anonrobt

Which makes Islam, by its nature, an anti-human shitty deal...

http://www.amazon.com/Commanding-Heights-Battle-World-Economy/dp/068483569X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262442322&sr=1-1 I also highly recommend the following by Daniel Yergin. http://www.amazon.com/Prize-Epic-Quest-Money-Power/dp/1439110123/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262445080&sr=8-1 Thank you! I had thought it was a more recent book. I've seen The Prize, and skipped past it in the library. I wasn't familiar with Mr. Yergin's name, so I assumed it was one of the standard New York Times reporter-written books in which American lust for oil causes all the problems of the world. Will remedy that lapse next chance I get. Jeffrey S. Videos are available on youtube - http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1466397368167658753&ei=TgFAS8-4DoW0qwKnkd0z&q=the+commanding+heights&hl=en#

regarding that - [Thoughts to consider - from the chapter "Conflicts" of my manuscript, where the syndromes explain why the negative viewing of commerce pervades to today...] When the earliest of humanity spread out from the African terrain, the general assumption is that they all spread upward, that is, to the northern areas. One group, which in time became the Neanderthals, took to crossing the then land bridge of the Gibraltar straits, into western Europe. Others more or less settled among the shores of the Mediterranean which at that time were not the desert-like areas known today. Most wandered to the northeast, some settling among the delta of the Nile, others across the curve into the Anatolian region, still others crossing the isles into the Grecian areas into what became Thrace. The rest, by various ways, traversed across the near east region into the region of the Indo of the far east. As each advance took place across the land, offshoots took to going north, depending on the Ice Age glacier decendencies. There was also, after a time, a return migration from the Indo area across the northern lands, following the game which they by that time had begun to hunt, becoming very much the hunter society. It was those which settled along the eastern coastal waters of the Mediterranean, those who settled in Thrace and the Anatolian regions and down into the Mesopotamian valley, from which, it seems, civilization first took root, where the then lushness of the land did not derive a fierceness of struggling to survive, but allowed the leisureness from which all the rest developed. There is a proviso on this - too much lushness does not generate development, as there is little incentive for development. After all, why bother - what would be the gain in terms of survivability. None, or very little, actually, and what there was would have preceded along a path little different than of the other primates. In many ways, this would as consequence lead to the 'dead end' societies of today's primitives, who have, as they've had, almost no incentive to advance beyond where they presently are - human beasts of the jungle [and which is why Africa, except for its outlining fringe areas, never developed anything more than primitive civilizations]. In the north, however, matters were very much different. With the shifting of the ice masses of the Ice Ages, what was once lush lands ceased to remain as such. As a consequence, the leisure kind of life as examplified by those that settled on more southern areas, a life marked by gathering/foraging more than by hunting, and a diet consisting more of a vegetarian/seafood mode than heavy meat eaters, all changed. The hunters became the more important members to the group's survival. This principle economic activity, being focused on what can be considered a parasitic relationship to animals, was of course, the special preserve of menfolk. Thus the political/religious institutions which evolved took a quite different turn than the developed areas of the Anatolian region. There arose a system of patrilineal families, which were united into kinship by the authority of a chieftain, the person who was responsible for daily decisions as to where to seek out pastures for the animals which were kept, like goats, and the area where game was to be sought. Because expediency is often the measure of survival in harsh times, especially in a culture not highly developed, pastoralists were more apt to engage in the oftime violent seizure of another's animals or pastoral grounds - it was, after all, the easiest way to wealth, and was the most obvious form of prowessness. Thus arose importance to the practice and discipline of war - for war, as Jacob Bronowski pointed out in his Assent of Man, is organized theft. The hunter society, by its nature, stems more from the centripetal form of relationships. Alpha-males are considered needed for the social structure to work for the survival in a harsher land where leisure is much more at a general premium and foraging does not garner the surpluses found in the more hospitable climates. The political/religious would, then, be based on the agonic mode of commanding attention. This would be for the purpose of channeling the aggression of the males into a bonding to defend the members of the respective societies against, in the original pre-human ape/hominid societies, the leopard, or other similar predatory animal powerful enough to threaten the groups' survivals. As the evolvement became the human, the "leopard' became as much as a metaphor to signify "the enemy". Their religion, then, evolved as a means of, eventually, to justify the politics. In so doing, it would have had to shift emphasis from the benignly Mother Goddess that the women had preached into something congruent with the male domination of the hunters surviving in a harsh land. Religion is a primitive form of philosophy. The ethics of religions stem from what, pragmatically, were the actions considered as virtues to the groups involved. These in turn stemmed from the conditions in which the groups lived as they developed the cognitive abilities. As Jacobs pointed out, there are those two fundamental sets of virtues. I suspect, tho, that there were few areas on earth where conditions were so optimum as to foster rapid growth that led to the earliest civilizations beyond the initial group developments - and that this is why, in a few select areas, matriarchal societies were able to take hold and advance as rapidly