So: Let’s drop the shit-hammer, shall we?
Greece is broke. So is England, and so is most of the rest of Europe.
California is broke, Illinois is broke, and, if you count unfunded pension liabilities, not only are all the rest of the states, counties and cities broke, so are all of the surlier labor unions.
Social Security is broke, as is the metamorphosing medical scam to be known, soon enough, as no-healthcare-for-you!
The United States government is broke, of course, limping along, for now, on funds borrowed against the promise of future confiscatory currency inflation, future crippling taxation — or both.
Socialism is a Ponzi scheme, and, before you know it, you run out of suckers to milk. Sooner or later, welfare-state socialism has to collapse. As I’ve argued, I don’t think that time is now. Despite our talent, as a species, for forecasting apocalyptic, pandemic doom, in reality the sky hardly ever falls more than once or twice a day.
Moreover, even though we are enmired in a deep recession — and even though our puerile president is making that recession much worse with every boneheaded error at his command — even so, it is very likely that we are out-producing welfare-state socialism in the long run. That might stick in your craw, but it remains that — even despite the drag on the economy caused by taxes, regulation, deficit spending and waste — the trajectory of the standard of living of every American — and virtually everyone on earth — is steadily upward.
But, but, but! Government is impoverishing us! I saw it on the big-screen HD-TV in the bedroom, and also on the even-bigger-screen HD-TV in the living room, and, just to be sure, I followed-up on the high-speed internet connection on my 27″ quad-core iMac! Don’t try to tell me the world’s not going to hell in a hand-basket! I’ve got the best hardware and software in the world to tell me how terrible my life is!
That much is funny to me, but, even so, these circumstances can’t last forever. At some point the parasites will overwhelm the host, and, when that happens, the shit-hammer will come crashing down on all of us — virtuous or vicious, wise or foolish, ready or not.
And no matter how virtuous we might be, no matter how wise, it seems probable to me that most of us will be unprepared for life in a world where government has collapsed. We’ve seen this happen in other places, generally very poor places, but few of us have ever lived through a state of chaos.
So what happens? Looting and shooting, at first, with the amount of that kind of behavior being a reflection of how well-armed and how well-prepared owners of stuff attractive to looters turn out to be. Ordinary people will pull into their shells with a pronounced vigor, making lists and inventories and peeking out windows to see if there are any looters around.
The inventory will not be inspiriting, very probably. You may be lucky enough to have two weeks’ worth of meals on hand — less if the electrical power has failed. Still worse, if the water supply has failed, you may have next to nothing to drink in your home. And no matter how confident you feel about your ability to defend your home from marauders, I’m betting you have fewer than two hundred rounds of ammunition to your name — or is it zero rounds, and zero firearms, as well?
So you have no food, no water and no firepower. The nicer name for your status is prisoner-of-war. The not-so-nice name? Corpse.
But here’s some good news: If you are healthy, and if there is food enough to keep you healthy, you might just get to live. There will be a need for people to clean up all of those corpses, after all.
Thousands of corpses, maybe millions. Welfare-state socialism rewards thoughtless people for being thoughtless — for being stupid and lazy and completely incompetent to provide for their own survival. As bare as your own larder might seem, the victims of the welfare-state will have it much worse. They will die in droves, by the thousands, as soon as Big Mother’s massive teats dry up.
It gets worse. No water, no sewage treatment, no reliable supply-line for food — and corpse after corpse in one house after the next. In a circumstance like that, you have to expect some nasty epidemics. Too bad there is no pharmaceutical resupply chain. Too bad your doctor is afraid to open his door — assuming he’s still alive.
If you get very lucky, the people who will have formed a gang big enough to make you their prisoner-of-war will be imbued with the Spirit of Seventy Six — the idea that all men are created equal and have the right to live in freedom. If you’re that lucky, your time living under martial law might be fairly brief, and life could return to something like normal within just a few years.
What if you’re not so lucky? Whether your overlords are socialists or theocrats or just thugs, your true name will either be slave or corpse. The freedom you grew up with — the freedom you have always taken for granted — will be gone. For years? For centuries? Forever? Gone from your life, at least, for all the future you can see — all the future you can bear to look at.
