Freedom is not safe

That is the truth. Right before Obama took the wheel from Bush, we were witnessing the loss of a quarter million jobs each day and each week. Bankruptcies were at an all time record. It was a crash and much more acute than 1929, when bankers were jumping out of the windows. I am still astonished that the neo-bankers were allowed to keep million dollar bonuses after performance shortfalls.

 

Wrat

LOL In what way does it ‘challenge’ me as I said as a quiz it is fine, a bit of fun - my problem here is that you seem to want to replace debate with it and that doesn’t work.

Ok you stand by it but can you still answer my questions as I’m still not sure what you mean by the ‘centre’ in political views.

 

From the 1930’s to 1970’s there was a Keynesian agreement amongst many on the right and left of politics based to one degree or another on distributive and regulatory policies.

This was in many ways a reaction to Communism – many on the right saw it as a way of curtailing peoples move toward more socialist thinking (the same way Bismarck had in the Germany) with one hand offering some social benefits and with the other attack left wingers (McCarthyism etc). On the left many saw the pit falls and warnings that some so called communist states had shown and saw a more adaptive strategy as better than revolution.

So elements of the right and left could work together within the overlap

That consensus was destroyed with the rise in the 1970’s of neoliberal ideas which became to dominate (mainly in the US and UK) – the reasons for this were mainly due to (1) because the power of communist states was on the wane and (2) it was been heavily promoted and sponsored by wealth.

Communism/Socialism states looked like a failure and wealth heavily promoted the idea that since communism was left wing ALL left wing ideas were a failure including the ‘left wing’ economic ideas of Keynesianism.

Neoliberalism become so pervasive that even for a time the Democratic Party in the US and New labour in the UK flirted with its ideas.

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I see things changing again as free market neoliberalism is on the wane and is increasingly been seen as a failure (and as it has become so associated with capitalism, many see capitalism as failing) even those that claim to support fee market ideas are turning against it.

My hope is that this will bring about a new direction and even new consensus

My fear is that some on the right and some of its wealthy backers will turn to authoritarianism to hold up the crumbling system.

 

I recently read Ayn Rand's Anthem, and then posted this to my instagram account, entitlement_is. The post was several memes I made with a picture of her book, Anthem.

The meme's read as follows:

Ayn Rand and her philosophy of Objectivism has been embraced by many on the Right, and in turn has heavily influenced conservative politics, especially her anti-altruism stance.

Even Christians have adopted her anti-altruistic beliefs despite such beliefs being against the teachings of Jesus.



Her novel, Anthem, was her depiction of a future dystopic world if the trends of altrusim were to continue. It is about a world where knowledge, science, and the past have been deemed evil, and love and individuality have been stamped out under an authoritarian collectivist rule.

She intended it to be a fictional manifesto against altruism.



Ironically, what she describes is not unbridled altruism, but rather, absolute objectivism. She describes a world where individuality is stamped out because every individual has been completely objectified into nothing more than a tool (an object) of the State.

It is funny that her futuristic Prometheus brings to man the gift of individuality, i.e. subjectivism. Yet her philosophy dismisses subjectivism.



In her eyes, subjectivism denies individual rights because she thinks that rights are then only temporarily granted by other men. She fails to realize that she is defining subjectivism in objectivist terms. She thinks that subjectivism enables a minority to objectify everyone else.

When those in power objectively determine the rights of others, you are watching objectivism at work. This is pure Cartesian Objectivism with the self-centered ego focused on a dead world of objects.



This is how objectivism, not subjectivism, denies life. An object has been stripped of subjectivity,and can then be exploited or used.

Likewise, altruism is authentic if it is subjectively done from the heart. Objectively forcing others to act altruistically makes the act of altruism insincere and plastic.



It is ironic that intellectuals on the Right embrace Rand without realizing this basic flaw.

But then objectivism is the dominant focus of the civilized world. We can relate much of our modern problems and faults to the dominance of objectivist thinking.



It is also ironic that Anthem predicts a dystopic world where technology has been lost due to the denial of science and knowledge, and where human rights and freedom have been lost to a moral ideology that controls even how each person thinks.

In other words it describes the very world that the Right and the political arm of Christianity is trying to create for us.




