Letter Amongst Friends

Joe, just because the rich are getting super rich, does not mean that quality of life for all does not and is not increasing. In fact it only follows that services for all does increase, as the super rich (or merely rich :) ) try to sell more amenities and make these amenities ever more affordable in order for the super rich to dominate their respective markets (eg: AOL, Wal-Mart, MicroSoft) in order to become and stay super rich.

However, Levon, just because the quality of life is increasing for the middle class does not mean the middle class is thriving! Just the mean level of comfort for everyone is increasing across the board. For example, my mobile home I bought for $86,000 last year is now worth about $109,000 on rented land. That's not because the mobile home increased or thrived (they don't as a rule - they are like cars they always depreciate) only that the average house sale or housing market in general has increased as a whole, bumping everything up.

In the same way, my own observations show me that the middle class is decreasing (ie: becoming upper or lower class) - school costs are getting higher, low level jobs like waitress, car salesman, everything now needs some form of certificate or credentials (which costs $), housing costs more (while rent costs the same or less), cars cost more, transportation and insurance, utilities, everything costs more to keep the middle class cash poor and in debt (to the super rich).

They are kept placid by a mean level of amenities, higher "low end" quality of life, and cheap entertainment. Sure they are low level comfortable, like their pets :) but less and less the middle class does not have the resources or opportunity to change their destiny much. Their choices have been removed (by not telling them about the alternate ways of life from changing education to training for a (probably) low level job - again to keep them indebted to the Right) and many areas have been blocked (I could still become a lawyer or doctor or PhD (which is by no means rich in these days), but I could not become a Bill Gates unless I was ludicrously lucky and brilliant and had some connections. The likelihood of me competing with other companies ensures I stay poor and cash strapped except for rare circumstances where I see an opportunity in business and have the *capital* to take advantage of it. That capital in Canada is virtually impossible to come by unless you are already in the rich group (and are opperating in Vancouver, Calgary, Ottawa, Toronto or Montreal). In the States, one can get financial backing more easily (Wall Street, Sillicon Valley, The Strip, etc), but not as easily as one may imagine, and you really don't make that much money unless as I said you are like Bill Gates or Eric Schmidt: very clever and very, very lucky (in the right place in the right time). And who knows what governmental and financial assistance those guys got too. And they were already in good colleges in the states - meaning they must have been from upper middle class backgrounds at least to have that opportunity.

This "american dream" is highly unlikely, and becomes less likely because the right contunies to strengthen their various monopolies. The only resbit we are afforded as their slaves is when a new Right wing oligarch team comes in and tries to undercut the legacy monopoly with new technology. Then they soon become the new monopoly we are enslaved to.

Is this not contrary to the explicit political morés of a liberal democracy? Why is the superrich or the oligarchs allowed to have such various monopolies upon us? It is exactly because of the distinction of the left and right are not taken seriously at the largest, most fundamental, level!

I don't think that the distinction between the left and the right are meaningless abstractions at all. In fact, I see that this view is part of the *cause* of the left being impotent to stop the right from becoming more powerful and keeping the middle class cashstrapped!

Meaningless Po-Mo, critical theory abstractions are shoved down our throats in university leaving us absolutely a) in a dream world when it comes to how the real world operates, also b) more concerned about the welfare of some abstracted group (the Ethiopians, the Wal-Mart slaves in Thailand, the gay baby whales for Jesus, etc.) to c) therefore care enough or know enough to stop the Right (ie: big business / government, the Rich and Super Rich, ie: the Oligarchs) who actually own and run our "democracy".

Meanwhile the right is taught to be practical, efficient. They get their MBA, Lawyer's or MD, or Engineering Degrees. They learn marketting. They know what the score is, they know what they need to do (to get $$$ as that is what they love for those them that do) and they sure as hell have not been shown any alternative ways of life to oligarchy. For those who lean towards the right (who have a guilty conscience) who have been shown any alternatives it always runs in the vein of an authoritative religious commitment - holding them back! Or if they love honour enough they may turn to soldiering. Or a combination thereof; but notice how the oligarchs therefore successfully keep the competition out of the game? Therefore, more and more, the educational alternatives to oligarchy run in the vein of right wing bible college (which is equally ineffective at stopping the Right - as oligarchs have greed, not guilt or honour - they don't care if they are going to hell, they say the man with the most money upon death wins), and not true liberal education, for a liberal soul in all senses, political and philosophical.

