On the conservative quarrel with reason - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15129087
I found this to be a really interesting set of observations -- very pointedly stated as well. Lots of potential discussion points!

Left-liberalism is the ideology of the elite, and the inculcation of its doctrines is what is regarded as education, so of course liberals are on average smarter, better behaved, richer, more industrious, fitter, and more sexually attractive than conservatives. Failure to conform is almost always a sign of defect; almost never a sign of being more perceptive than one’s host society. However, when liberals say that conservatives are hostile to reason, they are making a more interesting claim, one about the role of public reason in our system compared to theirs.

Unfortunately, there have been few first-rate conservative epistemologists, and some, like Burke and Maistre, have spoken rather too sweepingly on this matter, so liberals cannot be blamed for any inaccurate conclusions on our attitude toward reason. We should admit that, while reason has a role in conservative governance, it is more subordinate than in liberal governance. We really do have a lower estimation of man’s ability to deduce principles of social justice from a priori reasoning. In this sense, conservatism is anti-reason in the same way that empirical science is anti-reason. Just as scientific reasoning begins from observations about the world and may not appeal to a priori reasoning to demand the data be different, so conservative moral reasoning begins with inherited practices and may not appeal to a priori reasoning to demand an overthrow of tradition.

Let’s try to draw this distinction more sharply, to be as fair as possible to both political traditions. Most liberals recognize that we first learn particular normative practices of an established social order, and then, by generalizing from them, apprehend abstract concepts such as fairness or equality. They would say, though, that once apprehended, such concepts are intelligible in themselves and can be used to critique the social order itself.

Conservatives lean toward more emergentist, less Platonist, understandings of abstract moral imperatives. A conservative would say that general normative principles–“treat others as ends and not merely as means”, “love thy neighbor”, etc–abstracted from a social context have very little definite content, that we need a society and its tradition to say what it means to treat someone fairly, what it means to recognize persons as ends in themselves, and which people are to be regarded as equal in what way. The particular rules always serve as a guide to understanding the general principles, so that when the former seem to conflict with the latter, it is usually our understanding of the principles that must be corrected.

There is another way conservatives could be said to assign reason a more humble role, regarding not what our intellects are able to prove but what they are able to say. What we can articulate is not the totality of what we know or to what we can commit ourselves. Conservatives often emphasize the importance of tacit knowledge and the power of symbolism, sacrament, myth, and ritual. Magnanimous liberals will often admit that ritual and symbolism can embody knowledge beyond the powers of the ignorant masses to directly comprehend, but they will usually assume that if this is true knowledge then the elite can know it in explicit propositional form, dispensing with all non-literal packaging. Conservatives will insist that the meaning of the sacraments is inexhaustible, that the fact that they are not literal speech allows them to exceed the limits of literal speech, and that we never outgrow our need for them, no matter how smart or articulate we get. The fact that most of us are not very smart or articulate perhaps makes it easier for us to accept this truth, but truth it remains.


Orthosphere

There is an interesting appendix to this short blog post there as well.
#15129294
ckaihatsu wrote:So what's *your* take on it?


I really liked the opening paragraph... I would add to it that Universities will tend to make people into modern Western liberals (to be sharply distinguished from not just conservatives, but more robust forms of leftists) because they are very humanist, rationalist institutions that openly dismiss any appeals to religious tradition. Not because religious tradition is necessarily wrong because, of course, they will say it is possible to be a Catholic and a humanist, but because to not be a humanist who puts his religion far from consideration in human affairs is literally the wrong answer.

So, in these universities the religious are told to give up their religions or, at least, to put them out of their minds when considering important topics. Since Universities will attract more 105-110 IQs than 90-95 IQs, many 105-110 IQs, who are smarter, will become the liberals that they were taught to be, and the general trend he is talking about will play out fully.

Also,

We should admit that, while reason has a role in conservative governance, it is more subordinate than in liberal governance. We really do have a lower estimation of man’s ability to deduce principles of social justice from a priori reasoning. In this sense, conservatism is anti-reason in the same way that empirical science is anti-reason. Just as scientific reasoning begins from observations about the world and may not appeal to a priori reasoning to demand the data be different, so conservative moral reasoning begins with inherited practices and may not appeal to a priori reasoning to demand an overthrow of tradition.


this was very, very poignant to me.

Rationale tells us why can't a Priest be a woman? why do we always have to do the Liturgy in the same way? It also tells us that tattoos, piercings, sodomy, polyamory, prostitution, drug use, etc. can be reduced to personal choices and do not need to be viewed as crimes. The traditions that make these activities taboo come off as archaic, not even banning these things for good reasons, and just irrationally limiting freedom.

"Besides," the liberal will argue, "even if you make prostitution legal, it doesn't mean your daughter will become one!" Of course it does not mean that... and, even if prostitution does increase, it will likely only increase marginally... But this does not change the fact that a society in which prostitution is legal and is increasing is going to have a very different attitude towards sexuality and freedom than societies in which it remains illegal and the whole community actively signals against it.

A lot of rationality deconstructs things to the most basic elements and dismisses the big picture fears of conservatives as unfounded and portrays them as superstitious. I honestly think the big picture view of conservatives can be said to be perfectly intelligent and reasonable in its own way, but it does lean on things that would be called 'fallacies' by logicians, but this is where the rational begins to break apart.

The human mind is imperfect and cannot account for all of the variables. Moreover, the mind can become far weaker than the passions, even when the mind is strong.

Image

Cue Toobin on Zoom call.
#15129398
Verv wrote:
I really liked the opening paragraph... I would add to it that Universities will tend to make people into modern Western liberals (to be sharply distinguished from not just conservatives, but more robust forms of leftists) because they are very humanist, rationalist institutions that openly dismiss any appeals to religious tradition.


Verv wrote:
Not because religious tradition is necessarily wrong because, of course, they will say it is possible to be a Catholic and a humanist, but because to not be a humanist who puts his religion far from consideration in human affairs is literally the wrong answer.



Okay, would you say then that you're a *secularist*, especially in matters of *government*?


Verv wrote:
So, in these universities the religious are told to give up their religions or, at least, to put them out of their minds when considering important topics. Since Universities will attract more 105-110 IQs than 90-95 IQs, many 105-110 IQs, who are smarter, will become the liberals that they were taught to be, and the general trend he is talking about will play out fully.



So is this trend / tendency a *good* thing, or a *bad* thing, according to you?

I'll point out that I think, overall, you're positing a *false dichotomy*, because I don't think that the college / university context is so riven by the 'liberal-conservative' factionalism that you contend.


Verv wrote:
Also,




We should admit that, while reason has a role in conservative governance, it is more subordinate than in liberal governance. We really do have a lower estimation of man’s ability to deduce principles of social justice from a priori reasoning. In this sense, conservatism is anti-reason in the same way that empirical science is anti-reason. Just as scientific reasoning begins from observations about the world and may not appeal to a priori reasoning to demand the data be different, so conservative moral reasoning begins with inherited practices and may not appeal to a priori reasoning to demand an overthrow of tradition.



Empirical science *isn't* 'anti-reason', though, because even the 'simple' action of *observation* requires a fair amount of reasoning ability, such as the journalistic who-what-where-when-why-how, and also core-periphery sorting, to focus on the *topic*, or *theme* of the social event being covered, and such is also subject to *politicization* (left-right), particularly in the selection of the event itself.


History, Macro-Micro -- Political (Cognitive) Dissonance

Spoiler: show
Image



philosophical abstractions

Spoiler: show
Image



universal paradigm SLIDES TEMPLATE

Spoiler: show
Image



---



We should admit that, while reason has a role in conservative governance, it is more subordinate than in liberal governance. We really do have a lower estimation of man’s ability to deduce principles of social justice from a priori reasoning. In this sense, conservatism is anti-reason in the same way that empirical science is anti-reason. Just as scientific reasoning begins from observations about the world and may not appeal to a priori reasoning to demand the data be different, so conservative moral reasoning begins with inherited practices and may not appeal to a priori reasoning to demand an overthrow of tradition.



This treatment, though, is conflating the process of *scientific observation*, with *traditionalist moral reasoning*, and the two aren't comparable, since, as the writer admits, 'conservative moral reasoning begins with inherited practices'. These 'inherited practices' are effectively 'a priori' in valuation since they're *not* subject to dispassionate, objective-minded scientific reasoning based on empirical observations.


Verv wrote:
this was very, very poignant to me.

Rationale tells us why can't a Priest be a woman? why do we always have to do the Liturgy in the same way? It also tells us that tattoos, piercings, sodomy, polyamory, prostitution, drug use, etc. can be reduced to personal choices and do not need to be viewed as crimes. The traditions that make these activities taboo come off as archaic, not even banning these things for good reasons, and just irrationally limiting freedom.



So how do you reconcile these conflicting trajectories, then, that of *traditional social mores*, versus *[individual] freedom* -- ?


Verv wrote:
"Besides," the liberal will argue, "even if you make prostitution legal, it doesn't mean your daughter will become one!" Of course it does not mean that... and, even if prostitution does increase, it will likely only increase marginally... But this does not change the fact that a society in which prostitution is legal and is increasing is going to have a very different attitude towards sexuality and freedom than societies in which it remains illegal and the whole community actively signals against it.



Different = different. Got it.


Verv wrote:
A lot of rationality deconstructs things to the most basic elements and dismisses the big picture fears of conservatives as unfounded and portrays them as superstitious. I honestly think the big picture view of conservatives can be said to be perfectly intelligent and reasonable in its own way, but it does lean on things that would be called 'fallacies' by logicians, but this is where the rational begins to break apart.

The human mind is imperfect and cannot account for all of the variables. Moreover, the mind can become far weaker than the passions, even when the mind is strong.

Image

Cue Toobin on Zoom call.



What is the 'big picture view of conservatives'?
#15129472
ckaihatsu wrote:Okay, would you say then that you're a *secularist*, especially in matters of *government*?


No, not at all.

So is this trend / tendency a *good* thing, or a *bad* thing, according to you?

I'll point out that I think, overall, you're positing a *false dichotomy*, because I don't think that the college / university context is so riven by the 'liberal-conservative' factionalism that you contend.


It's a bad thing because the modern left-liberalism is far from the actual truth -- the truth being Christianity.

I think that there are studies which show that faculty tends to be overwhelmingly left, specifically in things like sociology. Here is a study that shows liberal professors outnumber conservative professors 12:1 (Washington Times).

But, on some level, this is hard for academia to overcome. Once the fix is in, since the bulk of these professors are very dependent on their university educations and even pride themselves in their intellectual pedigree, it's hard to overcome the bias once it is fixed in.

Moreover, the conservatives that we have in the modern West are 80-90% right-liberals. That is to say, they are going to all be secularists, they are all going to talk about how the US and these other Western nations are based on liberty, equality, etc., and so their thought-patterns are going to often match up closely with left-liberals, and their big difference is not so much structural as it is in mere emphasis.

Empirical science *isn't* 'anti-reason', though, because even the 'simple' action of *observation* requires a fair amount of reasoning ability, such as the journalistic who-what-where-when-why-how, and also core-periphery sorting, to focus on the *topic*, or *theme* of the social event being covered, and such is also subject to *politicization* (left-right), particularly in the selection of the event itself.


It is not anti-reason, but it is not rationalist. Likewise, one can say that most Catholic intellectuals are not, in the least, anti-reason, but they are dependent on revelation, so they cannot be said to be rationalists. The differences can be subtle, but they are there.

History, Macro-Micro -- Political (Cognitive) Dissonance

Spoiler: show
Image



philosophical abstractions

Spoiler: show
Image



universal paradigm SLIDES TEMPLATE

Spoiler: show
Image



---


They are pretty charts, but I found the first one hard to read, and I did not care that much.

This treatment, though, is conflating the process of *scientific observation*, with *traditionalist moral reasoning*, and the two aren't comparable, since, as the writer admits, 'conservative moral reasoning begins with inherited practices'. These 'inherited practices' are effectively 'a priori' in valuation since they're *not* subject to dispassionate, objective-minded scientific reasoning based on empirical observations.


They can become subject to these things, but yes, they are not the starting point. They are looked to as perhaps semi-mysterious. I do not think they are viewed as something that is against reason, just as something that is not explicitly based on reason.