Here is the commentary I posted under these memes:

As a youth I bought many of Ayn Rand's books, but then the first one I started to read, on page 1, when she started to call altruism as the worst evil, I thought, 'What the...?!' It went against my hippie sensibilities. But I decided, maybe I don't understand what she's saying and read further. By page 2 I realized that I knew exactly what she meant and set the books down and never read them, other than passages to write a critique or two on her philosophy years later.
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I just happened to find Anthem in my library and decided to give it a read. I expected there to be something deeper in the book that might present a challenge and defend her immense philosophical flaw that stares me in the face everytime I try to give her any benefit of the doubt. But no, her argument is too simplistic and predictable.
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In my own philosophical writings I seek to deconstruct objectivism and replace its dominance with subjectivism. Many people like to argue with me that subjectivism is the source of greed and selfishness, but no, that is a product of a subject operating in an objectivist context. After all, the only subject in Cartesian objectivism is the self-centered, self-serving, I or me.
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Ironically, for these people, Ayn Rand preaches the glory of greed and selfishness. LOL!

 

You have good reason to fear. (I mean, other than the obvious ones of what is happening right now around the Nation.) I have written a fair amount on these forums about Nietzsche's concept of the Apollonian and Dionysian dynamics of society and culture.

The Dionysian dynamic or force represents the explosive uncontrolled power of nature. It is free, and likely spontaneous, it is also wild and untamed. Like Dionysus, it is also the force of intoxication, and on the downside, the force of madness. The hippie movement was a perfect example of the Dionysian.

On the other hand, the Apollonian represents man's attempt to control nature. It is repressive, retardant, controlling and manipulative. Apollo was the Sun God and things in the Apollonian stand in the stark black and white of duality. It manages and oppresses.

In my own observation, I have noticed both in private companies and in the culture as a whole that the Dionysian tends to appear at the beginning of trends, companies, cultures and so forth. There is a sense of unlimited potential, the market is wide open, or the country has the potential to overcome all others. The sky is the limit, so to speak. But somewhere along the line it appears that the sense of unlimited potential was illusion. The company now sees where the end of its potential growth probably lies ahead, or the nation sees the limits up ahead of its own power, or the maximum that it can achieve. This is where the Apollonian comes to play. Now this is all based on perception, so it may or may not be the actual limit of that entity's potential.Therefore this may be a temporary sense of pending impotency, or it may be the final, even fatal point where the end is approaching. Where before, everyone could grow freely and growth may have seemed to come without effort, and everyone is free to participate, now with this sense of impending doom, or this impending point of decadence, the forces that be clamp down and try to force that growth. They are now trying to squeeze blood from a stone.

For example, coming out of World War II the US seemed to be able to do anything.We were the global superpower, and we had now built a global infrastructure of roads, airports and and all kinds of things providing a global marketplace for our exploitation. We were experiencing a moment of Dionysian ecstasy. But the Soviet Union rose up as another superpower, and a threat to our continued existence. The Apollonian of the 1950's kicked in full swing, and lasted until the Dionysian Hippies--a true ubermensch--rose up and gave new life to our culture, rescuing us from an Apollonian demise. In fact, when you read Nietzsche's description of how the Dionysian breathes life into a culture, referencing ancient Greek motifs, it seems as though he is instead describing the hippies and pop culture of the 60's and early 70's. The 1990's brought another Dionysian force into play---technology based on silicon, which brought a whole new perception of infinite potential to corporate America, and we are still riding this wave of strength in many ways (another factor that helped us stay out of depression, and has amazingly enabled periods of low unemployment, low interest rates, rising efficiency, and consequently low inflation unprecedented at such levels of employment/low interest rates/economic growth).