An educated, strong left free of meaningless abstractions and that knows the game and can reason freely is exactly what these two regimes need if they are to stay a liberal democracy. As only the left can swing the political apparatus around to freely regulate and control the everly increasing free markets and insert non self destructive morés back into the politeia, morés that regulate and uphold the liberal ideal that allows for free rational consent to even ocurr (and perhaps even amoure de soi, and even eudemonia?)

Well, now that I am finished the rant of our forbears :) I'll just say that I am surprised you two have strayed so much from the flock!

josh

Does Reason rule the soul?

The soul is like a family - reason does not rule anymore than will or desire does. They work in conjunction. The desires are like chaotic, screaming and jumping children - they want many things, and they have no self-control. The reason is like a wise and overseeing mother; in control, beyond wise, all knowing, all seeing, "eyes in the back of her head", can read exactly what you mean or did simply by the look on your face; she decides which few of the many desires is good for the family to undertake (to ultimately silence the children; but to also please them in the way she knows is best whether desire currently wants it or knows it now). Once she has decided the matter is over, she now leaves it for the father (will) to enforce (as she goes on to consider other matters) - silent, unrelenting, unmoving except when he wills it, will pushes through the decision to act upon, until it is done. No discussion, no equivocation. The matter has been decided. Reason agrees and desires submit. If reason was correct in her judgement, desires are happy that they got their way (but in a way that was the best for the whole family/soul). Desire must always get its way - or none of the soul is happy.

If Will is reasonable or virtuous, reason persuaded him merely by speech. If he is unreasonable, then reason becomes an advisor, the woman behind the throne, subtly advising will without will realizing it is being persuaded.

Which facet rules? Reason does not, she merely decides to do the best thing desire tells her they want, and the best way to do it and when. Will does not rule, although he is strong, even stronger than reason or will (if he succeeds), and pushes the decision through to completion, it is not his decision to make.

For happiness to occur in the soul or the family, all parts must play their role. None rules too much - all parts must act in harmony.

Rebelliousness vs. Conformity

There seems to be a contradiction at the heart of the philosopher. On one hand the philosopher is supposed to rebel against any authority; they are to question everything, and take nothing on authority as being true or good.

On the other, they are supposed to conform to the authority of Reason, to the authority of the Truth. For , as being lovers of wisdom, one cannot find wisdom unless they find knowledge. One who is wise who knows all there is to know about a particular topic. One cannot have knowledge unless they have true justified belief. And thus, we are left with the dilemma, that the philosopher is always rebelling against truth claims but simultaneously seeking to find knowledge to which they acquiesce.


There are two possible outcomes then: 1) the philosopher will always be in a higher state of doubt than certainty. Constantly rebelling against, unsure of, and doubting truths as they come to him/her, even ones that were previously believed or "proven" true. These ones are too sceptical, too much the "haters of hypocrisy". 2) The philosopher succumbs to some truth, or system thereof and holds on to it and never examines it again. These people are the "lovers of truth" and they only submit to what reason tell s them is true - BUT this only leads them to accepting the first truth system that seems sufficiently good enough (and corresponds with their bias that the truth is good and ought to be so). This is as much biased as the first group. Now matter how much they may call themselves philosophers.

There seems to be this divide, a constant battle, between the two primary tenets of a philosopher - their love of truth, and their hatred of hypocrisy. A person's own inclinations allows them to slide off into one or the other camp over time.

But perhaps there is a third option? Perhaps knowledge is not a persistent state, but only comes when one is forced to give an account (either by their own doubt in their own mind, or by a persistent outer questioner). As such, no one knows anything until such time they are forced to - and the process of rehashing old arguments becomes so familiar to them after repetition that one can ramble off an argument without even thinking, thus satisfying their doubt nearly immediately - intuitively, instead of calculatively as it must have been when forming these relational matrices. In this way, one can maintain their freedom of thought, their potential doubt of any truth claim, until such time they are forced by said doubt to prove to themselves again something is indeed true.

do what you want

Here's a news flash: You know all those people who tell you not to do what you want to do? That doing what you want all the time is bad for you. Even that you should contract your wants, or do your duty and stop being a child who does what they want all day and is irresponsible?

