GENIUS FORUMS

In every teacher and preacher of what is new we encounter the same “wickedness” that makes conquerors notorious - even if its expression is subtler and it does not immediately set the muscles in motion, and therefore also does not make one that notorious. What is new, however, is always “evil,” being that which wants to conquer and overthrow old boundary markers and the old pieties; and only that which is old is [considered] “good.” The “good” men are in all ages those who dig the old thoughts, digging deep and getting them to bear fruit - the farmers of the spirit.” . . . .*

10 October 2008

Yesterday when a man at the McCain rally ask John McCain to please win and stop the country from turning socialist, it finally fell on the table; the root of all, the root of everything. The ass-bottom crux of human affairs; the dichotomy of dichotomies, and all of its historically appearing cousins: Master/Slave; aristocrat/peasant; Christian equality and Calvinist privilege; Social Darwinist and Socialist; Diversity and Unity; Difference/Sameness; Metaphysical/Existential; Conservative/Liberal, etc.

The Conservative Mind

In one of these category groupings, a world view emerges that assumes a lawful and unchanging base to human affairs. This view seeks to retain as inalienable right what appears to others as privilege. It is fair to assume of all dominant lines of human families that their ancestors were the first to pick up the stick and shake it at others to ward them off what they have had the strength and craftiness to seize and protect as their own. This is the only ‘right’ exampled in nature, and so those that have gotten, get to keep, and this means keep-from others.

So when one speaks of any era in which “conservative” and “liberal” forces are at work, one is taking note of this over and again, in its many costumes. Not only should money/property/advantage be held within those breeding strains who are already in possession of it, we should also conserve every social more and law that supports the breeding unit that perpetuates it; hence the special focus upon family in conservative rhetoric. In supporting this, we support in turn the notion that certain strains of humans are entitled by natual law to the lion’s share of wealth and material. The dynamics of the French Revolution did little but to extend this get/keep belief beyond the aristocracy to the “meritocracy” - the way we divvy things up today. “If you can get it, it’s yours,” is social darwinism in a letter-sweater.

The conservative seeks to conserve these ideas of an unchangeable natural law for humans (and a natural right to free-market grab however and whatever one can), and thus is in fear and resistance to any configuration that threatens such a god-given state of affairs. To many conservative minds, liberal efforts to equalize this distribution are destructive to humanity itself (or, at least, destructive to their particular position in the social hierarchy). These ideas would be as dangerous to them as Nietzsche suggests: it strikes the conservative mind as “evil” itself. And to speak the language of evil, one has to be be surfing the waves of human fear.

If we attempt to reconfigure this righteous human dynamic, humanity itself will fall apart, so the conservative mind might think. We must “conserve” this natural law of privilege to those who have the power and circumstances to get it; and we must fight against the devastating leveling effect of liberal equalization. It’s not natural; it’s the end of that part of human privilege that prevents the whole world from being divied up into mediocre allottments. Conservative/Aristocratic/Calvinist/Social Darwinist/Master thinking believes the rest of the world should be grateful for the citadels of public works and culture that only wealth and privilege can erect and protect. Pie cutting destroys the beauty of the pie. The rabble does not know what is for its own good. It would make a strip-mall barrio of it all. Would and did.

This was best said after the dust settled from the French Revolution, and one could gaze around at the petty establishments that pie-dividing produced. The whole history of the world, it was said, is driven by the the rich trying to keep the poor from robbing them. Rich has right, to the conservative thinker. It is righteousness itself. And even if that conservative thinker should him or herself be at the bottom of this configuration of wealth, they are inclined to support those that have got, along with all the social mores and laws that confirm this as natural law as supported in history. The “old pieties” are those in need of upholding. Anything “new” is going to be evil.

They embed themselves in their own breeding affairs as well as the breeding affairs of others (hence the varieties of xenophobia among conservative thinkers); they speak of their own allottments as “castles” and promote their own autonomy as “kings.” They become patrichian, and hence nationalistic, for what is a nation but a larger unit of breeding identity loyal to its father[land]. Their patriotic sentiments are easy to manipulate, looking back, looking back, and “dig[ing] the old thoughts, digging deep and getting them to bear fruit,” for they are the “good” men. A good old boy: upholding the sophomoric fraternities of his brethren’s past. A good man: he who upholds, conserves the values of the past; he who does not make waves. He will be patriotic, for the state is his larger breeding unit, and with other breeding units, the twain should not meet. The “aristocratic” strain must not be contaminated.

