders.
How does that work for slaves?
That was very well stated, and I appreciate your input. One thing I would ask for you to comment on, because it gets to the heart of the intersection of this individual driving force and the collective one.
Given that humans have and do exploit one another, and certain economic factors could insurmountably supplant one's capacity for achieving their potential, where do we begin to create a system which enables free enterprise and the rewarding of ingenious or hardworking person's, while not allowing the weaker members to be washed from the collective continent, speaking to the poem you quoted?
I think this strikes to the heart of the relationship between social responsibility, and individual liberty. I do not think it is controversial to state that your childhood really sets a lifelong trajectory. Can we abandon this narrative that if you just work hard and make good choices you will succeed? I believe we should temper the western narrative of everyone deserves where they end up, and place more emphasis on social responsibility and economic determinism. I would be interested in reading your thoughts.
So I have heard that "no man is an island" phrase hundreds of times. I just assumed it was some idiom. Thanks for the cultural learnin'.
Quoting Tzeentch
So ants and fish have that same desire? Not sure if it counts as a desire at that point?
Quoting rlclauer
Well a simple start would suggest that "rewards" should come in millions (of dollars) while leveraged power for future exploitation comes in billions. When 100 people own as much as HALF THE WORLD combined, it has NOTHING to do with "rewarding" their genius; they are using their "genius" to exploit the rest of the world.
One's parents, and the head start they give their children (or not), does indeed plot much of one's trajectory. There are enough exceptions, though, to warrant working hard and making good choices. Up to the spring of 1964, I did not, could not plan on going to college. Several fortuitous events happened that made it possible for me to begin college in the fall. I did work reasonably hard (could have, would have, should have worked harder) and I could have made better choices about careers. I thought I would become a high school teacher, but I did not know myself well enough to realize how stupid that choice was for me. Things eventually worked out OK after graduation, without me teaching so much as 15 minutes of 12th grade English.
Children can often exceed their parents economic achievements under some circumstances, especially during a vigorous growth economy, and if one's parents weren't very high achievers. It's possible to exceed one's own predicted trajectory through life if one has at least normal intellectual assets and a lot of drive, and not too many unfortunate accidents.
Greatly exceeding one's own expectations and parental achievements shouldn't be counted on. In the long run of history, continual speedy upward progress is NOT normal. (In the long run of history, people more or less match their parents' achievements when things are going well.). Centuries have passed with no net economic growth. That doesn't mean life was terrible during those hundreds of years. Life was just very stable. One's life was like one's great grand parent's lives. Another angle to remember is that when economic growth does occur, it is never evenly distributed. The rich get richer, of course, and the poor get poorer. When England colonized North America, it was not the riff raff that benefitted economically; it was the leading families of England who owned the colonies, and made investments. "It's not the Earth the meek inherit, it's the dirt."
Quoting rlclauer
Anglo-America, at least, has been fairly strongly flavored by Calvinist theology which holds that material success is a sign of God's grace. The successful man is successful because he was predestined to receive God's grace of salvation, and material success is a sign of grace. The poor couple with 5 sickly children are also evidence of God's plan of salvation. Their wretched state is a sign of their damnation by God, and their poverty is a mark of God's displeasure.
God's pleasure or displeasure is a flying fickle finger of fate, as it happens. It is quite often IMPOSSIBLE for us to perceive the virtues of the elect and the flaws of the damned. I mean, a lot of assholes seem to be among the elect, and a lot of very decent people seem to be among the damned. I say fuck John Calvin and his theology of fucking predestination.
Quoting ZhouBoTong
And now you also know where Ernest Hemingway got the title for his novel, "For Whom The Bell Tolls".
The movie wife of W. C. Fields, who played comic drunks, said in her usual harsh, stentorian voice, "You're going to drown in a barrel of whiskey." Fields' movie reply was "Drowned in a barrel of whiskey! O death where is thy sting?" Another line from a John Donne poem.
Presumably they do, though I am not that familiar with the psychological machinations of insects and fish. Why wouldn't it count as desire?
As an individual, the national system that you face, is a given. You cannot hope to change it. On the other hand, there are 200+ such national systems. In terms of what matters to me, at least 100+ of these national systems work absolutely fine.