But in 2000 there was a perception that technology was reaching limits in how it could create profit/growth---that the end was in sight. The dot.com market collapsed. More than anything else it was when the failures of neoliberalism and trickle-down economics were beginning to show (Enron was very symbolic here). For corporate America, I feel that Apollonian forces had returned. I feel that many companies had changed in the early 2000's. The push for workers to work harder for less incentives had appeared. Then the economic boom that followed, while fueled by technology and increased efficiency, was nonetheless largely an illusion. It was based on debt and little more. Think of how people made money then---loan brokering, boiler rooms pushing debt, credit cards were handed out like candy, people began borrowing to flip houses, second mortgages and loans on equity were also handed out like candy. For many Americans there was no wealth creation, especially after everything came crashing down into the credit crisis. There was however a large transfer of wealth to the upper 1%, for them it was an authentic boom. And that transfer of wealth has continued through today, while Apollonian Forces try to keep the game going as long as they can, because the end is in sight. So of course Trump was going to come into the picture. The time is ripe for Christofascism. Marvel superhero movies and franchises reflect our cultural need for a superhero, and along came Trump! And everybody misses the real underlying phenomenological message of these superhero motifs ala 2010's - 2020's---that we are the ones ourselves that have to be the superheros. We need the Dionysian forces to rear up again and save our culture from its demise.

We are facing another fin-de-siecle (End of Cycle). The last one occurred in Nietzsche's time. It was the collapse of the Bourgeoisie culture of Europe, and it was actually this event that the term fin-de-siecle was coined for. That era officially ended with the assassination of the Hapsburg that started World War I, though it had been playing out for decades already. But World War II was clearly the last death throe---the Apollonian attempt to bring Europe back to its former glory. There was a shift towards conservatism that had been taking place over decades, and Europe as so many Europeans saw it, had become very decadent. Liberalism had faced failures left and right throughout Europe, but especially in Vienna at the heart of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

There are so many parallels to today. Liberalism in Vienna once shown across Europe as a guiding light, reflected in music, art, and culture. The same could be said of America in the 60's and 70's---in fact, Jean Francois-Revel, said just that (in different words) in his book, Without Marx or Jesus, the New American Revolution has Begun (I apologize if the title is slightly off---I'm too lazy to go look for it in my library). I may be an old hippie, but I think there is still something to that, even if we have gone off the tracks and the liberalism of the 60's has evolved to something I sometimes don't recognize...

But regardless of how we find our way out of this, we need a new Dionysian ubermensch to rise up from within our culture.

 

I agree with you, and I love you man. As for the inevitability of selfishness, I think it would be hard to tell, on the basis of evidence, whether or not altruism is rooted in selfish motives. It would also make little difference to me, since selfish altruism would be more socially beneficial than selfish selfishness. I suspect (although it's admittedly speculative) that altruism evolved from selfish roots, as explained by evolutioary biologist Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene and elaborated in The God Delusion. Three mechanisms found in non-human species are likely candidates: kin selection, reciprocal altruism, and empathy. Kin selection is responsible for the phenomenon that individuals will sacrifice themselves for the sake of genetically related individuals, since in evolution it is survival of the gene, not the individual, that's important in natural selection. W.D. Hamilton (1964) Journal of Theoretical Biology. The mechanism of reciprocal altruism, documented in such species as wasps and bats, as well as humans, occurs among genetically unrelated organisms. Robert Trivers (1971) found that an individual would act in a manner that temporarily reduced its qwn fitness to increase that of a genetically related individual in the expectation that the beneficiary will reciprocate at a later time.(if this doesn't occur, the ungrateful beneficiary will be subjected to retalliatory action.) e.g., male red-winged blackbirds will protect the nests of neighbors. Mice, dogs and monkeys also exhibit the behavior known as empathy, the ability to perceive and share the feelings of others. Dr. J. C. Harris of Johns Hopkins University describes this as an "evolutionary mechanism to maintain social cohesion." Rats seem to have this ability, and will give up treats to save a fellow rat from drowning. When a rat s placed near a caged member of the same species, the free rat tries to open the hatch to liberated the prisoner, and when given the choice between saving a fellow rat and getting a treat, the free rat would liberate the caged rat first, and then share the treat.(Mason, Science ,2011). But cynics like psychologist Alan Silberberg, sharing Wrat's view of rats and altruism, found evidence that the rat wanted to liberate the other rat for the selfish motive of playing with it, and that when the rats couldn't play with each other, they lost interest in liberating their comrades. Desire for social contact, not empathy, may explain “rescue” behavior in rats - Animal Cognition More controversial is the theory of group selection (E.O. Wilson; Thomas Huxley): the selection of groups because of tendencies toward co-operative behavior. Wilson believes that sometime before the evolution of modern humans, our hominid ancestors developed separate modules for selfish and cooperative behavior. Ever since we've been plagued by pangs of guilt when we engage in selfish behavior at the expense of the group. Dawkins adds reputation and popularity to the list as reasons why humans would want at least to appear altruistic.

