Why Politics is Pointless

[moralist]

In a democracy, you have only yourself to blame for having placed tyrants into power.

This is so true.

So if, for the sake of argument, the majority willed tyrants--which, regrettably, they sometimes do-- it's only yourself that will hang for having opposed them.

EM

"We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."

--Benjamin Franklin

[Frediano]

Earlier generations of Americans delivered their young to a better and more free world. Not so this past 50 years of tag team Dem/GOP pursuing only control over an ever increasing CronyFest on the Potomac. The alternative to the No Hope for Freedom Dems is not the False Hope for Freedom GOP. And so I sense in the current twentysomethings a politics described as "a pox on both your failed houses." Because when it is nut crunching time, human beings love their lives, and the living of them, and will finally focus up first at least on what they know -isn't- a solution, no matter what they've been spoon fed in the mandrels of thought, and move on from there.

What species delivers their young to this? And so, those of us who have failed -- failed to do anything but grow a once federal government into the national government -- should help them save this nation from the cul de sac it allowed itself to meander into, by backing out and trying anew.

Our founding fathers were slave holders and the relevant word is 'were.' Of freedom, Monticello, and the University of Virginia, all built by slave holders and slaves, which of freedom, architecture, and public universities should today be cast aside because of the sophist application of 'simple facts?'

The enemies of freedom have been beating a dead horse with that logic.

Why are they anything but laughed at?

regards,

Fred

[eva matthews]

Earlier generations of Americans delivered their young to a better and more free world. Not so this past 50 years of tag team Dem/GOP pursuing only control over an ever increasing CronyFest on the Potomac. The alternative to the No Hope for Freedom Dems is not the False Hope for Freedom GOP. And so I sense in the current twentysomethings a politics described as "a pox on both your failed houses." Because when it is nut crunching time, human beings love their lives, and the living of them, and will finally focus up first at least on what they know -isn't- a solution, no matter what they've been spoon fed in the mandrels of thought, and move on from there.

What species delivers their young to this? And so, those of us who have failed -- failed to do anything but grow a once federal government into the national government -- should help them save this nation from the cul de sac it allowed itself to meander into, by backing out and trying anew.

Our founding fathers were slave holders and the relevant word is 'were.' Of freedom, Monticello, and the University of Virginia, all built by slave holders and slaves, which of freedom, architecture, and public universities should today be cast aside because of the sophist application of 'simple facts?'

The enemies of freedom have been beating a dead horse with that logic.

Why are they anything but laughed at?

regards,

Fred

I'm afraid that you've gotten the rhetoric correct, yet it's backwards.

it's the right-wing of american politics that has brought up 'founding fathers' points of view. OTH, the left is far more modernist, saying, in effect, that what's past is past, so we should deal with ,modern circumstance on our own terms, not theirs.

Having let the cat out of the bag, certain on the right whine that obtaining a realistc picture of FF's is 'unfair sophistry', etc...

but they've only themselves to blame.

EM

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

The enemies of freedom have been beating a dead horse with that logic.

Why are they anything but laughed at?

Fred,

Part of the reason that horse stays alive is what I call a core storyline error. I believe we are at fault, not the left. (Well, we both are, but I am looking at the part we play.)

It's going to take some explaining, but the idea is very simple in the end.;

We all live according to core storylines of what we expect to happen in normal situations, who the good guys are, who the bad guys are, the universal human themes focused in that storyline, the symbols, the standard emotional sequences and how to express them, and so on.

The plain fact is people think in stories, not concepts. Or better yet, people use concepts within core storylines in the same manner they use language, beliefs, visual symbols, gestures, etc. Story thinking comes before these elements, not after. There's a ton of research on this.

Story is probably the most primary form of mental integration there is. Notice that even nonconceptual animals think in stories when they weigh alternatives. Fight and flight is not just an instinct after the initial moment passes. It is a group of stories in memory used as standards of whether to attack, flee or hump after the blinding fight-flight mental surge passes.

