Definition of Power

[Dglgmut]

2 hours ago, Jon Letendre said:

I don't recall which character in The Fountainhead says that about leashes, I think it was Wynand. His/her point was that not only the slave but also the master loses their authentic self in the relationship. The nooses "execute" the self at each end.

I understand the meaning. The dominant person in a relationship may alter their behavior in order to stay dominant. But I don't see how that differs from any other decision we make. The question is the true value of the desire. We may walk around a puddle, but the change in our behavior is meaningless, and so the value of staying dry is clearly greater. If we have to lose all of our other values for the sake of dominating another person, then we have made an error.

 

Dominating an enemy military, though? There's no noose in that case. The value lost by altering your behavior in this case is worth it. And I think this is the optimal use of power: minimizing losses.

[The Unabashed Pragmatic]

3 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

U,

I don't find that to be a perfect argument. Ideologies are not agents. They are tools that agents use.

(Unlike Dawkins, I do not give memes agency, in other words, I do not identify a meme as a living organism that acts to survive and propagate--and throw in a little blah blah blah to cover the absurdity of this idea.) 

There is a very good discussion of this by Howard Bloom in Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century. So let me talk about that a bit.

 

Howard Bloom - the negatives

First, let's get the negatives out of the way. I can't stand Bloom's jargon, especially since I come from a Randian worldview. The idea of a collective organism and the implication that the individual only has value within that collective is like running my fingertips through a box filled with double-edged razor blades. However, I am a conceptual thinker, not a jargon-limited thinker and there is a level where Bloom's conceptual penetration into what happens in collectives (including living species) is breathtaking. I'll give one example below, but there are many and the insights are awe-inspiring.

The other negative is Bloom's rabid Trump Derangement Syndrome on his YouTube channel. That's his right, but his wholesale adoption and emotion-laden regurgitation of anti-Trump talking points are disappointing, even irritating. Not because he hates Trump. It's because he turns off his brain and opens his goddam mouth to hate Trump. I think he still believes Trump is a puppet for Putin. His TDS is on that level. How can a man of Bloom's intellect go wallow in the epistemological mud like that? But he does.

Fucking humans, those suckers never act right, even when they're on a roll.  

 

Howard Bloom - the positives

Setting that aside, Howard Bloom is brilliant if you allow the light from his thinking in.

(Apropos, in addition to evolution and other science-related matters, Bloom has been part of the motor behind the successes of huge rock stars like Prince, Michael Jackson, Bob Marley, Billy Joel, Paul Simon, John Mellencamp and others. But that's another story dealing with imprinting and understanding the common mental bases of individuals within the human species that can be triggered when people gather in large masses, which they do because they seek a mental/emotional/spiritual experience that can be gotten only in large groups. He lays it out in a very fun manner in his recent book, Einstein, Michael Jackson & Me: A Search for Soul in the Power Pits of Rock and Roll.)

Now about Dawkins's memes and the human species.

 

The Global Brain concept versus memes

In Bloom's ideas about collectives, which he takes all the way down past lifeforms and into atoms, he identifies 5 kinds of elements that act in a prewired manner for the good of the collective, which means for collective learning and evolving. A collective that does not learn enough to survive within an environment and adapt to the changes within its environment soon stops being a collective and becomes waste material. 

(Don't let the atom stuff turn you off. Bloom mostly deals with living species from single cell organisms, including the parts thereof, on up to human beings. The five elements he mentions coexist in a network of permanent conflict and cooperation with each other, but they are welded to each other at their core through networks. If one of the five elements dies out, the whole collective tends to dissipate. The evolutionary purpose of this system, so to speak, is to improve individual members in general and destroy the inferior individuals, being that if the individuals get stronger, the collective does likewise.

In Randian jargon, Bloom is talking about the nature of integration. And then he slaps the word "brain" and other terms on it, but the essence is still how integration works from an evolutionary lens

As an aside, Bloom only deals with the prewired part. Humans have volition, so humans can override these five elements to make space for individuals that the prewired system would have killed off. And, oddly enough, they do it through networks of conflict and cooperation--including the Internet--just like everything else that came before.