To explain present-day altruism among humans, we'd also have to consider social evolution, which Dawkins concedes may be more important for human behavior than biology. Social evolution is advanced by the human propensity for behavioral conditioning and social learning, rooted in the generally useful tendency to believe trusted authorities. Conquerors like Sargon of Akkad and Alexander the great made sure to spread the word that all their conquered subjects were fundamentally alike.And of course the message was reinforced by the great religious figures of the Axial Age and later. Dawkins introduced the concept of "memes", or units of culture, which he analogizes to genes at the biological leel. Like genes, memes tend to favor their own survival even at the expense of their hosts. Thus, Christian martyrs like St. Ignatius and Feliciatas went happily to their deaths looking forward to being eaten by wild beasts in the arena. The jihadi's of Islam go to their deaths with the same enthusiasm. If someone told them that some Qur'anic scholars think it's 70 figs instead of virgins they'll get in paradise would it have altered their behavior? If so, maybe Wrat is on to something. Still, I don't see most secularists sacrificing themselves for virgins or figs.

 

altruism functions essentially the same regardless of motivations for it.

I give frequently to charity at the grocery store even though in my heart I'm stingy. It still works!

 

As usual, your charges are terse, vague, and insinuating. What are you talking about? Who is wanting to oppress hard work, being on time and having a two-parent family? Translating this, it sounds like you think the work ethic and the traditional family are being assaulted or burdened by "the woke". Is that the same thing as people being more understanding of non-traditional family structures and people on welfare?

I'd argue that: (1) the so-called decline of the work ethic is an inevitable result of the transition from an industrial to a post-industrial economy and general affluence in society; (2) the productivity of the American worker doesn't seem to be declining; (3) the work ethic of Americans is still strikingly high in comparison with counterparts in other western industrial countries; (4) welare programs do not seem to foster a "culture of dependency"; and (5) the breakdown of traditional family values, evidenced by teenage pregnancies, unwed mothers, and an increased incidence in divorce, seems to be most prominent in Red States, and is at least partly attributable to educational deficiencies and cultural pressures for sexual abstinence and early marriage in those states. I'll proceed to develop these arguments in subsequent posts.

 

1. Decline of the work ethic. The traditional work ethic, dubbed the "Protestant Ethic" by sociologist Max Weber, was rooted in Puritan asceticism. Wisman and Davis (American Journal of Economics and Sociology, vol 72,Nov., 2013) argue that this ethic was undermined not by the "woke" but rather by the degradation of the quality of work during the industrial revolutions and post-industrial society. Work has become less rewarding than it was back in the day because of the advent of the assembly line and later a transition to a service economy in which wages in service industries are low and opportunities for advancement are limited. The work ethic of yesteryear depended heavily on an implicit two-way implied covenant between employer and employee which was shattered by the outsourcing and downsizing of the Reagan era. This isn't just a U.S. phenomenon but one which is happening all over the world.

 

2. Productivity of American workers. There doesn't seem to be much evidence of a decline in the productivity of American workers. According to a 2014 Gallup poll,full time American workers average 47 hours a week--90 minutes more than a decade earlier. Has the American Work Ethic Gotten Worse? | The Saturday Evening Post In 2021, labor productivity rose by an annualized 5.4% during the first quarter--above an expected 4.3%. Output grew by 8.4% and hours worked increased 2.9%. The present work shortage following the Covid-19 pandemic is attributed by conservatives to overly generous unemployment benefits, but that seems not to be the case. Here’s Why $300 A Week Unemployment Benefits Aren’t Driving Worker Shortages Other explanations include continued worker concerns about Covid-19, difficulty finding childcare, and failure of employers to provide a living wage.

