late wrote:Science isn't an ideology.
Ok. Allow me to clarify. People born during the industrial era who went into the physical sciences tended toward atheism, because so much of what constituted improvement was physical in nature. So you are correct that science is not an ideology, but scientists can be ideologues too. Read The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins for example.
late wrote:A nice introduction is Guns, Germs, and Steel.
Jared Diamond's inspiration for that book was speaking to wealth inequality--standard Marxism. He was arguing against any sort of supremacy of morals, intellect or genetics, and in favor of a purely environmental explanation between Eurasia and Egypt and the rest of the world. It's worth rereading it with respect to Cuba. Maybe Tainari88 might benefit from reading it so she can understand why a place like Puerto Rico will never be an industrial power house, but maybe PR could be an IT-based economy.
What Diamond doesn't consider is that genetics ends up playing a role, and he simply ignores it because it does not help him arrive at a Marxian conclusion. For example, Diamond posits that humans domesticated animals that were docile enough for domestication. Wolves and wildcats were domesticated into dogs and cats very early on. Selective breeding of dogs has been going on for a very long time. Dogs were often used for hunting, not agriculture.
However, genetics also played a role in humans. Most humans are lactose tolerant as babies and toddlers but are lactose intolerant into adulthood--except a significant portion of the European population. You cannot explain a dairy culture without this genetic modification. France has over 400 varieties of cheese. How many does China have? How many does Congo have?
The Chinese don't have a cheese culture, because they lacked milk-bearing bovines or they are too stupid to make cheese. They overwhelming majority of them are lactose intolerant. It gives them an instant stomach ache.
late wrote:But we do know capitalism played a large, pivotal role.
That's not easy to establish either. US money expressly states "In God we trust." One of the earliest banking powers was the Knights Templar. Religion and finance have a complex history and relationship.
late wrote:There were a few that took this to it's natural conclusion. If you don't have a logical proof of the existence of a deity, and no actual evidence, then a theist is assuming his conclusion. You're not supposed to do that, logically speaking.
Lennox emphatically disagrees with this assertion. If you think everything is random and unguided, would you bother to make plans? Of course not. Would you write a computer program? Obviously not. Science is founded on an assumption that physical phenomena obey rational rules. Otherwise, there would be no point in doing scientific research. That's why Richard Dawkins is kind of a daft prick.
late wrote:I think the increasing secularism as part of the intellectual evolution of Western thought.
I think the increasing acceptance of intelligent design is because Darwinism only explains specialization within an existing species, not the origin of a species or the origin of life itself. Further, Gregor Mendel demonstrated heritability of traits. Watson and Crick demonstrated the structure of DNA. The understanding of DNA and RNA demonstrates that it is a code--an instruction set. A series of discrete instructions that direct deterministic behavior at the microscopic level. It's a force that permeates all life. Master Yoda of the Jedi can tell you all about it.
Tainari88 wrote:I will post two different Cuban in exile perspectives, one from a right leaning magazine called The Economist which I do like reading even though I am a Richard Wolff economic prescription person.
The Economist isn't right leaning. It's more like the London School of Economics and Political Science, in that it seeks a rational discussion of market forces.
Tainari88 wrote:It is a good thing to read other points of view on economics.
It is, because I have a bachelor of science in business. Why a bachelor of science and not of arts? It's because the science degree requires a lot more math, isolating independent variables, and identifying statistically defensible causal relationships, etc. That's why they use terms like "market forces" in the same vein as physical forces.
Tainari88 wrote:The deep state gets its fuel from capitalist elitist shit BJ.
This is why you need to read up on economics so you can see what it doesn't say. Nowhere in an economic text is it going to be telling you about erecting a deep state, conducting espionage, etc. The KGB and the Stasi, for example, were not capitalist. It's as if you associate everything you don't like with capitalism. It's not capitalism that is bad. It's Democrats. Democrats are bad, bad, bad.
Tainari88 wrote:It about building wealth through force and greed and privilege. You are not against that. I am. While you permit greed, force and privilege to run relationships between nations?
Building wealth sometimes requires force. However, that's not what a modern nation state is about. It's why I recommend reading Law and Revolution by Harold J. Berman so that you understand the legal philosophy behind nation states. They are in effect an asserted monopoly on the use of violent force. That's all nation states. Not just capitalist ones.
Tainari88 wrote:And eventually it will cannibalize its own national interests in order to keep its greed fueled.
Well, it has already done that many times over. When you hear the left leaning types here talk about the US military versus the American people, they speak as if the US military could easily defeat the American people in a revolt, while ignoring that they lost winnable fights in places like Vietnam and Afghanistan against relatively primitive enemies. However, an alternate view of that is that the greed of maintaining physical assets precludes unrestricted warfare. Anthony Schafer provides a blueprint for winning against the Taliban, which is more or less a very sound strategy. However, it will not get implemented because the establishment does not want to risk war with Pakistan, and by extension, China. So they go with a strategy where they lose by their own design.
Tainari88 wrote:All Empires in the past have faded. They had to. They reached their limits. They cannibalized their wealth from the rot of the values lived in those deep states BJ.
The decline of empires is well studied, and it's rare that it simply redounds to bad morals of a few back bencher bureaucrats. Economically, the British Empire was simply eclipsed by Germany and America. Other than South Africa, British holdings in Africa were not profitable. It was India that was profitable. So once India was independent, the British more or less scuttled most of the rest of their empire, save a few militarily important places, a few profitable places like Hong Kong, and a number of small islands. The French weren't as economically strong as the British, but they actually fought to maintain empire and lost in places like Vietnam and Algeria. Yet, there is still a part of France on the East Coast of North America--Saint Pierre and Miquelon. And you thought that the Euro wasn't used in North America...