Rubbish! Hypocritical rubbish, at that.

Human beings only do what they want to do. In fact, humans NEVER do anything they don't want to. Bullshit you cry? I hate going to work, you retort, I certainly don't want to, but I have to because I am duty bound to, or something like this.

Not so. You don't *have* to do anything - you only do what you want. Think about it. Your desire to not go to work is less than the alternative - and some corresponding perceived consequence of NOT going to work like: being yelled at by your boss, being looked down on as a slacker by your peers / wife / husband / parents, and the last and probably most important, not having any money. You want to be free of the anxiety of not having a secure financial future, more than you want to stay home and not go to that god damn hell hole. You desire living free of these unpleasant things more than you desire to not go to work, so therefore, you go to work to avoid these unpleasant consequences that you want to experience less than you want to experience going to work.

People always do exactly what they want to do at that moment - trouble is they sometimes get wrapped up (or habituated) into doing what they want right then and there without thinking about their other wants, which can actually be stronger. They want to drink that beer, but they have forgotten at the moment they want to be more healthy and less fat and the long term pleasure of being so more than they want the 15 minutes of pleasure drinking that beer.

This isn't revolutionary, or ingenious. This is common sense that everyone has been told - but most people get it confused to think there is a such a thing as duty vs. want. Duty is merely the name people give to actions or a opinions about actions that they want to do because it makes them feel responsible and good about themselves. They would feel guilty if they didn't do what they were dutybound to do, and most people who believe in duty (if not all), would rather do their duty than feel guilty about not doing it.

Dear Editor...

I recently wrote this letter to the editor at this online magazine re: there "100 most dangerous questions in science":

http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_print.html

Here is my letter to them. They have (oddly) yet to publish it...

Dear Edge Editor,

With respect to your 2006 issue of “Dangerous Ideas” in science, I would like to humbly suggest that every single one of your contributors missed the single most dangerous idea to modernity. This omission is so heinous – due to the pervasiveness of this particular idea in our “culture”, that as an educated reader I feel duty bound to point it out and hopefully as an educated publisher you will feel obligated to print this constructive yet earnest critique.

It is no small problem that this idea was missed. It is, in fact, the most dangerous idea to any period of time in which humans still exist and that all philosopher’s to one extent or another have sought to solve. Even worse, it is an idea that all of your contributors have been educated to believe implicitly and largely unreflectively. Many of your worthy contributors sensed this idea deep in their subconscious and struggled to articulate it in their responses. It is something that Nietzsche posed directly in his work “Beyond Good and Evil”, and that Kant before him tried desperately to solve what “is” solely in order to prove that this idea was false:

Morality does not exist.

What do I mean? There is no justifiable basis for any moral adjudication in any sense. Any action is as right or wrong as any other and no one can tell you otherwise and be speaking the truth.

If danger means the apprehension of the possibility of impending physical or mental harm, then this is the single most dangerous idea to humankind for it is the Pandora’s box which enables any human to justify their wants upon another by liberating their dogmatic belief they even require justification to act beyond: because I want to. For it is true beyond a shadow of a doubt, despite that fact that you may feel my observation (my “idea”) is banal and commonplace, that you must admit every human being of every time acts as if there is a justifiable morality, despite that there is none. Including, most notably, all of your contributors.

All humans go through a similar thought process: What should I so today? I guess I’ll cut the grass. Why? Because I / my wife / my city wants me to. Why? Because justification-X is good. Why is X good? Hardly anyone gets to this last proposition. Ultimately all one can admit is “Because I say so” is the final arbiter of why it is good or bad to do anything. This is obviously false. It is a proposition so obvious that all two year olds know it and after multiple failed attempts at understanding why adults justify the things they do the poor children have to be duped to cohere with the view of any society. It always boils down to: because I (the power at hand) says so. And they don’t justify it anymore than that because they can’t. Not in the same way we justify mathematical or logical propositions, or even scientific propositions. Oh we can do surveys that say “95% of people don’t like murder”. That doesn’t make it wrong a priori, or even probably.