 

3. U.S. workers have stronger work ethic than workers in other countries--maybe to a fault.

The U.S.A. still has the strongest work ethic of practically any western industrial country (except Canada) , although some Asian countries are ahead of us (not the Japanese; a 2017 NationalToday.com survey found that American workers work 137 hours more a year than they do.).. According to the Office of Economic Cooperation and Development, he average American works over 34 hours a week, compared to 28 hours/week for the average French worker. Federal Reserve Economic Data for 2017 , comparing 167 countries shows that U.S. workers put in almost 1704 hours per year , compared with 1650 for the U.K.,1475 for France,1406 for Germany, and 1382 for the Netherlands. Canadians slightly outdo us with 1708 hours per year.University of Groningen - Economic Data Series | FRED | St. Louis Fed A Pew Research (2017) survey of people found that 73 percent of U.S. respondents agree with the statement "It is very important to work hard to get ahead in life", compared with 60% of British respondents, 49% of Germans, and a global median of 50%

In fact, the American work ethic strikes many observers from abroad as insane.The Origins of Crazy U.S. Work Ethic | Better Living through Beowulf The persistence of the work ethic may account for a goodly portion of the "family values" problems conservatives complain about. According to the Center for American Progress, “in 1960, only 20 percent of mothers worked. Today, 70 percent of American children live in households where all adults are employed.”. The U.S. Department of Labor notes that 75% of those women working full time. It would be hard to go back to the Cleaver-style family, since most of us require two incomes to maintain the middle class lifestyle we see on TV and save for the kids' college. My wife and I are treading water juggling care of four kids and two jobs.The U.S. is the only industrialized country without legally mandated annual leave. According to Professor Vallas, Northwestern University sociologist, work remains the single most important way Americans prove their worth. And in an economy like ours where layoffs are not uncommon, loss of a job can be devastating, not only economically, but psychologically. The work-life balance is stronger in other western industrial countries. Workers in Luxemborg are the most productive in the world, but have only a 29 hour work week. Ireland, Norway and Belgium likewise exceed the U.S. in productivity with shorter work weeks. American work ethic glorifies the hustle, disregards personal well-being

 

4. Welfare programs don't seem to foster a "culture of dependency". Contrary to Republican mythology, research suggests that welfare programs may counteract poverty and dependency. A meta-study of cash assistance programs in 7 countries found "no systemic evidence that cash transfer fprograms discourage work." Similar studies of Uganda and Nigeria, as well as Mexico's Prospero porgram and Indonesia's PKH found that such programs can increase working hours and earnings by improving health and nutrition, especially where training in work skills is required.
Dispelling the Myth of Welfare Dependency | Harvard Evidence for Policy Design
The Myth of Welfare’s Corrupting Influence on the Poor (Published 2015)
The Impact of Medicaid on Labor Market Activity and Program Participation: Evidence from the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment

 

Can I just say thank you to many of the contributors to the thread for some really great posts.

Once again I’m amazed at the depth and research that people here put into their posts and for free, just for the pleasure of debate – again thank you.

Balbus

 

Tish

1) the envious who want to disincentive people to work hard to be rich,

2) the guilt-ridden "woke" who want to oppress morals and practices known to produce a prosperous society (such as working hard, being on time, raising a family with mom and dad, etc),

3) those who want to erase history because it hurts people's feelings, the replacement of religion with allegiance to government,

4) pushing political agendas as "science", wishing to force people into medical procedures (such as vaccines),

5) wanting to ban firearms from the general population,

6) wanting to tell people how much energy they're allowed to use (even though they're paying for it),

7) wanting to put people out of work unless they can contribute a certain value or more,

8) wanting to decide by race who can do what,

9) letting men use the ladies room because they "identify" as such... That's just what comes to mind in five minutes.


I was also taken with that list from Trudge

Because it is kind of what the right are about, the things they want to change or reverse and it got me wondering about how they would translate into policy

1) Cutting benefits and tax cuts

2) Cutting benefits, More power to employers, More power to men (eg turn back clock on liberal divorce policies) cutting benefits

3) Right wing education policy (nationalistic based history, less science based education more Christian religious education, etc)

4) Less science based education.

5) No gun control

6) Less science based education.

7) ? - More power to employers

8) ? – Sounds a lot like turning back liberal racial discrimination policies

9) turning back liberal sex/gender discrimination policies

These policies would seem to lean toward the anti-rational and the discriminatory although fitting in with many current right wing policies seem rather fascistic in their social dimensions cutting away the rights of women, ethnic minorities and the LBTQ+ and its limiting of rational and facts based education.