as cognitive possibilities allowed. The other groups advanced, yes, for the most part, but much slower, for the reasons already pointed out. I further suspect, too, that the virtues of the trader syndrome were in place before these divisions among the civilized groups took place and the diaspora took place. This is not to say that the competing groups around the civilized ones did not possess a rudiment of virtue sets, but that their developments, if they had them, went much slower, and probably like those that went out far north, turned patriarchal as well in the course of time - tho for a different reason [this is to say, the patriarchialness of the kind found among the primitives of today]. This is also assuming before these groups were overcome by those early homo sapiens that migrated up along the coast of Africa from their apparent origin in South Africa areas. In any case, these virtues acquired prominence over the course of time, and ethics arose from them. Could ethics have arisen without religion - probably not, for the initial striving to understand the world around in a patterned sense, even in the optimum case, would have resorted to analogies involving relatings to their own kind. Thus the "mother earth" deity, for instance. I don't, however, hold to the idea that the matriarchal religions had to develop as ferociously as did the patriarchal ones did, mostly because I hold their development was far more benign and fostered a far less a stressful inquisitiveness. What had been originally a mild form of the matriarchal/matrilineal association, where the first religions came out of the first attempts to make sense of what at first seemed as a lot of chaos in the world, quickly shifted to what was felt a need for some form of organization to combat that sense of chaos. The most likely way of making sense of something which doesn't at first makes sense is to relate to something which is understandable, at least to the degree anything could be understood in those times. In this case, just as the women used the earth goddess as a means of countenancing sex and birthing and the former bountiness of the land, so the hunter leaders used the human-as-example forms. Gods, like goddesses, were created as analogies to explain the unpredictables of the world - oversized invisible humanlike beings who controlled the weather, crop growth, and so forth, with the same degree of inconsistency which had been observed among fellow humans. As this, under the harsher and different conditions of the north, seemed to be a more correct viewing of things, the analogies quickly became considered as if actuals, in a much more formidable form than were the goddesses - and which were then used as means of controlling the members of the groups. Goddesses still were acknowledged, but they shared with gods. Moreover, such matters as the sensual/sexuality of the society of the southern climes did not get very developed in the north - sex was largely for procreational purposes, and too many children made difficulties in distributing food supplies, as the herbs used for birth control were not as easily found up north. Now, virtues, as expressed by the syndromes, implies ethics which encompass those virtues. The ethical code of the northern hunter societies, as was to be expected, derived from out of the agonic taking tribal syndrome. It was essentially the ethics of stealing, because the attribute of taking implies the other end, of being taken, and also implies the zero-sum perspective of the world, wherein one's gain is at another's expense - which is what all the other animals essentially have: eat or be eaten, take or be taken. It was, essentially, a justification for reverting to acting like human-style animals. Even tho these early humans, like all humans, had the capacity to think, that is to abstract to at least some degree, to be able to make judgments - the form of ethics became modeled, almost inevitably, after the only mode that was outrightly noticed by them, that of the animals around them. By the time these groups encountered trading, these societies had already formed a hard and fast code based on the agonic mode. Raiding others' territories successfully, as well as other aspects of the hunt, evolved the virtue of "prowess", to achieve this prowess, then, required "obedience" and "respecting hierarchy" for the group, as well as "loyalty". These comprise the basic virtues of the agonic mode syndrome. It also explains why such extreme agonic societies, such as the latter dynasties of ancient Egypt, used animal characteristics as their gods - for these animals adhered to the code "effortlessly", as part of their nature, and this was considered a superior trait, something to be emulated. The same can be said of those early civilizations in the Americas, which were founded by patriarchal groups which had migrated across the straits. Thus no American civilizations were ever matriarchal, and why in the land of lushness there arose such agonic societies as the Incas and Mayans and Aztecs which rivaled the Egyptians in being so authoritarian. When the game patterns again shifted, these northerners, some, went south - and came into contact with the cities and civilizations that, as noted, flourished there. They also came into contact with something else - a whole different view of the female and her relationship to society. To reiterate, the political/religious structuring of the matriarchal societies was that of the Mother Goddess with, as the word matriarchal means, the female as the prevailing sex and the male as a subserving one. While by the time of the patrilineal hunter society invasion this was more nominal than anything else, resting mostly with the matrilineal means of lineage, and the earth mother being referred to more as an allegory than actual - to those invaders, it was an absolutely intolerable situation. These patrilineal/patriarchal societies, as noted, subserved the females, some very denegratingly so, having by this time completely altering out any referring in their religions of goddesses. The two systems could not co-exist. Those holding to the taking code could not permit sanction of a competing code, especially one which would negate their established power structures and upset their status quo. "Shun trading' was a defense against that alternate viewpoint of the matriarchal societies, even as it was later admitted, tho reluctantly, that