Now here’s an interesting question:
Doesn’t that seem like a fate worth avoiding?
Please keep in mind that I don’t think this is going to happen. It could, but I’m betting my money — and your life! — on happier fates.
But stipulate that it could happen — everything I’ve described and things still worse. Your children haven’t been stolen from you, conscripted into genocidal armies. Your daughters haven’t been raped and gutted. You haven’t had to choose between starving to death or eating the rotting flesh of one of those thousands of corpses you see everywhere. You haven’t been invited either to guard a deathcamp or to perish there instead. All of these things have happened — and recently — and there is no basis for arguing that they can’t happen here.
But if you want to avoid the collapse of civilization, what’s the one thing that could swing the balance?
[To be continued in Part 3.0.1.]
< ?php include "https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/cheerful.php"; ?>
Jim Klein says:
I think we live in the Penultimate Age, right here and right now. No doubt that’s been the chorus of every Age before us, but at some point it’s got to be right! I doubt there’s ever been a better candidate than the present situation.
The good news is that I don’t think people are inherently looters or moochers. Their nature is to be cooperative and it’s only because of rotten collectivist philosophy that they’ve learned to be different. This is why I believe that the single best thing we could do is stop ALL public funding of ALL education, like yesterday. Left to their own thoughts and devices, I think hardly anyone would choose to be the fools we see today.
OTOH extreme hunger can make even decent people do extreme things.
Here’s what I think you’ve got wrong: “…it is very likely that we are out-producing welfare-state socialism in the long run.” Society-wide, I don’t think we’re outproducing anything. That’s what’s happened here, no matter what the ostensive numbers say. Production is sloping downward toward zero, simultaneous with an incentive not to produce increasing asymptotically to infinity. It strikes me that this situation simply cannot last, which all-in-all is a good thing. If everyone stops producing, then they die. It seems to me that at some point before that, even the most feeble-minded person will come to understand why he ought to produce, and exactly for whom.
After that, I think it’ll be a piece of cake to continue on the road to Splendor. The amount of skill and production currently incentivized to be kept off the market, is unfathomable. When those disincentives are removed, which is to say when people are free to build, they’ll build like they never built before. It took only 200 years of this country’s existence to build our modern society. After the Collapse it might only take 200 days to do it again!
July 20, 2010 — 8:02 am
Greg Swann says:
> I think we live in the Penultimate Age, right here and right now. No doubt that’s been the chorus of every Age before us, but at some point it’s got to be right! I doubt there’s ever been a better candidate than the present situation.
I disagree. The singularity could come first. Or we could learn to use our minds. I rate the former more likely, the latter more imminently doable right now.
> Society-wide, I don’t think we’re outproducing anything.
But clearly we are. Everything is amazingly cheaper today — per hour of labor — than it was yesterday, and not just amazingly cheaper but also amazingly better.
> After that, I think it’ll be a piece of cake to continue on the road to Splendor. The amount of skill and production currently incentivized to be kept off the market, is unfathomable. When those disincentives are removed, which is to say when people are free to build, they’ll build like they never built before. It took only 200 years of this country’s existence to build our modern society. After the Collapse it might only take 200 days to do it again!
I don’t disagree with any of this, stipulating that Americans in sufficient numbers demand a huge and progressive reduction in the amount of government we now live with. I can easily foresee a new renaissance under those circumstances.
But if Big Mother collapses, all bets are off. If we have not learned the lesson you are teaching in the text quoted above, then we will meet the new boss — who may be quite a bit worse than the devil we know.
I see no reason to expect that libertarian ideas will be an easier sell after a collapse, rather than before it, assuming we learn nothing from the experience. To the contrary, the insane doctrines of “selflessness” that got us into this mess will be that much easier to sell when people are poor, starving and scared. Poverty and self-destructive dogmas are not found together so often by accident.
Here’s my secret: I am writing to help people understand what they will need to do, each of us inside his own mind, to learn how to be indomitable, ungovernable — as free in the mind as we already are ontologically. But I never doubt that I might be writing across the crevasse, to survivors of the collapse of this idiot Ponzi game.