So how do you reconcile these conflicting trajectories, then, that of *traditional social mores*, versus *[individual] freedom* -- ?


First, tradition behaves the same way that any sort of high culture behaves. It is a series of ideas and reference points... thus, it is always an imagined, perfect thing, that does not reflect reality completely. Reality is always streaked through with human flaws. It should be seen as a sort of meta-ideology. I wrote some more about this, inspired by the question and realizing that a more substantial answer perhaps should be given, on my blog here.

So, we must consider that tradition behaves more like an ideal than it does as a collection of things brought down. It is a collection of things brought down which people wish to see preserved.

So, just like an ideal, it is constantly undermined by its own practitioners who dishonor it through their inherent hypocrisy. It suffers from the same flaws that the Church and Marxism suffer from: the flaws of Christians & Communists.

It is being dragged down constantly by the gravity of human imperfection...

Thus, tradition (which includes social mores) must always be said to be far more important than liberty. This is not to say that everything against tradition must be made illegal, but it is to say that all things which do not live up to the traditional virtues & ideals ought to be very roundly condemned by the bulk of society.

It does not have to be illegal to be drunk or illegal to buy sex, necessarily, but there has to be a moral consensus. When people speak of how society should behave in terms of law and not in terms of virtue, we are asking the wrong questions and sending the wrong messages.

What is the 'big picture view of conservatives'?


There's a lot of different kinds of conservatives. But, whether they are right-liberals or reactionaries, but the conservative is generally fighting to uphold his traditions and that sort of social & cultural meta.
#15129491
Verv wrote:
Not because religious tradition is necessarily wrong because, of course, they will say it is possible to be a Catholic and a humanist, but because to not be a humanist who puts his religion far from consideration in human affairs is literally the wrong answer.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, would you say then that you're a *secularist*, especially in matters of *government*?



Verv wrote:
No, not at all.



Going by what you said, you're *dichotomizing* one's (Catholic) religion, and one's humanism. You said that the humanist side of someone needs to put their religion far from consideration, which sounds like secularism in civil affairs.


---


Verv wrote:
So, in these universities the religious are told to give up their religions or, at least, to put them out of their minds when considering important topics. Since Universities will attract more 105-110 IQs than 90-95 IQs, many 105-110 IQs, who are smarter, will become the liberals that they were taught to be, and the general trend he is talking about will play out fully.



ckaihatsu wrote:
So is this trend / tendency a *good* thing, or a *bad* thing, according to you?

I'll point out that I think, overall, you're positing a *false dichotomy*, because I don't think that the college / university context is so riven by the 'liberal-conservative' factionalism that you contend.



Verv wrote:
It's a bad thing because the modern left-liberalism is far from the actual truth -- the truth being Christianity.



And what is human society to do with those who are *non-Christian*? I'm an *atheist* myself, and I like to *dabble* a little in learning about various religions as a part of social history, but I feel much better off in my life without such invented childish beliefs.


Verv wrote:
I think that there are studies which show that faculty tends to be overwhelmingly left, specifically in things like sociology. Here is a study that shows liberal professors outnumber conservative professors 12:1 (Washington Times).



Okay, I'm going to take you at your word, since what you're saying sounds *accurate* -- however I still don't see academic warfare going on in the industry over liberal-vs.-conservative. I think you're *exaggerating*.


Verv wrote:
But, on some level, this is hard for academia to overcome. Once the fix is in, since the bulk of these professors are very dependent on their university educations and even pride themselves in their intellectual pedigree, it's hard to overcome the bias once it is fixed in.



Are you claiming that people's *careers* are jeopardized based on their chosen political beliefs? That's disallowed by law, in my understanding, and would legally be *discrimination*.


Verv wrote:
Moreover, the conservatives that we have in the modern West are 80-90% right-liberals. That is to say, they are going to all be secularists, they are all going to talk about how the US and these other Western nations are based on liberty, equality, etc., and so their thought-patterns are going to often match up closely with left-liberals, and their big difference is not so much structural as it is in mere emphasis.



Okay, this is better -- in academic professional life this more *nationalist* political attitude that you're describing tends to prevail, not that I agree with such sentiment *myself*, of course -- I'm a workers-of-the-world socialist.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Empirical science *isn't* 'anti-reason', though, because even the 'simple' action of *observation* requires a fair amount of reasoning ability, such as the journalistic who-what-where-when-why-how, and also core-periphery sorting, to focus on the *topic*, or *theme* of the social event being covered, and such is also subject to *politicization* (left-right), particularly in the selection of the event itself.



Verv wrote:
It is not anti-reason, but it is not rationalist. Likewise, one can say that most Catholic intellectuals are not, in the least, anti-reason, but they are dependent on revelation, so they cannot be said to be rationalists. The differences can be subtle, but they are there.



I think we should allow for a measure of *subjectivity*, to *anyone*, which may or may not be religious experience.


Worldview Diagram

Spoiler: show
Image



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Verv wrote:
They are pretty charts, but I found the first one hard to read, and I did not care that much.



I know -- maybe they need to be *prettier*. Garrrrrrrrrnnnnhhhhhhhhhh! (grin)

Don't worry about it too much -- I did them mostly for myself, but I like to include them in my posts to provide a kind of generic context. I'll make sure to express myself fully in text, though.


---



We should admit that, while reason has a role in conservative governance, it is more subordinate than in liberal governance. We really do have a lower estimation of man’s ability to deduce principles of social justice from a priori reasoning. In this sense, conservatism is anti-reason in the same way that empirical science is anti-reason. Just as scientific reasoning begins from observations about the world and may not appeal to a priori reasoning to demand the data be different, so conservative moral reasoning begins with inherited practices and may not appeal to a priori reasoning to demand an overthrow of tradition.



ckaihatsu wrote:
This treatment, though, is conflating the process of *scientific observation*, with *traditionalist moral reasoning*, and the two aren't comparable, since, as the writer admits, 'conservative moral reasoning begins with inherited practices'. These 'inherited practices' are effectively 'a priori' in valuation since they're *not* subject to dispassionate, objective-minded scientific reasoning based on empirical observations.



Verv wrote:
They can become subject to these things, but yes, they are not the starting point. They are looked to as perhaps semi-mysterious. I do not think they are viewed as something that is against reason, just as something that is not explicitly based on reason.



Okay, I'll refer to my previous point about *subjectivity* -- but I'll remind that many / most scientific-observational tasks tend to be *objective* in nature, and do *not* lend themselves to one's own subjective experiences or opinions.

How are 'inherited practices' to be treated, then, alongside a professionally-minded, more-*empirical* approach to objective observation? So far this institution of 'tradition' that you uphold sounds more like an *albatross*, than anything else.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
So how do you reconcile these conflicting trajectories, then, that of *traditional social mores*, versus *[individual] freedom* -- ?



Verv wrote:
First, tradition behaves the same way that any sort of high culture behaves. It is a series of ideas and reference points... thus, it is always an imagined, perfect thing, that does not reflect reality completely. Reality is always streaked through with human flaws. It should be seen as a sort of meta-ideology. I wrote some more about this, inspired by the question and realizing that a more substantial answer perhaps should be given, on my blog here.



So you're upholding some specific culture as an *ideal*?


Verv wrote:
So, we must consider that tradition behaves more like an ideal than it does as a collection of things brought down. It is a collection of things brought down which people wish to see preserved.



Okay, so an ideal / model, perhaps similar in function to the graphical frameworks I've included.


Verv wrote:
So, just like an ideal, it is constantly undermined by its own practitioners who dishonor it through their inherent hypocrisy.



Splitters! (grin)


Verv wrote:
It suffers from the same flaws that the Church and Marxism suffer from: the flaws of Christians & Communists.



Weeeelllllllllll, that's a rather *facile* comparison -- 'flaws' in socio-political practice are due to *material* historical reasons / dynamics / trajectories (see base-and-superstructure), while I'd say that *religious* flaws tend to be around matters of groupthink-cultures, and thus social ins-and-outs over various belief systems.


Verv wrote:
It is being dragged down constantly by the gravity of human imperfection...



I'm going to start to edge my way over to the *door* right now....


Verv wrote:
Thus, tradition (which includes social mores) must always be said to be far more important than liberty.



Ah.


Verv wrote:
This is not to say that everything against tradition must be made illegal, but it is to say that all things which do not live up to the traditional virtues & ideals ought to be very roundly condemned by the bulk of society.



Because?


Verv wrote:
It does not have to be illegal to be drunk or illegal to buy sex, necessarily, but there has to be a moral consensus. When people speak of how society should behave in terms of law and not in terms of virtue, we are asking the wrong questions and sending the wrong messages.



Oh, so you want some kind of *lifestyle*-groupthink. That's *definitely* anti-liberty, in the bourgeois sense, and is *reactionary*, politically. Sorry.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
What is the 'big picture view of conservatives'?



Verv wrote:
There's a lot of different kinds of conservatives. But, whether they are right-liberals or reactionaries, but the conservative is generally fighting to uphold his traditions and that sort of social & cultural meta.



Crusades much?
#15129571
ckaihatsu wrote:Going by what you said, you're *dichotomizing* one's (Catholic) religion, and one's humanism. You said that the humanist side of someone needs to put their religion far from consideration, which sounds like secularism in civil affairs.


That is how they are expected to function but not how I would tell them that they ought to function.

And what is human society to do with those who are *non-Christian*? I'm an *atheist* myself, and I like to *dabble* a little in learning about various religions as a part of social history, but I feel much better off in my life without such invented childish beliefs.


Generally speaking, it would be important for non-Christians to not be put into positions of cultural influence, or to be given large amounts of authority over Christians.


Okay, I'm going to take you at your word, since what you're saying sounds *accurate* -- however I still don't see academic warfare going on in the industry over liberal-vs.-conservative. I think you're *exaggerating*.


There doesn't have to be much warfare because the war was lost decades & decades ago.

There's some book on the topic about how there was a feud between Anglo-American academia and largely Continental, leftist influenced academic types, many who were Jewish or recent immigrants, and the Anglo-Americans were ultimately defeated, resulting in institutional capture. That is why now there are even entire departments that exist to be leftist in nature (Women's Studies, for instance), and many departments have rules & regulations that make it potential to dismiss people who do not meet the political tests that they wish to impose through their HR departments.

I would be unprepared to argue this at length because I have not read about it but only heard it described, but it seems to be an accurate assessment of what must have happened for academia to be so biased, and I have heard others describe the state of affairs in Christian seminaries in the US, and it seems very believable.

Are you claiming that people's *careers* are jeopardized based on their chosen political beliefs? That's disallowed by law, in my understanding, and would legally be *discrimination*.


It would not be except in California and New York which passed laws decades ago that a person's hobbies or leisure activities cannot affect their employment, and politics can be spun as a hobby.

However, while religion is a protected category, it tends to be the case that politics are not a protected category.

Okay, this is better -- in academic professional life this more *nationalist* political attitude that you're describing tends to prevail, not that I agree with such sentiment *myself*, of course -- I'm a workers-of-the-world socialist.


I'm unaware of some patriotic attitude in academia.

I think we should allow for a measure of *subjectivity*, to *anyone*, which may or may not be religious experience.

Worldview Diagram

Spoiler: show
Image



---





I know -- maybe they need to be *prettier*. Garrrrrrrrrnnnnhhhhhhhhhh! (grin)

Don't worry about it too much -- I did them mostly for myself, but I like to include them in my posts to provide a kind of generic context. I'll make sure to express myself fully in text, though.


Very creative!

Okay, I'll refer to my previous point about *subjectivity* -- but I'll remind that many / most scientific-observational tasks tend to be *objective* in nature, and do *not* lend themselves to one's own subjective experiences or opinions.


They are just shorter, tighter tracks of understanding that dismiss everything outside of them.

They function as tautologies unto themselves:

People are materialists and say that the only measure of truth is that which can be observed by science, and since they have chosen a limited set of tools to understand the universe, they get limited results, and they refer to this as objective.

Publicly verifiable is a better term.

How are 'inherited practices' to be treated, then, alongside a professionally-minded, more-*empirical* approach to objective observation? So far this institution of 'tradition' that you uphold sounds more like an *albatross*, than anything else.


This is a wrong question, because more empirical approaches should not be put alongside tradition. They are very different things.

