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  • Posted by ewv 9 years, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Not a sacred text of myth and 'narrative', but objective principles and values. Religion is a primitive form of philosophy attempted out of the human need for a sense of life and broad understanding beyond a sequence of range of the moment events. Only a real philosophy can fulfill that need.
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  • Posted by ewv 9 years, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Rationalization in this context does not mean rationality, it means making excuses through verbal manipulations employing floating abstractions, context dropping, invalid concepts and other fallacies to convince oneself or others that something is true or justified when it has no such basis. It is the opposite of objectivity.
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  • Posted by ewv 9 years, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Man evolved in a continuum, and that includes his brain and cognitive ability. Acting on reason was employed for survival when in evolution it became possible to increasing degree, but the principles of reason had to be discovered and formulated, beginning with the Greeks.

    Individuals who embrace and practice reason do not act out "gut feelings" rationalized later. Much of our thinking is learned and internalized at the subconscious level (including such activities as reading and writing), subject to constant conscious checking and analysis. Selective focus and rationality become easier and natural over time with practice and constant effort, guided by a self-chosen drive for objectivity.

    Error, evasion, psychological distortion, fantasy and rationalization are all possible, which is why we require epistemology and ethics for principles of goals and method. That is why rationality is the primary virtue of Ayn Rand's ethics, to be pursued by choice rather than regarded as automatic.

    Those who don't do it remain savages or wind up, entirely or in some mixture of degree, as religious zombies, resentfully cynical hedonistic hippies, or mobs of street rabble led by and supporting the likes of Obama demagoguery as they chant his name and demand that irrational lives matter while they burn the city and persecute the police from high office.

    Neither the heroes of Atlas Shrugged nor any other even remotely sympathetic character acts like or insults each other as monkeys fighting over a banana, driven by their "guts" rationalized later as the meaning of rationality. "Nobody is as naive as a cynic."
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  • Posted by Maritimus 9 years, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Hello, jdg,
    I will try to state a few things which, I believe, are self-evident truths. If we agree on those, perhaps we can earn a chance for a worthwhile discussion.
    1. Humans are a species of living organisms on Earth, the only one in possession of consciousness, rational apparatus, cognitive abilities and free will capable of controlling his actions and subconscious and emotional drives.
    2. No other living organism has these attributes developed to even a remotely comparable degree.
    3. Already Aristoteles recognized clearly the distinction between needs and desires of living things and especially humans.
    4. If a man doesnot rationally evaluate his emotional drives and adjusts his actions in accordance with those evaluations, then he is not performing to his potential and deserves the consequences.
    5. I understand "rationalization" to mean an evaluation after the action is taken with the purpose of explaining to self or others a rational basis for that action. Is that how you understand it?

    I did not understand your last paragraph. What sorts of mental disciplines you recognize? Is "this process" you are referring to the one whereby most of our actions originate in "gut feelings"?
    Let's analyze, evaluate and conclude, thus living up to our potential as rational human beings. Are you game?
    EDIT: Separated the paragraph.
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  • Posted by strugatsky 9 years, 7 months ago
    The most intensive effort for a human is mental effort. Especially for those that have little training and experience in using their intellect. Many will go to exuberant degree to avoid any mental effort. They will gladly trade off anything for having someone else making decisions for them. They want a structure to their life - structure minimizes decisions. People cling to religions, traditions and, ultimately, a powerful ruler, because that allows them to avoid making decisions. In many instances, slaves prefer to be slaves, as long as they are relatively well treated. The fact that they ultimately turn themselves into canon fodder is beyond their mental capacity, or desire, to grasp. Face it - the human evolution has just begun; most of us are nothing more than cattle.
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  • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 9 years, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I had forgotten about that one. But there was a kernel of truth. When I was young and looking to get laid to be blunt I found the single best place without the fear of VD was any function run by the Democratic Party. the dudettes would stop at nothing to get you signed up for whatever and i always obliged

    sincerely

    A. Frederick Neumann
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  • Posted by Maritimus 9 years, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Hello Dean,
    I read the article at the link you provided. I found it difficult, sometimes confusing or ambiguous. My overall impression was: an attempt to describe a Utopia with insufficient structure, consistency or basic completeness. Too bad. The subject of the role of government is vitally important and ignored by vast majorities of Americans. You might benefit from studying Ayn Rand's writings. She is excellent at exposing ideas in a consistent and carefully thought out way. "Producer" or not, welcome to the discussions.
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  • Posted by AdmNelson 9 years, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Ah, we are now in agreement. Totalitarianism is the complete fulfillment and final flower of collectivism.
    In the cases of creeping collectivism, the transition to totalitarianism is often so gradual that the original authors are not associated with the eventual tyrants. When the transition is rapid, they can be, as in the Marx-Lenin-Stalin linkage.
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  • Posted by DeanStriker 9 years, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Yes, it sure came out "hard to follow" because I could post only that headline, which in context proved to be lousy. I tried to edit it to include a little description and the link, but found no way.
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  • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 9 years, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I'll extend those remarks into something I observed in the military with regularity. One of my assignments was active duty adviser with a reserve component unit. An infantry battalion. Spread over 1/4th of a western state with one Recruiting Sergeant. The units had trouble meeting the 70% rule in numbers and personnel qualified. Reason the old timers had learned they could hold out for a promotion or not re-enlist. Reverse blackmail. Weight Control programs were and this time not as a saying but as reality a joke and so was drill attendance. As a result the unit's were flabby at the top and inexperienced at the bottom. That was the problem that caused the low numbers. A North Carolilna unit commander called their bluff and bounced out the dead wood recruiting from experienced regulars out of the service to get college degrees. Many took the degree and ROTC or did the reserve component commissioning route. The unit hit 100% even with US Army personnel upgefuchting at every opportunity. Then went back to the regulars.