July 20, 2010 — 3:07 pm
Brian Brady says:
Jim, you say Penultimate Age and I start looking at the Mayan calendar and quaking. Let’s hope you’re wrong about that.
I tend to share Jim’s optimism about the future, Greg. Hungry people do desperate things and thugs will organize to seize power. In the inevitable collapse, both things will happen but…BUT…
Jim’s right about people inherently understanding the value of cooperation. I’ve been thinking that the collapse will be the big reset, removing most barriers to production. I’m not naive enough to believe that it’s all going to be sunshine and rainbows. Power grabs over water supplies, electricity, and even the internet seem likely but smart people will find ways to defeat or outmaneuver the gangs.
I’m still perplexed about currency and barter. Has anyone any ideas about what might emerge as an alternative currency?
July 20, 2010 — 10:54 am
Greg Swann says:
> Has anyone any ideas about what might emerge as an alternative currency?
Beans. Then bullets. Then gold, but not before enough people have enough beans and bullets that they have a surplus to trade. Starving people do not engage in trade.
> I’ve been thinking that the collapse will be the big reset, removing most barriers to production.
Can you name any time in human history when the prevailing mafia-of-superior-firepower has collapsed and the immediately ensuing political climate was better than it was before — or even just not a chaotic mess? I can’t.
The optimistic thing to do is to work to avoid disaster. The survivors of a cultural collapse will be the best-prepared pessimists. I’d offer to bet on this proposition, but you will have nothing to pay me with if I win.
July 20, 2010 — 11:43 am
Teri Lussier says:
Okay, I’ll bite.
Aren’t we too big to fail? I mean, shoot, if CA is too big to fail, then surely…
I think (and would prefer to think) that if a collapse comes, for most of the country, instead of a *BAM* collapse, it’s more a slow, sluggish, groaning, creaking, lumbering off into a changed world type of thing. An elderly grandparent of a USA, wheezing as it draws a few shallow breaths every now and then. Harmless now, feeble and hunched over a bit, but still remembered for the ramrod straight backbone it once had. Tolerated, barely, by those much smarter, greener, (blonder?) European countries that remember, sort of, jaunty American GI’s after WWII.
All that is a long way of saying Change won’t be too much chaos, but it will be sad as freedom after freedom is signed off and filed away into a dusty back room.
July 20, 2010 — 1:20 pm
Greg Swann says:
> if a collapse comes, for most of the country, instead of a *BAM* collapse, it’s more a slow, sluggish, groaning, creaking, lumbering off into a changed world type of thing.
A very plausible argument. The Roman Empire fell in 476 AD. Picking a starting date for that collapse is not easy, but I think the best candidate is the term of Tiberius Gracchus as Tribune of the Plebians. When did that happen? 110 BC. IOW, the Roman Empire was “collapsing” for almost 600 years. The British Empire has been collapsing at least since 1945.
The counter argument would be that America won’t go until the rest of the West has gone before it.
July 20, 2010 — 1:29 pm
Elli D. says:
For some economic theorists, (like Wallerstein, for example), collapse is a natural part of our history. These days they would come and say “see, we told you so”, for what is happening all around the world right now resembles their predictions in many ways. However, i still think we can make this not happen again. The world that we live in is something we have created throughout the history ourselves. Things are the way they are because we made them that way. Whatever will happen, at some point we’ll have to realize that we’re in this together, every single one of us. And maybe this downfall is just what we need.
July 20, 2010 — 2:12 pm
leann anderson says:
WE ARE HEADED DOWN A DARK PATH THAT IS FOR SURE. I JUST JOINED http://WWW.GOOOH.COM ….CHECK IT OUT….BEST CURE I HAVE SEEN FOR THE CONGRESS AND CLEANING IT UP.
ALL THE BEST,
LEANN
July 20, 2010 — 2:20 pm
Brian Brady says:
“Can you name any time in human history when the prevailing mafia-of-superior-firepower has collapsed and the immediately ensuing political climate was better than it was before”
Sure. The post-USSR Republics, with all of their problems, are still better off today. Estonia just got UP-graded yesterday.