 

Example - the five elements

For the five elements, here's a quote:

 Don't forget that this also applies to the sum of mankind's knowledge, which is, in essence, an effort by countless individuals who worked and work within a collective in these different capacities. Not one person has to invent counting, the alphabet, and so on. There is already a wealth of stuff to learn that has been formed by countless individuals for each brand new baby. And, if all goes well, the baby with grow up and add to it all.

This topic is way too long to get into here, but Bloom goes in depth with what is wrong with Dawkins's meme idea. It just doesn't work across these five elements. Notice that a religion can be toxic in the way Dawkins and Dennett claim, with war and so on, but it also can lead to so much peaceful cooperation among all these diverse elements and situations that free-market capitalism can emerge. How are both possible if religion is nothing more than a parasitical meme?

Also, Bloom goes into bickering--creative bickering and otherwise--which is baked the whole shebang. This happens, say, when conformity enforcers collide with diversity generators--but even between different conformity enforcers and different diversity generators.

(btw - Online forums and social media are great places for creative bickering.  )

When these five elements get way out of balance within a "collective learning machine" (which includes living species), bad things happen to said machine. Integrated wholes need cooperation and they need conflict to continue to be integrated.

Here is another quote by Bloom from the end of the book when he is talking mostly about human beings and when these elements get out of whack.

I could go on and on about this, but what little I did mention just now awakened a thirst in me for rereading this book.

 

Throwaway thoughts

Since my main interest is fiction writing at the moment, finding this book was one of those joyous discoveries that sometimes happen to authors. I stumbled across five archetypes for the five essential parts of collectives, just like Jungian archetypes mostly work for the essential parts of individuals. Each one can be a character or a character can be made up of several. Or even new archetypes can be dreamed up.

As I go deeper into my work on writing fiction like Rand, I am going to have to wed all this stuff with her techniques and see what is valid and what isn't. (Sorry... This last stuff is just throwaway thinking as a reminder to myself.)

Michael

Ideologies are not agents, true.  They are the tools.  And when the followers, the sheep swallow the ideology whole and without question, they become the tools.  They run on it.  Like Marines who are drilled with the ideology of "Kill! Kill! Kill!", they become tools of the State and do its bidding without question, turning the ideology, the idea, into reality, into kinetic force.  The leaders simply point them in the direction they wish them to go... until the followers realize they are being used, and that they are tools, and wipe their hard drives clean and break off from the leader(s).

Power is an illusion.  It is is not real.  The only power one has is the control he has over himself.  Power is in the hands of those who give consent, sanction, are willing; and to the leader, so long as he is obeyed.  Everyone disobey the emperor and he stands naked before all.  And a dismal looking thing he really is, after all.

[Dglgmut]

56 minutes ago, The Unabashed Pragmatic said:

Power is an illusion.  It is is not real.  The only power one has is the control he has over himself.

You have power over your body. That's simple enough... But your mind? That is where it gets tricky.

Power is not simple even on an individual level.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

15 hours ago, The Unabashed Pragmatic said:

Ideologies are not agents, true.  They are the tools.  And when the followers, the sheep swallow the ideology whole and without question, they become the tools.

U,

True, but the people become tools of the leaders (like you sort of mentioned in an earlier post). And there are other elements to keeping a dictatorship together. 

But the people do not become tools of the ideology.

This is one point where Rand becomes a bit iffy in her insistence that philosophy is the sole or main motor of a society. Even David Kelley mentioned in some book or other I read a long time ago that a philosophy (read ideology) doesn't just penetrate a culture by osmosis. There are countless forms of conveyance from people gossiping, to movies, to the names being put on newborns. (Example, how many males have been named Mohammad in the Western world in the last 15 years or so?) 

 

Imitation and celebrities

A HUGE human nature biggie in the spread of an ideology or religion is the hardwired impulse to imitate that is common to all primates. This is the principal manner in which primates learn.