there was much value being gained by having the riches acquired by trading. There was a problem, too, in understanding trading, by their standards - they viewed the world as a zero-sum matter, and thus, somehow, trading had to have been in some way a matter of stealing, from distant shores at least. They could not conceive of a sum-plus view, only a greater measure of riches acquired from other rich places distantly. Thus trading became a sort of "necessary evil". the forms followed thru, but with suspicion - and, as such, it had to be controlled as much as possible, yet still expect to get the gaining out of it. This was morally done by disparing it as much as possible, and then hobbling its activities by as much restrictions as could be devised. And to do that, you had to take it all over - hence all the wars and episodes of conquests that dominated the fertile crescent at the dawn of history. Which raises another question - if these matriarchal societies existed for thousands of years, building great cities of civilization into the fertile crescent, then spreading thru trading across into the Mediterranean, establishing outposts all along the coastlines, and into the European interior, as far as the British Isles, how could such obviously superior societies, so advanced in so many ways, be overthrown by barbarians? It would seem that the answer may be, sadly as it may be true, that after thousands of years of the trading syndrome, the "warrior" mentality, psychologically speaking, most likely deteriorated mightily for lack of necessity for developing it more - thus enabling the barbarians to gain the amount of hold they did when they first invaded. The psychology of the two kinds of world view, the trading and the taking, were and are quite different from each other. The taking syndrome was tribalistic, whose members were raised to consider themselves as parts of groups, a valued quality when it comes to matters of organized theft. A group can overwhelm better than several individuals because the hierarchical structure makes for greater cohesion of purpose. Moreover, there is the psychological aspect of "us" versus "them" which is not as pronounced as a class among individuals as it is within a group, thus giving greater impetus to the achievement of conquering goals as opposed to the defensiveness of the individuals taken as a group. This is especially so when, in their zeal to maintain the patriarchal social structure, they were willing to slaughter wholesale all but the prepubescent females as the quickest way of obtaining female subjugation and ending any matriarchal rule. The consequence of this is the instituting of slavery, which was a human offshoot of the pastoral practice of domestication [which was why, with the conquerings by the patriarchal societies, slavery has always existed as a way of life from earliest historical times to only a hundred years ago or so - and still exists among the more virulent patriarchal groups of today; whether it is called by that name or not, the essence is the same]. The trading syndrome is one ennobling individualism. individuals qua individuals are not prone to yield and submit - they make poor slaves, always being apt to insubordination. So, the simplest way to be rid of them is - to be rid of them. Hence besides the females mentioned, there was also wholesale slaughtering of entire towns, decimations of entire cultures across the ancient world [ it has even been recorded and dealt with as a virtue [!!] in the Bible]. Yet, by the same token, it had come to be perceived that without at least some of the inhabitants, the whole richness of the trading world would come down completely, leaving poverty for all in its wake. Thus there was the allowing of trading, but hobbling it as much as possible, considering it "necessary evil", yet still removing all traces of the matriarchal social structures - including to the extent of rewriting all the legends of the matriarchal into patriarchal gods and destroying as much as possible the originals. This meant imposing a two-tier system, the "commoners", the original inhabitants, and what became known as the aristocracy, the conquering ones - and it also meant elevating, where it hadn't existed before, males to the authoritating positions within the trading [indeed, to render all positions as male positions]. It also created, for the conquerors, because of having slaves, the leisure time which they were encouraged to make rich use of - which didn't amount to much since they in turn had to be almost constantly on war footing against other invaders out to do the same thing they had done: conquer. Then there is the psychological influence of envy - perhaps the most potent of the reasons for the successes of the patriarchal conquerings. As noted by William L. Davidson in defining it, "envy is aimed at persons, and implies dislike of one who possesses what the envious man himself covets or desires, and a wish to harm him... There is in it... a consciousness of inferiority to the person envied, and a chafing under this consciousness..." [Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, 1912] [my emphasis]. It has been around since before mankind. It appears to be a trait displayed in any group in which there is a deviancy from the established norm. it appears to be an outpouring consequence of the fear which results from considerations relating to the value of the being to the group. It stems not only from those low in the scale of hierarchy, but in the leadership as well, wherein there is the fear of displacement from another who can command attention better. It, of course, stems from the agonic mentality, and in humans came from the patriarchal societies of the northern hunter tribes. Yet is has never been considered to be a virtue. Quite the contrary. Human societies have persistently sought, as far as possible, to suppress it - it is a taking aspect which even negates the viability of the taking syndrome, as envy destroys the very social relationship necessary for any society to survive in any human fashion. This is to say that as an unofficial accord, in the hunter societies, where life was often little more than as human animals, it maintained the status quo. But, in a society with the trading syndrome, which is the uniquely human syndrome, it cannot function - it can only destroy, reducing all back to the level of that pre-existing hunter state.