Post-Malaysia Singapore, has a had a rocky but prosperous 40 years. Post-In/Pak Bangladesh, grows stronger as it sheds its remnants of its socialist past.
The last two aren’t great examples because of their small sizes but the USSR breakup is. Perhaps our future will be along the lines of Professor Panarin’s suggestion:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123051100709638419.html
“The counter argument would be that America won’t go until the rest of the West has gone before it.”
This argument is bandied about a lot today and its quite the conundrum. European investors are moving money HERE??? even though they see the destructive path on which we are headed???
I don’t mean to minimize this. I think your crystal ball is overly cloudy but I’m not going to bet against you. Better to be prepared.
July 20, 2010 — 2:31 pm
Greg Swann says:
I don’t think any of your examples are apposite. The state didn’t collapse in any of them, it was simply replaced — much as the British government was replaced here in the American Revolution — which was actually a rebellion or just a coup de etat. The most recent collapse of a state I can think of is Iraq in 2003. Even then, the U.S. military was there to pickup the pieces. When governments collapse, chaos ensues. We are lucky to know so little about this.
> I think your crystal ball is overly cloudy
I’m arguing against letting things get that far. I see this as a preventable catastrophe.
July 20, 2010 — 2:48 pm
Brian Brady says:
“I don’t think any of your examples are apposite. The state didn’t collapse in any of them, it was simply replaced”
I disagree. The Soviet Empire, for all purposes, had already collapsed by the time Yeltsin was recruited to dance on tanks. A bunch of generals realized the war machine was broke and wanted to salvage what they could. You can call that a coup d’etat or proactive engagement but the system had collapsed. I’d argue that the average Russian citizen is more free today than his parents were under the Soviet regime.
“I see this as a preventable catastrophe.”
Looking forward to 3.01
July 20, 2010 — 4:08 pm
Gordon says:
Well this post was very interesting, some what depressing then had a little up beat feel towards the end….did I enjoy reading it? yes it was thought provoking – will stay tuned for more interesting articles…thanks.
July 20, 2010 — 7:34 pm
Don Reedy says:
“I think (and would prefer to think) that if a collapse comes, for most of the country, instead of a *BAM* collapse, it’s more a slow, sluggish, groaning, creaking, lumbering off into a changed world type of thing….”
Teri, alas I don’t think your wish will come true. It’s the panic thing that has me worried. No longer do we have the luxury of getting information in a measured manner that enables us to contemplate and act rationally on it. It’s immediate now. Once the cards begin to fall, the mechanism to disseminate that fall is well in place, awesome in its scope, and unlikely to facilitate any lumbering or creaking.
I really want Greg’s 3.01 preventable catastrophe piece to put my postulate above in its place, but until that comes, I fear we are now incapable of contemplating the news of a collapse before it overwhelms us.
July 20, 2010 — 8:32 pm
Sean Purcell says:
An “event” is coming, I don’t think anyone paying attention to past and present would disagree with that.
The scenario you laid out could happen. I think it’s going to be a race. When things start to go bad… actually long before they go bad – before now even – people look for the alternative. Business goes black market. Barter is preferred over monetary purchase. The ingenuity and inherent freedom of many individuals will find ways. They always have and they are now. You’ve spoken about this at length Greg so I won’t detail the phenomenon here.
The question is: how many of those people are left vs. how many have accepted and embraced entitlement as their lifeblood? Some who have accepted it will revolt upon awareness, but some who feel the strength of freedom will cower at the cost. So let’s call people switching sides a wash. It comes back to a numbers game I think. As you said Greg, libertarianism will not be an easier sale after the event, if anything it will be a tougher sale.
Most large movements in socialism have been visited upon people who were already pre-disposed to slavery from years (centuries) of despots and who were starving… literally and figuritively. Here in America, the latter half is easy, it comes after the event. It’s the former that will decide the race. How many have already lost sight of freedom? Based just on comments here on BHB the last couple of days I’m not optimistic. (And this is a forum biased toward freedom!)
I read one comment referring to a “fair” election as one in which the outcome matches an ideal rather than one in which everyone has the opportunity to vote. Heck, right here in this post’s comments people refer to cooperation in various forms; as if we’ll be saved from the abyss by looking in and seeing not ourself, but ourselves. Good grief, collective effort is not the answer to collectivism, yet we don’t even see the irony.