There is another hardwired impulse: to look at the celebrities that are accepted by the group. There are studies of different monkey species with pictures of their local celebrity monkeys (alpha males and so on). It never fails. Monkeys stare long periods at the pictures of celebrity monkeys and ignore the pictures of ordinary monkeys.

Who is the biggest celebrity within a human culture? It is normally the leader, president, prime minister, king, dictator, Grand Poo-Bah and so on. If such a leader endorses a new philosophy or religion and is a powerful leader, suddenly that philosophy or religion will gain a huge number of followers. If the leader is not powerful, but weak, he or she will soon be replaced and the endorsement will fizzle.

We can observe this pattern all throughout recorded history.

There are other elements, of course, like whether the new philosophy or religion is objectionable or widely discussed and so on. But the most powerful way to spread a new philosophy in, say, America, is for the president to come out and endorse it, and practice it.

With the public at large, they don't absorb a new philosophy that sneaks up on them, then adhere to it (as Rand constantly insinuated). There is some of that. But in general, people adopt a new philosophy or ideology (for whatever reason, but mostly from imitating), and only after that, the words start changing them on the inside. 

 

The ultimate human nature imperative

This is how communism first took over in Russia. But, in this case, there was another element. The ideology didn't come down from the top celebrity monkey until the takeover of the Tsarist system by force. The angry hoards with torches and pitchforks didn't study communism, then go out to overthrow the Tsar. They were pushed into it by the ultimate human nature imperative: hunger and misery. And even then, there had to be another element to get them going.

You can keep poor people down and miserable for a long, long time. But you can't keep it up if you insist on eating lavish banquets right next door to them. Imagine a fence. On one side is a hoard of starving people outdoors. On the other is a huge banquet table outdoors with 100 times more food than the guests can eat. 

No one needs to be the world's greatest genius to see how that will play out.

 

Human nature...

That's basically what happened in Russia. The more organized people who went up against the Tsars called themselves communists and the starving hoards said that was OK by them. They heard the words, but all they thought about was food. They only learned how to internalize and adopt communism after Lenin became top celebrity monkey and people started imitating him. After that, this imitation persisted and grew because Lenin was clever about building a functioning practical organizational system right into the ideology. So by the time people began to see the bodies piling up and wanted to object, it was too late.

 

Another celebrity monkey

Take a look at Scientology for a different, but same form. Scientololgy operates in free societies so there is no compulsion by force. People go into it willingly and stay there willingly. But no one gets entangled in it because they believe airplane-shaped spaceships loyal to evil warlord Xenu came from the other side of the universe and dumped thetan souls into volcanoes on earth, which then belched them out and so on. New Scientologists get sucked into the ideology by babysteps through an organized system of brainwashing. It starts with bait and switch (personality checkups, training routines and so on). But soon in the indoctrination process, the newbies are encouraged to look long and hard (through video, audio, books and so on) at their main celebrity monkey, L Ron Hubbard. Before long, the new recruits are imitating him up the wazoo. After that starts, it really doesn't matter what the details of the new religion are. The newbies have adopted the cult's religion and only then are they going to start adhering to it.

 

These are just a few thoughts I have on how ideologies work and spread. I could go on for days about this stuff.

The biggest problem I have seen in formalized Objectivism (over the time I have been posting in public) is the number of people who get seduced into seeing Ayn Rand as the chief celebrity monkey. She was brilliant, but she was not--and is not--the best role model for many important things in life. This problem has led to splits and bickering on a Homeric scale and has kept Objectivism from becoming an organized force of importance in society. Many of Rand's ideas themselves have become important (mostly through her fiction and through celebrity endorsements in our culture), but the organizations have not grown in the same manner new religions like Scientology and new ideological organizations like, say, Black Lives Matter, have grown.

If Objectivism can one day be organized without the celebrity monkey thing baked in, I believe it can be an enormously important incubator for independent thinkers and producers of all stripes--ones who go on to shape society through their achievements. Who knows?.. Some day... perhaps...

Michael

[The Unabashed Pragmatic]

1 hour ago, Dglgmut said:

You have power over your body. That's simple enough... But your mind? That is where it gets tricky.

Power is not simple even on an individual level.