Therefore, at a systemic level, it is much more important to me that one such national system cannot impose their possibly misguided views elsewhere.
In terms of geopolitics, it probably means asking powers like Russia and China to be much more confrontational with the USA, as to force them to stay more within their own national borders.
What we certainly do not want, ever again, is a repeat of removing arsehole Gaddafi in Libya in 2011, resulting in over two thousand militia still shooting at each other and vying for power, almost nine years later.
In Libya, the shelves are still empty in the supermarkets, there are shortages of everything, and nobody has a real job except for shooting other people. Can we, please, urgently dig up Gaddafi's dead body, resurrect him, and put him back on his throne?
The systems of hierarchy are products of human social activity. Where the most people can attach to a sense of ‘worth’ more the system is perpetuated - humanity is perpetuated. We’re not static creatures though; we’re surprisingly adaptable and able to refine our systems and replace them.
I didn’t answer the poll because the first question needs at least several hundred nuanced options and the second does little more than show some people to read the question to suit their beliefs (it’s a pointless poll).
Why make such a weird poll? It would’ve made more sense to just express your ideas and concerns in plainer words than have people play pin the tail on the donkey.
Re the second poll question, I think both options you present are misconceived. It's neither "accurate" nor "illegitimate." It's simply a symptom of the way we've set things up and some common belief/idea tendencies in the context of how we've set things up.
Furthermore, I believe the outcomes we experience, are really expressions of inherent flaws in the configuration of our system. That is to say, we look at someone on top and conclude, "there must have been something of merit in them, otherwise they would not be there." and the same logic, just reversed, applies to those on the bottom. I do not view the world this way. I view the inequality of the economic game, it's rigged nature if you will, is played out in the inequality of outcome we witness. The flaws which are baked in diminish equality of opportunity, which most people seem to believe in.
So the point is, I do not even think we have an accurate way of evaluating people's competence (as a function of their economic position), because their position economically was more or less determined, and so you cannot determine who is more or less competent. We cannot know who is more or less competent until we have a competition in which all of the players are equal. Therefore, economic outcomes, in my view, are just the final product of a system of sanctioned illegitimate inequality, and the hierarchies we experience cannot be a function of competence.
I disagree on both accounts. I do not believe it is a given, and I think people can absolutely change it. I would also disagree that 100+ work completely fine. When there is an accumulation of gross wealth at the top, deaths of despair and, for the first time in the history of developed countries, decreasing life spans in many regions, and the rise of populism, I think to say it is working just fine is highly inaccurate. Unless what you mean by "working just fine" is, "well me and the people I care about still got our paychecks," then if that's what you mean, sure, I could see why you would think that way.
As far as your other arguments about global geopolitics, I am not well read on the subject and cannot comment.
This might be true if everyone had an equal amount of freedom with which to actuate their desires and potential, but there are structural elements within the economy which grant almost complete freedom to a few, while limiting the majority to practically losing their autonomy, as a function of the constraints on their range of options.
On my view, the hierarchies are product of historic exploitation and violence. Hardly benign, even if what you mean by "human social activity," is morally neutral, it's fairly easy to see in my opinion, that the products of the historic activity is illegitimate given the cost paid to generate wealth for a few.
I hoped to stimulate conversation. For the most part, the majority of people take our current system for granted. Framing the poll questions how I did can open someone's mind to potential structural flaws. Usually, we atomize all economic activity. So if you have a good job, you must be smart. The way the poll questions were framed in the context of one another, should cause you to consider the structural influences which can change the trajectory of individual outcomes. This is obviously going to be seen through the lense of your current ideology, and so the affect would be different on each person. I really appreciate you taking the time to share your insight.
It sounds like you are viewing it as neutral. That is fine, but do you think there could be a more improved version of what we call economic organization?
I would like something a bit more radical
Well, I did not say that the 100+ national systems, that work fine in my opinion, are the ones of developed countries. I certainly do not live in one. I tend to live in SE Asia. I have been here for longer than a decade now. For various reasons, I do not like living in developed countries. My own experience of living in the European Union is quite negative.