I believe reason is not a mere string of syllogisms. A core storyline is a fundamental part of any reasoned argument, is fundamental in any rational communication. This is often called context, but I believe it's not that simple. (There are nuances here. But that's beside the point with what I'm talking about right now.)

Think about what integration is. It is lumping a bunch of separate things together and making them a whole. And what is one of the mechanisms for doing this? A cybernetic system (sometimes called a servomechanism). A course-correction system. A system that has the flexibility for absorbing new disrupting input, then corrects itself to return to a path aimed at a predetermined outcome.

The autopilot function of an airplane is a cybernetic system. If the plane is blown off course by strong winds, it kicks in and sets the plane back on the correct course. The automatic temperature mechanism of a house is another. If someone opens the door and lets the cold air in, it turns the heat on until the temperature is back to normal.

A core storyline works this way. But the story is not just a path, it often doubles as an outcome. It includes what is called a vision, which is a projected moment in the future when a specific situation is imagined to exist in all kinds of detail. A core storyline is a way to try to make that future vision become a present reality. We do this manner of thinking at the most mundane level of leaving the house to go to work, or going to the fridge to get a bite to eat, all the way up to projecting life after death in religious mythologies.

Terms like American exceptionalism and Founding Fathers are not just concepts or names. They are elements in our core storyline (the first is a theme, the second is a group of characters). When we encounter new situations, we automatically course-correct toward how the story has been told to us. How we learned it.

The problem is a great story has good guys and bad guys. We're wired that way. We humans like our good guys to be really, really good, and our bad guys to be sheer evil. We have an innate urge to make these archetypal characters in our heads, even where none exist in reality.

The problem with applying a core storyline to history (or worse, current politics) is that we whitewash a crapload of plain old facts. Both left and right do this.

And that is what keeps the dead horse looking dead to us on the conservative-libertarian end, but keeps it alive on the left end.

When we tell the story of the founding of America and the greatness of the Founding Fathers to young people (or simply out in the culture in general), for instance, and they discover some unpleasant facts about them, the core storyline servomechanism kicks in with our explanations and we tend to gloss over those things, rationalize them, deny they existed, etc. The result? The bullshit meter in the minds of these listeners kicks in. That discredits not only us, but the core storyline itself, and eventually the themes it carries.

(This is manipulated from the left by masters, too. They know exactly what they are doing.)

The solution to avoid this is to make sure our core storyline is robust enough and broad enough to carry themes like liberty that are dear to us, but allow for unpleasant and inconvenient facts with our notions of good guys and bad guys. And this is starting to happen. Here is a great example:

Miracles and Massacres: True and Untold Stories of the Making of America by Glenn Beck

This is a collection of inspiring stories about our heroes and what really happened in stories about the shameful things some people we have celebrated as heroes did. Take a look at what's in it. Talk about the good, the bad and the ugly. This book has been flying off the shelves ever since it was released and shows no sign of slowing down. People are hungry for no-bullshit stories of our past. The glory and the shame.

And that, I believe, is a way to kill the horse we think is dead. How can a leftist spin facts in the minds of the young and unknowledgable when we tell these people the good and bad of the stories being spun and back it up with evidence?

The dirty little secret the left doesn't know is that the cybernetic system--the core storyline--in the brains of lefties works in the identical manner it does in the brains of right-wingers. And it's usually a sorry spectacle on both sides, with core storylines that make producers of Hollywood schlock blush because these stories are so bad.

All we have to do, both left and right, is inject "accuracy of fact" as one of the major themes in the respective core storylines, i.e., one of the preprogrammed outcomes in our respective cybernetic systems, and the system will automatically correct itself when the stories are told. We need to make it so the good guys in our stories face facts, pleasant and unpleasant, and bad guys distort them. Good guys identify correctly then judge. Bad guys spin and manipulate. That has to be fundamental to our heroes and villains, even if it means going back and redoing the stories of everybody, including people like George Washington, from the beginning.