To me, the whole thing is ridiculously simple.  I am the driver.  By 'I', I mean the intent, the ego, the individual.  I drive myself to whatever I wish.  And I can obey the commands of a dictator and put that power, that energy to his use, if I choose.  But I must choose it, must consent.  That is the only thing we have power over, and that power is limited and for a limited time, as is our power over our body. Isabel Paterson demonstrated and expounded on this beautifully in her book, "The God of the Machine."  

 

[Dglgmut]

8 hours ago, The Unabashed Pragmatic said:

To me, the whole thing is ridiculously simple.  I am the driver.  By 'I', I mean the intent, the ego, the individual.  I drive myself to whatever I wish.

You don't directly control your motivation, though. This is why it's so hard to make characteristic changes. You have to rearrange your environment, possibly get new friends, start doing things that are not directly connected to the change you want to make but are still part of the process. This reminds me of the thing Jung said about you not having ideas, but ideas having you.

 

This is all relevant to the idea of power, because if power over oneself is not absolute, then social power, being non-absolute, is still very significant.

[Dglgmut]

One thing that needs to be clarified is the notion of "rules." What is a rule, and is there a difference between natural rule and social rule? Rules presuppose the importance of avoiding negative consequences. "No stealing" means "if you don't want to be punished, do not steal." The rule here is a social rule. A natural rule would be "no jumping off of a cliff."

 

The concept of formal rules depends on the concept of formal rulers as well as the concept of "formal." Formal, in this sense, refers to the dynamics of dominant and submissive being acknowledged. A formal rule is a rule made by a dominant party who is acknowledged as such by the submissive party (some people conflate this with consent). Many rules are informal, and don't entail an obvious sub/dom dynamic. Social norms are rules abstracted from the behaviors of particular individuals through pattern recognition; here we have a situation that must be unpacked. To have effect a rule requires submission to the source of the rule (the consequences associated with breaking the rule must be significantly undesirable and the source of the consequences must be respected in that capacity), but the source of social norms is not a defined person or group. The abstract majority, or significant portion, of people are dominant here. Eccentrics may be people who do not submit to the majority in this sense.

 

One last case to examine is the cult leader or religious figure. The dominance in this situation is derived from the "truth" that is being conveyed. The bishop's status is not due to his higher worth in the eyes of God, but in his ability to relay valuable information. The religious figure does not need to convince his followers that he is higher status, he only needs to tell them what makes them feel good ("feel good" here does not imply happiness, but more like social media stimulating dopamine production).

[The Unabashed Pragmatic]

4 hours ago, Dglgmut said:

You don't directly control your motivation, though.

Who or what does control it?

[Dglgmut]

32 minutes ago, The Unabashed Pragmatic said:

Who or what does control it?

There's a number of factors, technically infinite, composing your experience. That does not mean you are determined entirely by external forces, because part of your experience is internal: your experience of self (experience of experiencing).

 

I don't want to get into this in this thread, though. I want to focus on the factors that determine behavior across entire populations.

[The Unabashed Pragmatic]

2 hours ago, Dglgmut said:

There's a number of factors, technically infinite, composing your experience. That does not mean you are determined entirely by external forces, because part of your experience is internal: your experience of self (experience of experiencing).

 

I don't want to get into this in this thread, though. I want to focus on the factors that determine behavior across entire populations.

Ok.  Here's another faction that determines behavior across entire populations: fear.  "The spectacle of fearsome acts", etc.

 

 

[Dglgmut]

17 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Who is the biggest celebrity within a human culture? It is normally the leader, president, prime minister, king, dictator, Grand Poo-Bah and so on.

I think identifying the connection between celebrity and leadership is incisive. The two are synonymous on a primitive level--in a prehistoric battle squad, hunting group, or tribe, the celebrity is the leader; the person you look to. Why should our attention naturally be drawn to the inconsequential? To be precise we could say that celebrity is derived from any human quality that naturally draws our attention, and therefore any human quality in others that can benefit us (our genes) or, in the case of infamous celebrities, that can harm us. That which can benefit or harm us is really that which would benefit or harm our ancestors.