Quoting rlclauer
Of course, I survived until now. So, I have clearly managed to make and spend enough to stay afloat.
I personally think that they have got it all wrong in "developed" countries. They are not even that much more "developed" any longer. The gap is gone, really.
It is rather that each country has segments of the population that move at different speeds. Some people here still live as subsistence farmers, while others fully participate in the global economy; pretty much undistinguishable from what people do in New York or London.
Then the question rather becomes: What do you prefer? Bangkok or New York? Well, in my case, Bangkok any day of the week. Furthermore, anybody I meet here in SE Asia who has also previously lived in a developed country (EU, USA, ...) does not want to go back. You would have to drag them back by their hair, kicking and screaming.
Yes. I'm not a fan of the way we've structured things at all. I'd do a socialized (but otherwise libertarian) structure, not based on money in any traditional way, where the competition is instead focused on helping people out and rather directly providing things that people want, where we regularly poll that.
I think the whole idea of atomizing individuals into market logic competition is fundamentally dehumanizing, although I am please to see you suggesting a social-libertarian philosophy. I am not necessarily agreeing completely, but I like to see people thinking about ways to have more humane economic organization.
In my own case, I do not feel that I have particularly been obstructed or favoured in SE Asia, while doing the things I have been doing. It's not that I can turn around and point to some evil society that threw a spanner in the works. It has worked out absolutely fine.
Quoting rlclauer
On the short run, outcomes look arbitrary and heavily influenced by the environment. On the long run, however, there is probably a real pattern to it. The common denominator is probably yourself.
My own take is as following. If you ask a teenage girl why she is wearing these clothes, she will say: because all my friends are wearing them too. I think that this pattern is actually very general. Failure-inducing behaviour gets often copied wholesale from others. Furthermore, in the background, there certainly are people who benefit from spreading lies and manipulating the masses. I have always been quite immune to manipulative mainstream media and education systems, but I do not really know why.
Quoting rlclauer
Wherever there is a herd of sheep, you will see packs of wolves materializing out the blue. Wherever there are gullible people, you will see manipulators gearing up to manipulate. Go to facebook and watch how the adverts, commercial, social, and political start flying in your face. Pick https://www.reddit.com/r/popular. It won't take long before you will read or see very manipulative messages. You won't see them at https://www.reddit.com/r/epistemology because the crowd there is less manipulable. So, the manipulators avoid wasting time there, because their attempts would be pointless anyway.
You will not be able to change anything to that phenomenon. Even if you change the hierarchy, the same crowd is going to sink to the bottom, and the same crowd is going to rise to the top. The wealthy datsha bureaucracy of the Soviet Union were obviously the former factory owners, while the factory workers themselves became even worse off than before.
You and I just have very different views of human beings in general. You seem to view them as individually unique in their own right. I am suggesting while that yes there is definitely uniqueness to each person, if given the right education, diet, and living in a society which is safe and contains opportunity for them, they will be dramatically different, and for the better. I am suggesting that given certain environmental parameters, you can reliably predict outcomes for that child. Take the quote, "Give me a child until the age of 7, and I will tell you what kind of adult they will become." (I probably butchered that, lol)
I just do not agree with this. The single biggest predictor of someone's life outcomes is the economic situation of their parents. This suggests a feedback system, in which the inputs determine, maybe not absolutely, the outcomes. I do not think the outcome ever look arbitrary, I think they [I]almost[/I] always point to a description of the starting trajectory.
This is just false, and this was the logic used by Aristotle and Plato to argue for slavery, and the same logic used by proponents of the apartheid south in the US. Basically, suggesting that some humans are [I]naturally[/I] going to rise to the top or sink to the bottom, is to suggest they have these ineffable qualities. This is just patently false.
It is almost like you’re saying the way humans behave isn’t human ... which is nonsense. I don’t see how hierarchies come about based purely on “violence” and “exploitation” - unless you’re another type who likes to twist such word’s meaning to counter any possible refutation. That is not to say I am naive and assume exploitations and violence are not part of social interactions anymore than I am naive enough to think eating food won’t produce feces.