I don’t know Greg. I like to think there’s a silent majority of people who will choose freedom when it comes time for fight or flight. But I believe the numbers are currently trending away. I’ve asked it before: Have we crossed the tipping point?
July 20, 2010 — 8:36 pm
Teri Lussier says:
Don-
We’ve become sort of lamb-ish. We don’t panic and run screaming into the streets, we’ve grown fat and happy even in our own Great Recession. I see a slow and steady erosion of freedom. Tick tock. Bit by bit we willingly and silently agree to become complacent. Tick tock. Yawn. One day we will look back and remember, I think only then will we say, “What? How did we get here? This isn’t my country. Where is the country I grew up in?” Then we will take a personal inventory and say, “Meh. It ain’t so bad here. They have it much worse in (insert country here)” or “Thank God I’m in a city like San Diego where the sun shines on my face every day. It must be so much worse in Dayton where it snows.” It’ll just happen slowly without much notice except in hindsight and stories told to our grandchildren.
July 20, 2010 — 9:10 pm
Jim Klein says:
[I wrote this offline a bit ago. I see a lot has happened since then!]
Great discussion; everyone’s got important points.
>The optimistic thing to do is to work to avoid disaster.
The meta-lesson there is problematic maybe, since the point is to work to personal splendor. Naturally, there’s a utility point that not having a disaster is a prerequisite for acheiving splendor.
Besides that I don’t like utility arguments generally, there’s an equally good utility argument that it’s more egoic to ignore the whole thing, and not work to either propagate nor hinder the Collective Disaster. This would be a highly defensible Epicurean POV, and might make us look as crazy as the rest. Indeed, to this moment, I’m not at all convinced it’s wrong and I’ll welcome any arguments to the contrary.
I can live being a fool, but I sure don’t want to feel like one!
> instead of a *BAM* collapse, it’s more a slow, sluggish, groaning, creaking, lumbering off into a changed world type of thing.
In the wide view, Teri, this is surely true. It’s already been quite a drag-on if you ask me! OTOH even for wide changes, there are usually critical moments which are effectively *BAM*.
Plus, having gotten into the habit of thinking like idiots, we generally don’t notice hardly anything until well after it’s past. That’s one of the few funny things about Govco–not only does it inevitably have the wrong fix, that wrong fix is for some problem that’s long past!
>All that is a long way of saying Change won’t be too much chaos,
I wish that were right, but I have trouble envisioning this. Of course, to me there are different sorts of chaos, so I don’t find this particularly troublesome in and of itself. Me, I always smell business opportunity!
Seems to me that whatever Change is to be, will be of a large and momentous nature. I think Greg had that exactly right, paraphrasing, “Whatever it is that’s going to happen, you likely aren’t prepared for it.” But that too is not necessarily a bad thing; it’s more a comment on the creative nature of men IMO.
Interesting cites, Brian, and I think largely accurate as far as laissez-faire is concerned. Still, without a seachange from collectivism to individualism, and from altruism to egoism, I’m pretty sure that in the long run, these are just footnotes. Of course if there are footnotes in the long run, then that means we made it!
>The state didn’t collapse in any of them, it was simply replaced
Yeahbut by that standard, there’s never been an instance. Point being, I don’t think we know what life in the absence of a State looks like. Frankly, I’ll take your vision of it anytime! Greg, you then write…
>When governments collapse, chaos ensues. We are lucky to know so little about this.
Do those two really go together? We know so little about it because it’s never really happened, while your point is more apropos to the replacement chaotic State that usually takes its place.
You brought up solvency elsewhere. We could make an easy case that we’re well insolvent, and hence a collapse of sorts has already happened. But that’s not what we’re looking to collapse, and this is where we agree. As we must, because it’s a simple matter of fact that either large numbers of people are going to decide that they don’t want to live as looters, else they’re going to continue seeking the next wild scheme in order to “sit at the table instead of being on the menu”…until everything’s been served bone dry.
Either of those options is a “collapse” of something, I’d say. One of ’em ends in people living glorious lives; the other ends with everyone dead.