Consequently, the conservative mind is easily upset by other races, or obsessed with the notion of race in general. In his blood runs the fear of contaminated aristocracy, and so he busies himself in critique of “inferior” bloodlines, or most especially the mixing of bloodlines. In the main, the conservative thinker is far more obsessed with sex: for conservatism demands (on paper) that sex be restricted to a matter of marriage/breeding; and it demands punishment for all non-procreative sex - the real root of the homophobic tendencies of the conservative mind. The same importance of breeding identity in the deep human past is carried through in the conservative turn of mind today. That money does for humans today what family name did for humans in the past is of no significant consequence. Whoever can grab, can have. Whoever has, can keep from others. Whoever breeds can make his material success a matter of genetic destiny. That’s the natural law.

In general, the conservative mind is deeply sentimental about the past; connected to the way-it’s-always-been; naturally suspicious (the social-darwinist animal on its guard); resistant and fearful of change (for change would refute these age-old natural human laws); apt to characterize the liberal thinker as “dangerous”; even imply that he or she is “evil.” The conservative thinker is aggressively interested in [regulating] the sex and breeding behavior of others; is worried about contamination of his strain (and hence wants to lawfully manage those of others); is usually homophobic in both a human-husbandry and a limbic-reactive way. He expresses his attachment to the past through his breeding focus in the present; and his attachment to the past makes him powerfully sentimental; hence nationalistic about the greater breeding pool in which he has belonged; generally patriotic in the extreme. His breeding concerns permit him to manage his breeding resources (women) as men have always managed them in the past. This, too, should be conserved.

The conservative thinker does not think it is natural to share on principle, and thus fears all socialist-sounding schemes. A person has what they have, either because their circumstances gave it to them (aristocracy); or because they have gotten it before someone else has (meritocracy), but either way, it is a law of nature that it should be so. Just as Calvinism promoted a spiritual scheme to prevent the poor from robbing the rich, the conservative turn of mind works toward this end as well. Even if the conservative thinkers are themselves on the bottom of the gene pool of appropriation, they would rather support this get-keep state of affairs and all that adorns it, than contemplate its distribution in any other way.

*” . . . But eventually all land is exploited, and the ploughshare of “evil” [the new] must come again and again.”

Friedrich Nietzsche
Gay Science #4
Trans. Walter Kaufmann 1974

.

McCain, was a serial adulterer, his first wife and children have nothing to do with him. Born in Panama Canal zone.

Obama is a closet bi-sexual who has no record on anything. He wasn't even born in one of the 50 states (actually in Kenya).

Joe Biden (the serial liar), born in Pennsylvania, now in Delaware. Claims (in his stump speeches) his first wife was killed by a drunk driver - not true!

Sarah Palin, born in Idaho, raised Catholic till the age of 14, now governor of Alaska. Former business owner, former city councilwoman, former mayor. The only candidate with executive experience..

All american politicians are right wing / far right wing.

Gun to my head? - I'd vote for Sarah Palin..



BTW - Did you write that article?

And, why do you front for some dead guy named Nietzsche.. very mistranslated and ghost written by his equally-whacky sister.


PS - If you ain't from america, Pye, stay on the porch.


.

Tomas: McCain is a serial adulterer, his wife and children have nothing to do with him. Born in Panama Canal zone.

perfect. xeno-focus.

Tomas: Obama is a closet bi-sexual who has no record on anything. He wasn't even born in one of the 50 states (actually in Kenya).

xenophobic and homophobic. you're batting a thousand.

Tomas: Sarah Palin, born in Idaho, raised Catholic till the age of 14, now governor of Alaska

.
what, no smart-ass descriptor? I know what's coming . . .

Tomas: Gun to my head? - I'd vote for Sarah Palin..

priceless . . .

but thanks for reminding me how the conservative mind has to culture guns in the mix as well. Not for arms rising against abusive government, but for keeping our stuff from others; for taking others stuff from them. Simply an arms-extension of how we defend the old system of distribution.

