Why Politics is Pointless


SoAMadDeathWish

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Excellent example.

Here is another...Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson, which was not based on one fact. She never ventured out to not hear the birds singing.

This book led to the banning of DDT which led to the deaths of millions of children and adults and continues through to today.

Shall we try global cooling warrming climate change?

The intellectual cowardice on the part of teachers today, particularly at the college/university is unforgiveable.

A...

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I've already been dealing with society just as it is for most of my life simply by being the one who takes the initiative to set the moral tone in my business and personal relationships. This allows the freedom to consistently enjoy a good life independent of economic and political cycles.

I think I mistakenly thought that you were talking about a course of action for fixing society. I realize now that you were talking about one's personal policies toward the rest of society, and I have to agree with you. It is definitely possible to improve one's chances of surviving the worst that society has to offer, and I think that this is the most that anybody really ever can or should do with regard to politics.

Good point. That's why I have absolutely nothing to do with the wrong people. They have their own kind upon which to feed. It's called freedom of association. I freely choose to associate with my own kind who share my values.

The trouble with that is that the wrong people usually won't wait for you to come to them.

Yes.

That's a very unusual position to take. You're saying that the victim, rather than the initiator of force, is the one who is lacking in moral character. Is this your meaning?

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Off the cuff, I think a little better definition of power is the ability to exercise control. That said, I don't think that force and power are seperate alternatives. Indeed, in politics they go together. Having political power is the right to make and enforce laws that apply to a society. A government behaves, even if it doesn't outright say so, as a monopolist that insists it has the legitimate and exclusive authority to compel others to obey its laws or rules.

Indeed, considering power and force as seperate alternatives obscures the difference between power without force and power with force. The executives of a large business have a lot of power to control what is done within the business. However, they don't do it with force. A government uses its power to exert control and it backs it up with force. Of course, the executives of a large business may in some cases act with force indirectly via political influence.

P.S. One of the definitions of "power" in the American Heritage Dictionary is "the ability or official capacity to exercise control; authority."

I think the two definitions of power are entirely equivalent when you define control.

I never meant to imply that force and power were somehow alternatives. I agree with pretty much everything you've said here.

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I never meant to imply that force and power were somehow alternatives.

I can't read your intent. I read your words. "After studying the subject for several years, I have come to the conclusion that politics is not about force, but rather about power" (link).

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Power, even in present-day America, is held primarily by the economic and not the political system (state).

Now that's a statement.

Let anyone believe it who thinks we can ignore the government and see how far that goes.

Power today is held by economic interests in cahoots with the government. Blaming one or the other and not blaming the union of the two is playing the sucker game they want you to play.

Oh... I forgot. It's "distributive power" and "collective power" that are the true invisible hands controlling all our lives and making them suck. So we might as well get used to eternal suckdom. Life is bad and will only get worse.

What's the use anyway? Might as well obey. (sigh) :smile:

I never said that we can ignore the government. But I do maintain that the government is really the secondary level of power in American society. Were the political and economic systems equal in power, there would be a lot of friction between them as one tries to dominate the other, like you have in Venezuela.

Regarding that last comment, I don't remember reading any books titled Atlas Obeyed.

There is actual reality and there is perceived reality. If one of the standards of the opening post was to start with reality as it is, then reality needs to be looked at as it is. Not as the unconscious has been programmed to perceive it.

No, the point of the OP was not to describe reality as it is, but to attempt to explain why it is the way it is. It is not the result of brainwashing. As far as I know, virtually nobody except me thinks about politics like I do.

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I'm confused...

Is your premise that people who become astronomically wealthy are "lucky?'

I think chance is the biggest determinant of wealth, yes.

No one who works productively to create their own wealth could ever say that.

Greg

Ring the loudest bells from the highest tower on OL: this is something Greg agree on 100%! :laugh: Halleluiah!!

Seriously, SoAMad..., what experience in your life leads you to believe your above statement about chance is true?

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Ring the loudest bells from the highest tower on OL: this is something Greg agree on 100%! :laugh: Halleluiah!!

Seriously, SoAMad..., what experience in your life leads you to believe your above statement about chance is true?

There is no single experience of mine that would justify that belief. You have to look at the evidence.

Your life chances are determined far more by factors that are beyond your control than not. Where you were born, the era you were born in, your parents and family, your health, etc. All of these things are largely decided for us. Sure, there are always things you can do to improve your chances of success, but there are no guarantees. As I said in post #17, if you were born a serf in Medieval Europe you would be doomed from the start, and virtually no amount of productivity would really help the situation.

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Regarding that last comment, I don't remember reading any books titled Atlas Obeyed.

