It seems we basically have one sort of atheism alive and well today. That secular humanism which is, for all intents and purposes, basically identical to most popular religions with the exceptions of its cosmology. Perhaps theres less crisis regarding homosexuality, but the trope 'i'm okay, you're okay' morality is still there.
But this is not a discussion on ethics, its aabout atheism...with a capital A. At the core of modern popular atheism is that materialistic belief, if I cannot sense it (or scientifically" intereact with it, it does not exist. Now, an atheist need not subscribe to scientific realism, nor even materialism entirely, but certainly they must (or do, rather) believe that to believe in anything which cannot be demonstrated is stupid. Now, we do have a sort of weak religious belief here, because inhrent in all this is the unspoken rule that if God confronted an atheist, the atheist would be forced to acknowledge God's existence (ignoring the fac tthat the atheist may deem himself insane first.
But that is not the atheism that that interests me. I want a truly religious atheism, one that is not merely cosmologically bound, but morally bound, to ignore God's existence, nay, to deny it, even if that God presents himself. If I knew for certain that God exists, I would still adopt my Atheism in pure defiance; and note that this is not a sort of lazy defiance, or absured refusal to acknowledge that I was wrong about God's existence. No, its a moral imperative which states that i will not be encumbered by moral norms set upon me by another power, no matter how infinite or powerful it might be. In this way, it is a sort of reverse humanism; it shockingly denies an objective or obviously human good in favor of the heroic morality of the individual.
More later
Friday, December 10, 2010
Friday, December 3, 2010
There is no Main Street
We've heard it. We have to keep an eye on Wall Street and Main Street. If you have no local economy, and by that I mean locally owned and operated businesses, then you have no Main Street. Your "Main Street" is tied to Wall Street if it consists only of large, national and/or international business; you cannot hope for it to act like Main Street, cannot expect it to act for the best local interests when it is fettered externally. The masters of your local economy--which means your masters--do not live near you.
They do not care about you.
They care about Wall Street.
There is no Main Street.
Not if there is no locally owned and operated business.
They do not care about you.
They care about Wall Street.
There is no Main Street.
Not if there is no locally owned and operated business.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
The Creature that Tells Stories
Language has made our species strange. So long as you accept as fact that mankind is somehow divinely created (and we all know atheists who think as much), our ability to tell stories doesn't seem so strange. When you think about evolution though; holy cow that's weird. Here we've managed to become capable of creating a complex language; not just body signals or the ability to emote, but a way to convey abstract ideas. Now, why would we really need those? Well, I don't know; you can't exactly explain everything away with evolution, ya know, and who'd want to anyway?
The stories we tell aren't just communications..."I found food over by that river, but watch out for the piranha"...we convey more than just facts, we convey value.
A pack of wolves, a group of chimps, what's important to them? Who's the boss. Who has the power. That's what. Now, if I'm a bottom rung chimp, and I find that I don't get the food that's coming to me, because the head chimp is a bully, hardly a leader at all, maybe I will get so pissed off that I'll go ape shit on him. But probably not; probably I'll just yield because that's the way we're built. He's at the top; he calls the shots.
Really, that's not so different than a lot of people, I think. They seem to relish in giving more and more to people who already have power over them. Don't ask me why, because it seems to fly in the face of story telling, because the root of every good story is an appeal to justice. And don't we spend an inordinate amount of time discussing justice? Everything we talk about has to do with whether I got what is coming to me or whether some undeserving jackass is causing me grief. No matter how banal it might be, that's the story we tell.
How about this. Those chimps and wolves relationships are all about power relations. Well, our stories allow us to lie about power relations...to ourselves. Why be racist? What does that do for us? Its a lie, for power. Even if my life is crap, I can lie to myself; I'm not inferior (even if I am) because I belong to a superior race. Why do you think the Nazis were successful?
The stories we tell aren't just communications..."I found food over by that river, but watch out for the piranha"...we convey more than just facts, we convey value.
A pack of wolves, a group of chimps, what's important to them? Who's the boss. Who has the power. That's what. Now, if I'm a bottom rung chimp, and I find that I don't get the food that's coming to me, because the head chimp is a bully, hardly a leader at all, maybe I will get so pissed off that I'll go ape shit on him. But probably not; probably I'll just yield because that's the way we're built. He's at the top; he calls the shots.
Really, that's not so different than a lot of people, I think. They seem to relish in giving more and more to people who already have power over them. Don't ask me why, because it seems to fly in the face of story telling, because the root of every good story is an appeal to justice. And don't we spend an inordinate amount of time discussing justice? Everything we talk about has to do with whether I got what is coming to me or whether some undeserving jackass is causing me grief. No matter how banal it might be, that's the story we tell.