(The usual procedure is simply to reinterpret history in light of a core storyline, then bash the ones on the other side as manipulative idiots.)

When we tell a story about history and a good guy distorts a fact, that is called a character flaw, not a reason to discredit all the good-guy stuff he did. When a bad guy accepts inconvenient facts, that is called a moment of lucidness, a moment of good, not a reason to sanction all the bad-guy stuff he did.

We make that credible by making sure the good and bad are told raw, unfiltered, and in loud voice in our stories. And we keep the stories on track by making sure "accuracy of fact" is always right there in the fundamental themes and character motivations.

This process isn't about reviving a dead horse. It is getting in a horseless buggy and driving toward a glowing horizon as we leave dead horses behind.

Michael

[SoAMadDeathWish]

Naomi,

I don't understand your logic. It sounds like word games.

It's simpe:

Premise 1: Either rights violations are at a minimum or they are not. (a true dichotomy)

Premise 2: Checks and balances are the best way to keep rights violations to a minimum.

Premise 3: If there is a best way to do something, then there is no better way to do it.

Premise 4: Rights violations are at a minimum.

Conclusion 1: Then there is no better way to safeguard individual rights than what is happening now.

OR

Premise 1: Either rights violations are at a minimum or they are not. (a true dichotomy)

Premise 2: Checks and balances are the best way to keep rights violations to a minimum.

Premise 3: If there is a best way to do something, then there is no better way to do it.

Premise 4*: Rights violations are not at a minimum.

Conclusion 2: Then a checks and balances system is not the best way to keep rights violations to a minimum.

You seem to be going with the first route.

Dollhead, you're looking at a button and I'm looking at the horizon. Which way do you think will change the world for the better? It doesn't matter, though. My button-proof gaze is fixed on the freedom in the distance. And... as one of my favorite songs goes (by Gordon Bok), "The world is always turning toward the morning."

Neither. As I've argued in the OP and elsewhere, people are incapable of changing society for the better.

I really don't care why you think that I think the things I think. If you want to prove your case that a checks and balances system like the one we have now is the best we can do then you must 1) clearly define it and any possible alternatives 2) explore the possible real-world consequences of each alternative 3) evaluate the outcomes and 4) create a plan to reach the most desirable outcome. As it stands, your belief that things will eventually get better rests on nothing more than a blind faith in the Holy Wisdom of the Founding Fathers.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Naomi,

Your premises are flawed.

They assume the obedience and violation of rights are inherent parts of human nature.

Obedience and infringement are merely effects. Actions.

The cause, the urge to bully others, is inherent to human nature. Checks and balances hogtie that urge. (Not eliminate it, that's impossible, they just hogtie it. And that's a lot better than hogtieing the masses under a bully.)

This makes it possible for the little guy to have the same fundamental rights as the big guy and have that actually mean something.

And I really don't care why you think that I think the things I think are nothing more than blind faith. Reality-wise, your premises are wrong. I can't prove anything using them to make the button work for you and give you instant results. When I check your premises with reality, I get this:

Slop

More slop

Therefore: even more slop

I can also see why you believe people are incapable of changing society for the better. The damn button doesn't work.

Saying people are incapable may be inaccurate, but at least it's an instant imagined result you can arrive at with flawed premises and a syllogism.

Here's a book with some empirical evidence that people are capable if you are interested: The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker. Here's a video if you don't want to read it. Or don't look at this material. Your choice. (It's a button-buster.)

Michael

[Frediano]

Earlier generations of Americans delivered their young to a better and more free world. Not so this past 50 years of tag team Dem/GOP pursuing only control over an ever increasing CronyFest on the Potomac. The alternative to the No Hope for Freedom Dems is not the False Hope for Freedom GOP. And so I sense in the current twentysomethings a politics described as "a pox on both your failed houses." Because when it is nut crunching time, human beings love their lives, and the living of them, and will finally focus up first at least on what they know -isn't- a solution, no matter what they've been spoon fed in the mandrels of thought, and move on from there.