 

So our criteria for celebrity and leadership are those that would have benefited (or in the case of infamy, harmed) us if we lived thousands of years ago. But how direct is this connection between celebrity and power? Surely Tom Cruise is a bigger celebrity than any of the Scientology leadership or L. Ron Hubbard, himself. I used submissive/dominant relationships to describe power dynamics, and I think that's the best way to look at it as far as I've thought of.

Quote

If Objectivism can one day be organized without the celebrity monkey thing baked in, I believe it can be an enormously important incubator for independent thinkers and producers of all stripes--ones who go on to shape society through their achievements. Who knows?.. Some day... perhaps...

But human nature won't change for a long time (until genetic engineering is practiced), so the ideal would probably be a culture of lesser celebrities that embrace an individualist philosophy and therefore encourage many others to seek answers there. Otherwise you need a new celebrity to take Rand's place, one who is a better role model.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

1 hour ago, Dglgmut said:

Surely Tom Cruise is a bigger celebrity than any of the Scientology leadership or L. Ron Hubbard, himself.

D,

To us he is. Not to them.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

1 hour ago, Dglgmut said:

... the ideal would probably be a culture of lesser celebrities that embrace an individualist philosophy and therefore encourage many others to seek answers there.

D,

Or simply a form where celebrities do exist, but in parallel activities.

For example, (btw - I'm not doing this) a fiction school that focuses on writing in a Randian style, and famous bestselling students of said school being the celebs.

Ditto for an economic/entrepreneurship school based on Randian ideas where the celebs come from nowhere and become hot-ass gazillionaires through their own start-ups.

And so on.

Socially speaking, a philosophy celeb is a priest without the robe.

And we all know what the cost is for formal churches, right?

Tithing...

 

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

D,

Since you are looking at power from a human nature standpoint, I suggest looking at the Milgram experiment and the Stanford prison experiment.

There are plenty of others, but these are mind-blowing enough to serve as a great introduction if you are not familiar with this line of research.

(I'm not providing links on purpose just to see if you are interested enough to look up this stuff. It's easy to find...)

Michael

[The Unabashed Pragmatic]

5 hours ago, Dglgmut said:

I think identifying the connection between celebrity and leadership is incisive. The two are synonymous on a primitive level--in a prehistoric battle squad, hunting group, or tribe, the celebrity is the leader; the person you look to. Why should our attention naturally be drawn to the inconsequential? To be precise we could say that celebrity is derived from any human quality that naturally draws our attention, and therefore any human quality in others that can benefit us (our genes) or, in the case of infamous celebrities, that can harm us. That which can benefit or harm us is really that which would benefit or harm our ancestors.

 

So our criteria for celebrity and leadership are those that would have benefited (or in the case of infamy, harmed) us if we lived thousands of years ago. But how direct is this connection between celebrity and power? Surely Tom Cruise is a bigger celebrity than any of the Scientology leadership or L. Ron Hubbard, himself. I used submissive/dominant relationships to describe power dynamics, and I think that's the best way to look at it as far as I've thought of.

But human nature won't change for a long time (until genetic engineering is practiced), so the ideal would probably be a culture of lesser celebrities that embrace an individualist philosophy and therefore encourage many others to seek answers there. Otherwise you need a new celebrity to take Rand's place, one who is a better role model.

Human nature won't change.  Human nature cannot be changed.  Nature itself, the nature of the universe, cannot be changed.  Messing about with human genes will not change nature or the nature of life itself.  Messing about with human genes will guarantee the powerful even more power and will ruin many lives, but it will not change nature or the nature of life.  All of this nonsense will eventually crash and burn.  Why?  Because the maniacs have hold of it and will ruin it just like they ruin everything else they touch.  They will not put the technology, the science to any good use, just as they did with the Industrial Revolution when they used all the new technology to arm other maniacs with the deadliest machinery mankind had ever seen and start two world wars in a row, endless wars all over the world ever since, and a world wide banking and fake money fiasco that is only leading us to our inevitable ruin.