What business does materialist worldviews have in the realm of traditional Western culture? What use is it? What does it offer?

So you're upholding some specific culture as an *ideal*?


The ideal culture is the local culture that is actualizing itself in a way that pleases God. There is not a single culture that is meant to be above the world, because there is no culture that would adequately address all nations and their unique circumstances.

Weeeelllllllllll, that's a rather *facile* comparison -- 'flaws' in socio-political practice are due to *material* historical reasons / dynamics / trajectories (see base-and-superstructure), while I'd say that *religious* flaws tend to be around matters of groupthink-cultures, and thus social ins-and-outs over various belief systems.


The chief reasons both of these things have issues is because people cannot live up to ideals -- that is the point.

Because?


That which negates tradition negates the local social mores and culture. That is not to say that there is no room for disagreement within the tradition, or suggestions to move beyond aspects of the tradition, but it is a total non-starter to suggest that the answers for a Christian society lay outside of Christianity

Oh, so you want some kind of *lifestyle*-groupthink. That's *definitely* anti-liberty, in the bourgeois sense, and is *reactionary*, politically. Sorry.


Oh, don't be sorry.

It's fine.

Liberty is something that is always tenuous. Take away Church authority, and it is replaced by other forms of authority that exercise other types of coercion.

There is no truly free society, and so holding it up as a value misses a lot.

Crusades much?


In 21st century, against the modern world? In some literal sense, of course not. But, sure, we should, in a figurative sense.
#15129700
Verv wrote:
That is how they are expected to function but not how I would tell them that they ought to function.



Would you rather subject the workplace to ideological battles of clerical-sectarianism? I'd rather it be *civil* and secular so that it doesn't lend itself to religious-politicization.


Verv wrote:
Generally speaking, it would be important for non-Christians to not be put into positions of cultural influence, or to be given large amounts of authority over Christians.



So you'd rather have a Christian *theocracy*, then.


Verv wrote:
There doesn't have to be much warfare because the war was lost decades & decades ago.

There's some book on the topic about how there was a feud between Anglo-American academia and largely Continental, leftist influenced academic types, many who were Jewish or recent immigrants, and the Anglo-Americans were ultimately defeated, resulting in institutional capture.



When *was* this, allegedly?


Verv wrote:
That is why now there are even entire departments that exist to be leftist in nature (Women's Studies, for instance), and many departments have rules & regulations that make it potential to dismiss people who do not meet the political tests that they wish to impose through their HR departments.

I would be unprepared to argue this at length because I have not read about it but only heard it described, but it seems to be an accurate assessment of what must have happened for academia to be so biased, and I have heard others describe the state of affairs in Christian seminaries in the US, and it seems very believable.


Verv wrote:
It would not be except in California and New York which passed laws decades ago that a person's hobbies or leisure activities cannot affect their employment, and politics can be spun as a hobby.

However, while religion is a protected category, it tends to be the case that politics are not a protected category.



Yeah, on second thought I think you're correct here, on existing government policy.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, this is better -- in academic professional life this more *nationalist* political attitude that you're describing tends to prevail, not that I agree with such sentiment *myself*, of course -- I'm a workers-of-the-world socialist.



Verv wrote:
I'm unaware of some patriotic attitude in academia.



I don't mean 'patriotic', I mean *nationalist* -- that which favors the bourgeois government *status quo* for official culture, and even informal culture.


Verv wrote:
Very creative!



Thanks. Hopefully they're *useful*, too -- for all of them you can just fill in your own details, for whatever it is that you're looking at.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, I'll refer to my previous point about *subjectivity* -- but I'll remind that many / most scientific-observational tasks tend to be *objective* in nature, and do *not* lend themselves to one's own subjective experiences or opinions.



Verv wrote:
They are just shorter, tighter tracks of understanding that dismiss everything outside of them.

They function as tautologies unto themselves:

People are materialists and say that the only measure of truth is that which can be observed by science, and since they have chosen a limited set of tools to understand the universe, they get limited results, and they refer to this as objective.

Publicly verifiable is a better term.



Okay, I don't quibble -- and I don't mean to exclude the *subjective*, either, as in one's own selection of topic for investigation.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
How are 'inherited practices' to be treated, then, alongside a professionally-minded, more-*empirical* approach to objective observation? So far this institution of 'tradition' that you uphold sounds more like an *albatross*, than anything else.



Verv wrote:
This is a wrong question, because more empirical approaches should not be put alongside tradition. They are very different things.

What business does materialist worldviews have in the realm of traditional Western culture? What use is it? What does it offer?



With all due respect, it sounds like we may simply have varying intellectual interests. If you'd like to argue for a particular worldview, or belief system, with specifics to address, feel free. I'll *consider* what you have to say but I doubt that I'll *agree* with your perspective, or worldview.

Again, I just don't see what value religious tradition has over science, except perhaps for the historical record. I'll go so far to say that *whatever* one is looking-into, one can use this following framework to keep track of their efforts:


universal paradigm SLIDES TEMPLATE

Spoiler: show
Image



Regarding history, there's this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
So you're upholding some specific culture as an *ideal*?



Verv wrote:
The ideal culture is the local culture that is actualizing itself in a way that pleases God. There is not a single culture that is meant to be above the world, because there is no culture that would adequately address all nations and their unique circumstances.



I'm not a cultural determinist, so I happen to agree with you on that point. I'm not religious, either, so I *don't* agree with you on the initial point.


[1] History, Macro Micro -- Precision

Spoiler: show
Image



---


Verv wrote:
The chief reasons both of these things have issues is because people cannot live up to ideals -- that is the point.



But people *don't have to* live up to ideals -- that would be *lifestylism*.

*My* concern is with 'civil society', meaning *universal civil rights*, and also how productivity and distribution is accomplished by *industrial mass-production*. The world's working class should control all of society's production, for socially necessary needs and wants.


---


Verv wrote:
This is not to say that everything against tradition must be made illegal, but it is to say that all things which do not live up to the traditional virtues & ideals ought to be very roundly condemned by the bulk of society.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Because?



Verv wrote:
That which negates tradition negates the local social mores and culture. That is not to say that there is no room for disagreement within the tradition, or suggestions to move beyond aspects of the tradition, but it is a total non-starter to suggest that the answers for a Christian society lay outside of Christianity



So your concern is obviously with 'Christian society', but what happens / should-happen when people of various cultures and religions begin to *encounter* one another, as in the U.S., from immigration?

Do you have a politics that can address modern heterogeneous urban society, or don't you?


---


Verv wrote:
It does not have to be illegal to be drunk or illegal to buy sex, necessarily, but there has to be a moral consensus. When people speak of how society should behave in terms of law and not in terms of virtue, we are asking the wrong questions and sending the wrong messages.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Oh, so you want some kind of *lifestyle*-groupthink. That's *definitely* anti-liberty, in the bourgeois sense, and is *reactionary*, politically. Sorry.



Verv wrote:
Oh, don't be sorry.

It's fine.

Liberty is something that is always tenuous. Take away Church authority, and it is replaced by other forms of authority that exercise other types of coercion.

There is no truly free society, and so holding it up as a value misses a lot.



Why can't society be based on *civil rights*? If one's civil rights are being violated by another's actions, then that's a *problem* and should be regulated appropriately.

I have no problems with drunkenness or prostitution in the *abstract*, myself, but I can certainly understand that public drunkenness may easily become disruptive to *others*, and likewise prostitution may be more trouble than it's worth, and perhaps everyone should just get adequate government social services for their basic requirements of life and living so that they can be sex-worker *hobbyists*, so-to-speak, if they want, and not have to charge for their services, for the sake of their livelihoods.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Crusades much?



Verv wrote:
In 21st century, against the modern world? In some literal sense, of course not. But, sure, we should, in a figurative sense.



To expand the Christian theocracy. (Pass.)
#15130202
ckaihatsu wrote:Would you rather subject the workplace to ideological battles of clerical-sectarianism? I'd rather it be *civil* and secular so that it doesn't lend itself to religious-politicization.


But that is not actually how it works. There is no such thing as a place where there is not a political fight. Once we secularize the public sphere, it is politicized, and the culture changes to reflect that change.

So you'd rather have a Christian *theocracy*, then.


I would not describe it as a theocracy, but assuming that you are hypersensitive to anything Christian being enshrined and would refer to it as a theocracy anyway, yes.

When *was* this, allegedly?


I believe the focal point of it all was the late forties an early fifties, but that there were signs of it before.

I don't mean 'patriotic', I mean *nationalist* -- that which favors the bourgeois government *status quo* for official culture, and even informal culture.


If the definition is changed to mean something that supports a bourgeois status quo, then why not just use a term like classist or something that is transparently Marxist? It just confuses the conversation to refer to it as nationalist because it does not really fit the way that nationalists view themselves?

With all due respect, it sounds like we may simply have varying intellectual interests. If you'd like to argue for a particular worldview, or belief system, with specifics to address, feel free. I'll *consider* what you have to say but I doubt that I'll *agree* with your perspective, or worldview.

Again, I just don't see what value religious tradition has over science, except perhaps for the historical record. I'll go so far to say that *whatever* one is looking-into, one can use this following framework to keep track of their efforts:


Sure, we can avoid having a religious debate right now.

But people *don't have to* live up to ideals -- that would be *lifestylism*.

*My* concern is with 'civil society', meaning *universal civil rights*, and also how productivity and distribution is accomplished by *industrial mass-production*. The world's working class should control all of society's production, for socially necessary needs and wants.


I think it is the case that people actually ought to live up to their ideals. It would be a mistake to develop a system that relies on people to live up to high ideals in order for there to be prosperity or successful governance. But, nonetheless, we should actively assist people in living up to their values.

So your concern is obviously with 'Christian society', but what happens / should-happen when people of various cultures and religions begin to *encounter* one another, as in the U.S., from immigration?

Do you have a politics that can address modern heterogeneous urban society, or don't you?


I do not live in a very heterogeneous place. My answer is for the local population to have adequate birth rates and to only grant citizenship to people who are (a) have a citizen for a parent, or (b) have been naturalized because they are fluent in the local language, familiar with local history and law, and also have proven to be able to earn an income or education that is superior to the local average.

Multiculturalism should not be the end game because it produces atomization and, in the worst cases, it can result in there being extreme political fracturing, mutual distrust, and subjugation of people in their own places of birth.

For similar reasons, I think the ideal nations are generally small and provide for significant amounts of regional autonomy.

Why can't society be based on *civil rights*? If one's civil rights are being violated by another's actions, then that's a *problem* and should be regulated appropriately.


Then we are not even talking necessarily about a nation in a meaningful sense. The nation then is nothing more than a rule book and a common marketplace. It's just waiting to fall apart when a catastrophe comes. It also fails the people by not providing direction or mutual strength.

I have no problems with drunkenness or prostitution in the *abstract*, myself, but I can certainly understand that public drunkenness may easily become disruptive to *others*, and likewise prostitution may be more trouble than it's worth, and perhaps everyone should just get adequate government social services for their basic requirements of life and living so that they can be sex-worker *hobbyists*, so-to-speak, if they want, and not have to charge for their services, for the sake of their livelihoods.


See, this is the short-sighted hyperrationalism that sinks liberal socieites. They come up with tight little systems in which the individual alone is King, and allow for the society to fall apart through the weight of its own selfishness and ennui.

To expand the Christian theocracy. (Pass.)


I think we'd all be happier in a God-centered society. :D
#15130208
ckaihatsu wrote:
Going by what you said, you're *dichotomizing* one's (Catholic) religion, and one's humanism. You said that the humanist side of someone needs to put their religion far from consideration, which sounds like secularism in civil affairs.



Verv wrote:
That is how they are expected to function but not how I would tell them that they ought to function.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Would you rather subject the workplace to ideological battles of clerical-sectarianism? I'd rather it be *civil* and secular so that it doesn't lend itself to religious-politicization.



Verv wrote:
But that is not actually how it works. There is no such thing as a place where there is not a political fight. Once we secularize the public sphere, it is politicized, and the culture changes to reflect that change.



Yes, that *is* how it works, much of the time -- the U.S., for example, has *secular* laws, and we don't bring in *religious* precepts in order to balance one's guilt or innocence. This is a *good* thing.