There is thread where some folks here are trying to discuss Social Contract theory - most of what is being said there is gibberish, but the actual thrust of the theory/theories in that area grapples with what you’ve mentioned here.
My point was about people having a sense of ‘worth’ as an extremely important and overlooked issue. This surpasses status, as we seek out meaning in many different ways.
When I see the term ‘economics’ I think of the actual meaning of the word. That is the management of resources - of which our emotional and moral disposition is constituted.
If I have a limp I don’t cut my leg off. I live with the limp and focus on dealing with the problem rather than assuming I can eradicate it. There is a naive proclivity - especially among the youth - to believe they can simple expunge any human problem cleanly and without disruption. A more mature understanding of this is to hold this sense of hope but understand that it is better for everyone and ourselves to cope with a problem rather than annihilate it. This is because life is complex and removing an intrinsic problem means we’ll inevitably end up removing a benefit too (we’re just generally not astute enough to see at the time the potential fallout).
In simple terms you cannot have your cake and eat it - if you do then the problem will be shifted and exacerbated.
Anyway GL :) I’m just passing through.
Well, a few blocks away from own place, they rent out dwellings at $60/month. Furthermore, people who eat for less than $1/day tend to be much healthier than myself. Not eating meat more often than a few times per month is a good thing, and fasting once in a while for a week or so, is even better. So, a complete family can survive here for less than $100/month.
I do not say that one should necessarily strive to be poor, but people seriously exaggerate their problems.
Concerning opportunity, I made all my money from doing things on the internet.
So, if you want to replicate that, you need to learn basic reading/writing skills, preferably at a young age, and figure out how to Google search as to browse for things, and then you can make things snowball from there. By the way, you are not going to be better at programming than a shantytown kid who learned it from playing with his $150 mobile phone and $5/month internet connection. Even the poorest kid over here, is playing with a mobile phone before he can even walk.
So, if it is that easy, why don't they do it?
Taxi and tuktuk drivers stubbornly and systematically refused to learn how to use Google Maps, no matter how many times customers may have pointed out the issue to them, until the Grab ride-sharing network started operating here. Suddenly, all of them can now use it. Seriously, each one of them. No exceptions. You do not even need to ask them to use it. They are already using it just to find you in order to pick you up. So, the Google Maps war is finally over now. I lost every Google Maps battle in the last ten years, but apparently I still won the war.
The locals here consider me to be some kind of magician. What I do, in their eyes, only works because it is me doing it. If they tried it, it would not work. That is the gist of their opinion. I don't have a problem with that, because I don't feel the need to interfere with what other people do. I do my thing and they do theirs. Furthermore, I should carry a magic wand around, because they will probably think that I know the secret of how to turn people into frogs.
I am not really sure what exactly you are referring to, but the overall condescending tone of your comment is very off putting. I do not really see a point in engaging with you because you will probably just dismiss me as some juvenile ignorant person, so it's probably better to just leave it alone.
You frame your recommendations for the people in your community who are not utilizing technology as sort of "failing to take advantage of opportunities available to them." I have a fundamentally different view of human behavior. I view humans as acting out their behavior which was determined since childhood, which is why I emphasized education as a means to assist people in realizing their potential. So we just have a fundamentally different view, and I don't think there is too much to engage with. You view humans in a sort of existentialist frame, that is to say, through mental activity leading to physical exertion they can change their environment. I view it in just the revers, a type of economic and behavioral determinism, that is to say, their environment, especially from early childhood ultimately will decide which trajectory they are on.
Well, it is certainly not the State-controlled education system that would teach them how to use Google maps. In fact, if you look at it, trillions of dollars later, what exactly have their students/customers learned? You see, these State-controlled schools were designed halfway the 19th century and haven't changed since. Do you know of anything else that managed to avoid changing for over a century? With every year that passes, the gap and the disconnect become even worse. They are sending their graduates straight to the unemployment queue.
I increasingly see the State-controlled education system as detrimental to society. It has become a tool to destroy people's potential.