Tomas: BTW - Did you write that article?

yes. just passing through; thought I'd drop off a copy.

Tomas: And, why do you front for some dead guy named Nietzsche.. very mistranslated and ghost written by his equally-whacky sister.

part quoted doesn't have to do with his wacky sister.

Tomas: PS - If you ain't from america, Pye, stay on the porch.

oh, but I am. I'm your next-door porch. yet you wouldn't deter me anyway with your xeno-threat, Tomas. You make it sound like I struck a nerve.

No, I am not patient with conservatism at present. It is a tyranny of ignorance that retains all thinking on a restrictive plane of sentiment and fear. The insistent clinging to private hearth and patriotic home (and guns necessary to secure both) is the aristocratic hangover from a hominoid past - the animal-breeding lead-weights on future conscious being. Our view of earthly materials and our defense of their historic distribution is and will be our own undoing. Belief in its absolute necessity as natural law is the suffocation of future vision.

Pye wrote: To many conservative minds, liberal efforts to equalize this distribution are destructive to humanity itself (or, at least, destructive to their particular position in the social hierarchy). These ideas would be as dangerous to them as Nietzsche suggests: it strikes the conservative mind as “evil” itself.

Nietzsche also said:

44.

......To put the matter briefly and seriously, they belong with the levellers, these falsely named “free spirits” — as eloquent and prolific writing slaves of democratic taste and its “modern ideas”: collectively people without solitude, without their own solitude, coarse brave lads whose courage or respectable decency should not be denied. But they are simply unfree and ridiculously superficial, above all with their basic tendency to see in the forms of old societies up to now the cause for almost all human misery and failure, a process which turns the truth happily on its head! What they would like to strive for with all their powers is the universal, green, pasture-happiness of the herd, with security, absence of danger, comfort, an easing of life for everyone. The two songs and doctrines they sing most frequently are called “Equality of Rights” and “pity for all things that suffer” — and they assume that suffering itself is something we must do away with.

We who are their opposites, we who have opened our eyes and consciences for the question where and how up to now the plant “Man” has grown most powerfully to the heights, we think that this has happened every time under the opposite conditions, that for that to happen the danger of his situation first had to grow enormously, his power of invention and pretence (his “spirit” — ) had to develop under lengthy pressure and compulsion into something refined and audacious, his will for living had to intensify into an unconditional will for power: — we think that hardness, violence, slavery, danger in the alleys and in the hearts, seclusion, stoicism, the art of attempting, and devilry of all kinds, that everything evil, fearful, tyrannical, predatory, snake-like in human beings serves well for the ennobling of the species “Man,” as much as its opposite does: — in fact, when we say only this much we have not said enough, and we find ourselves at any rate with our speaking and silence at a point at the other end of all modern ideology and things desired by the herd, perhaps as their exact opposites?

Beyond Good and Evil

http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/nietzsc ... devil2.htm

(Luckily, Nietzsche's quote is here to support my thinking above; and my thinking above is not here for the purpose of supporting the whole of Nietzsche.)

That was sort of a knotted piece, Pie, and it seems you are still working out your ideas on the subject. I just want to mention that when driving yesterday, I heard the same snip from the rally where the guy asked McCain to save the country from socialism, and I could, of course, understand what informs his thinking. There recently appeared on Fox TeeVee an hour-long special of the most yellow of yellow journalism, dressed in news-documentary, implicating Obama in all the evils of 60s radicalism..

Post-war Sixties radicalism is indeed a very complex group of ideas and trends, and one has to weed through it very, very carefully in order to glean from it what is realistic and practicable. I don't see how average people can do this unless they make it into a research project.

Current right-wing American Christian conservatism is also a confusing group of ideas and propositions, and they are certainly preoccupied with the issue of abortion, sexual licentiousness, deviancy, family, and all the rest. They see Sixties Radicalism as the beginning point where all kinds of destructive ideas and practices entered the mainstream, and they see and note the effects of these destructive influences in the culture at large.