Verv wrote:
I would not describe it as a theocracy, but assuming that you are hypersensitive to anything Christian being enshrined and would refer to it as a theocracy anyway, yes.



So how far do you want to take 'In God We Trust' -- ? This is an offensive phrase that makes it onto the walls of courtrooms and into the Pledge of Allegiance, among other places -- how far would *you* take it in the direction of a full-fledged Christian theocracy?


---


Verv wrote:
There doesn't have to be much warfare because the war was lost decades & decades ago.

There's some book on the topic about how there was a feud between Anglo-American academia and largely Continental, leftist influenced academic types, many who were Jewish or recent immigrants, and the Anglo-Americans were ultimately defeated, resulting in institutional capture.



ckaihatsu wrote:
When *was* this, allegedly?



Verv wrote:
I believe the focal point of it all was the late forties an early fifties, but that there were signs of it before.



Well there *was* a lot of Jewish immigration to the U.S. during WWII, escaping the Nazis -- being anti-Nazi could very well make one more prone to liberal politics.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
I don't mean 'patriotic', I mean *nationalist* -- that which favors the bourgeois government *status quo* for official culture, and even informal culture.



Verv wrote:
If the definition is changed to mean something that supports a bourgeois status quo, then why not just use a term like classist or something that is transparently Marxist? It just confuses the conversation to refer to it as nationalist because it does not really fit the way that nationalists view themselves?



My understanding is that even the term 'classist' doesn't mean 'class' in the sense of 'class struggle', or 'class warfare', but rather *subordinates* the paramount importance / determinism of class, to that of the ruling-class divide-and-conquer *strategies* of racism, sexism, etc. -- meaning that it's an inaccurate definition of *class*. It lends itself more to intersectionality, which is *not* class-consciousness.


[1] History, Macro Micro -- Precision

Spoiler: show
Image



---


Verv wrote:
Sure, we can avoid having a religious debate right now.


Verv wrote:
I think it is the case that people actually ought to live up to their ideals. It would be a mistake to develop a system that relies on people to live up to high ideals in order for there to be prosperity or successful governance. But, nonetheless, we should actively assist people in living up to their values.



Prosperity can be had by all these days with *full automation* of industrial mass-production. Unfortunately such industrial and computational techniques are subordinate to the private interests for profit, from *private property*. That's what's holding it up.

Governance is another matter, since that's the superstructure of the bourgeois *ruling class*, as things are.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
So your concern is obviously with 'Christian society', but what happens / should-happen when people of various cultures and religions begin to *encounter* one another, as in the U.S., from immigration?

Do you have a politics that can address modern heterogeneous urban society, or don't you?



Verv wrote:
I do not live in a very heterogeneous place. My answer is for the local population to have adequate birth rates and to only grant citizenship to people who are (a) have a citizen for a parent, or (b) have been naturalized because they are fluent in the local language, familiar with local history and law, and also have proven to be able to earn an income or education that is superior to the local average.

Multiculturalism should not be the end game because it produces atomization and, in the worst cases, it can result in there being extreme political fracturing, mutual distrust, and subjugation of people in their own places of birth.



You're sounding like a cultural determinist. Don't you think there's enough humane commonality for various international cultures to find common-ground, and to live together? This has *already happened*, I'll note, in the U.S. in particular, due to several waves of immigration from all over the world. There doesn't have to be cultural homogeneity as long as there's equality before the law.


Verv wrote:
For similar reasons, I think the ideal nations are generally small and provide for significant amounts of regional autonomy.



Are you for international / globalized trade?

Also:


Political Spectrum, Simplified

Spoiler: show
Image



---


Verv wrote:
Then we are not even talking necessarily about a nation in a meaningful sense. The nation then is nothing more than a rule book and a common marketplace. It's just waiting to fall apart when a catastrophe comes. It also fails the people by not providing direction or mutual strength.



Nationalism hasn't always been around, so it's not like it's an enduring feature of social existence. I find it to be outmoded, myself, and it's actually a *hindrance* to workers-of-the-world socialism, which *could* be accomplished more easily *without* nationalism.


Verv wrote:
See, this is the short-sighted hyperrationalism that sinks liberal socieites. They come up with tight little systems in which the individual alone is King, and allow for the society to fall apart through the weight of its own selfishness and ennui.



But as things are under bourgeois bureaucratization -- the modern nation-state -- people have *already* been individualized, not that the individual is 'king', really, unless they have a lot of wealth, I suppose. There's still the *government* and its *legal* use of force, anyway.

Societies actually fall apart due to an unaddressable *wealth imbalance*. *Many* civilizations have fallen to the wayside for this reason, and here we are today with *massive* income inequality.


Verv wrote:
I think we'd all be happier in a God-centered society. :D



Well, I can assure, as one who isn't even *religious*, that I would *not* favor a theocracy or patriarchal theocracy of any kind, and I would not be 'happy' in such. Consider my vote cast.
#15130238
The messages no longer merit these great lengths so I am going to try to select just key quotes and stick to them.

EDIT: I had a critical quote error. I will try to correct it by putting your stuff in italics.

Yes, that *is* how it works, much of the time -- the U.S., for example, has *secular* laws, and we don't bring in *religious* precepts in order to balance one's guilt or innocence. This is a *good* thing.


We do not need literal blasphemy laws in the society I am proposing.

As it stands, we already do have a new set of blasphemy laws in most secular, Western democracies. Issues about race and gender cannot be spoken about freely, and any amount of divergence from the norm results in blacklisting, doxxing, etc., so explaining to people that we can't have any religious proscriptions in our society because it is secular is unpersuasive.

It is safe to say that there is always some form of religion in control. The only question is whose metaphysics, based on faith, is in power.

So how far do you want to take 'In God We Trust' -- ? This is an offensive phrase that makes it onto the walls of courtrooms and into the Pledge of Allegiance, among other places -- how far would *you* take it in the direction of a full-fledged Christian theocracy?
[/quote]

I don't know. I suppose I would begin by removing all first amendment based protections for smut, and making it uncopyrightable. I would also come up with standards to exercise full control over public airwaves, not to crush political or religious dissent, but to remove SJW inspired programming and promote only themes with Chrsitian narratives. I'd also, of course, totally change what Departments and types of courses could be operated within Universities with public funding.

Because man is born free and has a God-given right to his freedom of conscience and expression, I would [i]"ban"
and ostracize people far less than what the New York Times or SPLC.

Prosperity can be had by all these days with *full automation* of industrial mass-production. Unfortunately such industrial and computational techniques are subordinate to the private interests for profit, from *private property*. That's what's holding it up.

Governance is another matter, since that's the superstructure of the bourgeois *ruling class*, as things are.


Why assume that mass automation is being prevented to your detriment? Isn't it more likely that mass automation would mean that you would be out of a job and collecting welfare?

You're sounding like a cultural determinist. Don't you think there's enough humane commonality for various international cultures to find common-ground, and to live together? This has *already happened*, I'll note, in the U.S. in particular, due to several waves of immigration from all over the world. There doesn't have to be cultural homogeneity as long as there's equality before the law.


You see the riots happening in US cities? We've been trying to live together as a multikulti society for quite some time with little success, and the last summer has shown us that it has gotten to the point that there is such a cultural rift even between white Americans... why introduce even more players?

Moreover, why have a country where there can be riots in Oregon over an event in Minnesota?

There can be functioning societies based solely on equality before the law, but they are inferior to countries which enjoy the unity of homogeneity and have equality before the law along with everything else.

Are you for international / globalized trade?

I do not believe it should be pushed as an agenda, but if it it is in the collective best interests of a nation, it should definitely occur.
#15130302
Verv wrote:
We do not need literal blasphemy laws in the society I am proposing.

As it stands, we already do have a new set of blasphemy laws in most secular, Western democracies. Issues about race and gender cannot be spoken about freely,



You *may* be indicating a *workplace* context, but you're not explicitly *specifying* a context.

The workplace, unfortunately, due to capitalism, has *fewer* civil rights than out-and-about 'civil society'. It's not surprising to hear that norms tend to be to *not* discuss such controversial issues as politics, religion, etc., at the workplace.


Verv wrote:
and any amount of divergence from the norm results in blacklisting, doxxing, etc., so explaining to people that we can't have any religious proscriptions in our society because it is secular is unpersuasive.



Here, again, I think you're *crossing* / mixing contexts, because you seem to be indicating the *professional* sphere, but you're also indicating matters of *law* at the same time.

If anything this just goes to show how *sensitive* and life-critical one's employment is, and that vigilanteeism *leverages* this, as with fascists doxxing, or professional networks blacklisting, etc., on the basis of one's politics or political identity.

In the context of *law*, there *shouldn't* be religious interference in the government's secular-based affairs, and I'd say there mostly isn't, except for religious tax exemptions, 'In God We Trust' (Cold-War-era), and now a rising legal acceptance of individual-religious objections to working to non-discriminatory workplace policies.


Verv wrote:
It is safe to say that there is always some form of religion in control.



Can you explain this part a little more? I'm not quite sure what you're referring to, except maybe the general culture of people's religious *attitudes*, or traditions, in all contexts -- but I think the U.S. is fairly far from official religious *doctrine*, as you seem to be suggesting.


Verv wrote:
The only question is whose metaphysics, based on faith, is in power.



Okay, can you answer your own question? Which religion tends to be more 'in power', according to you?


Verv wrote:
I don't know. I suppose I would begin by removing all first amendment based protections for smut, and making it uncopyrightable. I would also come up with standards to exercise full control over public airwaves, not to crush political or religious dissent, but to remove SJW inspired programming and promote only themes with Chrsitian narratives.



So you want a theocratic *media*. What about the Internet?


Verv wrote:
I'd also, of course, totally change what Departments and types of courses could be operated within Universities with public funding.



And theocratic higher education. Where do you stand on the Scopes monkey trial?



The Scopes Trial, formally known as The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes and commonly referred to as the Scopes Monkey Trial, was an American legal case in July 1925 in which a high school teacher, John T. Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which had made it unlawful to teach human evolution in any state-funded school.[1] The trial was deliberately staged in order to attract publicity to the small town of Dayton, Tennessee, where it was held. Scopes was unsure whether he had ever actually taught evolution, but he incriminated himself deliberately so the case could have a defendant.[2][3]

Scopes was found guilty and fined $100 (equivalent to $1,500 in 2019), but the verdict was overturned on a technicality. The trial served its purpose of drawing intense national publicity, as national reporters flocked to Dayton to cover the big-name lawyers who had agreed to represent each side. William Jennings Bryan, three-time presidential candidate, argued for the prosecution, while Clarence Darrow, the famed defense attorney, spoke for Scopes. The trial publicized the Fundamentalist–Modernist controversy, which set Modernists, who said evolution was not inconsistent with religion,[4] against Fundamentalists, who said the Word of God as revealed in the Bible took priority over all human knowledge. The case was thus seen both as a theological contest and as a trial on whether modern science should be taught in schools.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scopes_Trial



---


Verv wrote:
Because man is born free and has a God-given right to his freedom of conscience and expression, I would "ban" and ostracize people far less than what the New York Times or SPLC.



You're speaking here in the context of *public opinion*, or 'prevailing politics', which is *non-legal* and not typically subject to government involvement.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Prosperity can be had by all these days with *full automation* of industrial mass-production. Unfortunately such industrial and computational techniques are subordinate to the private interests for profit, from *private property*. That's what's holding it up.

Governance is another matter, since that's the superstructure of the bourgeois *ruling class*, as things are.



Verv wrote:
Why assume that mass automation is being prevented to your detriment? Isn't it more likely that mass automation would mean that you would be out of a job and collecting welfare?



Well, this is a currently-pressing societal issue -- as the pace and scope of automation increases, putting more workers out of jobs, society *does* have to address this mass-unemployment dynamic, especially under current conditions of uninhabitable conventional workplaces due to the coronavirus.

Again, I'm for workers-of-the-world socialism, meaning that, ultimately, it's the *workers* who should be collectively running *all* workplaces, since capital needs labor, but labor doesn't need capital.

Here's a treatment for such, btw:


Emergent Central Planning

Spoiler: show
Image



---


Verv wrote:
You see the riots happening in US cities? We've been trying to live together as a multikulti society for quite some time with little success, and the last summer has shown us that it has gotten to the point that there is such a cultural rift even between white Americans... why introduce even more players?