They put boys and girls together in the same class. To cut a long story short, it turns the boys into idiots and the girls into sluts. By making them unsuitable for any kind of long-term relationships, the State-controlled education system is single-handedly destroying sexual reproduction across society, with marriage and birth rates collapsing. They indoctrinate the boys to be like girls, and the girls to be like boys. The effects are disastrous. They are turning the next generation into very, very unhappy people.
Well I know Andrew Carnegie funded and led the charge of public education in the US, with the objective of creating workers. Modern colleges are really just vocational schools, where students attend in order to "get a good paying job," and they really do not care about the love of learning in and of itself, and being a well-rounded citizen. So I would probably agree with your criticisms of the education system. However, we would disagree on the cause of this. I would point to capital, and the drive of the wealthy to increase their share of capital, on the backs of workers. It is indeed the state which mediates the relationship of workers to owners, however, I was pointing to "education" loosely, divorced from the context of what is called "education" in our current system. (often equated falsely with intelligence)
My point here is, that if you have a condition which is beneficial to the child, they generally have better outcomes in their life. For the sake of argument, just focus on this one point. I understand you are critical of the state and the type of education on offer at the moment, but do you agree with this one point? To put it even simpler: good conditions generally improve outcomes and vice versa. In my opinion that is not controversial. In fact there is a mountain of evidence to support that claim.
In my opinion, we are long past that 19th-century, early 20th-century conflict between capital and labour. Factory work has either been automated or shipped off to China and the like.
Quoting rlclauer
The middle class eagerly adopted "the system", and being born in the middle class made you likely to do relatively well in life, in a sense that you would probably end up middle class too. Still, that would have been the case also without "the system". Rich people play golf. So, playing golf will make you rich ... not really.
To an important extent, the middle class is gone now anyway. So, why waste time on something that is dead already?
Nowadays, if your dad is a plumber, and he takes you with him as an apprentice, you will almost surely do better than if you went to college. By the way, that is how it used to work, before they introduced "the system". For the vast majority of people, it would work better if they just reintroduced it. Furthermore, the need to put children in large holding pens and other large-scale nurseries, because the parents could not take them with them to the factory, is also mostly gone anyway.
With the boys incessantly beta-orbiting their unattainable targets, i.e. girls who are not interested in effeminate soy boys who are addicted to Ritalin -- since the age of six -- meant to cure their imaginary ADHD problem, we can also say goodbye to the nuclear family, I think.
Every day, the mess keeps growing worse. For example, for someone who is gender-confused, it is really hard to make headway on any nuclear-family ambitions. Is that person supposed to become the husband or the wife? If this person cannot answer that question, then what is the other side supposed to do?
As I read the end, I was thinking "for whom the bell tolls" is one of the only phrases I find aesthetically pleasing. Now I know it wasn't invented by Metallica or Hemingway :grin:
Quoting Bitter Crank
Another good one. While my patience for poetry is basically non-existent, I can say that I would imagine that John Dunne would have been a fun person to talk with...perfectly phrased jokes and all that.
Is John Gregory Dunne the right John Dunne? Looks like he wrote books and screenplays which I would expect I would enjoy a bit more than poetry.
Interesting. When I said it, I thought it was obvious...upon reading your question, I immediately began to doubt it. Let's see if i can justify the claim:
Hmmm, well first, desire is an emotion (correct me if wrong). Do all living things have emotion? I don't know...it seems it depends on definitions, but I would lean toward needing a certain level of mental complexity before it seems like the same type of emotion we humans understand? Does a dog experience some emotions similar to humans...seems VERY likely. Fish don't demonstrate behaviors that make their emotions obvious, but I can imagine they exist. As I keep moving down the food chain toward less complex organisms, it seems I am less convinced of their emotional capacity.
Colloquially, I also feel that 'desire' STRONGLY implies "more than need". I get that by definition, we can desire the things we need...but we don't usually say things like "I desire to breath". In this sense, an ant and a fish would not (seemingly) have desires.
In the same way (to try to get back to thread topic, haha), I am not sure a human desires life. We live life. So I would struggle to follow that slave owners get their power from slaves desire to live? Their power comes from guns, germs and steel (so to speak) right?