Both modes of survival operate in many cultures. Some Objectivist organizations have a Guardian worldview. They protect their intellectual territory. They value (philosophical) toughness. They grant generous scholarships (largess) that come from donations (bounty). Loyalty, of course, is highly important. Other Objectivists are open to strangers, encourage competition and dissent for the sake of the task, as well as novelty and inventiveness. Read more about Systems of Survival here on Wikipedia, but by all means, get the book. It's an easy read. Then think about the relationship between capitalism and Objectivism. [Thoughts to consider - from the chapter "Conflicts" of my manuscript, where the syndromes explain why the negative viewing of commerce pervades to today...] When the earliest of humanity spread out from the African terrain, the general assumption is that they all spread upward, that is, to the northern areas. One group, which in time became the Neanderthals, took to crossing the then land bridge of the Gibraltar straits, into western Europe. Others more or less settled among the shores of the Mediterranean which at that time were not the desert-like areas known today. Most wandered to the northeast, some settling among the delta of the Nile, others across the curve into the Anatolian region, still others crossing the isles into the Grecian areas into what became Thrace. The rest, by various ways, traversed across the near east region into the region of the Indo of the far east. As each advance took place across the land, offshoots took to going north, depending on the Ice Age glacier decendencies. There was also, after a time, a return migration from the Indo area across the northern lands, following the game which they by that time had begun to hunt, becoming very much the hunter society. It was those which settled along the eastern coastal waters of the Mediterranean, those who settled in Thrace and the Anatolian regions and down into the Mesopotamian valley, from which, it seems, civilization first took root, where the then lushness of the land did not derive a fierceness of struggling to survive, but allowed the leisureness from which all the rest developed. There is a proviso on this - too much lushness does not generate development, as there is little incentive for development. After all, why bother - what would be the gain in terms of survivability. None, or very little, actually, and what there was would have preceded along a path little different than of the other primates. In many ways, this would as consequence lead to the 'dead end' societies of today's primitives, who have, as they've had, almost no incentive to advance beyond where they presently are - human beasts of the jungle [and which is why Africa, except for its outlining fringe areas, never developed anything more than primitive civilizations]. In the north, however, matters were very much different. With the shifting of the ice masses of the Ice Ages, what was once lush lands ceased to remain as such. As a consequence, the leisure kind of life as examplified by those that settled on more southern areas, a life marked by gathering/foraging more than by hunting, and a diet consisting more of a vegetarian/seafood mode than heavy meat eaters, all changed. The hunters became the more important members to the group's survival. This principle economic activity, being focused on what can be considered a parasitic relationship to animals, was of course, the special preserve of menfolk. Thus the political/religious institutions which evolved took a quite different turn than the developed areas of the Anatolian region. There arose a system of patrilineal families, which were united into kinship by the authority of a chieftain, the person who was responsible for daily decisions as to where to seek out pastures for the animals which were kept, like goats, and the area where game was to be sought. Because expediency is often the measure of survival in harsh times, especially in a culture not highly developed, pastoralists were more apt to engage in the oftime violent seizure of another's animals or pastoral grounds - it was, after all, the easiest way to wealth, and was the most obvious form of prowessness. Thus arose importance to the practice and discipline of war - for war, as Jacob Bronowski pointed out in his Assent of Man, is organized theft. The hunter society, by its nature, stems more from the centripetal form of relationships. Alpha-males are considered needed for the social structure to work for the survival in a harsher land where leisure is much more at a general premium and foraging does not garner the surpluses found in the more hospitable climates. The political/religious would, then, be based on the agonic mode of commanding attention. This would be for the purpose of channeling the aggression of the males into a bonding to defend the members of the respective societies against, in the original pre-human ape/hominid societies, the leopard, or other similar predatory animal powerful enough to threaten the groups' survivals. As the evolvement became the human, the "leopard' became as much as a metaphor to signify "the enemy". Their religion, then, evolved as a means of, eventually, to justify the politics. In so doing, it would have had to shift emphasis from the benignly Mother Goddess that the women had preached into something congruent with the male domination of the hunters surviving in a harsh land. Religion is a primitive form of philosophy. The ethics of religions stem from what, pragmatically, were the actions considered as virtues to the groups involved. These in turn stemmed from the conditions in which the groups lived as they developed the cognitive abilities. As Jacobs pointed out, there are those two fundamental sets of virtues. I suspect, tho, that there were few areas on earth where conditions were so optimum as to foster rapid growth that led to the earliest civilizations beyond the initial group developments - and that this is why, in a few select areas, matriarchal societies were able to take hold and advance as rapidly as cognitive possibilities allowed. The other groups advanced, yes, for the most part, but much slower, for the reasons already pointed out. I further suspect, too, that the virtues of the trader syndrome were in place before these divisions among the civilized groups took place and the diaspora took place. This is not to say that the competing groups around the civilized ones did not possess a rudiment of virtue sets, but that their developments, if they had them, went much slower, and probably like those that went out far north, turned patriarchal as well in the course of time - tho for a different reason [this is to say, the patriarchialness of the kind found among the primitives of today]. This is also assuming before these groups were overcome by those early homo sapiens that migrated up along the coast of Africa from their apparent origin in South Africa areas. In any case, these virtues acquired prominence over the course of time, and ethics arose from them. Could ethics have arisen without religion - probably not, for the initial striving to understand the world around in a patterned sense, even in the optimum case, would have resorted to analogies involving relatings to their own kind. Thus the "mother earth" deity, for instance. I don't, however, hold to the idea that the matriarchal religions had to develop as ferociously as did the patriarchal ones did, mostly because I hold their development was far more benign and fostered a far less a stressful inquisitiveness. What had been originally a mild form of the matriarchal/matrilineal association, where the first religions came out of the first attempts to make sense of what at first seemed as a lot of chaos in the world, quickly shifted to what was felt a need for some form of organization to combat that sense of chaos. The most likely way of making sense of something which doesn't at first makes sense is to relate to something which is understandable, at least to the degree anything could be understood in those times. In this case, just as the women used the earth goddess as a means of countenancing sex and birthing and the former bountiness of the land, so the hunter leaders used the human-as-example forms. Gods, like goddesses, were created as analogies to explain the unpredictables of the world - oversized invisible humanlike beings who controlled the weather, crop growth, and so forth, with the same degree of inconsistency which had been observed among fellow humans. As this, under the harsher and different conditions of the north, seemed to be a more correct viewing of things, the analogies quickly became considered as if actuals, in a much more formidable form than were the goddesses - and which were then used as means of controlling the members of the groups. Goddesses still were acknowledged, but they shared with gods. Moreover, such matters as the sensual/sexuality of the society of the southern climes did not get very developed in the north - sex was largely for procreational purposes, and too many children made difficulties in distributing food supplies, as the herbs used for birth control were not as easily found up north. Now, virtues, as expressed by the syndromes, implies ethics which encompass those virtues. The ethical code of the northern hunter societies, as was to be expected, derived from out of the agonic taking tribal syndrome. It was essentially the ethics of stealing, because the attribute of taking implies the other end, of