There is actual reality and there is perceived reality. If one of the standards of the opening post was to start with reality as it is, then reality needs to be looked at as it is. Not as the unconscious has been programmed to perceive it.

No, the point of the OP was not to describe reality as it is, but to attempt to explain why it is the way it is. It is not the result of brainwashing. As far as I know, virtually nobody except me thinks about politics like I do.

As to that very clever statement, Atlas Obeyed, isn't that precisely what John did with Mr. O'Bama, oops Thompson? Additionally, the sanction of the victim is one of the critical breakthroughs that Ayn made.

As to your polical thought, what past political theorists did you read, and, or, get exposed to at school?

A...

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I think I mistakenly thought that you were talking about a course of action for fixing society.

I was.

But first you need to fix yourself, and when you do, what you are sets the moral tone for your relations with others within your own sphere of influence.

I realize now that you were talking about one's personal policies toward the rest of society, and I have to agree with you. It is definitely possible to improve one's chances of surviving the worst that society has to offer,

Not merely survive... flourish. :smile:

and I think that this is the most that anybody really ever can or should do with regard to politics.

Politics for me is basically entertainment. A comedy writer couldn't come up with better material!

But nevertheless, I still always vote for whoever most closely matches my values, because that is the only time my input actually counts. And only when enough Americans live by American values will the government represent Americans. Until then I will continue to enjoy my life, because as an independent autonomous productive American, I don't need the government to represent me.

The trouble with that is that the wrong people usually won't wait for you to come to them.

They sure won't wait as long as you are a wrong person yourself. This is because you always attract your own kind... right or wrong. So if you first become a right person yourself, right people won't wait for you to come to them, for they will come to you.

That's a very unusual position to take. You're saying that the victim, rather than the initiator of force, is the one who is lacking in moral character. Is this your meaning?

That's pretty close, but it needs the other side also. The moral weakness of the victim needs to match the moral weakness of the government initiator of force for an interaction to take place. The government first needs the sanction of the victim to prey upon them.

Did you know that the government is subject to all of the same moral laws that you are? So if you want to be treated like a decent person by the government (or anyone else for that matter)...

...first become one, and you will. :smile:

Greg

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As to that very clever statement, Atlas Obeyed, isn't that precisely what John did with Mr. O'Bama, oops Thompson? Additionally, the sanction of the victim is one of the critical breakthroughs that Ayn made.

As to your polical thought, what past political theorists did you read, and, or, get exposed to at school?

A...

None, actually. From what I remember of my history class, we very rarely ever went into any depth at all about political theory. It was all just extremely dry memorization of dates and names.

I study political theory in my own time. The thinkers that influenced me most are:

Thucydides

Machiavelli

Hobbes

Locke

Adam Smith

Gaetano Mosca

Karl Marx

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita

C. Wright Mills

and Michael Mann.

There's also quite a lot of cooperative game theory thrown in from various sources.

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Ring the loudest bells from the highest tower on OL: this is something Greg agree on 100%! :laugh: Halleluiah!!

Seriously, SoAMad..., what experience in your life leads you to believe your above statement about chance is true?

There is no single experience of mine that would justify that belief. You have to look at the evidence.

Your life chances are determined far more by factors that are beyond your control than not. Where you were born, the era you were born in, your parents and family, your health, etc. All of these things are largely decided for us. Sure, there are always things you can do to improve your chances of success, but there are no guarantees. As I said in post #17, if you were born a serf in Medieval Europe you would be doomed from the start, and virtually no amount of productivity would really help the situation.

Right down the topic list from your thread are a series of posts by George H. Smith about political theory. I think you would profit from reading those. You seem to be trying to reinvent a wheel regarding political theory that many others have reviewed, spun around, and been tortured on before you.

Obviously, if I am born with the body of the Hunchback of Notre Dame, I can't realistically become an Olympic gymnast, even though I technically have the freedom to try.

But correct thinking about political theory does not focus on outcomes, but instead opportunity, and the best form of government to protect such opportunities. In fact, such political theory assumes unequal outcomes because of the vicissitudes of life. The Constitution, for instance, protects the right to free speech, but it doesn't grant any rights to own a newspaper. The Dec of Independence exalts the pursuit of happiness, not the attainment of it.

I'm not suggesting this as a taunt, but as some friendly advice: go read George Smith's essays in his Cato thread and then get back to us with your thoughts....

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I'm not suggesting this as a taunt, but as some friendly advice: go read George Smith's essays in his Cato thread and then get back to us with your thoughts....

Excellent advice.

I would add Aristotle's Rhetoric and Politics [http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/politics.html].

Additionally, Bastat, Montesquieu [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/montesquieu/] and Lysander Spooner.

A...