What species delivers their young to this? And so, those of us who have failed -- failed to do anything but grow a once federal government into the national government -- should help them save this nation from the cul de sac it allowed itself to meander into, by backing out and trying anew.

Our founding fathers were slave holders and the relevant word is 'were.' Of freedom, Monticello, and the University of Virginia, all built by slave holders and slaves, which of freedom, architecture, and public universities should today be cast aside because of the sophist application of 'simple facts?'

The enemies of freedom have been beating a dead horse with that logic.

Why are they anything but laughed at?

regards,

Fred

I'm afraid that you've gotten the rhetoric correct, yet it's backwards.

it's the right-wing of american politics that has brought up 'founding fathers' points of view. OTH, the left is far more modernist, saying, in effect, that what's past is past, so we should deal with ,modern circumstance on our own terms, not theirs.

Having let the cat out of the bag, certain on the right whine that obtaining a realistc picture of FF's is 'unfair sophistry', etc...

but they've only themselves to blame.

EM

it's the right-wing of american politics that has brought up 'founding fathers' points of view... and will continue to do so, without any reason not to. It's the left-wing that has countered with the 'argument' of 'simple facts' -- that freedom, Monticello, and UVA were all built by slave holders in Charlottesville, and so, let us use these orthogonal facts to ... throw away freedom and yet retain architecture and public universities.

Its an entertaining argument when impotently spouted by foaming at the mouth fringe WFPers down on lower east side sidewalks.

Safely fringe and ineffective in a free nation.

[Frediano]

Michael:

Some storylines are so easy to understand that the gymnastics required to make them complex are revealing.

Rapists rape, and what makes rape 'rape' and not an act of love is forced vs. free association.

I'm not confused in the least between political paradigms based on that which makes rape 'rape' and the free alternatives.

Not even a little bit. Sleep like a baby in that certainty, and have no concept at all about what defect in human character would allow other of my peers to cling to their paradigms shared by rapists.

That would take some gymnastics, and does. They want what they want. Well, so do rapists; nothing special about what folks want.

regards,

Fred

[Frediano]

Eva doesnt like the rape illustration because Eva has no answer for it at all, other than that the illustration is impolite and not a proper topic for this polite debate.

There is a name for candidate rape victims who politely discuss the question of rape with rapists: "The raped."

There is a name for candidate slavery victims who politely discuss the question of slavery with slave owner wanabes: "Slaves."

There is a name for the advocates of free association who politely discuss the question of forced association with totalitarian emperor wanabes: "The un-free."

In the context of a free nation, it is impolite to raise the question of forced association.

It is as absurd as "Excuse me, can we politely discuss the terms of your rape?"

Such questions of the initiation of aggression are met with superior aggression(aggression raised in response to the first use of agression)with a clean conscience, and exhortations by rapists to be quiet, sit still, lay back, and enjoy it are equally ignore-able without a moments hesitation..

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Fred,

I don't get the rape thing. I've seen it come up a bit (here an over yonder). It sounded like one of those arcane things people like to get upset about, but doesn't go anywhere. So I've just skipped over most of those discussions.

Rape is a form of bullying.

Is that news to anyone? I don't get it.

Michael

EDIT: I just saw something over yonder where you used this analogy with the weird dude who wants to replace private property with rules of behavior. I actually see an equivalence there. If someone came into your house and demanded you start behaving within it according to a set of rules they determined, if that were backed by force, I agree it would feel a lot like rape.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Fred,

Also, I don't get the forced association connection, unless we are talking about "protection rackets" and things like that.

Nature imposes certain forced associations on us. Starting with the people who raise us (usually our parents). Also, there's the country we grow up in, including the language we are "forced" to learn.

I certainly would not equal any of that to being raped.

Michael

[moralist]

It's simple:

Premise 1: Either rights violations are at a minimum or they are not. (a true dichotomy)

The flaw here is the tacit implication that no matter which it is, someone else is responsible for your rights. You are the only one who is personally responsible for keeping your own rights intact by how you live.