>stipulating that Americans in sufficient numbers demand a huge and progressive reduction in the amount of government
I think at this stage, this is nearly oxymoronic. IOW whatever you mean by a “government” that has “progressive reduction,” it’s something quite distinct from what we call “government” these days.
I love what the Tea Party says too; I love anything rational to any degree. The thing is, since this stuff is /actually/ hierarchical, there’s a huge risk that the higher principles will hold sway, and that this could spell extreme trouble. Communism really might be better than fascism; I wouldn’t even know how to figure that out.
While my philosophy is obviously tons closer to most Republicans than Democrats, I’ve always been more afraid of the former. Until the recent breakdown, Democrats always talked the crazier stuff, but the Republicans got their work done. There are arguments both ways, I suppose. Still, without a fundamental philosophy shift, the particular type of statism is but a minor detail.
>But if Big Mother collapses, all bets are off.
This seems to directly imply that there’s something other than individuals out there. Since I know that’s not what you mean, I’m not sure what you do mean.
>I see no reason to expect that libertarian ideas will be an easier sell after a collapse,
This is another linguistic problem IMO. The referent of “libertarian ideas” in today’s instances are probably closer to Big Mother than they are to ego-adoration. I understand the retort would be, “Who cares? At least they believe in people being free to run their own lives.” I’d like to believe that, but I can find no basis for it. Of course this is good news of a sort, insofar as nearly everyone is in the same boat of devising a different approach.
OTOH we might mean very different things with “libertarian ideas.” You mean that as a class of ideas; I tend to look at the instances.
>Here’s my secret: I am writing to help people understand what they will need to do, each of us inside his own mind, to learn how to be indomitable, ungovernable as free in the mind as we already are ontologically.
I’ll make it easy for you. Just get them to understand why they would /want/ to, and they’ll figure out the rest from there.
Hey, look how well that worked for the commies!
July 20, 2010 — 9:36 pm
Greg Swann says:
> Just get them to understand why they would /want/ to, and they’ll figure out the rest from there.
Ahem. What is it you think I’m doing?
July 20, 2010 — 9:46 pm
Sean Purcell says:
Interesting as usual Jim
there’s an equally good utility argument that it’s more egoic to ignore the whole thing, and not work to either propagate nor hinder the Collective Disaster … to this moment, I’m not at all convinced it’s wrong and I’ll welcome any arguments to the contrary.
Can there be a defensible argument to the contrary? Not only only is it more egoic to ignore the whole thing, I’d argue it is the only possible action of an egoist. Actions to propogage or hinder the Collective Disaster are either effective, in which case I’ve imposed myself on you, or are ineffective and constitute a waste of me (my splendorous moments).
There are usually critical moments which are effectively *BAM*.
I was just discussing this with Brian earlier. The “system” is so precarious and so dependent on faith (in the concepts of money, government as an entity, authority, etc) that it might not take much to create the BAM. The outcome to the federal lawsuit over immigration laws in AZ could to it. Certainly California could be the spark. In a matter of weeks CA will begin issuing its own script again. The gov has directed all state workers to be paid min wage until there’s a budget. Sound a little like Greece? We are surrounded by BAM triggers. All the more reason to ignore rather than spend time on one or the other (but not possibly all).
The referent of “libertarian ideas” in today’s instances are probably closer to Big Mother than they are to ego-adoration.
I was surprised by this terminology myself. Greg’s philosophy is generally quite a ways further down the road from Libertarianism. Was this a relative statement Greg?
July 20, 2010 — 10:27 pm
Brian Brady says:
“We could make an easy case that we’re well insolvent, and hence a collapse of sorts has already happened.”
I believe that. I think the BAM moment was 9/11 and the coup d’etat Greg warns us might come was the State’s reaction to it. Every action by the State since then has been an emergency, enacted with alacrity and opacity. The optimistic note is that very few like it.
I don’t suggest that 9/11 was causal but rather the catalyst that hurried the inevitable collapse. Maybe 9/11 will be a footnote, Jim and if true, the scenario Greg lays out will be less catastrophic.