That's not *cultural*, though -- the U.S. has become *very* multicultural, culturally, as evidenced with the two-term presidency of Barack Obama. The BLM / Antifa stuff has more to do with *government policy*, which is sorely lacking due to the government's ongoing tolerance and acceptance of *police killings*.


Verv wrote:
Moreover, why have a country where there can be riots in Oregon over an event in Minnesota?



Same thing -- public outrage and expression over institutionalized government killer cops.


Verv wrote:
There can be functioning societies based solely on equality before the law, but they are inferior to countries which enjoy the unity of homogeneity and have equality before the law along with everything else.



Again, I have to point to the U.S., culturally, which has finally gotten over race riots (by whites), and many other social frictions in its earlier history. I don't see cultural homogeneity as being *significant* when the entire *world* has become so culturally integrated, and multicultural, these days.

The social issues that *remain* are almost entirely about *government*, and *governance*.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Are you for international / globalized trade?



Verv wrote:
I do not believe it should be pushed as an agenda, but if it it is in the collective best interests of a nation, it should definitely occur.



Are you for Trump's relative geopolitical *nationalism*, and isolationism?
#15130539
ckaihatsu wrote:You *may* be indicating a *workplace* context, but you're not explicitly *specifying* a context.

The workplace, unfortunately, due to capitalism, has *fewer* civil rights than out-and-about 'civil society'. It's not surprising to hear that norms tend to be to *not* discuss such controversial issues as politics, religion, etc., at the workplace.


What I am worried about now is not even that which occurs in the workplace. There is little reason to harass others with your personal views in the workplace -- it is rational to not want your car salesman or nurses getting passionate about politics and letting customers or patients overhear.

We are in a whole different era where people get fired for even donating legally to legitimate political causes (Human Events - Mozilla CEO forced out).

Here, again, I think you're *crossing* / mixing contexts, because you seem to be indicating the *professional* sphere, but you're also indicating matters of *law* at the same time.

If anything this just goes to show how *sensitive* and life-critical one's employment is, and that vigilanteeism *leverages* this, as with fascists doxxing, or professional networks blacklisting, etc., on the basis of one's politics or political identity.

In the context of *law*, there *shouldn't* be religious interference in the government's secular-based affairs, and I'd say there mostly isn't, except for religious tax exemptions, 'In God We Trust' (Cold-War-era), and now a rising legal acceptance of individual-religious objections to working to non-discriminatory workplace policies.


You missed the point:

Secular societies have not produced the liberty that they claim to produce.

Can you explain this part a little more? I'm not quite sure what you're referring to, except maybe the general culture of people's religious *attitudes*, or traditions, in all contexts -- but I think the U.S. is fairly far from official religious *doctrine*, as you seem to be suggesting.


If we take anything based on faith to be like a religion, then there is always a sort of ascendant value-system, based on faith, indistinguishable from religion, at the top.

All politics is reducible to theocracy. it only appears to not be theocracy when it is contrasted explicitly with religion.

Okay, can you answer your own question? Which religion tends to be more 'in power', according to you?


Egalitarianism.

So you want a theocratic *media*. What about the Internet?


I wouldn't use those words.

I live in a country where all smut is blocked -- however, it is easily worked around.

So, there is no point in blocking smut... and thus there is a point in blocking smut: it just sends the right message. Illegalize the industry & block it -- but block it in the way that Korea blocks it... not in some draconian way that actually affects people determined to pollute themselves.


And theocratic higher education. Where do you stand on the Scopes monkey trial?


A differently theocratic education.

It makes sense to teach the theory of evolution, and it should be taught.

You're speaking here in the context of *public opinion*, or 'prevailing politics', which is *non-legal* and not typically subject to government involvement.


The government regularly comments on social issues, through the construction of monuments, through the speeches of politicians; through getting the President to officially condemn the Proud Boys, or Antifa.

Politics is never just about law.

Even so, legal issues are indirect commentaries on morality, and all morality is interpersonally subjective as it is not a publicly verifiable category.

Well, this is a currently-pressing societal issue -- as the pace and scope of automation increases, putting more workers out of jobs, society *does* have to address this mass-unemployment dynamic, especially under current conditions of uninhabitable conventional workplaces due to the coronavirus.

Again, I'm for workers-of-the-world socialism, meaning that, ultimately, it's the *workers* who should be collectively running *all* workplaces, since capital needs labor, but labor doesn't need capital.

Here's a treatment for such, btw:


Emergent Central Planning


I do not believe in Socialism, or Capitalism, but I agree it hs to be addressed. If the best results resemble Socialism more, then that is the best system for even traditionalist societies to embrace.

That's not *cultural*, though -- the U.S. has become *very* multicultural, culturally, as evidenced with the two-term presidency of Barack Obama. The BLM / Antifa stuff has more to do with *government policy*, which is sorely lacking due to the government's ongoing tolerance and acceptance of *police killings*.


Culture is a problem word here because I think that you have an improperly narrow scope of what culture is.

The truth is that BLM/Antifa practice politically conscious culture that is decidedly far leftist.

Again, I have to point to the U.S., culturally, which has finally gotten over race riots (by whites), and many other social frictions in its earlier history. I don't see cultural homogeneity as being *significant* when the entire *world* has become so culturally integrated, and multicultural, these days.

The social issues that *remain* are almost entirely about *government*, and *governance*.


The birthplace of these dreams of cosmopolitanism has never been able to overcome the shortcomings of the multicultural society, yet this is being proposed as the model going forward.

I am very skeptical of this.

Are you for Trump's relative geopolitical *nationalism*, and isolationism?


I do not think Trump does this well as he is actively trying to destroy Iran.

I am also not sure I am an isolationist because, while I believe multipolar world is desirable, we certainly need American power to actively offset Chinese imperial ambitions.
#15130636
Verv wrote:
What I am worried about now is not even that which occurs in the workplace. There is little reason to harass others with your personal views in the workplace -- it is rational to not want your car salesman or nurses getting passionate about politics and letting customers or patients overhear.

We are in a whole different era where people get fired for even donating legally to legitimate political causes (Human Events - Mozilla CEO forced out).



There's a distinct *difference* here, though -- a CEO is *not* a wage-worker, and executives will always have *other avenues* at their disposal, so it's not taking food from their mouths to *politicize* their professional executive work roles, and to hold them *accountable* for their positions of power.

Let me know when you start to champion the cause of *wage-workers*, on a landscape of ebbing *job opportunities*, and then we can revisit this dynamic of populist politicization.


Verv wrote:
You missed the point:

Secular societies have not produced the liberty that they claim to produce.



Western secularism comes directly out of the European Enlightenment, which followed on the rise of *feudal nationalism*, over the nobility:



People often use the words ‘country’ or ‘nation’ when speaking about the ancient or medieval worlds. But the states which ruled then were very different to the modern ‘national’ state.

Today we take it for granted that a country consists of geographically continuous territory within fixed boundaries. We expect it to have a single administrative structure, with a single set of taxes (sometimes with local variations) and without customs barriers between its different areas. We assume it demands the loyalty of its ‘citizens’, in return granting certain rights, however limited. Being ‘stateless’ is a fate which people do their utmost to avoid. We also assume there exists a national language (or sometimes a set of languages) which both rulers and ruled speak.

The monarchies of medieval Europe had few of these features. They were hodgepodge territories which cut across linguistic divisions between peoples and across geographical obstacles. The emperor of the ‘Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation’ usually ran Bohemia as a kingdom and claimed sovereignty over various territories in the German speaking lands and in parts of Italy. The kings of England engaged in a series of wars to try to assert a claim over a large chunk of French-speaking territory. The kings of France sought to hold territory across the Alps in what is today Italy but had little control over eastern France (part of the rival Dukedom of Burgundy), south west France and Normandy (ruled by the English kings), or Brittany. There could be wholesale movement of state boundaries, as marriages and inheritance gave kings sovereignty over distant lands or war robbed them of local territories. There was rarely a single, uniform administrative structure within a state. Usually it would be made up of principalities, duchies, baronies and independent boroughs, with their own rulers, their own courts, their own local laws, their own tax structure, their own customs posts and their own armed men—so that the allegiance each owned to the monarch was often only nominal and could be forgotten if a rival monarch made a better offer. Monarchs often did not speak the languages of the people they ruled, and official documents and legal statutes were rarely in the tongue of those subject to their laws.

This began to change in important parts of Europe towards the end of the 15th century, just as Spain was reaching out to conquer Latin America. Charles VII and Louis XI in France, Henry VII and Henry VIII in England, and the joint monarchs Isabel and Ferdinand in Spain all succeeded in enhancing their own power at the expense of the great feudal lords and in imposing some sort of state-wide order within what are today’s national boundaries.

The changes were important because they constituted the first moves from the feudal towards the modern setup. That transition was still far from complete. The most powerful of the ‘new’ monarchies, that of Spain, still had separate administrative structures for its Catalan, Valencian, Aragonese and Castilian components, while its monarchs waged wars for another century and a half to try to keep possession of lands in Italy and the Low Countries. The French kings had to endure a series of wars and civil wars before they forced the territorial lords to submit to ‘absolutist’ rule—and even then internal customs posts and local legal systems remained in place. Even in England, where the Norman Conquest in 1066 had created a more unified feudal state than elsewhere, the northern earls retained considerable power and the monarchs still had not abandoned their claims in ‘France’.

Nevertheless, the ‘new monarchies’ and the ‘absolutisms’ which later developed out of them in France and Spain represented something different to the old feudal order. They were states which rested on feudalism but in which the monarchs had learned to use new forces connected with the market system and the growth of the towns as a counterbalance to the power of the feudal lords.36 Their policies were still partly directed toward the classic feudal goals of acquiring land by means of force or marriage alliances. But another goal was of increasing importance—building trade and locally based production. So Isabel and Ferdinand conquered the Moorish kingdom of Granada and fought wars over territory in Italy, but they also financed Columbus and his successors in the hope of extending trade. Henry VIII used marriage to establish dynastic links with other monarchs, but he also encouraged the growth of the English wool industry and the navy.

This certainly does not mean these monarchies were any less brutal than their forebears. They were prepared to use any means to cement their power against one another and against their subjects. Intrigue, murder, kidnapping and torture were their stock in trade. Their philosophy is best expressed in the writings of Machiavelli, the Florentine civil servant whose life’s ambition was to see Italy unified in a single state and who drew up guidelines by which a ‘prince’ was to achieve this goal. His hopes were frustrated. But his writings specify a list of techniques which could have been taken straight from the repertoire of the Spanish monarchs or Henry VIII.


Harman, _People's History of the World_, pp. 172-174



---


Verv wrote:
If we take anything based on faith to be like a religion, then there is always a sort of ascendant value-system, based on faith, indistinguishable from religion, at the top.

All politics is reducible to theocracy. it only appears to not be theocracy when it is contrasted explicitly with religion.



How can the status-quo in any way be considered a theocracy? There are no religious *precepts* enshrined in bourgeois laws.


---


Verv wrote:
The only question is whose metaphysics, based on faith, is in power.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, can you answer your own question? Which religion tends to be more 'in power', according to you?



Verv wrote:
Egalitarianism.



How the hell is secularism / egalitarianism 'based on faith' -- ?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
So you want a theocratic *media*. What about the Internet?



Verv wrote:
I wouldn't use those words.

I live in a country where all smut is blocked -- however, it is easily worked around.



Cool -- tell me how. (grin)


Verv wrote:
So, there is no point in blocking smut... and thus there is a point in blocking smut: it just sends the right message. Illegalize the industry & block it -- but block it in the way that Korea blocks it... not in some draconian way that actually affects people determined to pollute themselves.



This censorship-type of politics that you have is *incredibly* retrograde, because it would be *unenforceable* today, since everyone now has access to the *means of production* of pornography. All it takes is a smartphone (digital camera) and an Internet connection, and there it is, from *anybody*.

Why are you calling for a government policy that's *separatist*, and that doesn't reflect the will of its people?


Verv wrote:
A differently theocratic education.

It makes sense to teach the theory of evolution, and it should be taught.



Okay. Would you like to elaborate on 'a [different] theocratic education' -- ?