    We sent many to OCS at Fort Benning Georgia. That brought in good people from off the streets even out of highschools if 17.

    the one thing they all had in common? Looking for some order and discipline in their lives. They candidly described their home lives as to open, too unorganized and too iffy with next to zero rules.

    But we made sure they realized we were in the breaking things and killing people business regardless of politics the ultimate unorganized lack of rules clusterf...k in existence.

    Years later I found out one had made General, three or four Colonel five to seven Lieutenant Colonel (one an GED laid off saw mill worker) and many to the highest ranks non commissioned one to Sergeant Major a former janitor.

    The system broke down of course but then along came Kuwait and bang the reserves went to war. The old system still came back in the form of vote hunting politicians. Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray of Washington good examples. Bitching about the poor familes back home....Two dumb asses who didn't bother to check to see what active duty mean in terms of family benefits.

    They were Shia supporters so it figures.

    The reserves paid the price for being the hidey hole for those with connections during Vietnam.

    But like all of us....they went where they were told to go by their their military and political leaders who ultimately were given the power by the mothers and fathers and relations of those reserve soldiers.

    Pray to your own God the seasoned veterans never decided to uphold their oath of office. When the Dogs of War return home they are most to be feared. A lesson not lost on the ex governor of Arizona. I see nothing being done to cause them not to uphold that oath.

    Those who treat their soldiers despicably are soon despised by those who are their protectors. Crossing that line is easy. They never took an oath of allegiance to you.

    Which all ties in together with the main point. Why people look for protection from force by being part of force.
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  • Posted by ewv 9 years, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Hayek remained a collectivist welfare statist, including in his The Road to Serfdom. He didn't like the results of socialist and communist collectivism, but only argued as a social utilitarian that much of collectivist economic policy is collectively self-defeating. But Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin were the results of the ideology of collectivism, not an extremist aberration.
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  • Posted by gaiagal 9 years, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    You know your Iron Butterfly :)

    Seeing the condition of some of my friends, as they returned from Woodstock, made me very happy that I didn't go.

    They were foolish then - though their idealistic exuberance, at that time, could be explained away by the inexperience and know-it-allness of youth. Now there is no excuse for those people not to be able to extrapolate and arrive at the true cost of "free."
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  • Posted by $ jdg 9 years, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Man was a grabbing and fighting animal long before he became rational. Our reason is only the top layer of our minds, and is often not really in charge. In fact, most things we do originate in gut feelings, and our "reasons" for doing them are rationalizations constructed after the fact.

    Mental discipline, of any sort, can help us understand this process better, but anyone who thinks his reason is in complete control of it is fooling himself.
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  • Posted by ewv 9 years, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    You don't have to be a paid member to post new topics here. But the writing at that link is hard to follow. It seems to range from advocating anarchism to the duty ethics of Biblical Commandments.
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  • Posted by ewv 9 years, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    People are not "bound into groups" for any legitimate moral reason. Contrary to the mythological 'narrative' of conservative traditionalism, it most certainly is force when society coercively "ensures conduct" and tries to "ensure respect within the group". "All laws/rules, all governments" most certainly are "an act of force".

    The benefits of society are primarily accumulation of knowledge and trade, not "stability and security" of a tribe. Voluntarily dealing with other people is not for the "group's well being", and it is not a "compromise of independence". Neither is the 'security' of a proper government protecting the rights of the individual, in contrast to imposing conservative faith and force for 'tradition' and feelings of "security" against people with new ideas pursuing their own lives.
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  • Posted by Maritimus 9 years, 7 months ago
    In trying to understand how Germans elected to be governed by Hitler, I think that I learned that for at least a while the majority thought that they would be the governing "force". Powering over "others" (Jews, communists, "revolutionaries", WWI deserters etc.) Add to that the fact that would be tyrants are first rate demagogues, unscrupulous and morally corrupt. Very many lies can be sugar-coated well enough for the unthinking, poorly educated and emotionally anxious people to swallow them whole.
    In short, divide us in "us versus them", promise utopia and twist the message at will, disregarding truths. Add to the mix the substitution of indoctrination for education. Sound familiar?
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  • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 9 years, 7 months ago
    Conscious Beings wouldn't and we weren't supposed to be.
    The government was permitted to use force only when absolutely necessary; to protect our Being, our pursuit of happiness, our property and our contracts.
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  • Posted by AdmNelson 9 years, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    With experience comes wisdom. Hayek's early collectivist ethics were in the central European tradition of the late 19th and early 20th century. Later, in "The Road to Serfdom" (1944) he wrote of collectivists constructing government infrastructures which, when they fell into the hands of Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin, became the tools of barbarous totalitarianism.
    BTW: Why do meteorologists love economists? Because economists' predictions are so bad that they make meteorologists' forecasts look good. Incidentally, I'm an econometrician myself -- the marriage between economics (the dismal science) and statistics (the scary mathematics).
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  • Posted by ewv 9 years, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    The statism cannot be reversed by appealing to conservative collectivism.
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  • Posted by Herb7734 9 years, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Very potent portrayals Woodstock Disease? I like it.
    In a Gadda Da Vida is how you say in a garden of Eden with your mind scrambled by drugs. I once asked an acquaintance who was at Woodstock what he remembered the most about it. He knocked me back on my heels with his answer. It was, "The smell."
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  • Posted by ewv 9 years, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Hayek's utilitarianism and welfare statism were his collectivist ethics and politics, not economics. They are wrong and destructive. As fundamentals they cannot be swept under the rug by claiming "no economist is perfect".
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