July 20, 2010 — 11:30 pm
Jim Klein says:
>Can there be a defensible argument to the contrary? Not only only is it more egoic to ignore the whole thing, I’d argue it is the only possible action of an egoist. Actions to propogage or hinder the Collective Disaster are either effective, in which case I’ve imposed myself on you, or are ineffective and constitute a waste of me (my splendorous moments).
You make a tough case Sean, but it appears we both think there’s a flaw in there somewhere…else what are we doing here? Just offhand, I’m guessing it’s the implicit premise that wasting one’s time in this fashion can’t be splendorous. So far, it strikes me that it is, though it might strike me differently from the inside of a prison cell.
I’m all down with the Epicurean emphasis on friendship, and definitely in agreement about simple pleasures and all that, but somehow I take production, and especially creativity, as more focal to our nature than do most Epicureans. I can’t say I have a great defense of that–I would plead to ego-adoration, but it’s a leap from there to the necessity of creative production in order to have it–and I see this as somehow related to the “stay away from it” POV about politics. I’m not exactly sure how.
Often it’s a pragmatic appeal they’ll make—getting involved can’t possibly help you–and I’m not big on pragmatic appeals at all. I guess in the end I believe it /can/ help you, because unless people change their minds, we’re seriously screwed no matter where we might hide. And people can’t rationally change their minds without information. Presumably this is what drives us to deal with these issues at all.
I long ago concluded that ego-adoration is the pinnacle of the hierarchy that pays off in happiness, but I gotta admit that there’s a mighty strong case for ataraxia.
I’m a street philosopher though, so I go with, “Can’t we have both?”
July 20, 2010 — 11:32 pm
Greg Swann says:
> I’m guessing it’s the implicit premise that wasting one’s time in this fashion can’t be splendorous.
Why would you do it, then — either of you?
Why do you do it?
What is the self you would have yourself construct? Given a choice — and you always have a choice — what would be the optimal environment for that self? And who, precisely, do you expect to erect this environment, if you won’t do it for yourself — for your self?
There is nothing selfless about working to prevent a conflagration, nor anything of the self in sending the world to hell in a handbasket. Spite maybe. Not splendor.
July 20, 2010 — 11:58 pm
Greg Swann says:
> to work to personal splendor
I went back to see where you went wrong.
The word “personal” is both redundant and misleading.
Redundant because splendor is a mental state, necessarily subjective and therefore not just personal but undetectable by others except as it might be manifested in secondary physical consequences.
Misleading because “personal” in that use implies “solitary” — a misunderstanding of human ontology. We are a social species. Sharing is a huge part of what we do. We make our ideas and our ideals and our values real for selfish reasons, but among those reasons can be the joy of another person’s company. If you come to my house, I will prove this to you by making you some oatmeal cookies. This would not be a selfless sacrifice — precisely the opposite.
In exactly the same respect, helping other people learn how to live among each other without trying to enslave each other and without being enslaved by each other is not an act of selfless sacrifice. Very much to the contrary. The life I save may be my own, and the mind I help to liberate today may be the mind who saves my life thirty years from now. There is no downside to the pursuit of splendor, and there is no expression of splendor more bountifully selfish than having the world my own way.
July 21, 2010 — 7:34 am
Sean Purcell says:
…we both think there’s a flaw in there somewhere…else what are we doing here? Just offhand, I’m guessing it’s the implicit premise that wasting one’s time in this fashion can’t be splendorous. So far, it strikes me that it is…
I see no flaw in the premise that to waste my time is the opposite of splendor. My present moment is all I am and all I can ever be. To waste that is to waste me. So, what am I doing here? If you mean “here” as in trying to effect a change, I am not here. I don’t change others – can’t change others.
If you mean “here” as in writing on this post and this blog, again, it is not to change others, for the reasons I’ve already stated. Because the act of writing for others brings me joy? Yes. To change myself? More emphatically, yes. In writing I clarify my thoughts and engage in thinking (and all the glorious freedoms that word entails). When I discuss I hone my thoughts. When I read I discover my own truth, often in the reflection of another’s fire.