 

My main problem with it is that it's a list. No supporting evidence or argument, and terse enough and vague enough that he leaves it to us to figure out what he has in mind. I'm still not even through with the second point! It's like he opened that shoebox of anecdotes Ronald Reagan built his political career on and dusted off some topics for our consideration. One alternative would be just to ignore it, but these ideas are rattling around in the heads of the Retrumplican right and I think it's useful for the benefit of others to address them in some detail. At least he hasn't said anything about baby-eating Satanic pedophiles!

 

As a writer this is one thing I have always loved about Hip Forums, and especially as a writer of philosophy. Back in the days of Sartre and even earlier through the 1800's, Paris had the Cafes where philosophers could meet and debate, and argue, and agree and disagree. Philosophy grew immensely through all these debates. we don't have that today, and I certainly am not surrounded by a bunch of philosophers to debate with. Over the years I have had some intense debates on HF, and I love it. These debates have helped me strengthen my ideas, alter my ideas, and even change my ideas.

And of course this is a Hippie thing----one of the greatest things about the 60's and the liberalism of the 60's was that it was about liberation, and that included liberation of the mind. And this is what the internet was supposed to be about---remember? Suddenly we have all the world's information at our fingertips. We have a network through which to connect to anyone in the world instantly. Imagine the liberation of mind and knowledge that could present!!

...ok, we've found some major glitches, and liberating the mind through technology does risk a dangerous exploitation of moronic ideas for fun and profit and villainous elements seeking mind control of the masses, but...! ...And now we all know the world is flat! LMAO!!!!!

 

Finishing up point 2, (5) the breakdown of traditional family values, evidenced by teenage pregnancies, unwed mothers, and an increased incidence in divorce, seems to be most prominent in Red States, and is at least partly attributable to educational deficiencies and cultural pressures for sexual abstinence and early marriage in those states. Eleven Red States have higher divorce rates than any Blue State, one of the strongest predictors of higher divorce rates being the percentage of Evangelical Christians in that state.J. Glass and P. Levchak,(Feb. 1, 2014) American Journal of Sociology.; N.Cahn and J. Carbone, Red Families Versus Blue Famiies..Traditional/conservative communities preserve the expectations of an earlier era: early marriage, tying sex to marriage, stressing abstinence before marriage, more unplanned pregnancies, and less education. So finding and holding a good job becomes more of a challenge. Teen pregnancies are also higher in red states than blue states.
Teen Pregnancy Is Higher in Red States Than in Blue States Dossier: Red-State Values
Red Families Vs. Blue Families
An in general, babies born to unwed mothers also tend to be higher in the Red States.
Percent of Babies Born to Unmarried Mothers by State
In Louisiana, Miss., Tex, Ark. and my own state of Oklahoma, over 40 % of all births are born to unwed mothers.

Ah, but (sez the Retrumplcan) those Red States also have higher populations of African-Americans and Hispanics, and they have higher percentages of unwed mothers (62% and 49%, respectivly.) https://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/p20-570.pdf Nevertheless. this factor is insufficient to account for the overall trends. Poverty and lack of education are better predictors. where do those "guilt ridden wokes" fit in?

 

...

 

I find this one particularly ironic in light of current Retrumplican efforts to censor school curricula to prevent the kiddies from being taught anything that might lead them to be critical of U.S. history or race relations. Disputing Racism’s Reach, Republicans Rattle American Schools
Republicans attack critical race theory, but it's an afterthought in policies banning it
The new Texas law forbidding “deference to any one perspective” on any “particular current event or widely debated and currently controversial issue of public policy or social affairs” that is taught in schools,t would be difficult in covering the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. My state, Oklahoma passed a law banning K-12 schools from teaching lessons that would cause "guilt" because of a person's race or sex. A new Oklahoma law bans K-12 schools from teaching topics that cause 'guilt' because of race or sex. Does this mean that the schools can't teach about the Trail of Tears that impacted so many of my people, along with other tribes, or to teach about the Tulsa riots. A Republican friend of mine recently decided to take a history course offered to the public, and was angry when he found out about the Tulsa race riot and realized he hadn't been taught about in in high school.