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No, the point of the OP was not to describe reality as it is, but to attempt to explain why it is the way it is. It is not the result of brainwashing. As far as I know, virtually nobody except me thinks about politics like I do.

That's interesting.

Let's see how this works.

Regarding that last comment, I don't remember reading any books titled Atlas Obeyed.

Adam mentioned:

As to that very clever statement, Atlas Obeyed...

That very clever statement had some very real recent roots, like from a couple of days ago. Where did I hear this argument in practically the same form (albeit it more wordy), I wonder I wonder?:

The core storyline of power blinds the person who lives by it to the rest of reality. It's a cybernetic system that's as addictive as any drug I know of.

People in this story even think Rand wants to rule. But in her core meaning, in the subtext of everything she said and wrote, she never said, "Obey me."

Instead, she said, "Get the hell out of my way."

Now I don't for a minute believe this poster was making a pithy imitation of this argument on purpose.

But that's the way the human mind works.

You either choose to learn how to recognize and control this PWA (perception without awareness) stuff, or you let it control you and pretend it doesn't.

School is not just words in books or lectures. It's the entire experience. The entire miniworld of how to think and behave and what to expect out of people. That's what seeps in.

Primates learn fundamentally by imitation. Humans add conceptual learning to that. They do not replace it with conceptual learning.

I know I was really pissed and appalled when I first started detecting this stuff in myself. I'll be damned if I imitate like that! Hell no! I'm the one running me! I'm unique and rational!

This flew in the face of the one thing I thought I could control--my own ability to reason. Add that to the big honking cognitive bias everyone has about not being wrong (and yes, mine was gigantic and it honked loud and long) and I went through some changes. It hurt. It hurt bad.

But reality is what it is, not what I want it to be. Face it, dude. Some of my best arguments, conclusions and most sacred beliefs were in my head by osmosis, not by me reasoning about them. Other people put them there. Not me.

Ah shit!

So I ate the frog of my past even as it was croaking. I didn't like it, but I did it.

Now I know what this stuff is when it pops up and I detect it. (It still happens to me. Of course it does. All the time, in fact. Welcome to the human race, primate! :smile: )

Some of it is good and some of it is not, but now I can choose what stays and what goes. At least with respect to the stuff I detect. The good news is this is a skill that gets better and better with practice.

Instead of feeling threatened by loss of control, once I accepted that I was actually vulnerable to brainwashing--and worse, some really superficial crappy petty little manipulations--just like everyone else is, and I knew concrete examples of my own behavior to prove it (sting as that might), I gained far more control over my mind than I ever had before.

If fact, this made it possible for me to start shoveling out the crap in my mental stables and cleaning things up.

It's a choice. An unpleasant and hard choice because it comes with a big-ass frog to swallow, but still a choice with good things at the end for making the right one.

Michael

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Force is a sub-category of power. I'd say violence is in turn a sub-category of force. George Washington said government was force. Period.

--Brant

all kinds of power: economic, political, persausive, cultural, military, religious, etc.

all or almost all relationships are power relationships

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Landmark's Forum refers to that "stuff" as the "already always listening" "stuff" that get's in the way of thought.

That was not a reponse to your post Brant.

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Adam,

I am peripherally familiar with The Landmark Forum (I have gone through some stuff I found online and even a few audio courses of Werner Erhard from Landmark's predecessor, est).

You might be surprised to learn this is an offshoot of Scientology, mixed with other things and Erhard's own thinking, of course. (And later changes added after it changed into Landmark.) But Erhard borrowed a lot from Hubbard.

He built marketing right into the LGAT experience (another hat-tip to Hubbard), but I do like one thing about this "transformation experience" Landmark does.

It gives people an immediate brand new frame for thinking and evaluating by rooting out the bullshit in their old frame (which I sometimes call a core storyline) and showing rational thought as the alternative--at least for a good part, unfortunately not all.

That mostly works out as a positive thing and beneficial. Not so for some people. But it seems to be a nice shortcut if you resonate with it, although, from some of the things I have read, it can be a painful three days

Michael

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That's pretty close, but it needs the other side also. The moral weakness of the victim needs to match the moral weakness of the government initiator of force for an interaction to take place. The government first needs the sanction of the victim to prey upon them.

Did you know that the government is subject to all of the same moral laws that you are? So if you want to be treated like a decent person by the government (or anyone else for that matter)...

...first become one, and you will. :smile:

Greg

Greg, all of this is just magical thinking. There is nothing in the laws of physics or causality that says "do good things and bad things can't happen to you."

The government does not care about the moral laws that I hold myself to. And if it did, it would inevitably be destroyed by a competitor who doesn't.