Verv wrote:
The government regularly comments on social issues, through the construction of monuments, through the speeches of politicians; through getting the President to officially condemn the Proud Boys, or Antifa.

Politics is never just about law.

Even so, legal issues are indirect commentaries on morality, and all morality is interpersonally subjective as it is not a publicly verifiable category.



Again you're sounding like you support an official government political *morality*, in a top-down way. An 'interpersonally subjective' approach, on the other hand, sounds more 'bottom-up', and democratic.


Verv wrote:
I do not believe in Socialism, or Capitalism, but I agree it hs to be addressed. If the best results resemble Socialism more, then that is the best system for even traditionalist societies to embrace.



Okay, and how do you *measure* the 'best results'?


---


Verv wrote:
You see the riots happening in US cities? We've been trying to live together as a multikulti society for quite some time with little success, and the last summer has shown us that it has gotten to the point that there is such a cultural rift even between white Americans... why introduce even more players?



ckaihatsu wrote:
That's not *cultural*, though -- the U.S. has become *very* multicultural, culturally, as evidenced with the two-term presidency of Barack Obama. The BLM / Antifa stuff has more to do with *government policy*, which is sorely lacking due to the government's ongoing tolerance and acceptance of *police killings*.



Verv wrote:
Culture is a problem word here because I think that you have an improperly narrow scope of what culture is.

The truth is that BLM/Antifa practice politically conscious culture that is decidedly far leftist.



See -- you're implicitly *acknowledging* that there's a distinction between 'politically conscious culture' (political culture), and 'culture' (as in 'multiculturalism').

Politics is mainly about *government policy*, since the government is *publicly funded*.


Verv wrote:
The birthplace of these dreams of cosmopolitanism has never been able to overcome the shortcomings of the multicultural society, yet this is being proposed as the model going forward.

I am very skeptical of this.



I'm not 'multicultural' myself, because that's more of a *cultural* artifact of the prevailing *politics* -- yes, I think that there should be equality-before-the-law, while we're still under bourgeois capitalist class rule, as for civil society, but I don't advocate a *politics* of 'multiculturalism' for its own sake, because that would be superstructurally-ideological for its own sake, meaning *arbitrary*.

What counts *politically* is how a society produces a surplus, and how it distributes / disposes of it:


Components of Social Production

Spoiler: show
Image



---


ckaihatsu wrote:w
Are you for Trump's relative geopolitical *nationalism*, and isolationism?



Verv wrote:
I do not think Trump does this well as he is actively trying to destroy Iran.

I am also not sure I am an isolationist because, while I believe multipolar world is desirable, we certainly need American power to actively offset Chinese imperial ambitions.



So you want one empire to, what, 'police' an up-and-coming rival? How would that be done, exactly?
#15130754
ckaihatsu wrote:There's a distinct *difference* here, though -- a CEO is *not* a wage-worker, and executives will always have *other avenues* at their disposal, so it's not taking food from their mouths to *politicize* their professional executive work roles, and to hold them *accountable* for their positions of power.

Let me know when you start to champion the cause of *wage-workers*, on a landscape of ebbing *job opportunities*, and then we can revisit this dynamic of populist politicization.


Oh, do you think that regular workers are immune from being doxxed and pursued for their personal opinions, being fired.?

This is a very strange deflection on a very serious issue.


Western secularism comes directly out of the European Enlightenment, which followed on the rise of *feudal nationalism*, over the nobility:


Point being?


How the hell is secularism / egalitarianism 'based on faith' -- ?


What is wrong with the argument I made?

This censorship-type of politics that you have is *incredibly* retrograde, because it would be *unenforceable* today, since everyone now has access to the *means of production* of pornography. All it takes is a smartphone (digital camera) and an Internet connection, and there it is, from *anybody*.


I have never denied that people will not have access to it or will be incapable of making it.

Why are you calling for a government policy that's *separatist*, and that doesn't reflect the will of its people?


Because the government does not exist solely to reflect the imperfect will of the people, but to ensure the rights of the people and the continuity of the culture & state.

Okay. Would you like to elaborate on 'a [different] theocratic education' -- ?


This just relates back to the argument that everything can be said to be a faith-based moral system, and thus theocratic in a pejorative sense of the word.

Again you're sounding like you support an official government political *morality*, in a top-down way. An 'interpersonally subjective' approach, on the other hand, sounds more 'bottom-up', and democratic.


(i) You say that like it's unique and a bad thing.
(ii) No, it's just a way of describing the human condition.

Okay, and how do you *measure* the 'best results'?


The standard of living of the average family where the father has only secondary education and the mother is a homemaker.

See -- you're implicitly *acknowledging* that there's a distinction between 'politically conscious culture' (political culture), and 'culture' (as in 'multiculturalism').

Politics is mainly about *government policy*, since the government is *publicly funded*.


All culture is political.

Just take a look at how gender related issues are everywhere now, and how all culture involves interplay of gender roles.

What counts *politically* is how a society produces a surplus, and how it distributes / disposes of it:


I thought Marxists generally were into the idea that all culture is political?

So you want one empire to, what, 'police' an up-and-coming rival? How would that be done, exactly?


You are completely ignoring my previous statements if you think I want one empire.
#15130983
Verv wrote:
Oh, do you think that regular workers are immune from being doxxed and pursued for their personal opinions, being fired.?



No, I'm in agreement here.


Verv wrote:
This is a very strange deflection on a very serious issue.



I'm not *deflecting* -- I'm *counterposing*. Workers have more to lose than executives do.


---


Verv wrote:
You missed the point:

Secular societies have not produced the liberty that they claim to produce.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Western secularism comes directly out of the European Enlightenment, which followed on the rise of *feudal nationalism*, over the nobility:



Verv wrote:
Point being?



As I said before, nationalism is not a *given*, so the historical *development* of nationalism (in Europe) conferred somewhat better conditions -- towards 'liberty' -- for the average person, instead of being stuck in a locality, on an estate, for one's entire life. Nationalism, with citizenship, expanded the space in which one could be mobile in, even if serfs were ultimately still stuck to the land due to the feudal nature of economic relations then.


---


Verv wrote:
The only question is whose metaphysics, based on faith, is in power.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, can you answer your own question? Which religion tends to be more 'in power', according to you?



Verv wrote:
Egalitarianism.



ckaihatsu wrote:
How the hell is secularism / egalitarianism 'based on faith' -- ?



Verv wrote:
What is wrong with the argument I made?



You *haven't* made any argument to explain how the *secular* concept of egalitarianism -- in governance, and material distribution -- has any *religious* / faith-based cultural origins.

You're conflating egalitarianism with theocracy, when notions of 'equality' derive from the secular Enlightenment, and not from religion -- actually, *contrary* to the religious powers of the time.


Verv wrote:
I have never denied that people will not have access to it or will be incapable of making it.



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Why are you calling for a government policy that's *separatist*, and that doesn't reflect the will of its people?



Verv wrote:
Because the government does not exist solely to reflect the imperfect will of the people, but to ensure the rights of the people and the continuity of the culture & state.



This is an argument for the status-quo, meaning the specialized, separatist state administration, in the interests of the ruling class (wealthy property-owners).

What makes you think that such a specialized, standing administration would 'ensure the rights of the people'? Is it doing that *now*?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay. Would you like to elaborate on 'a [different] theocratic education' -- ?



Verv wrote:
This just relates back to the argument that everything can be said to be a faith-based moral system, and thus theocratic in a pejorative sense of the word.



You seem to conflate *religious* values with *secular* values, for some reason -- I think you *mean* 'ideology' instead of 'theocracy' or 'moral system'.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Again you're sounding like you support an official government political *morality*, in a top-down way. An 'interpersonally subjective' approach, on the other hand, sounds more 'bottom-up', and democratic.



Verv wrote:
(i) You say that like it's unique and a bad thing.
(ii) No, it's just a way of describing the human condition.



But why should any government dictate over personal lifestyle to *everyone*, in an imposing, top-down way? Doesn't this sentiment contradict your earlier usage of the term 'liberty'?

You obviously condone *some* kind of government, or state, which *contradicts* any purported 'interpersonal' / bottom-up / democratic / human condition kind of approach to society, and socio-political issues.

*Could* an 'interpersonal' approach, as with participation on this PoFo discussion board, be a better approach towards resolving social issues, instead of having a standing specialized state administrative apparatus / bureaucracy, with its own separatist institutional interests?


---


Verv wrote:
I do not believe in Socialism, or Capitalism, but I agree it hs to be addressed. If the best results resemble Socialism more, then that is the best system for even traditionalist societies to embrace.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, and how do you *measure* the 'best results'?



Verv wrote:
The standard of living of the average family where the father has only secondary education and the mother is a homemaker.



So the 'nuclear family' is your standard baseline. Okay. Would this be the standard for *economics*, and/or *culturally / politically* -- ?


---


Verv wrote:
Culture is a problem word here because I think that you have an improperly narrow scope of what culture is.

The truth is that BLM/Antifa practice politically conscious culture that is decidedly far leftist.



ckaihatsu wrote:
See -- you're implicitly *acknowledging* that there's a distinction between 'politically conscious culture' (political culture), and 'culture' (as in 'multiculturalism').

Politics is mainly about *government policy*, since the government is *publicly funded*.



Verv wrote:
All culture is political.

Just take a look at how gender related issues are everywhere now, and how all culture involves interplay of gender roles.



Yes, culture is a part of society's 'superstructure', as distinct from its 'base'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_and_superstructure


---


Verv wrote:
The birthplace of these dreams of cosmopolitanism has never been able to overcome the shortcomings of the multicultural society, yet this is being proposed as the model going forward.

I am very skeptical of this.



ckaihatsu wrote:
What counts *politically* is how a society produces a surplus, and how it distributes / disposes of it:


Components of Social Production

Spoiler: show
Image



Verv wrote:
I thought Marxists generally were into the idea that all culture is political?



Yes, it is, but you're *concentrating* on the cultural, to the detriment of the *material* -- see the diagram.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
So you want one empire to, what, 'police' an up-and-coming rival? How would that be done, exactly?



Verv wrote:
You are completely ignoring my previous statements if you think I want one empire.



So you're a theocratic totalitarian, basically. Again, this has *nothing* to do with your previously mentioned 'liberty' at the individual level.
#15131068
In the interest of both of our precious time, I will try to condense this and skip parts that I think are exhausted.

ckaihatsu wrote:I'm not *deflecting* -- I'm *counterposing*. Workers have more to lose than executives do.


This is objectively true.

As I said before, nationalism is not a *given*, so the historical *development* of nationalism (in Europe) conferred somewhat better conditions -- towards 'liberty' -- for the average person, instead of being stuck in a locality, on an estate, for one's entire life. Nationalism, with citizenship, expanded the space in which one could be mobile in, even if serfs were ultimately still stuck to the land due to the feudal nature of economic relations then.


Technology produced a greater amount of independence from hierarchical structures which naturally lead to peopel just having more freedom, and this being more enshrined into law, is how I would say it.

And, nationalism or any form of identitarianism is a very natural expression.

You *haven't* made any argument to explain how the *secular* concept of egalitarianism -- in governance, and material distribution -- has any *religious* / faith-based cultural origins.

You're conflating egalitarianism with theocracy, when notions of 'equality' derive from the secular Enlightenment, and not from religion -- actually, *contrary* to the religious powers of the time.


OK, you understand that all value systems are based on faith that the value placed at the top of the pyramid is the right one. There is no logic that can conclude, with any more certainty that we can in our worship of God, that liberty or equality is the ultimate desirable.

This is an argument for the status-quo, meaning the specialized, separatist state administration, in the interests of the ruling class (wealthy property-owners).

What makes you think that such a specialized, standing administration would 'ensure the rights of the people'? Is it doing that *now*?


What are the rights of people?

You seem to conflate *religious* values with *secular* values, for some reason -- I think you *mean* 'ideology' instead of 'theocracy' or 'moral system'.


Why shouldn't they be conflated?

There is only one reality -- why should we behave as if there are two? We tried behaving as if there are two realities, but ultimately, this did not give the so-called liberty that was promised.

But why should any government dictate over personal lifestyle to *everyone*, in an imposing, top-down way? Doesn't this sentiment contradict your earlier usage of the term 'liberty'?