Some came close to seeing this – they speculated if we actually have free will or not. So what? Nothing would functionally change if the majority of the populace believed that. People would still go to jail. We may just rationalize the reasons differently. But probably not as the self-aware, free willed, moral self is as natural a self-generated illusion as it is valuable. They wondered if democracy may in some way fail. Of course it may – it has in every other time it was tried – what is that different about now? America is not indestructible nor is it that important.

But they failed to understand the tacit supposition at the root of all of their “dangerous ideas”: what if all society for all time as we know it has no base? No moral truth with which to fall back upon. What if no moral justifications are possible and all moral rules are ultimately arbitrary impositions?

And they are. Nothing can be more dangerous than this as nothing can potentially cause that much harm to that many people. And in not noticing this, your contributors failed to understand the challenge that Nietzsche has provided to intellectuals of every field.

You may have read my dangerous idea and said “of course!” Anthropology observed that years ago. But no they didn’t – cultural anthropologists assume “because no one can actually prove that doing anything is good or evil, right or wrong, and we observe morality to be culturally based with no objective standard for adjudication, therefore we have no moral right to tell any other culture what to do.”

But that is an incorrect inference! If there is nothing morally wrong or right, then you cannot infer that “we have no moral right to tell any other culture what to do” or that anyone has or does not have a moral justification to or not do anything. The truth is anyone can do whatever they want and if there is no justifiable morality we cannot tell them they ought to truthfully stop, only that we don’t like it and we will impose our views upon them in resistance.

This is the terrible truth that Nietzsche unleashed and that paved the way for the Nazi regime. And it only took 30-50 years or so to come to fruition. They took this truth and said, “If there is no moral right or wrong, then the strong will rule. And we are the strong.” And we all know what proceeded from that. Sure, the “west” beat them in overtly political terms, but in educational terms the west has bought into the idea of moral relativism wholesale with all of its dangerous implications.

When the majority of people actually believe this and it comes to its fullest extent, no one will be safe. And Nietzsche’s plan to destroy the “slave” morality of democracy and Christianity will have succeeded.

the illusions of teleology and perfection

Is it fitting for humans to think and speak? In one sense yes - it is fitting that a human can speak or speak well, as we are the animals on the planet that do that. As such it is fitting that we do. We have a human nature, that in the most general sense can be learned and defined. Basically it is that we think and communicate in abstract terms, build tools, and live in social groups and desire to do these things to one extent or another.

But this does not mean that there is a certainly justifiable end goal or perfection of humans. We can be good at these human things, and we can train to be better at them, but that doesn't mean we ought to or have to for any reason other than we may or may not want to. It simple does not follow. In the most general sense people do want to be happy - but from this fact it does not follow that we therefore ought to seek happiness, or that we ought to seek happiness for anyone else. I think Aristotle knew this and we have interpretted him wrong.

Why do we do this? Why do we assume intuitively that things ought to be better? Where does the "ought" come from? In most cases it comes from a preceeding hypothetical supposition: If we want to be happy, then X follows (X being that philosopher's argument on how to be happy based on their supposition of what human nature is - and this changes throughout philosophical epochs). But no one can prove that "All humans want to be happy all of the time" or that "All humans ought to be happy all of the time". These are undemonstrable propositions. We can make them plausible by surveys and inductive reasoning, but not certainly or necessarily true.

(Why does it need to be certainly or necessarily true? It doesn't - only for us who worry about such things such as the truth. Feel free to seek your happiness, I won't stop you).

Yet it is assumed quite often. People always seem to think things ought to be better, things ought to be made perfect or as perfect as possible. If it is broken it must be fixed. Why is this assumed so often? Because, humans have another root bias which causes this - the idea of perfection. Take two people making a bed. One says, "Just flop the covers over the cats, that's the way to do this [as the cats cannot be controlled and it is easier to make the bed around them as they play fight in amongst the covers as they are want to do]". The other responds, "No, that's not the right [correct] way to make a bed" and moves the cats off the bed.

Why? Who was right? The answer is neither was right. There is no correct way to make a bed. There are ways which get the job done better and faster, but whoever proved that was the correct way? That assumes things in the material world ought to be perfect - that perfection can and does exist. I love Plato, I think he was the best philosopher ever and I would do almost anything to vinidcate his thought - but I'm sorry he was just wrong here. There is no Idea of Perfection - at least, not in the realm of the forms as where he would put it (meaning a permanent a priori concept existing independent of human thought).