In America today, decent people who enjoy rights honor the Giver of those rights by striving to live a life deserving of them. In contrast, the indecent stupidly piss away their rights while angrily blaming others. And like screaming spoiled children they demand that someone else go get them back for them.

No one can protect your rights when you don't deserve them.

As I've argued in the OP and elsewhere, people are incapable of changing society for the better.

What about changing yourself for the better first? For the quality of your own being is what affects the people around you with whom you personally interact. That is the society for which you are personally responsible.... and it is all within your own control. So if the society around you is crappy, then you're just as crappy because you made it that way.

As it stands, your belief that things will eventually get better rests on nothing more than a blind faith in the Holy Wisdom of the Founding Fathers.

There is the sacred... and the profane.

And we each freely choose by which standard we live.

Greg

[Selene]

Rapists rape, and what makes rape 'rape' and not an act of love is forced vs. free association.

What would you communicate to Ms, Mac Donald about her voluntary choice in this particular situation?

Mac McClelland, a civil rights reporter who has seen the impact of sexual violence around the globe, couldn't shake the image of Sybille, a woman who said she had been raped at gunpoint and mutilated in the aftermath of Haiti's catastrophic 2010 earthquake.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/reporter-mac-mcclelland-violent-sex-ease-post-traumatic/story?id=13995013

While on assignment for Mother Jones last September, McClelland said she accompanied Sybille to the hospital when the woman saw her attackers and went into "a full paroxysm -- wailing, flailing" in terror.

Something snapped in McClelland, too. She became progressively enveloped in the classic symptoms of post-traumatic stress -- avoidance of feelings, flashbacks and recurrent thoughts that triggered crying spells. There were smells that made her gag.

McClelland, 31, sought professional help but said she ultimately cured herself by staging her own rape, which she writes about in a haunting piece for the online magazine Good. The title: "How Violent Sex Helped Ease My PTSD." <<<<,

Think link with the red arrows goes to her personal article which is particularly powerful.

[eva matthews]

Earlier generations of Americans delivered their young to a better and more free world. Not so this past 50 years of tag team Dem/GOP pursuing only control over an ever increasing CronyFest on the Potomac. The alternative to the No Hope for Freedom Dems is not the False Hope for Freedom GOP. And so I sense in the current twentysomethings a politics described as "a pox on both your failed houses." Because when it is nut crunching time, human beings love their lives, and the living of them, and will finally focus up first at least on what they know -isn't- a solution, no matter what they've been spoon fed in the mandrels of thought, and move on from there.

What species delivers their young to this? And so, those of us who have failed -- failed to do anything but grow a once federal government into the national government -- should help them save this nation from the cul de sac it allowed itself to meander into, by backing out and trying anew.

Our founding fathers were slave holders and the relevant word is 'were.' Of freedom, Monticello, and the University of Virginia, all built by slave holders and slaves, which of freedom, architecture, and public universities should today be cast aside because of the sophist application of 'simple facts?'

The enemies of freedom have been beating a dead horse with that logic.

Why are they anything but laughed at?

regards,

Fred

I'm afraid that you've gotten the rhetoric correct, yet it's backwards.

it's the right-wing of american politics that has brought up 'founding fathers' points of view. OTH, the left is far more modernist, saying, in effect, that what's past is past, so we should deal with ,modern circumstance on our own terms, not theirs.

Having let the cat out of the bag, certain on the right whine that obtaining a realistc picture of FF's is 'unfair sophistry', etc...

but they've only themselves to blame.

EM

it's the right-wing of american politics that has brought up 'founding fathers' points of view... and will continue to do so, without any reason not to. It's the left-wing that has countered with the 'argument' of 'simple facts' -- that freedom, Monticello, and UVA were all built by slave holders in Charlottesville, and so, let us use these orthogonal facts to ... throw away freedom and yet retain architecture and public universities.