Power is not real.  Power is a dream.  Power is an illusion.

Power is simply submission to an authority.  Power is simply the fearful, the ignorant, the stupid submitting to the latest fool who believes in himself, in his power, in his might.  He has nothing but the obedience of other fools who believe his nonsense.  He has nothing.  They have nothing.  It is a facade.  His fools, his fearful, stupid fools, prop his dumb ass up in every way and try to wish him into a god.  But it never works and it all comes crashing down, time and time again, throughout our sordid, stupid past.

Power is not real.  Power is an illusion.  It does not exist.  

The American Founders understood this only too well.  They fought a war over it and freed themselves, recreating themselves with the "Bill of Rights", and by breaking down governance into many compartments, states, counties, etc., and giving the individual the right to choose whatever he likes.  Little did they realize no government has any such authority in the first place and cannot give these properties to anyone nor take them away.  Nature has given these properties to the individual--and that's that.  I can choose whatever I like anyway.  And there's not a thing they can do about that, save do violence on me.  But while the Founders had the right idea, some of them, they screwed the whole experiment up from the beginning by ratifying the Constitution, which Patrick Henry refused to sign, and for good reason.  He smelled a rat.  I say, he smelled more than just one rat, to be sure. And here we are in this mess.  Samuel Adams got it right, too.  Too bad no one listened to these guys.  

Power is a story in a book.  The main character is God, who has real power, the kind of power the fools and maniacs really want, which is to wish whatever they like into existence, like the gods in their old stories.  They can wish all they like, change all the genes they like, start all the wars they like, fool others all they like--but they will never get what they like.  

Because it does not exist.  And because it cannot be created.  Power is nonsense.

"AI".  Lol.  They don't call it "artificial" for nothing.  

Men are animals, whether or not they like it.  Man is the greatest survivor, the most cunning, ruthless, intelligent survivor of them all... so far.  And the only reason he still walks the earth is because of his willingness to survive, to fight the enemies of human life, and to perpetuate himself.  That is the very nature of life.  That does not change.  That cannot be changed.

"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed." Rand

Of course.  See to it that your claws and your wits are as sharp as you can make them. 

It's all you have.  It's all you're ever going to have.  It's the only power.

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I first saw this video on power ages ago and it is still one of my favorites.

It's not very Randian, but it does present a lot of truth.

How's this for weird? It even explains how the power struggles in O-Land have played out.

 

Michael

[The Unabashed Pragmatic]

Here's a great moving picture on power.  Live free or die!  Kill all the dictators or die tryin'!  

The great idea behind America to begin with was to arm all the people, even the children, especially the children, and teach them that tyrants are about, have always been about, and the only way to deal with any of them is to set about them with arms and deal with them accordingly.  Play football and other fun games with their heads.  

Who needs a standing army when you've got a few good men and women with guts hanging around?

"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined."  Patrick Henry

Sorry, Folks, but there simply is no other way to your power.  The only way to preserve human life and Liberty is to attack the enemies of human life and Liberty.  Patrick Henry and Sam Adam's got it right the first time around.  

Rand got it even righter.  She said what Henry and Adam's said, then added the ice cream on the cake: the Strike.  Shrug.  Do not help them get to where they rule you before you throw them all in the garbage.  

Revolt.  STRIKE!  Rebel!  Disobey. 

Keep your ploughshares and your swords!

Teach a kid to shoot.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

59 minutes ago, The Unabashed Pragmatic said:

Here's a great moving picture on power.

U,

And the most powerful of all was the film director.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

That was a bit snarky, I suppose.

No ill intention meant.

On an individual level, the power dude is not the one making loud macho declarations and dramatic gestures.

I always wonder what that dude wants more, freedom or attention. (Or maybe another drink.)

 

The power dude is the one sitting quietly by himself, observing, but otherwise minding his own business.

You do not want to fuck with that dude.

Not even among the oppressed in a dictatorship.

That's not a 100% rule, but it's about 80% to 90% in my experience.

Michael

[The Unabashed Pragmatic]

11 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

U,

And the most powerful of all was the film director.