Because certain lifestyles are exponentially better and healthier than others, and it can even be objectively demonstrated.

You obviously condone *some* kind of government, or state, which *contradicts* any purported 'interpersonal' / bottom-up / democratic / human condition kind of approach to society, and socio-political issues.


Yes, I do not believe democracy is the way to settle right/wrong.

*Could* an 'interpersonal' approach, as with participation on this PoFo discussion board, be a better approach towards resolving social issues, instead of having a standing specialized state administrative apparatus / bureaucracy, with its own separatist institutional interests?


Neither of these are preferable. We should probably just have the most natural hierarchy to that society, and it should be a meritocracy 90% through & through but with some strong institutional inertia from a historic ruling class.

So the 'nuclear family' is your standard baseline. Okay. Would this be the standard for *economics*, and/or *culturally / politically* -- ?


The question was only about measuring economic success, so it should stay in that field, I think.

Yes, it is, but you're *concentrating* on the cultural, to the detriment of the *material* -- see the diagram.


By all means, let's have a nice economy.

So you're a theocratic totalitarian, basically. Again, this has *nothing* to do with your previously mentioned 'liberty' at the individual level.


Whatever you want to call it, I promise you that any system I would be in charge of would give you more liberty than the UK, Canada, Sweden, or France.

Not a very high bar... but I assume you do not think of those places as tyrannical.
#15131092
Verv wrote:
In the interest of both of our precious time, I will try to condense this and skip parts that I think are exhausted.



Okay, and I have a small request -- could you include my username, 'ckaihatsu', in the quote blocks? It's for ease of formatting on my end. Thanks.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
I'm not *deflecting* -- I'm *counterposing*. Workers have more to lose than executives do.



Verv wrote:
This is objectively true.



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
As I said before, nationalism is not a *given*, so the historical *development* of nationalism (in Europe) conferred somewhat better conditions -- towards 'liberty' -- for the average person, instead of being stuck in a locality, on an estate, for one's entire life. Nationalism, with citizenship, expanded the space in which one could be mobile in, even if serfs were ultimately still stuck to the land due to the feudal nature of economic relations then.



Verv wrote:
Technology produced a greater amount of independence from hierarchical structures which naturally lead to peopel just having more freedom, and this being more enshrined into law, is how I would say it.

And, nationalism or any form of identitarianism is a very natural expression.



Yes, I agree about the empowerment of 'consumer technology', and nationalism *was* a positive, developmental increment *at the time*, but these days nationalism has been superseded by the *industrial* technology of mass production, and nation-states just seem *redundant* and *backwards* these days.

F.y.i.:



The importance of what happened in the countryside between about 1000 and 1300 is all too easily underrated by those of us for whom food is something we buy from supermarkets. A doubling of the amount of food produced by each peasant household transformed the possibilities for human life across Europe. Whoever controlled the extra food could exchange it for the goods carried by the travelling traders or produced by the artisans.

Crudely, grain could be changed into silk for the lord’s family, iron for his weapons, furnishing for his castle, wine and spices to complement his meal. It could also be turned into means that would further increase the productivity of the peasant cultivators—wooden ploughs with iron tips, knives, sickles, and, in some cases, horses with bridles, bits and iron shoes.

By supplying such things at regular markets the humble bagman could transform himself into a respectable trader, and the respectable trader into a wealthy merchant. Towns began to revive as craftsmen and traders settled in them, erecting shops and workshops around the castles and churches. Trading networks grew up which tied formerly isolated villages together around expanding towns and influenced the way of life in a wide area.101 To obtain money to buy luxuries and arms, lords would encourage serfs to produce cash crops and substitute money rents for labour services or goods in kind. Some found an extra source of income from the dues they could charge traders for allowing markets on their land.

Life in the towns was very different from life in the countryside. The traders and artisans were free individuals not directly under the power of any lord. There was a German saying, ‘Town air makes you free.’ The urban classes were increasingly loath to accept the prerogatives of the lordly class. Traders and artisans who needed extra labour would welcome serfs who had fled bondage on nearby estates. And as the towns grew in size and wealth they acquired the means to defend their independence and freedom, building walls and arming urban militias.



Harman, _People's History of the World_, p. 144



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
You *haven't* made any argument to explain how the *secular* concept of egalitarianism -- in governance, and material distribution -- has any *religious* / faith-based cultural origins.

You're conflating egalitarianism with theocracy, when notions of 'equality' derive from the secular Enlightenment, and not from religion -- actually, *contrary* to the religious powers of the time.



Verv wrote:
OK, you understand that all value systems are based on faith that the value placed at the top of the pyramid is the right one. There is no logic that can conclude, with any more certainty that we can in our worship of God, that liberty or equality is the ultimate desirable.



No, I'm trying to delineate the *difference* between secular, and faith-based.

All value systems / values are *not* based on faith.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
This is an argument for the status-quo, meaning the specialized, separatist state administration, in the interests of the ruling class (wealthy property-owners).

What makes you think that such a specialized, standing administration would 'ensure the rights of the people'? Is it doing that *now*?



Verv wrote:
What are the rights of people?



You could tell *me*, or we could just go with the Bill of Rights as one of the best detailings of the rights of people.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
You seem to conflate *religious* values with *secular* values, for some reason -- I think you *mean* 'ideology' instead of 'theocracy' or 'moral system'.



Verv wrote:
Why shouldn't they be conflated?

There is only one reality -- why should we behave as if there are two? We tried behaving as if there are two realities, but ultimately, this did not give the so-called liberty that was promised.



Okay, one objective reality in common, but you *do* realize, don't you, that religious-derived values often *conflict* with secular values, such as what's at the center of the solar system. I don't mean to be *entirely* negative, because religion has done some *good*, particularly at the interpersonal / social level, but, historically official religion has more often *repressed* humane and scientific social ideals.


Worldview Diagram

Spoiler: show
Image



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
But why should any government dictate over personal lifestyle to *everyone*, in an imposing, top-down way? Doesn't this sentiment contradict your earlier usage of the term 'liberty'?



Verv wrote:
Because certain lifestyles are exponentially better and healthier than others, and it can even be objectively demonstrated.



So, based on your religious certainty -- to be generous -- you'd like *everyone* to live a certain way that you deem to be universally better for all, whether or not individuals themselves *agree* with your lifestyle prescription.


‭History, Macro-Micro -- politics-logistics-lifestyle

Spoiler: show
Image



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
You obviously condone *some* kind of government, or state, which *contradicts* any purported 'interpersonal' / bottom-up / democratic / human condition kind of approach to society, and socio-political issues.



Verv wrote:
Yes, I do not believe democracy is the way to settle right/wrong.



Religious courts, then?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
*Could* an 'interpersonal' approach, as with participation on this PoFo discussion board, be a better approach towards resolving social issues, instead of having a standing specialized state administrative apparatus / bureaucracy, with its own separatist institutional interests?



Verv wrote:
Neither of these are preferable. We should probably just have the most natural hierarchy to that society, and it should be a meritocracy 90% through & through but with some strong institutional inertia from a historic ruling class.



Nope, sorry, I certainly *don't* agree with any kind of (heredity-based) class structure, because I don't think that the 'divine right of kings' is valid. What would you tell people as to why certain individuals are part of the ruling elite (probably from heredity), and not others?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, and how do you *measure* the 'best results'?



Verv wrote:
The standard of living of the average family where the father has only secondary education and the mother is a homemaker.



ckaihatsu wrote:
So the 'nuclear family' is your standard baseline. Okay. Would this be the standard for *economics*, and/or *culturally / politically* -- ?



Verv wrote:
The question was only about measuring economic success, so it should stay in that field, I think.



What if a family's own *politics* / beliefs happened to be relatively more *expensive* than most others' -- perhaps they're used to *travelling* more, and require a larger *budget*, maybe for proselytizing. Would they be more 'economically successful' with more *expenses*, even if they happen to be upholding and spreading the ideology of the ruling elite?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Yes, it is, but you're *concentrating* on the cultural, to the detriment of the *material* -- see the diagram.



Verv wrote:
By all means, let's have a nice economy.



And how would that economy be *structured*, exactly? What would it look like, how would it function, etc.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
So you're a theocratic totalitarian, basically. Again, this has *nothing* to do with your previously mentioned 'liberty' at the individual level.



Verv wrote:
Whatever you want to call it, I promise you that any system I would be in charge of would give you more liberty than the UK, Canada, Sweden, or France.

Not a very high bar... but I assume you do not think of those places as tyrannical.



So you want to be a benevolent *dictator*, basically, over the whole world.

Just offhand, is your name Donald Trump?


= D
#15131315
ckaihatsu wrote:Okay, and I have a small request -- could you include my username, 'ckaihatsu', in the quote blocks? It's for ease of formatting on my end. Thanks.


I will do that, going forward!

You put a lot of effort into your formatting and I respect that.

ckaihatsu wrote:Yes, I agree about the empowerment of 'consumer technology', and nationalism *was* a positive, developmental increment *at the time*, but these days nationalism has been superseded by the *industrial* technology of mass production, and nation-states just seem *redundant* and *backwards* these days.


I think that the best way, oddly enough, to protect workers, is through local political organizations and identity. The nation-state plays an important role in this.

One of the best bargaining chips available is the organized labor force of a common identity, common standard of living, common demands, etc.

ckaihatsu wrote:No, I'm trying to delineate the *difference* between secular, and faith-based.

All value systems / values are *not* based on faith.


I do not see the distinction as relevant to my world view. If any tenet is based on faith, it should be pointed out. The difference between a religious perspective and a Marxist perspective is thus minimized and both ideas can be treated as equally valid grounds for governance.


ckaihatsu wrote:You could tell *me*, or we could just go with the Bill of Rights as one of the best detailings of the rights of people.


Why would it be?

It is fairly accurate because it does reflect Christian principles.

The Bible clearly gives to man the right to free speech, in both the New Testament (in the book of Acts) and in parts of the Old Testament when King David is interacting with critics. It can also be said to support the security of one's private property. Because of the nature of Christ's ministry, it can also be said to support the freedom of personal religion. Other rights could further be deduced, but I would just stick with these three that can be most clearly demonstrated, and I think they make a good enough basis for what constitutes human rights.

ckaihatsu wrote:Okay, one objective reality in common, but you *do* realize, don't you, that religious-derived values often *conflict* with secular values, such as what's at the center of the solar system. I don't mean to be *entirely* negative, because religion has done some *good*, particularly at the interpersonal / social level, but, historically official religion has more often *repressed* humane and scientific social ideals.


I do not actually believe that religion teaches scientific facts like that, and I believe that it has never been intended to replace science. Nor do I think that science is necessarily reflective of secular values.

There can be no values deduced from science.

ckaihatsu wrote:So, based on your religious certainty -- to be generous -- you'd like *everyone* to live a certain way that you deem to be universally better for all, whether or not individuals themselves *agree* with your lifestyle prescription.



Yes, I would like it for people to all live in a Christian manner. But, obviously, this can never be done, and all people have a right to their own thoughts and conscience, and can freely choose to not be religious. However, I do not believe that they have a right to domination of the government and cleansing the government of having any religious expression or values.

So, Christianity is a good basis for government. Not just a good basis, but the best basis.

And I can also promise you that Christians with my world view will give you more freedom than every sort of contemporary Leftists.

ckaihatsu wrote:Religious courts, then?


There are no religious laws in Christianity. There is a concept of sin, and that is between yourself and God. But there is no need to legislate some giant body of laws that has to do with religious courts.

Perhaps religious dynamics would be relevant to marriages that are explicitly between religious people when there are questions of divorce. But there would be no need for having some court of Christian clergy trying to enforce some idea of sin on a non-believer.

ckaihatsu wrote:Nope, sorry, I certainly *don't* agree with any kind of (heredity-based) class structure, because I don't think that the 'divine right of kings' is valid. What would you tell people as to why certain individuals are part of the ruling elite (probably from heredity), and not others?


I would say that the King will always do a better job of protecting our rights and security, whether he does so because he is a good King, or whether his handlers and others do it for him in order to maintain his Kingship, because democracy is chaotic, and democracy has a short life cycle.

It is also OK to not believe in the institution, because it does not require your belief to work.