That's true of French Guiana as well, down South. France shares a border with Canada, Brazil and Suriname as well as the European countries you know and several other non-land borders as well.
Tainari88 wrote:You got to change the value system that perpetuates Empire. The USA was at a crossroads in 1898. They chose the cannibalization and the subjugation of conquered territories.
For all practical purposes, the US stopped its empire building project. That is why Cuba is an independent nation, as well as the Philippines. We even left Clark AFB and Subic Bay naval station. Alaska and Hawaii were incorporated into the US. Puerto Rico, Guam and the US Virgin Islands haven't been. They have been allowed to vote on it. The US Virgin Islands cannot even draft a constitution consistent with the US constitution, so it's ruled as a municipality.
Tainari88 wrote:Cold greed will lead to eventual destruction of your nation-state and its power position.
Sometimes empires are collapsed because of greed, just as they are erected for similar reasons.
Tainari88 wrote:India has laws against child slavery. But if there is corruption and lack of enforcement? It is moot.
So does China, but it's meaningless. China is a communist country that abandoned many of the principles of communism for greed. So now it is just another totalitarian state like Nazi Germany.
Tainari88 wrote:It has to be that no one in India will remain passive as that happens.
It takes a lot to get people to demand action. I think frustration with the Covid lockdowns had a lot to do with the Floyd riots, for example. Many people felt the government had a knee on their necks and still do.
Tainari88 wrote:Fix the economics.
Ah, but you are fighting against greedy people and they know how to manipulate you. Who was it that warned about the effects of making high schools feeder schools for college and abandoning vocational training? Charles Murray. That was his argument in the Bell Curve. Some people aren't ready for college fresh out of high school, and some may never have the aptitude for it. All it takes to prevent fixing it is to run around calling the person with the right economic answer a racist and a white supremacist, and the greedy people get to keep their system. It's a pretty neat little racket when you think about it.
Tainari88 wrote:And you believe in some shitty ideal of English only when people in India and Cuba and Puerto Rico and Mexico and many other nations including Russia and China and Greece all study English and don't feel threatened by assimilaton and their societies are all should be RUSSIAN only and Mandarin only?
I am not some monolingualism fool BJ.
Uh... neither am I. However, I am not someone to move to another nation and expect them to learn English so they can talk to me rather than to learn their language. I am not fluent in any other language, but I can speak some German, Russian, and Japanese. That's primarily to accommodate the people I work with around the world. Language is a big part of culture and economy.
Tainari88 wrote:More languages and more understanding of other cultures and world views? Is not some threat to cohesion. It is FREEDOM of thought and freedom of exploration.
Again, you are arguing with a straw man in your own head. I have never said (at least seriously) that we should abandon all languages and make everyone speak English. I don't know if I said something like that in humor just to piss you off, but it's very obviously not something I believe. I do believe you are at a serious disadvantage if you live in a country and cannot speak its dominant language. India has English as an official language because of the British Empire. Likewise, Hindi is the other official language. If you cannot speak either of these in India, you are at a serious economic disadvantage. If you can speak English, you can effectively work for American, British, Canadian, South African, Australian, or New Zealand-based companies. It provides a major economic advantage.
Tainari88 wrote:Again I loathe imperialism and assimilation.
Yes, but you cannot understand the value of why it persists. For example, Latin is a dead language except in religion and academia. Yet, the Roman Alphabet is a fine invention. It's relatively compact and flexible enough to accommodate many languages. The Roman numeral system, by contrast, totally sucks. The Indo-Arabic numeral system is much more efficient. The mother of all ironies is that you are trained in perhaps the one discipline more or less founded by the imperial mindset: anthropology. Here a link to a PDF of Kathleen Gough's
Anthropology and Imperialism paper.
Kathleen Gough wrote:Anthropology is a child of Western imperialism. It has roots in the humanist visions of the Enlightenment, but as a university discipline and a modem science it came into its own in the last decades of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries.
Tainari88 wrote:Both are about imposing by force and thinking that humans who live in some other environment are INFERIOR to others. Human experiences are rich innately in their own realities. Expanding what is possible requires flexibility in thinking.
This is what makes your philosophy a bit of a mess. You think we should get everyone running water, sewage, access to education and health care. If you want to do that, you must have laws and property. So you're headed right down the slippery slope you say you hate. Anarchy isn't a solution, but government basically is force. It doesn't matter what kind of government it is.
Tainari88 wrote:Bilingualism and polyglotism is an important component to that flexible mind.
Sure. So is assimilation. Think about the English language. We use foreign words in our language all the time. Shampoo and pajamas aren't English. They have their roots in India. You can feel sick and ill in English, because we incorporate words from the Danish, Vikings, French, etc. Sail, maelstrom, cog, cozy, rig, ombudsman, snug, knife, husband and so on are not English words. They're of Scandinavian origin. Preach, dungeon, rampart, dragon, accoutrements, aide-de-camp, lieutenant, camouflage, cavalry, corps, espionage, reconnaissance, squadron, sergeant, sovereignty, finance, coup d'état, bureau, constitution, jurisdiction, court, case, judge, jury, envoy, embassy, chancery, accord, treaty, alliance, harmony, melody, music, note, and an endless list of others are all French words. We speak them with regularity. The English language is an assimilating language. The Anglo culture is an assimilating culture. That's why Chicken Tikka Masala or Butter Chicken is the most popular dish in England. It's why I had a burrito for breakfast this morning.
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