Michael

Dunno about that.  I never paid any attention to the director.  The beautiful Alex Kingston got me surging, vibrating and tingling.  What a magnificent creature.  Those lips!  OMG!  But, for all I know, when she's not LARPing for pounds she very well could be a BLM activist.  Don't tell me!  I don't want to know.  

[The Unabashed Pragmatic]

11 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

That was a bit snarky, I suppose.

No ill intention meant.

On an individual level, the power dude is not the one making loud macho declarations and dramatic gestures.

I always wonder what that dude wants more, freedom or attention. (Or maybe another drink.)

 

The power dude is the one sitting quietly by himself, observing, but otherwise minding his own business.

You do not want to fuck with that dude.

Not even among the oppressed in a dictatorship.

That's not a 100% rule, but it's about 80% to 90% in my experience.

Michael

Either you prefer the strong, silent type or you would advise one not to loudly announce his plans before he carries them out, lest his enemies take advantage of his position.  Can't tell which.  

I know my neighbors, but they don't know me from the wind.  Teetotaler here.  Man up on a wall, quietly observing.  I'm a loner by choice.  I keep people at least six feet away from me since long before Dr. Fauci mandated it.  It amazes me how much I shout and how nobody appears to listen.  But they always make eye contact, smile and nod as they pass me by on the way to the gun store.  They know I'm not the one they need to worry about and guys like me, when they're needed--are needed badly.

There are only three kinds of people in this world: wolves, sheepdogs and sheep.  My father was a wolf, my mother a sheepdog.  So I'm a sweet guy with no regard for rules of engagement.  I've learned to strike a balance between the good, the bad and the ugly.  We all have it.  

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

30 minutes ago, The Unabashed Pragmatic said:

The beautiful Alex Kingston got me surging, vibrating and tingling.  What a magnificent creature.  Those lips!  OMG!  But, for all I know, when she's not LARPing for pounds she very well could be a BLM activist.  Don't tell me!  I don't want to know.  

U,

That is exactly the power of the director.

He makes you forget reality and replace it with an interactive story in your mind by telling you a story. And he uses the largest parts of the brain to do it, mostly the visual cortex and the auditory cortex.

Michael

[The Unabashed Pragmatic]

Just now, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

U,

That is exactly the power of the director.

He makes you forget reality and replace it with an interactive story in your mind by telling you a story. And he uses the largest parts of the brain to do it, mostly the visual cortex and the auditory cortex.

Michael

Well, yeah, but I'd do Alex Kingston even if she weren't LARPing for pounds in front of the director.  

[The Unabashed Pragmatic]

The question of power:  

https://www.bitchute.com/video/YQ3W3uUmVrQ/

[Dglgmut]

On 8/7/2020 at 7:51 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Since you are looking at power from a human nature standpoint, I suggest looking at the Milgram experiment and the Stanford prison experiment.

Finally got around to reading about these. I recently read a couple lines from a book that touched on this subject as well:

Quote

It has become clear, not only that sufficient torture will break down almost any man's fortitude, but also that morphia or cocaine can reduce a man to docility. The will, in fact, is only independent of the tyrant so long as the tyrant is unscientific.

Bertrand Russel, The History of Western Philosophy p 267

This also connects to how I think of free will, and compatibilism. I think our actions are bound to the rules of causality, but the causes at play are partly external and partly internal. We are, in part, our own cause. However, the proportions of internal to external causation are not fixed.

 

The domination of a person is to become a disproportionate external cause of their actions. That doesn't mean you can directly control them, in that you can't make them do whatever you want--you are limited to their natural responses. If fear locks them up, for example, you determined that behavior, but it may not have been what you intended.

 

From the individual's perspective, filtered through rational self-interest (integrated and non-contradicting), the goal is to maximize internal causation in proportion to external. In Randian terms this is man's "spirit." We could also call it will power. This is the opposition to social power, or circumstantial determinism in general. It may be called ego, but ego can mean different things to different people. However, the egoless are tools, by any definition. They are tools either to those that control their circumstances, or to their own idea of "the greater good."