Its an entertaining argument when impotently spouted by foaming at the mouth fringe WFPers down on lower east side sidewalks.

Safely fringe and ineffective in a free nation.

The good news, Fred, is that your seemingly ad-hoc 'left' as now been reconstructed into a narratology called 'Fredoia' here at Dust Bunny U!

More to the point: to the extent that slaveholders write about freedom, they're writing about their own freedom to own slaves.

As for UVa itself, beyond the Fredoia that leftists want to burn the buildings, the demand is, in actuality, that the descendants of slaves be fairly compensated for their labor.

EM

[Frediano]

Fred,

I don't get the rape thing. I've seen it come up a bit (here an over yonder). It sounded like one of those arcane things people like to get upset about, but doesn't go anywhere. So I've just skipped over most of those discussions.

Rape is a form of bullying.

Is that news to anyone? I don't get it.

Michael

EDIT: I just saw something over yonder where you used this analogy with the weird dude who wants to replace private property with rules of behavior. I actually see an equivalence there. If someone came into your house and demanded you start behaving within it according to a set of rules they determined, if that were backed by force, I agree it would feel a lot like rape.

Michael:

What characteristic distinguishes an act of rape from a sexual act between two people? It is not the physical act. It is not even 'rough' sex. It is precisely the characteristic free association vs. forced association. It is exactly the non-consensual aspect of the human interaction. Ditto 'slavery.' This hardly seems subtle.

If it is some other characteristic that you think makes rape abhorrent, let me know. Similarly, if you don't think the issue of free vs forced association in any way relates to libertarian principles, then why not?

regards,

Fred

[Frediano]

Rapists rape, and what makes rape 'rape' and not an act of love is forced vs. free association.

What would you communicate to Ms, Mac Donald about her voluntary choice in this particular situation?

Mac McClelland, a civil rights reporter who has seen the impact of sexual violence around the globe, couldn't shake the image of Sybille, a woman who said she had been raped at gunpoint and mutilated in the aftermath of Haiti's catastrophic 2010 earthquake.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/reporter-mac-mcclelland-violent-sex-ease-post-traumatic/story?id=13995013

While on assignment for Mother Jones last September, McClelland said she accompanied Sybille to the hospital when the woman saw her attackers and went into "a full paroxysm -- wailing, flailing" in terror.

Something snapped in McClelland, too. She became progressively enveloped in the classic symptoms of post-traumatic stress -- avoidance of feelings, flashbacks and recurrent thoughts that triggered crying spells. There were smells that made her gag.

McClelland, 31, sought professional help but said she ultimately cured herself by staging her own rape, which she writes about in a haunting piece for the online magazine Good. The title: "How Violent Sex Helped Ease My PTSD." <<<<,

Think link with the red arrows goes to her personal article which is particularly powerful.

I'd tell her I share her abhorrence of that which makes rape 'rape,' and that her anthem was fully read and understood.

I don't see me, however, voluntarily voting for either a Democrat or Republican any time soon to try to cure me of my abhorrence of totalitarianism.

regards,

Fred

[Frediano]

Earlier generations of Americans delivered their young to a better and more free world. Not so this past 50 years of tag team Dem/GOP pursuing only control over an ever increasing CronyFest on the Potomac. The alternative to the No Hope for Freedom Dems is not the False Hope for Freedom GOP. And so I sense in the current twentysomethings a politics described as "a pox on both your failed houses." Because when it is nut crunching time, human beings love their lives, and the living of them, and will finally focus up first at least on what they know -isn't- a solution, no matter what they've been spoon fed in the mandrels of thought, and move on from there.

What species delivers their young to this? And so, those of us who have failed -- failed to do anything but grow a once federal government into the national government -- should help them save this nation from the cul de sac it allowed itself to meander into, by backing out and trying anew.

Our founding fathers were slave holders and the relevant word is 'were.' Of freedom, Monticello, and the University of Virginia, all built by slave holders and slaves, which of freedom, architecture, and public universities should today be cast aside because of the sophist application of 'simple facts?'