How about this. Those chimps and wolves relationships are all about power relations. Well, our stories allow us to lie about power relations...to ourselves. Why be racist? What does that do for us? Its a lie, for power. Even if my life is crap, I can lie to myself; I'm not inferior (even if I am) because I belong to a superior race. Why do you think the Nazis were successful?
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Earning
This is as yet an incomplete thought.
I've heard a few times, both in person and on various media outlets, some person, or persons reciting, as a sort of rallying cry, "I earned what I have." This is a sort of response that comes up from the right when confronted with the threat of redistributive taxation, etc.
Earning is a funny word. It has multiple meanings; the meanings can basically be divided into two groups and then a third which would seem (perhaps deceptively) to be in the middle. On the one hand we have the monetary sense, in which earning simply means an increase in money, for instance, an account earns interest. On the other, we have 'earn' as being used as meriting or deserving reward.
Now, when somebody is said to have earned a wage, or to have earned a living, there is some odd juxtaposing between these two broader meanings of the word earned. This came to mind awhile back when a friend of my family vehemently denounced Obama and his redistributive policies, stating that he had earned what he had. So here is a funny thing; on the one hand, there is no denying that he 'earned' it, in the fully monetary sense. He rendered a service and was given compensation for it. On the other hand, he is saying, basically, that what he has received (purportedly, all of it) he deserves.
The frightening conclusion (to my mind) is that the economy, apparently, decides on its own what people deserve. Given the recent rise in 'market fundamentalism' as a general philosophy, it is no more surprising than it is disturbing. Taken to its extreme, it basically says that a free market economy will always decide what people deserve. Given this belief, it is no wonder why all taxation would be decried as an injustice.
Also falling out of this belief of 'earning' is the oddity of what we might call uneven markets. So, for instance, if 'earning/deserving' is based upon how hard you have worked, one might ask why it is that you have more than, say, your ancestors. Do you work so much harder than your forefathers that you deserve all the amenities of modern society while they did not? The truth is, if any earning has been done, then it was done for us, in the past, by our predecessors. God knows that I do not do enough work today to have built this house, with its air conditioning, its television set, a modern oven, indoor plumbing, etc., and I dare to say that no man living today can in good conscience say that he has (though I'd wager that many would say just that).
Here is the third way in which the phrase, "I earned it," is odd to me. It requires others. If you go into the woods, hunt for your own food, build your own shelter, do everything for yourself through the good will of Nature, then there is not really a proper way in which you can say you 'earned' what you have. On the contrary, you did not earn your hovel, or your dinner, or anything else that you have, you created it yourself from whatever the land has provided for you. In this sense, where you did not 'earn' your house, because you actually built your house, we are actually precisely closest to seeing what a person, by his own work, by his own two hands, merits.
And yet since we are social creatures, capable of sharing work, of sharing burdens, we can have a much easier existence than we can have on our own. Thus it is only in a social context, where you actually receive more than you possibly could have created on your own, that we can speak of earning, deserving a certain place in that society based upon how much we have put into it. Considering the chaos of a free market, the fact that much of what we have today is thanks to the hard work of others from the past, and still from others today who work very hard for very little pay, thanks to quirks in our monetary system or simple exploitation of workers, we really cannot say we have 'earned' what we have when others who work as hard, or harder than we do, have much less.
To recap, if somebody says "I earned this," we cannot immediately jump to "I deserve this." If there is to be a social or moral dimension to the word earn, which is implied by the use of the phrase, then social merit, as opposed to cold market science, must be considered, and therefore, redistribution must be considered as a possible correction to the injustice of uneven earnings.
I've heard a few times, both in person and on various media outlets, some person, or persons reciting, as a sort of rallying cry, "I earned what I have." This is a sort of response that comes up from the right when confronted with the threat of redistributive taxation, etc.
Earning is a funny word. It has multiple meanings; the meanings can basically be divided into two groups and then a third which would seem (perhaps deceptively) to be in the middle. On the one hand we have the monetary sense, in which earning simply means an increase in money, for instance, an account earns interest. On the other, we have 'earn' as being used as meriting or deserving reward.
Now, when somebody is said to have earned a wage, or to have earned a living, there is some odd juxtaposing between these two broader meanings of the word earned. This came to mind awhile back when a friend of my family vehemently denounced Obama and his redistributive policies, stating that he had earned what he had. So here is a funny thing; on the one hand, there is no denying that he 'earned' it, in the fully monetary sense. He rendered a service and was given compensation for it. On the other hand, he is saying, basically, that what he has received (purportedly, all of it) he deserves.
