Well someone must have typed something error. It seemed to be Aster was making a case that attempting to change the system was futile and that we should give up. You seconded the point. What did I miss?
I don’t think that’s what Aster was saying.
Sorry bloom I’m not meaning to be vague. I thought we were on the same lines.
What exactly are you guys saying than? I’m confused now. =p
Just for reference I’m going off the following point Aster made.
He’s just saying everything falls apart. Eventually.
Pretty much, yeah. The only “hope” is to delay it as long as possible, and (when it does) make the period of chaos as short as possible before something orderly rises from the ashes.
superb quote. This is spot on. And to maintain the focus on “common instincts” is that the gov’t has to constantly appeal to those “common instincts” and the one that always makes a herd in the animal world, including humans, is fear. Animals don’t herd up closely when there are no immediate dangers and if no dangers show up the individual animals will float off to wider pastures. The society doesn’t necessarily break-down it simply becomes more loosely maintained especially if dangers can met by smaller groups the rest of the herd will go on about their buisness without finding the need to become very close and copy each others movements. Another predatory example of a herd is lions, but their need to stay close is their meals are very large animals and it takes a pride of lions to get a meal usually. So predatory needs are also herd mentalities. The constant need for protection (flight) and to attack other animals, ie within the same species at times, (fight) is the animalistic nature. But then their are humans that rise above these needs. Sometimes very many do. I go to the market and people are not drawn into the store because they are running from something coming to kill them (flight) nor are they going into the store to attack and make war (fight). They are able to provide find ways to provide their basic needs without needing to tap into their lowest common denominators. On top of all this they basic needs are met rather quickly and people often find time on their hands that can be used in more leisure activities. Gov’ts like to make lifeboat situations but what is that? That’s simply another way to call maintaining the herd by tapping into the fears of people to get them to pull together into a herd mentality. That’s the consensus way. The forced way would be the gov’t stepping in by initiating coercion in order to maintain the herd if any dissenters WISE up.
bloom you always incline to provide a view of pessimism. People find no reason to go on in life with such pure pessimism. No motiviation to innovate and tap into those higher qualities in which people can partake of instead of sitting around with their heads hanging low doing nothing.
if humans are the problem then there is no order to rise from any ashes. Notice all pessimism and no optimism with inspiration to tap into the creativity and not the destruction of humans. it seems that people that defend gov’t fall into the dooms-day category. Tapping into that fear of Chicken Little’s sky is falling.
Wow, great post about fear.
I also reject the notion that in the end everything ends. One cannot deny the fact that man’s conditions have improved and prospered for as long as we have recorded history. We have on occasion taken two steps forwards and one step backwards. I believe democracy to be a step backwards but man has been through worse.
It is in our best interest to continue to strive to improve our social framework. The efforts of previous classic liberals have been beneficial for hundreds of years now, the entire world owes a dept of gratitude to the free-market economics. Even China has adopted a more favorable stance in their domestic business activities. What if those various classical liberal economists decided not to write their treatises’s and not to attack their socialist counterparts? What if they simply beleived that it would all be destroyed in the end so why bother? Where would we be today? Where would your beloved country be?
If we believed that making an effort to improve our situation was fruitless we would be signing ourselves up for all kinds of evils. I guarantee you the free-market opposition will not stop to take a breath in their fight to gain control. Should we give up now in promoting the concept of freedom it would likely be generations behind us to pay for it. Should we give up it would be a dream come true to the various flavors of socialists we deal with on a daily basis.
Bloom and Astra, you both seem to be subscribing to a concept similar to the Second Law of Thermal dynamics, correct me if I am wrong. That things tend toward their own destruction. However, I would prefer to summarize the Second Law, Entropy, in that things tend toward disorder. I reject the notion that all things tend towards destruction, end of story. I think it would be far more appropriate to say that things tend toward a state of alteration, things are dynamic.
Energy is neither destroyed nor created, only altered. In death there is life. As a man dies his chemical makeup is returned to the earth of which he came from. His remains become the fertilizer for other organisms to grow from. For every man that dies 2.5 are born. It has been alleged that every minute of the day you loose 30,000 to 40,000 skin cells. Does this mean the end of skin? That man is destined to walk around skinless? Or is this a natural phenomena working as intended? The various social phenomena’s of man have also changed. One cannot deny that man has progressed to an ever more favorable conditions throughout our history.
The market is already featured as a dynamic complex organism, if you will*.* It is already equipped to adapt quickly to the various changes in man and his earthly conditions. The market itself is also forever in a state of alteration. I contend that we cannot stand on a pedistool of pessimism if our worries are unfounded. I encourage you Bloom, and Astra, to re-consider the position in a more positive light. Man does change, and he can change for the better but only if we act to help promote and foster a positive difference.
Exactly. The logical and good qualities of what humans can and currently do are ignored by ‘defenders of gov’t’ with ‘so who’s going to stop the bad people’ and so everybody has to give into that fear mentality, herd up, and copy each others movements, ie. regimentation. I say this is a focus not on what is good about people in general and it ignores the fact that each person contributes to the generation or degeneration. It is a focus on defeatism and all’s that’s left is to circle the wagons and pray. That’s depressing.[:P]
good. we agree.