The enemies of freedom have been beating a dead horse with that logic.

Why are they anything but laughed at?

regards,

Fred

I'm afraid that you've gotten the rhetoric correct, yet it's backwards.

it's the right-wing of american politics that has brought up 'founding fathers' points of view. OTH, the left is far more modernist, saying, in effect, that what's past is past, so we should deal with ,modern circumstance on our own terms, not theirs.

Having let the cat out of the bag, certain on the right whine that obtaining a realistc picture of FF's is 'unfair sophistry', etc...

but they've only themselves to blame.

EM

it's the right-wing of american politics that has brought up 'founding fathers' points of view... and will continue to do so, without any reason not to. It's the left-wing that has countered with the 'argument' of 'simple facts' -- that freedom, Monticello, and UVA were all built by slave holders in Charlottesville, and so, let us use these orthogonal facts to ... throw away freedom and yet retain architecture and public universities.

Its an entertaining argument when impotently spouted by foaming at the mouth fringe WFPers down on lower east side sidewalks.

Safely fringe and ineffective in a free nation.

The good news, Fred, is that your seemingly ad-hoc 'left' as now been reconstructed into a narratology called 'Fredoia' here at Dust Bunny U!

More to the point: to the extent that slaveholders write about freedom, they're writing about their own freedom to own slaves.

As for UVa itself, beyond the Fredoia that leftists want to burn the buildings, the demand is, in actuality, that the descendants of slaves be fairly compensated for their labor.

EM

In case my point was too subtle("and yet retain"), it is precisely the fact that the leftists don't want to burn the buildings that is the point; the leftists are remarkably selective about the orthogonal facts surrounding 'slave holders' that they want to taint with their 'slave holder' spraypaint.

That you are reduced to inverting my meaning by 180 degrees as all you got is what reassures me that you and the entire Lit Department serving at your beck and call got... absolutely nothing.

Go back to the Lit Department and make sure they've sobered up from the catastrophic PA Renaissance Faire junket; they should have called first, the parking lot is still full of un-melted snow. Ask them to put away the damp velour and brocade and interpret "and yet retain" for you. Give them time, because let's not waste them corn dogs and light beer on the long bus ride home weigh heavy on the soul of mankind.

Oncle F

[Frediano]

Michael:

When we regard the wide array of sexual acts between individuals, it is generally associated with pleasure; even those facets of same that consensually include pain, even the facets that include forceful action. All the way to the fringes of S&M and bondage and--what was the term in that article -- 'friendly gun' sex.

If we add only one ingredient, and replace free association with forced association, the precise same physical acts between two people are abhorred as 'rape.'

What makes rape abhorrent is precisely the non-consensual, forced association aspect of it. Forced association is what makes rape 'rape.'

Forced association is what distinguishes "12 Years A Slave" from "I'm three years away from my 15 year tie clasp."

regards,

Fred

[Frediano]

I'm kind of surprised that the advocates of forced association paradigms keep wanting to bring up slavery in the modern political context. They are kind of leading with their chin. The irony is, they should continue to feel free.

Yes, indeed, slavery is abhorrent; good it was eliminated in this free nation 8 generations ago. We should be encouraging the whole world to be moving away from forced association paradigms, you know, like slavery, rape, bullying, totalitarianism/national socialism(to be distinguished from socialism)and so on.

regards,

Fred

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Fred,

I think forced association is not a good synonym for bullying.

Being a child in a "forced association" to its parents does not equate to rape, not even remotely. Rape can happen to the child being raised, though, so what's missing in the essence you are promoting (forced association)?

It leaves out things like hostility, threat (and imminent danger at that), lack of concern with one of the parties in the relationship (objectifying them), suffering of the victim, and so on.

The evaluation:

Forced association = Evil

Voluntary association = good

... doesn't pass the universal test. There are just too many exceptions. I agree this evaluation is true for a lot of situations, but not all of them. It needs more to become a universal standard of good and evil.