Indeed. Even worse is the new business idea that NO PROFIT IS REQUIRED. The plan is to just lose a few million every year but sell billions worth of stock. However, if capitalism has a strength it would the market ability to determine value/supply and demand. Once profits don't matter, that function is lost. And the whole system becomes just a matter of consumer confidence. Which means it has become a "complicated confidence scam". Maybe we should start calling the leaders con artists?
Here is one of his characteristic poems - about how likely it is that a beautiful woman will remain both both beautiful and faithful. It's read by Richard Burton who had problems remaining faithful, as I recollect. So did his wife, Elizabeth Taylor.
Donne doesn't condemn the lady in the poem, however.
In The Flea, he contemplates the parasite that has just sucked blood from him and is now doing the same thing to the woman sitting near by. In his day, people had fleas. Fact of life.
Mark but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is;
It sucked me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be;
Thou know’st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead,
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pampered swells with one blood made of two,
And this, alas, is more than we would do. (two more stanzas)
The flea has mingled blood that is not going to get mixed in any other way -- certainly not by he and she having sex. The flea is luckier than he.
Writers like Shakespeare's and Donne's writing was loaded with memorable phrases that have taken an independent existence -- like "for whom the bell tolls" or "First thing we do is kill all the lawyers".
That makes more sense. I was rather shocked that a poet had written that much non-poetry.
He is certainly funny and has a way with words, but he also has that Seinfeld ability to find comedy in everyday situations. To bad he wasn't born 350 years later, I would imagine his comedies would be very enjoyable (that flea poem almost feels like a monty python soliloquy).
You are probably right, because from my rabbit hole here in SE Asia, it is even irrelevant to me what is crashing and burning elsewhere. The only thing that matters to me, is that they are NOT carrying out the same experiment here. I do not desire to get the job of hosing cold water on yet another Fukushima. Have you ever seen footage of how the naked nuclear cores keep glowing in the open air over there in tsunami land? What a bunch of idiots!
I couldn't find, despite going back through the discussion, the reason you brought up Fukishima, but since you did I must add the following: this was no Chernobyl. But that I mean, some accident the responsibility for which one can fob off on communism. Apart from Japan being utterly first world and capitalist, the reactors were US corporation made. And the engineers who built, installed, helped with maintenance and so on, had to have known before, during and after installation, the location of the site, the seismic history of Japan, including tsunamis and how that might relate to future accidents. I have not heard any come forward and say they warned the Japanese government or how their security and safety protocols included concern for tsumanis and why they are not also culpable. IOW while it happened 'over there' for the 'West' it is also a Western accident to the core, puns intended.
One can only wonder what global-level accidents are coming around AI, nano-tech and gm products. And while you are in SE asia, this does not mean you are safe from whatevery games the US, China and Russia play with us all.
On 5 July 2012, the National Diet of Japan Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission (NAIIC) found that the causes of the accident had been foreseeable, and that the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), had failed to meet basic safety requirements such as risk assessment, preparing for containing collateral damage, and developing evacuation plans. At a meeting in Vienna three months after the disaster, the International Atomic Energy Agency faulted lax oversight by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, saying the ministry faced an inherent conflict of interest as the government agency in charge of both regulating and promoting the nuclear power industry.[21] On 12 October 2012, TEPCO admitted for the first time that it had failed to take necessary measures for fear of inviting lawsuits or protests against its nuclear plants.[22][23][24][25]
The largest tsunami wave was 13-14 meters (43-46 feet) high and hit approximately 50 minutes after the initial earthquake, overwhelming the plant's seawall, which was 10 m (33 ft) high.[9]
The black swan theory or theory of black swan events is a metaphor that describes an event that comes as a surprise, has a major effect, and is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact with the benefit of hindsight. The term is based on an ancient saying that presumed black swans did not exist – a saying that became reinterpreted to teach a different lesson after black swans were discovered in the wild.
Black swan events were discussed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his 2001 book "Fooled By Randomness", which concerned financial events. His 2007 book "The Black Swan. Impact of the highly improbable" extended the metaphor to events outside of financial markets.