The present juncture in American politics is really, really strange! Many, many people 'resonate' with Obama and his message, in the way that you might hear a song you like and feel moved. Underneath it though---and you can see this if you stop in at the local Democratic Party offices---is a local, popular, certainly Left-leaning movement composed on many different ideals and orientations, and of course hinging into 'all the known suspects' of political thought, such as Chomsky, Zinn and so many others. If Obama gets elected---and I think he will---just the fact that he has been exposed, in a serious, thoughtful way, to the doctrines of Christian Liberation Theology (in his case Christian Black Liberation Theology, a sub-group) is nothing short of extraordinary. Almost unreal. Completely unprecedented.

I don't at all profess to understand what is happening in this culture. But it does seem to me that, as thinking people, we can't get caught-up in the rhetoric of one pole or the other if we really want to understand people, culture, politics, modernity. But one thing is very clear (as far as the American scene goes): we are entering a radically new phase. In that sense, which is a very wide and varied sense, Obama represents the future and what might be, and McCain the past and what has been.

Despite the fact that some think Obama is just as co-opted as anyone and is employed by the power structure, his constituency is not, and those millions of people who donated small sums of money do so because---in a genuine sense---they wish for something new, different, more fair, brighter and happier. At the same time I completely understand the Conservative Christian sort who is trying to hold a family together, looking for some sane, root-values to live by. It is likely that what will happen in the years ahead is a sort of melding process, a getting-to-know-each-other process, where one faction in the culture, expressing left-liberal Christian idealism (Obama's and a whole faction here in the US) will begin to come to terms with a more conservative platform. And the Right-leaning Christians too will have to begin to consider some of the social-Christian doctrines.

Conservative or liberal, or whatever, the problem is that there is no real fundamental difference in the candidates when they are all egotists. Sometimes I think Obama could be pretty cool, but when I watched the last debate, and saw the ugliness in his face when McCain got under his skin, I knew then I really shouldn't expect too much.

Alex,

You are in an optimistic mood.

Let it be so!

Alex Jacob wrote:Despite the fact that some think Obama is just as co-opted as anyone and is employed by the power structure, his constituency is not, and those millions of people who donated small sums of money do so because---in a genuine sense---they wish for something new, different, more fair, brighter and happier.

Anyone acting indirectly has been co-opted.

In that precise sense, Brad, we are all co-opted. That is the nature of politics, social structures, economic structures, etc. What I meant is that in a more democratic sense that (new) constituency has an agenda, has ideas about what it wants, and what it would like to see nationally and internationally.

McCain, was a serial adulterer, his first wife and children have nothing to do with him.

probably PTSD
http://www.fredoneverything.net/FOE_Frame_Column.htm

Pye wrote:The conservative thinker does not think it is natural to share on principle, and thus fears all socialist-sounding schemes. A person has what they have, either because their circumstances gave it to them (aristocracy); or because they have gotten it before someone else has (meritocracy), but either way, it is a law of nature that it should be so. Just as Calvinism promoted a spiritual scheme to prevent the poor from robbing the rich, the conservative turn of mind works toward this end as well. Even if the conservative thinkers are themselves on the bottom of the gene pool of appropriation, they would rather support this get-keep state of affairs and all that adorns it, than contemplate its distribution in any other way.

Pye, are you advocating that poor people should steal from rich people?

Or do you have some other sort of redistribution of wealth in mind?

Tomas, I can understand your crowing in the other thread about my not realizing you were responding here with mockery. I didn't realize that (if that's indeed what you're doing).

But it is beyond me where you have connected me to the very thinking pathology I am trying to understand and unravel - a thinking pathology that works as lead weights on human advancement. I am so far from a rightwingconservative that the light from rightwingconservative cannot reach me.

This is only fractionally about the current US election. It is about one of the deepest divisions of mind upon which hinges an enormous amount of human history. It is about a thinking pathology, and thinking pathologies are of major interest to me. Only understanding the values, the core footholds embedded in such a pathology can one possibly address them.

DHodges: redistribution altogether - in fact, an entire revolution in our relationship to material and the bases upon which we have distributed it.

Humans have traditionally claimed their 'right' to material through circumstance of birth (aristocracy). Since the post-revolution era, humans can now claim their 'right' to material through work & capacity to get it (meritocracy).

Both pathologies hinge upon two words that have seldom been questioned. That to live, one must either "earn" it, or have a "right" to it. Both pathologies are still embedded in the deification of darwinist implications as untranscendable, and such thinking has not escaped the religiosity of rights and earnings as this irreducible natural law.