being taken, and also implies the zero-sum perspective of the world, wherein one's gain is at another's expense - which is what all the other animals essentially have: eat or be eaten, take or be taken. It was, essentially, a justification for reverting to acting like human-style animals. Even tho these early humans, like all humans, had the capacity to think, that is to abstract to at least some degree, to be able to make judgments - the form of ethics became modeled, almost inevitably, after the only mode that was outrightly noticed by them, that of the animals around them. By the time these groups encountered trading, these societies had already formed a hard and fast code based on the agonic mode. Raiding others' territories successfully, as well as other aspects of the hunt, evolved the virtue of "prowess", to achieve this prowess, then, required "obedience" and "respecting hierarchy" for the group, as well as "loyalty". These comprise the basic virtues of the agonic mode syndrome. It also explains why such extreme agonic societies, such as the latter dynasties of ancient Egypt, used animal characteristics as their gods - for these animals adhered to the code "effortlessly", as part of their nature, and this was considered a superior trait, something to be emulated. The same can be said of those early civilizations in the Americas, which were founded by patriarchal groups which had migrated across the straits. Thus no American civilizations were ever matriarchal, and why in the land of lushness there arose such agonic societies as the Incas and Mayans and Aztecs which rivaled the Egyptians in being so authoritarian. When the game patterns again shifted, these northerners, some, went south - and came into contact with the cities and civilizations that, as noted, flourished there. They also came into contact with something else - a whole different view of the female and her relationship to society. To reiterate, the political/religious structuring of the matriarchal societies was that of the Mother Goddess with, as the word matriarchal means, the female as the prevailing sex and the male as a subserving one. While by the time of the patrilineal hunter society invasion this was more nominal than anything else, resting mostly with the matrilineal means of lineage, and the earth mother being referred to more as an allegory than actual - to those invaders, it was an absolutely intolerable situation. These patrilineal/patriarchal societies, as noted, subserved the females, some very denegratingly so, having by this time completely altering out any referring in their religions of goddesses. The two systems could not co-exist. Those holding to the taking code could not permit sanction of a competing code, especially one which would negate their established power structures and upset their status quo. "Shun trading' was a defense against that alternate viewpoint of the matriarchal societies, even as it was later admitted, tho reluctantly, that there was much value being gained by having the riches acquired by trading. There was a problem, too, in understanding trading, by their standards - they viewed the world as a zero-sum matter, and thus, somehow, trading had to have been in some way a matter of stealing, from distant shores at least. They could not conceive of a sum-plus view, only a greater measure of riches acquired from other rich places distantly. Thus trading became a sort of "necessary evil". the forms followed thru, but with suspicion - and, as such, it had to be controlled as much as possible, yet still expect to get the gaining out of it. This was morally done by disparing it as much as possible, and then hobbling its activities by as much restrictions as could be devised. And to do that, you had to take it all over - hence all the wars and episodes of conquests that dominated the fertile crescent at the dawn of history. Which raises another question - if these matriarchal societies existed for thousands of years, building great cities of civilization into the fertile crescent, then spreading thru trading across into the Mediterranean, establishing outposts all along the coastlines, and into the European interior, as far as the British Isles, how could such obviously superior societies, so advanced in so many ways, be overthrown by barbarians? It would seem that the answer may be, sadly as it may be true, that after thousands of years of the trading syndrome, the "warrior" mentality, psychologically speaking, most likely deteriorated mightily for lack of necessity for developing it more - thus enabling the barbarians to gain the amount of hold they did when they first invaded. The psychology of the two kinds of world view, the trading and the taking, were and are quite different from each other. The taking syndrome was tribalistic, whose members were raised to consider themselves as parts of groups, a valued quality when it comes to matters of organized theft. A group can overwhelm better than several individuals because the hierarchical structure makes for greater cohesion of purpose. Moreover, there is the psychological aspect of "us" versus "them" which is not as pronounced as a class among individuals as it is within a group, thus giving greater impetus to the achievement of conquering goals as opposed to the defensiveness of the individuals taken as a group. This is especially so when, in their zeal to maintain the patriarchal social structure, they were willing to slaughter wholesale all but the prepubescent females as the quickest way of obtaining female subjugation and ending any matriarchal rule. The consequence of this is the instituting of slavery, which was a human offshoot of the pastoral practice of domestication [which was why, with the conquerings by the patriarchal societies, slavery has always existed as a way of life from earliest historical times to only a hundred years ago or so - and still exists among the more virulent patriarchal groups of today; whether it is called by that name or not, the essence is the same]. The trading syndrome is one ennobling individualism. individuals qua individuals are not prone to yield and submit - they make poor slaves, always being apt to insubordination. So, the simplest way to be rid of them is - to be rid of them. Hence besides the females mentioned, there was also wholesale slaughtering of entire towns, decimations of entire cultures across the ancient world [ it has even been recorded and dealt with as a virtue [!!] in the Bible]. Yet, by the same token, it had come to be perceived that without at least some of the inhabitants, the whole richness of the trading world would come down completely, leaving poverty for all in its wake. Thus there was the allowing of trading, but hobbling it as much as possible, considering it "necessary evil", yet still removing all traces of the matriarchal social structures - including to the extent of rewriting all the legends of the matriarchal into patriarchal gods and destroying as much as possible the originals. This meant imposing a two-tier system, the "commoners", the original inhabitants, and what became known as the aristocracy, the conquering ones - and it also meant elevating, where it hadn't existed before, males to the authoritating positions within the trading [indeed, to render all positions as male positions]. It also created, for the conquerors, because of having slaves, the leisure time which they were encouraged to make rich use of - which didn't amount to much since they in turn had to be almost constantly on war footing against other invaders out to do the same thing they had done: conquer. Then there is the psychological influence of envy - perhaps the most potent of the reasons for the successes of the patriarchal conquerings. As noted by William L. Davidson in defining it, "envy is aimed at persons, and implies dislike of one who possesses what the envious man himself covets or desires, and a wish to harm him... There is in it... a consciousness of inferiority to the person envied, and a chafing under this consciousness..." [Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, 1912] [my emphasis]. It has been around since before mankind. It appears to be a trait displayed in any group in which there is a deviancy from the established norm. it appears to be an outpouring consequence of the fear which results from considerations relating to the value of the being to the group. It stems not only from those low in the scale of hierarchy, but in the leadership as well, wherein there is the fear of displacement from another who can command attention better. It, of course, stems from the agonic mentality, and in humans came from the patriarchal societies of the northern hunter tribes. Yet is has never been considered to be a virtue. Quite the contrary. Human societies have persistently sought, as far as possible, to suppress it - it is a taking aspect which even negates the viability of the taking syndrome, as envy destroys the very social relationship necessary for any society to survive in any human fashion. This is to say that as an unofficial accord, in the hunter societies, where life was often little more than as human animals, it maintained the status quo. But, in a society with the trading syndrome, which is the uniquely human syndrome, it cannot function - it can only destroy, reducing all back to the level of that pre-existing hunter state. [while over the years, some of the specific instances are in question [depending on 'belief' interpretations], the basics hold up and worth thinking over]