[i]Nassim Nicholas Taleb against Gaussian Curve. Bell curves used in extreme events may cause a lot of disaster. Measures of uncertainty that are based on Bell curve disregard the impact the sharp jumps and inequalities and using them is like getting grass (grass disaster) and missing out the trees (Big Black Swans). [...] Randomness if Gaussian is tameable and is not altered by a single addition or removal. Casino people make such calculation and sleep well in night, no single gambler with a big hit will not change it and you will never see one gambler getting 1 Billion.
Mediocre events get fine or acceptable with Gaussian Distribution because big trees are not present in such events. I say that one should not use Gaussian in extreme events. But once you get Bell curve in head it's hard to avoid. [...] So, while weight, height and calorie consumption are Gaussian, wealth is not. Nor are income, market returns, size of hedge funds, returns in the financial markets, number of deaths in wars or casualties in terrorist attacks. Almost all man-made variables are wild or carry massive randomness(Black Swans).[/i]
Seven states of randomness. Mandelbrot and Taleb pointed out that although one can assume that the odds of finding a person who is several miles tall are extremely low, similar excessive observations can not be excluded in other areas of application. They argued that while traditional bell curves may provide a satisfactory representation of height and weight in the population, they do not provide a suitable modeling mechanism for market risks or returns, where just ten trading days represent 63 per cent of the returns of the past 50 years.
A fat-tailed distribution is a probability distribution that exhibits a large skewness or kurtosis, relative to that of either a normal distribution or an exponential distribution. [...] As a consequence, when data arise from an underlying fat-tailed distribution, shoehorning in the "normal distribution" model of risk—and estimating sigma based (necessarily) on a finite sample size—would severely understate the true degree of predictive difficulty (and of risk).
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To cut a long story short, the likelihood of black swans is dramatically underestimated pretty much everywhere in security calculations, through the abuse of the Gaussian probability distribution which is simply not applicable to the likelihood of black-swan events. Therefore, nuclear installations are always several orders of magnitude more dangerous than typically calculated. Once in a million years usually rather means once every fifty years. Note that these wildly optimistic probability calculations were done in the 1950ies and 1960ies for installations typically built in the 1970ies, such as Fukushima.
They are no longer allowed to build these nuclear plants based on the overly optimistic views from the 1950ies and 1960ies. Nowadays, the problem is that they are actually too costly to build, using the new security calculations:
The Flamanville Nuclear Power Plant is located at Flamanville, Manche, France on the Cotentin Peninsula. A third reactor at the site, an EPR unit, began construction in 2007 with its commercial introduction scheduled for 2012. As of 2019 the project three times over budget and years behind schedule. Various safety problems have been raised, including weakness in the steel used in the reactor.[1] In July 2019, further delays were announced, pushing back the commercial date to beyond 2022.[2] [...] EDF estimated the cost at €3.3 billion. The latest cost estimate (July 2018) is at €10.9 billion.[5]
The Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant (Finnish: Olkiluodon ydinvoimalaitos) is on Olkiluoto Island, which is on the shore of the Gulf of Bothnia, in the municipality of Eurajoki in western Finland. Unit 3 is an EPR reactor and has been under construction since 2005. In December 2012, the French multi-national building contractor, Areva, estimated that the full cost of building the reactor will be about €8.5 billion, or almost three times the delivery price of €3 billion.
The financial losses, including €2 billion in 2015, reinforced moves for EDF to take over Areva. Areva said: “Half of this loss of €2 billion is due to additional provisions for Olkiluoto 3 and half to provisions for restructuring and impairment related to market conditions."
The largest hidden bill is that serious accidents in the existing installed base (designed in the 50ies and 60ies and mostly built in the 70ies) cannot be excluded, before they get retired, which was planned to already have happened more than a decade ago. They just keep operating them, but with a few exceptions, all of these plants are expired goods. Furthermore, the budget for decommissioning is gigantic, and probably also still underestimated by at least an order of magnitude.
John Maynard Keynes famously quipped, "In the long run, we are all dead." He said that in 1928 about 1975.
Hahaha, fair enough. Have we found a better way of deciding how much 'x' and 'y' we should produce? Pure capitalism is a nonsense fantasy (or a dystopian nightmare), and I certainly think the American model needs some heavy socialization. But I have not found a better distribution analysis than supply and demand. I have questioned this aspect of capitalism for years, as it is the only part I particularly agree with. So if there are any alternatives, please show me the way (even if they are vague or underdeveloped).