However, this "law" is not irreducible, and there are deeper bases upon which to consider life than its right to live or its earning that right to live.

Pye wrote:[T]here are deeper bases upon which to consider life than its right to live or its earning that right to live.

Will you elaborate please?

"Whoever knows how to take, to defend, the thing, to him belongs property." - Max Stirner

Jason: "Whoever knows how to take, to defend, the thing, to him belongs property." - Max Stirner

Well, yes, that would be The Ego and His Own through and through, wouldn't it?

Social Darwinism is tributary of the great religious flood. You can feel in it the great relief of men-of-science since Darwin, who now have 'greater' authority to conserve the get/keep scheme of human things.

Pye wrote:[T]here are deeper bases upon which to consider life than its right to live or its earning that right to live.

guest-of-logic asks: Will you elaborate please?

The first movement past a rights-and-earnings pathology toward life is necessity. That it is necessarily so that life shall need thus and thus, at this and that time, etc. Not claimed by [chimerical] rights (which will seek to exclude); and not claimed by authority of earning, as though this is a metaphysical "test" you're going to flunk if you don't get busy and produce.

The rest would be deep work . . . on the ego and its own . . . .

Pye wrote:The first movement past a rights-and-earnings pathology toward life is necessity. That it is necessarily so that life shall need thus and thus, at this and that time, etc.

Why would you grant a person that which is necessary unless you deemed that that person had a right to what is necessary?

guest_of_logic: Why would you grant a person that which is necessary unless you deemed that that person had a right to what is necessary?

I don't grant anything; I am not the author of this dynamic of necessity, nor the dispenser of rights and grants. There are no right or grants, except in a human scheme of withholding. One has to get out of this thinking loop altogether into the purer state of affairs: what is necessary - prior to our deeming and granting. What is already necessarily-so, for life.

There is no reason to look death in the face (i.e. reasonably) by giving desultory attention to life. There is every reason to give every attention to helping things to be; that is looking death in the face. There is no reason to hasten the non-existence of things that will become non-existent. That's taken care of, so to speak. In existence, one tends to existence.

There are no right or grants, except in a human scheme of withholding. One has to get out of this thinking loop altogether into the purer state of affairs: what is necessary - prior to our deeming and granting. What is already necessarily-so, for life.

There is no reason to look death in the face (i.e. reasonably) by giving desultory attention to life. There is every reason to give every attention to helping things to be; that is looking death in the face. There is no reason to hasten the non-existence of things that will become non-existent. That's taken care of, so to speak. In existence, one tends to existence.

Is it only me or does this so-called answer just suck majorly? Like...whaaat??

But anyway, Pye, what I see missing from your dissertation above, is that there are way too many people, and rather ordinary, poorish ones at that, who are filling the ranks of the conservatives, i.e., they ain't all rich. So this also needs to be looked at, and is something I personally find discouraging: the desire of many to be the masses, to grovel, to accept and reinforce their own low status. The love of hierarchy, and the incredible imagination and gullibility of supposing that the rich and famous are somehow good, or interesting. It takes two to dance that tango.

Basically the credulity of people has me distressed.

Pye wrote:I don't grant anything

Every day you grant me the right to live by not visiting me with a sawn off shotgun and enacting murderous intent.

Pye wrote:I am not the author of this dynamic of necessity

No, but you do choose whether or not to engage in it. You haven't answered my question as to why you'd do so unless you believed that other people (and yourself) had a right to have their needs met.

Pye wrote:nor the dispenser of rights and grants.

Oh but you are: see my first sentence of this post.

Pye wrote:There are no right or grants, except in a human scheme of withholding.

Of course rights and grants are part of a human scheme - that goes without saying.

But "withholding"? What is being withheld when you grant me the right to live?

Pye wrote:One has to get out of this thinking loop altogether into the purer state of affairs: what is necessary - prior to our deeming and granting.

How does that help? It still leaves open the question as to why we'd bother to respond to what is necessary.

Pye wrote:What is already necessarily-so, for life.

Now I'm not sure that I understand what you're trying to say. Up until now I had thought that you were talking about what is necessary to maintain life, but this sentence seems to imply that you're talking about what is necessarily true about life. Clarification?