Also, I think you are misunderstanding Rand's "sanction of the victim". I do not think she ever meant to say that the perpetrator and the victim are both guilty, as you seem to imply. This kind of ethics is simply barbaric. Rather, she said that the victims of force and fraud were too innocent, in that they believed, as you do, that everything will be ok so long as they don't rock the boat too much.

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Right down the topic list from your thread are a series of posts by George H. Smith about political theory. I think you would profit from reading those. You seem to be trying to reinvent a wheel regarding political theory that many others have reviewed, spun around, and been tortured on before you.

Obviously, if I am born with the body of the Hunchback of Notre Dame, I can't realistically become an Olympic gymnast, even though I technically have the freedom to try.

But correct thinking about political theory does not focus on outcomes, but instead opportunity, and the best form of government to protect such opportunities. In fact, such political theory assumes unequal outcomes because of the vicissitudes of life. The Constitution, for instance, protects the right to free speech, but it doesn't grant any rights to own a newspaper. The Dec of Independence exalts the pursuit of happiness, not the attainment of it.

I'm not suggesting this as a taunt, but as some friendly advice: go read George Smith's essays in his Cato thread and then get back to us with your thoughts....

Can you post the link to that? It isn't showing up for me.

When thinking about the normative aspects of political theory, sure, opportunities may be more important than outcomes. However, this is not the case when you are trying to rationally explain what actually happens in reality. A rational explanation should not explain everything that can possibly happen, only the things that actually do. And the possibility of something occurring cannot have an effect on reality unless it actually happens.

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Right down the topic list from your thread are a series of posts by George H. Smith about political theory. I think you would profit from reading those. You seem to be trying to reinvent a wheel regarding political theory that many others have reviewed, spun around, and been tortured on before you.

Obviously, if I am born with the body of the Hunchback of Notre Dame, I can't realistically become an Olympic gymnast, even though I technically have the freedom to try.

But correct thinking about political theory does not focus on outcomes, but instead opportunity, and the best form of government to protect such opportunities. In fact, such political theory assumes unequal outcomes because of the vicissitudes of life. The Constitution, for instance, protects the right to free speech, but it doesn't grant any rights to own a newspaper. The Dec of Independence exalts the pursuit of happiness, not the attainment of it.

I'm not suggesting this as a taunt, but as some friendly advice: go read George Smith's essays in his Cato thread and then get back to us with your thoughts....

Can you post the link to that? It isn't showing up for me.

When thinking about the normative aspects of political theory, sure, opportunities may be more important than outcomes. However, this is not the case when you are trying to rationally explain what actually happens in reality. A rational explanation should not explain everything that can possibly happen, only the things that actually do. And the possibility of something occurring cannot have an effect on reality unless it actually happens.

Here you go.

I'm not sure I see why you think things "that happen in reality" would be different than--or contradictory to--the correct political theory. One of the great triumphs of Objectivism is the merger of the two. That's sort of the whole point.

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Dollhead,

"Rational people should..."

Hmmmm...

Lots of quips come to mind and I could toy with you, but I won't.

You're improving. I see it.

I mean that. I see it. Working through this stuff is hard when the old rules aren't valid.

When you "should" all over the place and "should" all over everybody and nothing happens. (Opps... I said I was not going to quip. Dammit! :smile: )

I once wrote the lyrics to a song in Portuguese that I promptly lost (I was a mess back in my professional songwriting days). But I do remember that it was a love-song to my baby son and the refrain was a promise to him--that I would strive to never teach him what I did not know.

It's a bitch of a world. Everybody keeps teaching others what they themselves don't know.

No wonder people don't learn.

Michael

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He built marketing right into the LGAT experience (another hat-tip to Hubbard), but I do like one thing about this "transformation experience" Landmark does.

It gives people an immediate brand new frame for thinking and evaluating by rooting out the bullshit in their old frame (which I sometimes call a core storyline) and showing rational thought as the alternative--at least for a good part, unfortunately not all.

That mostly works out as a positive thing and beneficial. Not so for some people. But it seems to be a nice shortcut if you resonate with it, although, from some of the things I have read, it can be a painful three days

Michael

Michael:

It is an excellent marketing program. At this point, they have imported a lot of neurological information into the cours.

I worked with Erhardt folks in the late '60's and did the EST work which opened up my learning about group dynamics and persuasion.

Erhardt, as you may know, was problematical with his kids like many "guru's" can be.

The three day, plus graduation night [where they try to sell oops, enlist the folks you bring to sign up] is intense.

It is well worth it though.

A...

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Adam:

"Landmark's Forum." Interesting. Do you have a link? Never heard of any of this.

http://www.landmarkworldwide.com/

David:

It stresses personal integrity in unique ways that each person can employ.

The course was given to me as a gift by some really good friends.

It was a great re-boot for me, as I believe it would be for most folks.

A...

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