I find the Epicurean philosophy a bit… boring. I like passion and grand pleasures; my purpose is not to find a simple peace anymore than it is to attain a stoic acceptance. Ego-adoration over ataraxia every time.
July 21, 2010 — 12:52 am
Sean Purcell says:
Why would you do it, then
Why would I purposefully engage in an activity that wastes my time? I wouldn’t. (More accurately, I strive not to…) That’s my point.
There is nothing selfless about working to prevent a conflagration, nor anything of the self in sending the world to hell in a handbasket.
There is certainly nothing of freedom in either. My response to your post was simply my observation on others: “Collective effort is not the answer to collectivism, yet we don’t even see the irony.”
July 21, 2010 — 1:09 am
Teri Lussier says:
The more I think of this, the more I believe that the time is ripe for a theocracy to emerge from a BAM collapse. There are religions and religious groups, both very large and wealthy and powerful, and very small, that teach self-sufficiency and post-apocalyptic survival skills as a matter of course.
Religion is typically the default go-to or even reset during time of catastrophe throughout the history of civilization, and we see this across the world right now, we saw it during the Depression in this country in the 30’s. A starving baby or two is reason enough for most mothers to hand a child over to a lesser of two evils thriving religious organization. They might be raped, but they won’t be raped and gutted.
July 21, 2010 — 7:38 am
Jim Klein says:
>In writing I clarify my thoughts and engage in thinking (and all the glorious freedoms that word entails). When I discuss I hone my thoughts. When I read I discover my own truth, often in the reflection of another’s fire.
I’ve been saying exactly the same thing for years, Sean. I guess my problem is that I’m starting to have trouble believing it! In this sort of environment, with these sorts of topics at the depth they’ve been, I’m a bit more inclined to agree with Greg that we’re probably really doing it because we have a selfish motivation to “prevent a conflagration.”
Naturally the Epicurean would say this is just wild fantasy on our part. Come to think of it, so would the statists!
>I find the Epicurean philosophy a bit… boring. I like passion and grand pleasures;
Yes…this is it, the passion. Interestingly, for me, it’s not even the supposed result of “grand pleasures,” as I’m plainly Epicurean in my enjoyment of the “simple pleasures.” IOW I think it’s the passion itself.
>my purpose is not to find a simple peace anymore than it is to attain a stoic acceptance. Ego-adoration over ataraxia every time.
I don’t know…there’s a lot to be said for simple peace. I’d take that as a victory in a heartbeat. I consider my inability to achieve ataraxia (and engender it in those I love) as a huge failing of my previous life, even as I’ve never been short on ego-adoration and have gained what, by my standards, are many grand pleasures. Probably this goes to “passion itself,” with the point that what happens within ourselves is the real goal of everything. So to the degree ataraxia engenders self-comfort and self-love, it’s not in conflict with ego-adoration.
OTOH that leaves it too subjective IMO—either ataraxia is the (or a) manifestation of ego-adoration or it’s not. As I see it, this is a matter of fact, albeit an unknown one perhaps. I’m inclined to think it is a fact, and I’ve further noticed that many who seek lives well away from ataraxia are doing as much running as they are producing, which cannot be conducive to ego-adoration.
“The thrill is in the chase.” As you note, we live only in the moment, so presumably the source for ego-adoration is what we do as we go along, not so much what we tangibly gain by doing it. I don’t mean to dismiss the value of…well, the values we gain…but I think it’s more important how we gain them. Ataraxia is something that occurs in the moment, as we go along, and I am fairly convinced that it’s the best position from which to experience our moments. I don’t think it’s necessarily in opposition to passion or production though, so I continue to strive to try and have both. And let’s face it—this is not an environment conducive to ataraxia, since roughly 99% of our neighbors believe that they have an interest that we shouldn’t have it!
See, that’s the problem. In the midst of the sort of insanity we see today, it’s like one has to choose…”Shall I withdraw and figure out how to place myself in a situation of ataraxia, or shall I move forward with passion, trying to achieve the productive sort of ego-adoration among others?” These are the sorts of false alternatives that faulty philosophy creates, and the problem IMO is that rational beings shouldn’t have to deal with such false alternatives. And yet we do.
July 21, 2010 — 7:56 am