Pye wrote:There is no reason to look death in the face (i.e. reasonably) by giving desultory attention to life. There is every reason to give every attention to helping things to be; that is looking death in the face. There is no reason to hasten the non-existence of things that will become non-existent. That's taken care of, so to speak. In existence, one tends to existence.

Exactly what this paragraph has to do with rights or even necessity completely eludes me.

Pye wrote:DHodges: redistribution altogether - in fact, an entire revolution in our relationship to material and the bases upon which we have distributed it.

Humans have traditionally claimed their 'right' to material through circumstance of birth (aristocracy). Since the post-revolution era, humans can now claim their 'right' to material through work & capacity to get it (meritocracy).

Both pathologies hinge upon two words that have seldom been questioned. That to live, one must either "earn" it, or have a "right" to it. Both pathologies are still embedded in the deification of darwinist implications as untranscendable, and such thinking has not escaped the religiosity of rights and earnings as this irreducible natural law.

However, this "law" is not irreducible, and there are deeper bases upon which to consider life than its right to live or its earning that right to live.

Pye, what you are saying seems to me very vague. Please clarify and give some concrete example of what you are talking about.

Calling rights a "pathology" does not make it so. You seem to take for granted some authority that will accomplish this re-distribution.

I recognise no such authority. No one has that right over me.

Even Marx would say that a worker has some right to what he has produced, based on the fact that his labor went into it.

Taking away the rights of a group of humans means giving those rights to someone else - actually taking them by force, since basic human rights are not something people give up without a struggle.

People have certain inalienable rights. Any attempt to remove those rights is an attempt to turn people into property - slaves of another. I don't think this is what you want to do, but the vagueness of your wording makes it difficult to interpret.

DHodges: Calling rights a "pathology" does not make it so. You seem to take for granted some authority that will accomplish this re-distribution.

I recognise no such authority. No one has that right over me.

Do you recognize the fact that life needs thus and thus to live? If you're in need of authority to govern your actions, how much more authoritative a grounding are you expecting?

Look, this is all about what human rationale we use to divvy the materials of living. Ancient rationale used social class/heredity. Post-darwinian thinkers have used capacity/earning. The Max Stirners/Nietzsches of the world have used might. Each of these beliefs about distribution are downstream of the cause and effect facts of living things. I am calling for a rationale of distribution that is truly rational i.e. truthful. This is the truth of living things - the one behind all the how-we-go-about-its. It's a higher truth. And that is the movement that people who cannot move past right/earning/and might cannot make. They are stuck downstream of this source-thought, arguing distribution rationales upon withholding patterns, as though their authority to do so is higher than the truth.

guest_of_logic: Now I'm not sure that I understand what you're trying to say. Up until now I had thought that you were talking about [1] what is necessary to maintain life, but this sentence seems to imply that you're talking about [2]what is necessarily true about life. Clarification?

these are not mutually exclusive!

I wrote about death yesterday simply to address the problem in the right/earnings/might pathology. In all these distribution schemes, we are, in a way, assuming ourselves the dispensers of life and death (or a 'worse' or 'better' life, if you prefer). [Life and death would be slapping their knees with laughter over us, so to speak]. The only rational thing for a person in existence to do is be in existence. And that would mean helping everything else that exists to be in existence, too. Not withholding, selectively, based on any of our prior rationales. Not withholding at all - in each and any of our actions. All of it in support of life by necessity. If all things must pass, they must first put in a noticeable appearance. :)

The man at the McCain rally who was so frightened of socialism belongs to a whole family of thinkers who need a rationale - some kind of "authority" upon which to base their withholding patterns, because the thought of universal inclusion terrifies this aristocratic and/or social-darwin-animal living in fear (of being robbed by the poor). I'm offering here a different sort of rationale. If it makes an "is" an "ought", it does so no more offensively that the defenses you have heard for these prior methods of distribution.

Pye wrote:

Jason: "Whoever knows how to take, to defend, the thing, to him belongs property." - Max Stirner

Well, yes, that would be The Ego and His Own through and through, wouldn't it?

Social Darwinism is tributary of the great religious flood. You can feel in it the great relief of men-of-science since Darwin, who now have 'greater' authority to conserve the get/keep scheme of human things.