In other words, can we say rape is one kind of forced association? Yes.

Can we say rape (evil) belongs to the same category of human relationships as raising children, or even locking up a bad guy, (good) because all of them are forced associations?

Not in my world.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Fred,

Here's another aspect that needs to be on the table if you are seeking a universal principle of good and evil in human relationships.

Learned helplessness.

This is real.

Researchers have been shocking dogs (and God knows what else) to test this. Essentially they teach a dog that nothing it can do will avoid random shocks, then later put it in a box where all it has to do is jump over a partition of some kind right in front of it and the shocks will stop. But the dog just lays down and whimpers. Other dogs that are taught that shocks can be stopped by pushing a lever, or other ways, will jump over the partition immediately when placed in the new box.

Thus, in this case, teaching the dog helplessness was done by "forced association," but later, after the learning happened, when there was one easy alternative available that was not forced that ended the suffering, the dog didn't take action.

All you have to do is morph this out to human relationships and see the real evil that can be done by it. (Good, too, when dealing with real, but not apparent, dangers, but I don't want to get too nitpicky at this point.)

The standard story told in marketing circles to illustrate learned helplessness is about circus elephants. When they are small, the owners fix a rope or chain to one of their legs and attach it to a stake in the ground. The calf cannot budge the stake. After an elephant grows up and gets huge, it will no longer try to leave the confines of the stake, even though it could easily pull it up just by walking away. The story goes that elephants in this condition have died in tent fires, burning to death rather than simply walking away from the danger.

I'm pretty sure this story has had some morphing of its own over the years, but it persists because it is such a great metaphor for limiting beliefs (i.e., learned helplessness for humans).

I study this shit from a propaganda and persuasion perspective, so I know it is possible to teach people learned helplessness without their consent. Not all are easily susceptible, but many, many are. Actually we all are susceptible to some degree. It just depends on our mental disposition when it happens and the amount of repetition.

When done deliberately for domination, I can easily see that as a form of mental rape.

(As an aside, Valliant tried to make a case that NB did this to Ayn Rand, but somehow the idea of learned helplessness and Ayn Rand don't fit together too well. )

How does that work with your "forced association" paradigm?

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Fred,

I just read your tangle over on RoR where I was discussed. You basically see what I see.

(For interested readers, I mean these threads here and here.)

But it occurs to me that right now was not the best time to start examining your rape argument.

I quip, but ideas are ideas and any time is a good time for good ones (like your forced association focus, despite my reservations) to get a thorough vetting, honing and polishing.

The more a good idea can stand against a strong challenge, the stronger it gets.

Michael

[moralist]

I'm kind of surprised that the advocates of forced association paradigms keep wanting to bring up slavery in the modern political context.

Slavery is alive and well in America even today. It is the self imposed slavery to debt. People have become indentured debt slaves of their own need to possess what they cannot afford to own.

Greg

[BaalChatzaf]

I'm kind of surprised that the advocates of forced association paradigms keep wanting to bring up slavery in the modern political context.

Slavery is alive and well in America even today. It is the self imposed slavery to debt. People have become indentured debt slaves of their own need to possess what they cannot afford to own.

Greg

That is a stretch on the word "slavery". A person who cannot repay his debt is not put in chains and sold to a new owner. We have laws permitting one to be declared bankrupt and no longer a target of collectors. Being in debt beyond one's ability to repay is uncomfortable and even humiliating, but it is not slavery.

Why was the last time a lash was legally laid on the back of someone who could not repay. (ok, ok, the Mafia types break knee caps, but that is not legal).

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Brant Gaede]

I'm kind of surprised that the advocates of forced association paradigms keep wanting to bring up slavery in the modern political context.

Slavery is alive and well in America even today. It is the self imposed slavery to debt. People have become indentured debt slaves of their own need to possess what they cannot afford to own.

Greg

Depends.

--Brant