Human psychology is complicated and veiled enough as it is, so I don't see a point in involving animal psychology in this discussion, since we know even less about that. What I do know is, that most, if not all, living things show some form of desire to continue material existence, which is why they will avoid a fire rather than get burned by it.
Quoting ZhouBoTong
This "more than need" would need some elaboration. How does the act of breathing not involve some desire to continue living? Breathing and similar processes, like pain reception, are cemented very thoroughly in our brain, but a person with no desire to breathe or feel pain can condition their brain to stop doing those things. So I would say, all these things are desire, however some are rooted deeper in our brains than others.
Quoting ZhouBoTong
If a slave had no desire to continue living, what power would the slave owner have over him? He would run away, or resist; the slave owner may take his life but it has no value for him. When nothing of value can be given or taken away, power ceases to exist, thus even in this (extreme) example we can say the slave owner's power is based on the slave's preference of life over death.
I wonder why you called this movement "neoliberal". It's exactly the opposite to liberal ideals. You describe a movement of making the poor poorer and the rich richer -- in its most basic -- and that is not liberal, that is conservative, fascist. I really think you have such bias built into your outlook and it's a knee-jerk reaction by you to blame the liberals for all ills, even when an ill is in diametrical opposition to their movement.
So neo-liberal is the opposite of old-school liberal. What a language! Newspeak. Each word means something and also its own exact opposite. George Orwell, 1984.
But it does not obliterate the fact that I was ignorant. Thanks for the enlightenment, Coben!
Not really. Historically and in most of the world outside America today, “liberal” means what in America is usually called “libertarian”, because “liberal” in America had come to mean somewhat the opposite of what it historically had meant. In most of the world “liberal” is contrasted with “socialist” and is the main form of conservatism. (And a “libertarian” is a kind of socialist, just to make things extra confusing).
I live outside the USA, and it seems, also outside the world, because here Liberal as a political movement means "leftist", and conservative, "rightist". Liberal can also mean "centrist". But never right-wing, and never extreme left wing.
I don't think I should worry about it too much. Words mean not much any more, and communication is defunct in most instances. Because, basically, there is no inherent value in communication any more, other than "how do you code that", "what's for dinner" and "No, I'll never do that, you sick pervert."
Originally there was that association, which is why the left is still called "liberal" in the USA today even though they're no longer "liberal" in the classical sense still used elsewhere. But after (classical) liberalism largely won over its early enemies and socialism sprung up, socialism (originally libertarian socialism) became the new left and capitalist liberalism the new right.
And then most of socialism turned statist, and liberalism became virtually synonymous with capitalism , to the point that state capitalism, i.e. fascism, is now denounced as "socialist" by self-avowed liberal capitalists. And nobody even remembers anymore that libertarian socialists ever existed, so in the USA where the left=liberal association stuck around (despite their "liberals" becoming increasingly state-socialist), they appropriated the term "libertarian" to mean liberal capitalism instead.
"Cry me a river, liberal!" - Republicant.
??? If liberal meant rightist, this saying in bold would never have got coined.
PfHorrest, your thinking is way too complex for my comprehension. Maybe facts are, too, but I haven't yet noticed that.
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Libertarianism is an Ayn Rand version of individualism, I know that much. It has nothing to do with liberalism or with conservatism. It advocates complete independence in economic matters to the individual. It is the stupidest economic craze ever invented by a stupid, no good philosopher.
That position was to the left of the status quo of the time, which was aristocracy and theocracy and such. So “liberal” was associated with “left”.
Then the aristocrats disappeared, and socialists appeared further to the left of those old classical liberals.
In most of the world, that meant that (classical) liberalism was now considered to be on the right side of the spectrum.
But in the US and apparently wherever you live, the word “liberal” kept being used as a synonym for the left, even as the leftmost positions became increasingly unlike the classical liberal position. That’s why in those places “libertarian” was coined as a new name for classical liberalism.
(Even though “libertarian” had already been the name for a kind if socialism before that.)