The frightening conclusion (to my mind) is that the economy, apparently, decides on its own what people deserve. Given the recent rise in 'market fundamentalism' as a general philosophy, it is no more surprising than it is disturbing. Taken to its extreme, it basically says that a free market economy will always decide what people deserve. Given this belief, it is no wonder why all taxation would be decried as an injustice.
Also falling out of this belief of 'earning' is the oddity of what we might call uneven markets. So, for instance, if 'earning/deserving' is based upon how hard you have worked, one might ask why it is that you have more than, say, your ancestors. Do you work so much harder than your forefathers that you deserve all the amenities of modern society while they did not? The truth is, if any earning has been done, then it was done for us, in the past, by our predecessors. God knows that I do not do enough work today to have built this house, with its air conditioning, its television set, a modern oven, indoor plumbing, etc., and I dare to say that no man living today can in good conscience say that he has (though I'd wager that many would say just that).
Here is the third way in which the phrase, "I earned it," is odd to me. It requires others. If you go into the woods, hunt for your own food, build your own shelter, do everything for yourself through the good will of Nature, then there is not really a proper way in which you can say you 'earned' what you have. On the contrary, you did not earn your hovel, or your dinner, or anything else that you have, you created it yourself from whatever the land has provided for you. In this sense, where you did not 'earn' your house, because you actually built your house, we are actually precisely closest to seeing what a person, by his own work, by his own two hands, merits.
And yet since we are social creatures, capable of sharing work, of sharing burdens, we can have a much easier existence than we can have on our own. Thus it is only in a social context, where you actually receive more than you possibly could have created on your own, that we can speak of earning, deserving a certain place in that society based upon how much we have put into it. Considering the chaos of a free market, the fact that much of what we have today is thanks to the hard work of others from the past, and still from others today who work very hard for very little pay, thanks to quirks in our monetary system or simple exploitation of workers, we really cannot say we have 'earned' what we have when others who work as hard, or harder than we do, have much less.
To recap, if somebody says "I earned this," we cannot immediately jump to "I deserve this." If there is to be a social or moral dimension to the word earn, which is implied by the use of the phrase, then social merit, as opposed to cold market science, must be considered, and therefore, redistribution must be considered as a possible correction to the injustice of uneven earnings.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Capitalism dies, says Iran
Ahmadinejad Say Capitalism Dying
So, I thought to say that you really can't blame an ideology, but if you have an ideology which at its core is based upon the dominance of a few with money, which is an ideal I think a lot of proponents of capitalism would endorse today, then you're going to get out exactly what you would expect to get out. Of course, capitalism is a tricky term. A lot of people use it interchangeably with 'free market' economics, but that's not necessarily how you have to think about it. I could imagine a free market economy without capitalism; the most obvious example is an economy that has no monetary system. I suppose it all comes down to how you want to define things, but since you can have a free market without money, but not capitalism without money, I really don't think you can in any way use the terms interchangeably.
I think capitalism must die, because it has become...well, it is perhaps the one thing in the world which has actually become 'more and more like itself.' Modern capitalism is less an economic system than it is a religion, and I think the echoes of Marx's 'commodity fetishism' are obvious here. People actually believe that if you just have this 'capitalistic system' whatever that entails, then things will judiciously work themselves out. There's just no reason to believe that; its a faith statement. You might as well suggest we not have laws because ethics will work itself out naturally (if people start killing each other, the ethics market will immediately and naturally punish them).
I'll comment on this some more later maybe.
So, I thought to say that you really can't blame an ideology, but if you have an ideology which at its core is based upon the dominance of a few with money, which is an ideal I think a lot of proponents of capitalism would endorse today, then you're going to get out exactly what you would expect to get out. Of course, capitalism is a tricky term. A lot of people use it interchangeably with 'free market' economics, but that's not necessarily how you have to think about it. I could imagine a free market economy without capitalism; the most obvious example is an economy that has no monetary system. I suppose it all comes down to how you want to define things, but since you can have a free market without money, but not capitalism without money, I really don't think you can in any way use the terms interchangeably.
I think capitalism must die, because it has become...well, it is perhaps the one thing in the world which has actually become 'more and more like itself.' Modern capitalism is less an economic system than it is a religion, and I think the echoes of Marx's 'commodity fetishism' are obvious here. People actually believe that if you just have this 'capitalistic system' whatever that entails, then things will judiciously work themselves out. There's just no reason to believe that; its a faith statement. You might as well suggest we not have laws because ethics will work itself out naturally (if people start killing each other, the ethics market will immediately and naturally punish them).
I'll comment on this some more later maybe.
Monday, August 30, 2010
The Awful Power of Belief
Don't laugh (Mando).