I can see many Libertarians refelcting later that monarchy made them freer than the previous democratic system.

ckaihatsu wrote:What if a family's own *politics* / beliefs happened to be relatively more *expensive* than most others' -- perhaps they're used to *travelling* more, and require a larger *budget*, maybe for proselytizing. Would they be more 'economically successful' with more *expenses*, even if they happen to be upholding and spreading the ideology of the ruling elite?


I am not an economist

In cases like this, I would tend to just favor a free market, but that things would have to be regulated in order to ensure that the average lower middle class family unit was doing well, and that those who are not doing well still have forms of recourse to improvement and are not so bad off, ultimately.


ckaihatsu wrote:And how would that economy be *structured*, exactly? What would it look like, how would it function, etc.


I spend a small amount of time discussing economics because I think it is difficult and above me. But, from what I know, it appears that the free market tends to produce the best results in the business world, and that where government tinkering should occur should be in terms of creating a welfare state that supports those who are falling in between the cracks.

ckaihatsu wrote:So you want to be a benevolent *dictator*, basically, over the whole world.

Just offhand, is your name Donald Trump?


= D


LOL!

Oh no, I assure you, each nation, and even each region, should have significant control over their local politics, and I do not think that totalitarianism is right. Thus, I oppose both hard and soft forms of totalitarianism.
#15131383
ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, and I have a small request -- could you include my username, 'ckaihatsu', in the quote blocks? It's for ease of formatting on my end. Thanks.



Verv wrote:
I will do that, going forward!

You put a lot of effort into your formatting and I respect that.



Yeah, that's exactly it -- I'd rather do a search-and-replace, to insert all the tags, than to put a lot of effort into formatting. Thanks again.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Yes, I agree about the empowerment of 'consumer technology', and nationalism *was* a positive, developmental increment *at the time*, but these days nationalism has been superseded by the *industrial* technology of mass production, and nation-states just seem *redundant* and *backwards* these days.



Verv wrote:
I think that the best way, oddly enough, to protect workers, is through local political organizations and identity. The nation-state plays an important role in this.



I have to mostly *disagree* here -- yes, there *are* federal labor standards (U.S.), but these are basically on-paper only, and the NLRB doesn't exactly represent *workers* interests in any disputes with the bosses.

The working class has an objective class interest in *no* national boundaries, because the work that workers do is basically the *same* no matter which country it may be located in. Militant labor organizations organize *across* national boundaries due to the *economics* of being laborers (wages, benefits, etc.). *Capital* is able to cross national borders, and does, and laborers shouuld *also* have the freedom to locate wherever they like for the sake of their own economic interests.


Verv wrote:
One of the best bargaining chips available is the organized labor force of a common identity, common standard of living, common demands, etc.



I'll agree with 'common standard of living' (economics), and 'common demands' (politics).


Ideologies & Operations -- Bottom Up

Spoiler: show
Image



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
No, I'm trying to delineate the *difference* between secular, and faith-based.

All value systems / values are *not* based on faith.



Verv wrote:
I do not see the distinction as relevant to my world view. If any tenet is based on faith, it should be pointed out. The difference between a religious perspective and a Marxist perspective is thus minimized and both ideas can be treated as equally valid grounds for governance.



Sorry, but I can't just agree with this on the basis of your say-so -- maybe you could provide some *reasoning*, or *examples*, for your summary comparison of religion to Marxism -- ?

I have to reiterate that Marxism is based on an observation of the empirical / real-world *class divide*, which is *not* a matter of 'faith'. I have no problems working with militant laborers who may happen to be religious, if we're all facing in the same direction, but I have distinctly *atheist* philosophical roots myself.


universal context

Spoiler: show
Image



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
You could tell *me*, or we could just go with the Bill of Rights as one of the best detailings of the rights of people.



Verv wrote:
Why would it be?

It is fairly accurate because it does reflect Christian principles.

The Bible clearly gives to man the right to free speech, in both the New Testament (in the book of Acts) and in parts of the Old Testament when King David is interacting with critics. It can also be said to support the security of one's private property. Because of the nature of Christ's ministry, it can also be said to support the freedom of personal religion. Other rights could further be deduced, but I would just stick with these three that can be most clearly demonstrated, and I think they make a good enough basis for what constitutes human rights.



If that 'one's private property' could be interpreted to mean one's *personal* property -- the items that one actually *uses* oneself -- then I would have no differences here, but if 'private property' means *capital accumulations* then it actually *encourages* the furtherance of the class divide. In particular it's the private property of society's means of mass *industrial* production that is most at-issue to Marxist politics / worldview.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
You seem to conflate *religious* values with *secular* values, for some reason -- I think you *mean* 'ideology' instead of 'theocracy' or 'moral system'.



Verv wrote:
Why shouldn't they be conflated?

There is only one reality -- why should we behave as if there are two? We tried behaving as if there are two realities, but ultimately, this did not give the so-called liberty that was promised.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, one objective reality in common, but you *do* realize, don't you, that religious-derived values often *conflict* with secular values, such as what's at the center of the solar system. I don't mean to be *entirely* negative, because religion has done some *good*, particularly at the interpersonal / social level, but, historically official religion has more often *repressed* humane and scientific social ideals.



Verv wrote:
I do not actually believe that religion teaches scientific facts like that, and I believe that it has never been intended to replace science. Nor do I think that science is necessarily reflective of secular values.

There can be no values deduced from science.



What about values of *honesty*, sound observation, reasoning ability, objectivity in investigation, imagination / conceptualization, experimentation, confirmation / verification, etc.?

I have a usable framework that's based on the scientific method, btw:


universal paradigm SLIDES TEMPLATE

Spoiler: show
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universal paradigm DATABASE

Spoiler: show
Image



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
So, based on your religious certainty -- to be generous -- you'd like *everyone* to live a certain way that you deem to be universally better for all, whether or not individuals themselves *agree* with your lifestyle prescription.



Verv wrote:
Yes, I would like it for people to all live in a Christian manner. But, obviously, this can never be done, and all people have a right to their own thoughts and conscience, and can freely choose to not be religious. However, I do not believe that they have a right to domination of the government and cleansing the government of having any religious expression or values.

So, Christianity is a good basis for government. Not just a good basis, but the best basis.

And I can also promise you that Christians with my world view will give you more freedom than every sort of contemporary Leftists.



I agree with you on your critique of contemporary Leftists, and I just happened to have written a *treatment* on the subject 3 days ago, at another thread, which follows, though I mischaracterized Random American's position.

I have to ask, though, why does *government* need to be allowed religious expression and values? Isn't it merely a socio-political *function*, and could operate *generically*, meaning secularly, meaning scientifically, as it mostly does? I don't mean to say that I *agree* with bourgeois government premises, since they serve the interests of the bourgeois *ruling class*, but I do appreciate the Enlightenment worldview, that had to break out of the shell of monastic Christianity since the fall of the Roman Empire.


ckaihatsu wrote:
Again, i think you're hitting on the specific *arbitrariness* of the liberal-type reformist politics / position -- yes, it's an institutional, standing political-cultural 'regime' of its own, in the power structure of government, and so there *has* to be *some* kind of power-culture, as in 'this' is done, but 'that' isn't, etc., but the relative *arbitrariness* of this in-group culture on any given day is annoying since, to everyone on the 'outside', it just feels like a *placeholder* because it's so disconnected from any bottom-up process, or input, or needs.

That said, though, there is the *relative*-progressivism of it to be considered, as with *any* point on the political spectrum. Many left-wing governmental reforms *are* at least nominally *socially progressive*, so that the official-power-culture has the potential to be *incrementally* better than what we currently have, as with housing reform, or whatever, and that dynamic itself explains all of the typical hype around presidential elections, candidates, etc.

For *you*, since, as a conservative, you don't *give a shit* about government directly benefitting the everyday person, this left-wing stuff doesn't *interest* you at all, and you'd rather see the market mechanism sort everything out. But government-supply *is*, *objectively*, a better, less-expensive, more-direct, and more-beneficial, to more people, potentially, *method* for the distribution of any goods and/or services since it's done through the relatively centralized point of *government* administration, and your position doesn't object when the same government favors *private sector* interests directly, as for the wealthy and/or corporations / military, so the same administrative process could *certainly* be applied to the average person and *their* *humane* needs as individuals.

But your political position would then be at an *impasse* if that happened, because if people are satisfied by *government* programs, directly at the *individual* level, then all of the private-sector bullshit would be *obviated* and you'd be politically *bankrupt* -- so *that's* the social dynamics at the heart of left-versus-right.

In the *meantime* social progressives will be doing social progressivism, since that's a *niche* between the status-quo and full workers-of-the-world control over all social production. Social progressivism is *valid* to the degree that it's *anti-oppression*, which isn't much, but it's definitively more than the politics of any right-wing 'conservative' like yourself.



viewtopic.php?p=15130756#p15130756



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ckaihatsu wrote:
Religious courts, then?



Verv wrote:
There are no religious laws in Christianity. There is a concept of sin, and that is between yourself and God. But there is no need to legislate some giant body of laws that has to do with religious courts.

Perhaps religious dynamics would be relevant to marriages that are explicitly between religious people when there are questions of divorce. But there would be no need for having some court of Christian clergy trying to enforce some idea of sin on a non-believer.



Okay, so then how would a proposed Christian government handle *civil* marriages and divorces, for example? Or, perhaps, more crucially, what about *incarceration*?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Nope, sorry, I certainly *don't* agree with any kind of (heredity-based) class structure, because I don't think that the 'divine right of kings' is valid. What would you tell people as to why certain individuals are part of the ruling elite (probably from heredity), and not others?



Verv wrote:
I would say that the King will always do a better job of protecting our rights and security, whether he does so because he is a good King, or whether his handlers and others do it for him in order to maintain his Kingship, because democracy is chaotic, and democracy has a short life cycle.

It is also OK to not believe in the institution, because it does not require your belief to work.

I can see many Libertarians refelcting later that monarchy made them freer than the previous democratic system.



And what is society / humanity to do when various nationalist kings / monarchs get into *disputes* with each other, as over territory, natural resources, etc. -- ? To me this is just a different form of elitist class rule, because, without democracy, most people will have *zero* say in how these critical social dynamics / policies play-out, even though such *affects* every last person within the nation-state.

Again you need to provide more backing than just your say-so.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
What if a family's own *politics* / beliefs happened to be relatively more *expensive* than most others' -- perhaps they're used to *travelling* more, and require a larger *budget*, maybe for proselytizing. Would they be more 'economically successful' with more *expenses*, even if they happen to be upholding and spreading the ideology of the ruling elite?



Verv wrote:
I am not an economist

In cases like this, I would tend to just favor a free market, but that things would have to be regulated in order to ensure that the average lower middle class family unit was doing well, and that those who are not doing well still have forms of recourse to improvement and are not so bad off, ultimately.



Isn't this, then, an argument for a liberal welfare-state kind of economics? Regulated markets, basically, which is what we have today, more-or-less, and *class rule* which favors the interests of corporations and of the wealthy.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
And how would that economy be *structured*, exactly? What would it look like, how would it function, etc.



Verv wrote:
I spend a small amount of time discussing economics because I think it is difficult and above me. But, from what I know, it appears that the free market tends to produce the best results in the business world, and that where government tinkering should occur should be in terms of creating a welfare state that supports those who are falling in between the cracks.



Okay, please see the previous segment, and I'll ask you to address the phenomenon / dynamic of the *class divide*. Since you support monarchical-type administration, do you think that such class elitism is *acceptable*? *Desirable*? *Better*?

How would you balance this with the treatment of the working-class issue, from earlier in the post? What would your preferences be between the interests of the ruling class (administrators / bureaucracy / elites / royals / etc.), against the interests of the *working class* (higher wages, more benefits, more social infrastructure in common, etc.) -- ?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
So you want to be a benevolent *dictator*, basically, over the whole world.

Just offhand, is your name Donald Trump?


= D



Verv wrote:
LOL!

Oh no, I assure you, each nation, and even each region, should have significant control over their local politics, and I do not think that totalitarianism is right. Thus, I oppose both hard and soft forms of totalitarianism.



So it's classical medievalism, according to you.

Btw, I happen to think that current conditions are basically *global medievalism* -- country-by-country, instead of the former estate-by-estate, so maybe you're simply reflecting current empirical trends with your politics.

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