The notion of perfection is a by product of human thought - perfection is an imaginary concept we language speakers subconciously invent and relate to the physical world. We need it because we need nouns to relate to whole, perfectly contiguous concepts (whether the thinsg the words corelate to are or not or we can know with dedictive certainty they perfectly corelate or not) such as "1", "door", etc. We cannot think (as a verb - ie: process thoughts correctly) without there being a notion of perfect wholeness. And just because there needs to be this mental understanding for us to understand our perceptions of the world, does not mean this mental appirition (perfect contiguity) exists outside of our thought. A perfect circle does not exist outside the world as far as we know and even our understanding of our perceived world is imperfect so we can't even be sure of that. Mathematics are perfect in thought, and seem to have a margin of predictable correspondance to the world, but there is nothing guarenteeing this won't change or can't change. And the predictable variables are just that - predictions who may change and do have a level of variance for each moment in time.

One has responded in antiquity and the middle period: Yes, but we do have a notion of perfection and we are imperfect beings, therefore perfection must exist independant of our minds as, if not, then where does it come from? My answer would be: how do you know you are imperfect? Fallible yes, but how do you know perfection is enduring? The human conception of perfection is perfect in that it is contiguous and coherent with the rest of our thought. 1 = 1. Perfect. I think; I am. Perfect. And contained in our thought entirely. Why do we assume it must extend beyond our thought? By definition it cannot and does not.

One has also responded in post modernity: yes, but if the corelation of our thought (our mental idea of "1") ever changed with the world (a single stone [if such a thing exists]) we would never know because thought itself would no longer function. It would be utter unknowable chaos if suddenly A did not equal A, or 1 did not eqal 1, or A & ~A were true. We wouldn't know, therefore what we cannot think is impossible for us to experience.

My answer would be, maybe. How do you know that? Given how you think now you correctly deduct this conclusion, but this does not mean that perfection ought to be. True, it means why worry about it as we would never know if it ever happened or is happening, but it does not prove therefore there must be order in the universe just because a universe without order would not make sense to us. Who said it was supposed to or has to make sense? Prove that to me. It cannot be done as the proof requires a knowably, deductively certain corelation between thought and the reality. No such conduit exists.

Oh, I am perfectly willing to entertain the notion that "the outside world" does not really exist and the perception of it each of us has is in truth "reality" or as much reality as we can ever know. That there is no objective truths, as objectivity assumes knowable certainty in the physical world which any scientist will tell you is not the way it apparently works. But that does not mean that notions such as perfection exist outside human thought, even though it seems to be consistenly inter-subjective, or a consistent inter-subjective truth. Perfection is nothing but an invention, a language speakers thought by-product, and when all the language speakers are gone, perfection ceases to exist.

Antiquity responds, but perfection cannot cease to exist as if it ever did then it wasn't perfection to begin with.

I (with post modernity) respond: Exactly. It wasn't. We imagined it.

So I'ze-a-thinkin'...

Informal education is very powerfull. What do I mean by informal education Mr. Unknown Interlocular? Well, let me tell you.

By Informal educaiton I mean the unofficial education one receives daily from pop-art. The media of the masses and for the masses so to speak. Not official - so that includes the little sayings people say, the colloquialisms, and also the advertising campaigns. Movies, music, etc.

Take this blog for example. The sub-title is Philosophy, Art and Gung-Fu. Philosophy is an old Greek word which means (the pursuit of being a) friend/lover of wisdom. Art is a "creative" or stylistic / imagistic expression of the truths intuited or reasoned from philosophy, and gung-fu is chinese for the "internal power" (or that's what I was told).

Three types if education, one for the rational, one for the appitetative, and the last for the spiritied - three portions of the Platonic tri-partite soul that consist of us all, one of these facets being our dominant psychological portion. Philosophy cultivates your rationality, your reason. Art cultivates and diminishes your particular desires, and gung-fu (internal style martial arts when practiced correctly - ie: including the fighting aspect) cultivates and moderates your spirit, or thymos.

So there.