This obviously goes against your view of humans as more of a tabula rasa. Tell me, in your vision of a better future, would human beings continue the "get/keep scheme" over weaker animals and insects? Do the animals and insects get to be a part of this "redistribution?" Or do humans continue to use force to overpower animals and insects that get in the way of their plans?

I haven't read everything in this thread, but my guess, at the moment, is that you're something like a libertarian socialist. Since you also view humans as largely a blank slate, you think these political, economic and social changes would come about(or at least be sustained) through alterations of some of the basic psychological characteristics of humans - maybe the removal of aggression, competition, greed and selfishness for example. How close am I?

Jason: Tell me, in your vision of a better future, would human beings continue the "get/keep scheme" over weaker animals and insects? Do the animals and insects get to be a part of this "redistribution?" Or do humans continue to use force to overpower animals and insects that get in the way of their plans?

Well then, once adjusted in perception and attitude, I imagine a bizillion ways and means that the conditions you state above could have more thoughtful address. Once one opens the door to this fundamental connectivity, one is finally inclined to understand, let's say, what bees do in support of life, rather than how fast they die under our swatters or cans of Raid.

Once adjusted in perception and attitude, we might not have to have the forceful either-or scenario you mention above. Instead, all kinds of room to work for support of all kinds of existing things. Basic intelligence tells us it is not humans vs. others, but ecosystem from which we come, in which we live. A larger scope and understanding of cause and effect. What could be the objection to that, on any philosophical or practical grounds?

Jason: I haven't read everything in this thread, but my guess, at the moment, is that you're something like a libertarian socialist.

This is bad practice, Jason, on two counts: Upfront, to try to conclude, whilst running alongside your own lack of conclusion (you haven't read everything here yet). And, secondly, I have been historically way out of sync with a number of libertarian views. There is not, as yet, a descriptor of thinking or party of thought to which I find myself fully aligned, but there are some worthy thoughts or two from many of them. It's a waste of time to do this, though. An agenda helmet on the head will always restrict the immediate view.

Jason: Since you also view humans as largely a blank slate, you think these political, economic and social changes would come about(or at least be sustained) through alterations of some of the basic psychological characteristics of humans - maybe the removal of aggression, competition, greed and selfishness for example. How close am I?

Actually, I was thinking of an appeal to reason, not this "removal" business (if indeed one could ever find the actual thing they want to remove). I'm pretty sure reason is the only thing that has had or now has any hope of affecting those [so-called] "a priori" features of aggression, competition, selfishness and greed. The same use of reason that people have assumed to have some kind of effect on their own aggression, competition, greed, selfishness, even sex-drive, as exampled on this forum here.

Pye wrote:Look, this is all about what human rationale we use to divvy the materials of living. Ancient rationale used social class/heredity. Post-darwinian thinkers have used capacity/earning. The Max Stirners/Nietzsches of the world have used might. Each of these beliefs about distribution are downstream of the cause and effect facts of living things. I am calling for a rationale of distribution that is truly rational i.e. truthful. This is the truth of living things - the one behind all the how-we-go-about-its. It's a higher truth. And that is the movement that people who cannot move past right/earning/and might cannot make. They are stuck downstream of this source-thought, arguing distribution rationales upon withholding patterns, as though their authority to do so is higher than the truth.

The way I see it, there is
(1) personal property, owned and controlled by a single individual, and
(2) public property, owned and controlled by some group or governmental body.
(3) things that are not owned at all (generally because ownership of the thing is impossible, like owning the moon).

Generally an attack against personal property in an argument in favor of public property (e.g., Marxists talking about the "means of production.") You seem to be arguing against the concept of property altogether, but have evaded the central question: what does that mean? How does it work? Are you saying that if I have something, it's okay for someone else to walk up and take it? Why is (or isn't) that okay?

You talk like there is a big pile of stuff, and some central agency hands it out based on some rationale. The world isn't like that. There are individual people, each with their own property, who are going to object to someone who decides to "redistribute" it.

I'm offering here a different sort of rationale. If it makes an "is" an "ought", it does so no more offensively that the defenses you have heard for these prior methods of distribution.

As far as I can see, you have not offered a new mode of distribution, you've only stated that you don't like the current one. (Or if you have, I haven't understood it.)