http://www.amazon.com/Browning-Version-Criterion-Collection/dp/B00092ZLFS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1262484180&sr=1-1

Better hair than Lindsay actually has - rofl...

Nice find! Yes, have a copy, tho has been a few years since last read it... as recall, was quite interesting... seems to be out of print, tho can get one on Amazon - http://www.amazon.com/Secret-League-Ernest-Bramah/dp/1887207007/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262384215&sr=8-1

I wonder if Perigo will boycott it as he is asking others to do. You never know. In years gone by, this dumbass flew halfway around the world to give a "Hate Barbara" speech at the same time as—and quite near to—the TAS conference so he could leech off its public. He obviously has no public of his own other than a small online group in his personality cult and people who tune in once in a while to watch the SLOP Opera. Social metaphysics, anyone? Michael As bad as SOLOP was before I stopped posting there, it has since turned into a fulminating cesspool on some threads I was involved with and a new one I was not. --Brant sad, isn't it... and when first joined many years ago, was never impressed with him and wondered how he ever got to be considered as an O'ist in the first place...

But have you ever seen a red moon? Yes. A patial eclipse of the moon when it enters the penumbra (the outer shadow) will give the moon a rusty or coppery red color. I have seen it several times. Ba'al Chatzaf Indeed - and it is quite spectacular, called a 'blood moon'... ;-) http://www.russia-ic.com/news/show/9451/

Oh my, an ignoranus!!! [happy new year - may ye become less ignored of things... ;-)]

Does Fox Business Channel have an online site?

been a member for years... [thumbsup]

Given her reaction to a one-line change in a play and her obsessiveness on the script for the movie The Fountainhead, I agree that they would surely have experienced her rage - full blast. Bill P Yeah, but if she had edited her answers she'd have made similar changes. --Brant Maybe.....

1) The problem with the shooting of the guard lies in how Rand described Dagny's motivation. She could have grounded it with rising impatience and a decision by Dagny that there was simply no more time to waste. Instead she turns the scene into something to point out a fundamental idea in her philosophy: Dagny doesn't shoot him because she can't wait any more on his dithering, but because he is dithering in the first place. 2) The doctor is, I think, more complicated than you indicate. Doctors still swear the Hippocratic Oath, don't they? Even without a formal oath, a doctor takes on voluntarily an obligation to preserve life when he can do so: it comes not from the fact that he has a large amount of medical knowledge, but from the fact that he was a doctor in active practice (even if he retires afterwards). Refusing to share that knowledge would arguably violate that freely undertaken obligation. Jeffrey S. Two bridges too far. 1) What is the basis for your assertions about Dagny's motivations? Look at her actions after they get into the room to see that she was anxious. Where do you find specific statements of th emotivations which you indicate above? 2) Do you really believe that every doctor has voluntarily taken on an obligation to preserve whenever he can do so? Does this mean to you that every doctor is obligated to never rest - because he/she could instead go somewhere and find an emergency room where he could treat someone? This is an amazing obligation. (Inter alia, I'm not certain that the Hippocratic oath is something taken seriously. I'm not a scholar on the Hippocratic Oath. What version is used? Does it contain the item you mention? And what does it mean (see my question above)? Bill P 1) Go back and read the sentence or two Xray posted. Rand killed off a minor character not because the plot demanded it, but to illustrate a philosophical point. 2) Please do attack (if you must attack) what I say. Otherwise I might mistake you for Xray or Perigo:) What I actually wrote was this: We're not talking about some form of heroic virtue. We're talking about doing or not doing a very minimal action with little or no inconvenience to the doctor, and a self imposed obligation taken on himself at the time he became a doctor. As for the text of the Hippocratic Oath itself, Wikipedia has both the "Classic" and what it claims is a modern version: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocratic_Oath Jeffrey S. Obviously, one group of doctors who don't take the oath nowadays would be those who provide abortions. On the guard: Rand killed off a FICTIONAL CHARACTER - not a real person. Note that the text does not say that Dagny killed him for philosophical reasons or to make a philosophical point. She killed him because he was in her way, barring her ability to get to and rescue Galt, and refused to grant her passage. She told him the price would be his life if he did not let her through. And then he did not let her through. I have read the Wikipedia article re the Hippocratic Oath (it was the first place I went to remind myself of the content of the oath). A quick scan convinced me that the oath is something probably used by some doctors as part of a ritual, not one being taken seriously, and hence my comment. It appears we differ in how we view the applicability of that, as well as on how much of a "minimal action with little or no consequences" it would be to surrender this intellectual property won at (presumably) the price of much time and effort spent studying. If the Hippocratic Oath is understood by doctors as you interpret it (I don't think it is, based on the physicians I know)I do not see it as reasonable. If a doctor has the funds to purchase expensive medicine, is he obligated by the Hippocratic Oath to do so for anyone who needs it for life sustenance? I don't think so. I don't know how you turn the Hippocratic Oath into a guide for action. I suspect the actual intent of the portion you are citing is that if a physician physically encounters someone in need of life-sustaining aid, the physician should provide it. Would you view yourselves as having an obligation to take almost all of your wealth and spend it to purchase AIDS medicine for young children suffering from the disease in Africa? Is the only reason why would not take this view that you did not take the Hippocratic Oath? Is the oath really the issue here? Bill P Besides, the doctor oath is predicated on the altruist mode of 'duty', which is, actually, a code of slavery [involuntary servitude for having acquired said knowledge], an ethical fallacy, since one does not exist for the sake of others...