Who do they “piss off” and why?
Exactly, it’s a never-ending cycle.
I’m not pessimistic and my attitude doesn’t leave me with my head low. I just don’t imagine that it’s a permanently solvable problem and that more likely than not, we’re going to see history repeat itself over and over again just in different ways. There’s nothing sad about this.
You know, there was a movie called K-Pax with Kevin Spacey and at the end of the movie he says something to the effect of “the universe will expand and then contract and time will be reset and everything will happen the same way over and over again, so knowing this all you can try to do is get it right this time around.”
I don’t pin the blame on government. Government, to me, is just an extension of the human psyche. This is exactly what you’ve been saying.
The human psyche is so complex, so diverse and yet so primitive at its base levels that I cannot imagine a way to convince people there should be no government. In fact, as I’m reading this book The Origins of Totalitarianism, I’m becoming more and more convinced of my minarchist position that government is necessary. There’s too many reasons to have a government. And eventually governments fall apart and out of their ashes a new one is born. We should just be focused on getting it right this time around.
Fil, I think all I can say is that some things can be changed and others cannot. I try to focus on the things that can be changed. I would contend that an-cap people try to focus on what cannot.
Unfortunately this is not true. The state is no more of an extension of the human psyche than murder is, or alcohol abuse, or video game abuse, or even positive things, like an attraction to flowers, to women, to men, or whatever. Government is no more an extension of the human psyche then any other human action. Your assertion that government is an extension of human action is arbitrary. We are not Ants my friend. It is a very collectivist viewpoint.
Your reading a book that discusses the terrors of the state, so you promote the state. All of the reasons you’ve argued on this forum have been throughly refuted and your only defense to others has been that you simply will not accept, you have appealed to ignorance and majority, and other various formal fallacies. You even admit to it.
There is no way to ‘get the right’ government. Such a concept is a fairy tale. You’r still subscribing to the fallacy that if we just had that one special law, or that one special president, or that one special congress. Such beliefs are fallacious and will never be realized. If anything it is to live in a state of denial and a belief in fairy tales to presume that you can have an omniscient and omnipotent government. Also Hayek’s quote that I mentioned above describes why the state will never be in a position where everyone unanimously agrees to it’s policies. You also have the issue of the state’s natural ability to grow, by design. The state is incapable of remaining small. No state in the history of man has democratically shrunk itself, it has always shrunk by way of violence. These are the things you promote.
Also when you consider rational ignorance and ‘the lowest common denominator’ as Hayek describes you have to agree that the political officials that will become in power will almost always be someone who probably shouldn’t be in power.
What exactly cannot change? The concept that history repeats itself is somewhat of a fallacy to give into. It is accurate than certain aspects of history repeat itself but it’s a mischaracterization of the problem. If a man murders another man we can say that history has repeated itself, but this is untrue. We need to recognize that the world has evil men, always will. It has nothing to do with history.
Ultimately we come back to Wilderness’s theory of regimentation that you subscribe to, fear.
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I didn’t say we were, ants, I said we were humans. We are a collective in a sense. But a collective of individuals. Government is and will always be, a necessary institution. I support government. I do not support its current incarnation. This is why I’m not hanging my head, i know the government can be changed. I believe for the better.
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The terrors of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were not terrors of THE state, but terrors of A state. There are lessons to be learned from those experiences, but I don’t think we need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I’m not making an argument from ignorance any more than you are. I don’t think there will ever be a time without governments and you don’t know that there will be a time without governments.
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Now you’re being pessimistic. It’s not about one right thing, but many right things. I do not give up on the government any more than you will give up on an-cap. Your assertion that something is a fallacy does not make it so. It just means you don’t think it’s possible.
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The world has evil men it will always have evil men. The question is whether or not those evil men will come along at just the right time and be able to organize the masses like Hitler and Stalin did. Right now, I’m not so sure, but we’re getting too close. I can’t change this, but I can certainly be aware of it.
You define what’s happening in pessimisitic terms. Don’t be deceptive. Be aware of what you write.
Indeed, but your focus is on problems without resolution, ie. pessimism.
Who said we have to convince people of anything because surely you understand that each person enjoys the fruit of their own individual decision and the dreams each individual shares with the next is one of ‘fear reins over us’ or ‘courage enables clarity’.
The dream of a dictator (all ‘defenders of gov’t’) is to externally rule over what is only solvable internally and thus repeats what is impossibile from the start.
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You might find what I’m saying to be pessimistic. I don’t.
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If you can’t convince people, what’s the point?
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I am no dictator. To defend government is not to defend dictatorship. You’re equivocating. I don’t think it’s impossible. What I think is impossible is imagining that Ozymandias doesn’t teach anything.
How do you know this?
Has there ever been or can there ever be A state that doesn’t threaten violence? Is it possible?
Yes that is the question and the answer is only if there is a state in place.