beg to differ, at least somewhat... [from my manuscript... source, The Decent of Woman] In terms of the aquatic ape, this aspect of "showing off" ended up having a number of consequences which the other apes did not have to contend with. For one, a primate, by nature, is, in the juvenile stage especially, a restless and curiosity-oriented creature. But while a primate, as said, is by nature curious, by the time it has attained adulthood, this curiosity has considerably diminished. An aquatic ape, on the other hand, because of the fact of it spending its time in the waters, developing bipedalism and other attributes as consequences, also has another shifting - the lengthening of its juvenile stage of development. This lengthening was made possible by the shifting to bipedalism and the enlargement of the pelvic bones to accommodate the larger newborn head during birth - and the fact that the newborn was, by the scale of development corresponding to other primates, prematurely birthed [a comparative scale would require a gestation period of 21 months], thus necessitating an environment far less hazardous for the continued survival of the newborn than other primates had to have. Far enough less a hazard that the development of the infant/child into a juvenile was not as quickly a premium and could thus take place as a more leisurely pace. The same could be said for the continuation of growth from the juvenile into adult, which allowed for greater development of the brain usage, assuring greater chances of species survival. This extension of juvenile development, for example, made for a major difference in the way "showing off" progressed - for in fostering the growth of the brain, the curiosity was extended, with inclusion of it into adulthood as a consequence. Along with these developments, yet another came into place as an extended consequence - language. Speech is a special property of being human. All the higher animals, at least, possess a wide assortment of communication skills - smells, gestures, involuntary cries which constitutes automatic responses to various situations such as hunger, danger,and so forth. But, for the aquatic ape, there would have come times, because of the uniqueness of being in the waters, that there would be need of volitionally utilizing sounds to indicate whats and wheres in an environment wherein so much is out of sight and smell of others. But it is one thing to become able to volitionally make sounds [primates, after much and long time efforts, have been able to achieve this in labs], quite another to turn those sounds into abstractions which pertain to specific concepts. Somewhere along the way the first noun had to come into existence. There have been a number of suggestions as to how this might have happened - but all are predicated on the notion that it was among the adults [and, for the most part, the males] that this momentous event took place. I think this is an error of perception. There is little argument that once the abstractionization started taking place, it was applied to adult usage, such as hunting game that was aquatic, where there would have been need to communicate the kind of game to others unable to see or smell the animal. But the essence of biology is to perpetuate the species - which means the emphasis is on the young, and it is that for which adults are for, to bring into the world more of those young, another generation to continue the specie. The essence, then, of survivability is the successfulness of the young to gain to adulthood so as to give forth another round of young. No one knows, of course, just how the first event took place. But it, I think, can be conjectured that it revolved around the survivability of the young - and that it was initiated by the young. It is known that only among the young is there the capacity of acquiring an initial language - if a person does not acquire a language by a certain age, that person never will. How much more so it must have been back at the beginning. Thus it was the young, already imbued with the rudiments, who grew into juvenile adults that carried those rudiments of language, ensuring that the early hominids had a grasp of it at all their living stages. This is not to say that all partook of the development, but that those quickest to understand words would have been the likeliest to survive and thus perpetuate their segment of the species. The issue of abstraction, however, goes much further than this volitionally utilizing particular sounds to indicate particular actions, events, animals, objects. Whatever sound was used, it was only issued when the object in question was there, attached as such only to a concrete specimen that was present in the vicinity. There remained getting the idea in the mind without the concrete specimen in view. I suspect it was an inevitable consequence of the ability of being able to volitionally utilize sound to indicate particular objects, in conjunction with the rise of self-awareness - for with this rise of self-awareness would come memory. Out of the memory the cognitive state of being arose, to be used henceforth. The cognitive being is the difference of man and the other animals. But the difference it makes is much more profound than usually ascribed. Cognition allows for the development of the sense of the individual, because it is not a group thing but a personal thing. In this, personalness comes as the attributes which are consequences - personal expressions, matters which pertain to the self and which are worked out in the single solitary confinement of the mind of the person, the individual, even if this was not immediately recognised as such. This would include, as the hominid evolved, eventually matters of contemplation, what would become known as matters of Art. But there is a context in which this must be understood, that of time. Just because a word was formulated, an abstract concept of a noun symbolized by a specific sound, it didn't mean that one and all went out and started formulating abstractions all over the place. Urgencies made use of when and where - and especially the what - of the occurrences. Differences in the degrees of the intelligences had quite a bit to do with it as well - even among the animals, there is a very measurable difference in the qualitativeness of smartness among the members of any group. Not only that, within this context of time, there is a need to recognise that just as Homo sapiens evolved from forebearers, so did the chimps and gorillas and so forth of today. The groups that Jane Goodall studied are a lot smarter than their ancestors - not, perhaps, quite the difference as with Homo sapiens, but just the same a very noticeable difference. Putting this into context, the urgencies that would impereate the usage of abstractions become a bit more spaced than would have appeared at first glance. Remember, by the time this necessity of cognition arose, our forebearers were by far the most complex and advanced species that ever went into the waters. The social organization was a very highly developed one - indeed, among those species which were aquatic, only the dolphins and killer whales have anything near the hominid social structures. The hominids' system of signaling, for example, were tremendously subtle and very expressive - the mouths were used to command attention, to exercise ruling control, and to direct the course of relationships. It was an overlay of what was used before, the expressions and emotions of the faces and bodies. It would be only when those signals ceased to work that it correspondingly became imperative to augment them. And those times would not suddenly come into being, but would appear only sporadically thru the course of time, an exiguous circumstance initially, only building in frequency as the fluency of abstraction and the perceived benefits of it became more observable. At the same time, it must be remembered that the intensity of its occurance had to be significant enough to make the survivability of those utilizing it superior to those not. Another thing to consider is that this cognitive effort was not a sex-linked characteristic, even tho it most likely first developed via the females. Both sexes engaged in it, when and as it was deemed to be needed. There is a continuum involved here - while the process of abstraction involves an open-endness, an effortness to use, this did not mean that the automatic process of perceptualness ceased to operate, let alone right then and there. There was a graduation, a shifting of gears, so to speak, and the rise of thought then began to pertain not just to nouns but to ideas as well, to greater inventiveness, a greatly expansiveness of the "show me"ism of obtaining attention. It was also one of the end results of tool making. ............. not quite the hunters doing it, as usually presumed...

[heh - you like blue faces, don't ye] ;-)

Which then brings to mind - By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, Here the embattled farmers stood And fired the shot heard 'round the world. Anon: Damn good memory! By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world. The foe long since in silence slept; Alike the conqueror silent sleeps; And Time the ruined bridge has swept Down the dark stream which seaward creeps. On this green bank, by this soft stream, We set to-day a votive stone; That memory may their deed redeem, When, like our sires, our sons are gone. Spirit, that made those heroes dare, To die, and leave their children free, Bid Time and Nature gently spare The shaft we raise to them and thee [heh - you should hear my Hiawatha [no - you shouldn't]]

You don't think her being a woman will save her job. If she were honorable she would quite. But I am talking about someone in the Obama administration. Yes, this administration is proving to be the most corrupt since Grant's...

Which then brings to mind - By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, Here the embattled farmers stood And fired the shot heard 'round the world. [Emerson, from memory]

There is another aspect regarding morals developments - TWO WORLD VIEWS - THE TAKING AND TRADING SYNDROMES Jane Jacobs, in Systems of Survival, points out that there are only two methods of survival. In addition, she points out that humans are unique in possessing both -- all other animals have only one. The first method is the one common to all animals, the agonic way of responding to strangers: to take what is wanted -- just simply to take it, depending, of course, on not only what is available to be taken, but on the difficulty in obtaining it. The second method is the unique one of humans: the capacity of being able to trade -- to exchange goods and services for other goods and services, depending again, on what is available. This method is unique -- it is non-coercive, with trading done by voluntary agreement, with mutual assent. Indeed, that is the central essence of trading, and the trading mentality. There is yet another aspect to note -- it is the other major expression of the eccentricity of the aquatic ape, for it is an expression of dealing as equals, more or less, and not as members of a hierarchy. Which is to say trading is done, primarily, individual to individual. These two methods of survival are, as Jacobs notes, fundamentally different outlooks on life. As such, they have profoundly different consequences. Originating in very different contexts, these outlooks each evolved into a set of syndromes that encompass a whole range of notions congruent with each particular view of the world. To better understand these syndromes, I list their components as Jacobs has them -- along with, in parentheses, addenda of my own. The Trading Syndrome [individualist virtues] Shun force Come to voluntary agreements Be honest Collaborate easily with strangers Compete Respect contracts Use initiative and enterprise Be open to inventiveness and novelty Be efficient Promote comfort and convenience Dissent for the sake of the task Invest for productive purposes Be industrious Be thrifty Be optimistic The Taking Syndrome [Tribal virtues] Shun trading Exert prowess Be obedient and disciplined Adhere to tradition Respect hierarchy Be loyal Take vengeance Deceive for the sake of the task Make rich use of leisure Be ostentatious Dispense largesse Be exclusive Show fortitude Be fatalistic Treasure honor These are lists of virtues that Jacobs found were esteemed throughout the centuries, moral precepts beyond those considered as universal in all walks of life. These precepts were divided this way because specific ones were observed to be repeatedly associated with others -- consider, for instance, loyalty with obedience and respect for hierarchy, or industriousness with thrift and efficiency. The precepts, in other words, came in clusters -- and the clusters overlapped. Combining the overlaps resolved the clusters into the two syndromes. Note that neither list is internally contradictory. Each has, in effect, its own integrity. Note, too, that each syndrome is opposed to the other -- there are two separate sets of moral values being expressed here. Since these virtues have been esteemed since before historical times (they were already in place at the beginning of recorded history, and are even found in the legends about times before recorded history), they must be considered as having strong survival value, or as having had survival value at one time. One of the things which Jacobs did not notice (or chose to ignore) is that each syndrome lists virtues of either individualism or tribalism, (hence my addenda). Likewise, she made no notice that these syndromes are outgrowths of the agonic and hedonic modes of social structures. This latter note is very important because, the recognition that the agonic evolved into the taking syndrome, and the hedonic into the trading, marks the understanding that civilization is indeed the process whereby man is freed from man -- that is, the development of the sense of the individual as apart from the group, to the ultimate recognition that the human world is composed of individuals only, and that a group is merely an aggregate of individuals because individuals are, by their nature all different from each other. What kind of conjectures, then, can be made about these ancient societies -- what can be said about the kind and quality of life enjoyed by the societal members? A trader society, for one, is a peaceful society -- as the syndrome indicates, they "shun force." Archaeological evidence backs up this assertion. Trader cities did not have fortifications, walls built around to keep out the unwanted and protect those within. There was no evidence of the implements of massive war, such as shields and so forth, that would have been used by soldiers -- in other words, there were no standing armies. What weaponry was there was more of a defensive kind utilized more for hunting than anything else. There was, of course, a basic reason for this -- warfare, being destructive, disruptive, and an impetus for theft, is not good for trade. Trading emphasizes trust, which is an offshoot of honesty. It is non-coercive because there must be a continual series of voluntary agreements, else there'd be no trading -- and this also requires respect for contracts. The contacts and stimulus with others of different cultures allows an openness to inventiveness and novelty, to newness and difference for that expand the market. The virtues listed by Jacobs in the trading syndrome arose out of practical necessity (just as did the virtues listed in the taking syndrome ... each list contains the major attributes required to maintain the respective syndromes). The trading societies began as matters of practicality, without much thought to possible theories, only the empirical evidence that trading worked better and was, for more persons, more rewarding than theft. Wealth, creative wealth, came from trading, in a sum-plus series of situations. It was, in other words, an obvious choice. And it is possible that it never occurred to anyone that there might be a need to justify it, especially in the light of its being around as part of the matriarchal lineage for several millennia. Moreover, it was a rational endeavor, a mindful notion, which needed not be argued with another because of its obviousness, and could not be argued with the mindlessness of the barbarians encountered in the outlying areas of the trading influence, because those barbarians were, for the most part, little more than human animals, limited as such to not much more than the range of the moment. [from my manuscript,ETHICS AND AESTHETICS]

Yes, this one has been making the rounds - guy is more 'famous' now than ever

Very interesting... thanks...

First it was Angalina Jolie who would play Dagny. Then Charlize Theoron. Eventually it will be Dakota Fanning. Ba'al Chatzaf Scrooge has spoken! Lol! Humbug!!

but the battery is running low.......

An excellent essay, as we have learned is your norm, Ed. If someone had written the events of the crumbling of the fall of the Soviet Empire as fiction, it would have doubtless been treated as fantasy. And yet it happened. Meanwhile, in the USA, we are squandering our freedom for the "privilege" of having a nanny state look after us. Bill P Some are, not me...