Because yesterday I looked at a Yahoo article (a particularly lame one) and then even scrolled down far enough to see the first comment.
The comment basically was a long, single sentence rant of epic racism, telling 'ethnics' to wake up and start behaving like the good part of the world. It pointed out how in Africa and the Middle East its just kill, kill, kill, but here in the white west, we are peaceful, and our 'oppressiveness' is nothing compared to the oppression that 'ethnics' heap upon one another.
I don't want to talk about the comment itself. But it got me thinking. Why would a person go to the trouble of leaving such an unconvincing rant? Why do people have such strong beliefs about the superiority of their race that they actually write such things and even act upon them?
I thought for a moment, and the answer came to me that it is like Nietzsche said. We aren't in it to be happy; a search for happiness does not motivate us. We just want power. When I 'oppress' you for your color, or at the least, extol my own race, it is my own petty way of giving myself a power.
I pursued this train of thought, and I remembered how the night before a friend of mine, cornered by the majority opinion of my other friends, actually began to exhibit a 'fight or flight' response. I think we have all felt it. When our beliefs are attacked, we get a tightness in our chests, our breathing increases, our minds close. Sometimes we even react violently to hear our strong beliefs challenged.
It may be as simple as that we interpret such attacks somehow as physical attacks; certainly, having several people around you telling you you are wrong about something is not unlike being attacked or provoked; one can imagine monkeys in a forest hooting at each other before violence ensues.
When somebody challenges your beliefs, they are also challenging your identity. When we are talking about racial groups, and our place in them, we are also talking about identity. What is this thing about identity which is so touchy that merely questioning it can send us into a rage? From a behavioral anthropological point of view, I would guess it has something to do with group dynamics. You gain power through your associations, so naturally you wish to empower those same associations.
But we're talking about belief here, right?
Serendipitously, I stumbled upon this interesting RSA animation on empathy. According to this we are 'soft wired' not for selfish survival, but for empathic responses, for being sociable, friendly. We desire to preserve and support the group; when our beliefs are challenged, the belief in our group is therefore challenged, albeit indirectly. Could it be that through sub-conscious intellection we make that connection, and that this is what leads to such a visceral response?
As I was watching the video, I also could not help but think of flaws in his position. If we all have empathic responses, then how come we can joyously watch an execution? But, of course, we have learned not to, at least in some parts of the world. There is also the objectification of the person who has committed crimes; it is as though we remove them from our social group, and therefore feel no more empathy toward them. Thus, whatever we do to them, it is not as though we are doing it to a 'person'.
There is also the obvious divisiveness of religion and other broader social groups. Suddenly, though before I would have empathized with my family and neighbor, now I see those with the same religion as my kin at the exclusion of my blood relations and neighbors.
This is no doubt why politicians spend so much time talking about who they are, and what they purportedly represent rather than about real issues or the actual changes they intend to make. We trust them because they have the same beliefs as us, and therefore we see them as being in the same group as we are; so we give them unearned trust. What is this awful belief that is so mingled with the primitive parts of our brain that makes us act so irrationally? Why would we trust a stranger based, not on how he acts, but on what he believes? Why is belief and not the proper application of belief the measure by which we judge others? Its not enough to just say it is wrong, or that people who do so are dumb, we 'all' do it! It seems to be something deeply wired into us, and yet our intellect creates the beliefs, supposedly understands us, so what is the tie between the intellect and our bestial minds?
Even Jesus excoriated us for this sort of behavior and told us that we would be judged based on what we do. Remember the sheep and the goats? Remember the Samaritan? Its supposed to be all about how we act, how we empathize, not what we believe. But why does the other come so naturally, when it seems like the less natural thing to do?
Because yesterday I looked at a Yahoo article (a particularly lame one) and then even scrolled down far enough to see the first comment.
The comment basically was a long, single sentence rant of epic racism, telling 'ethnics' to wake up and start behaving like the good part of the world. It pointed out how in Africa and the Middle East its just kill, kill, kill, but here in the white west, we are peaceful, and our 'oppressiveness' is nothing compared to the oppression that 'ethnics' heap upon one another.
I don't want to talk about the comment itself. But it got me thinking. Why would a person go to the trouble of leaving such an unconvincing rant? Why do people have such strong beliefs about the superiority of their race that they actually write such things and even act upon them?
I thought for a moment, and the answer came to me that it is like Nietzsche said. We aren't in it to be happy; a search for happiness does not motivate us. We just want power. When I 'oppress' you for your color, or at the least, extol my own race, it is my own petty way of giving myself a power.
I pursued this train of thought, and I remembered how the night before a friend of mine, cornered by the majority opinion of my other friends, actually began to exhibit a 'fight or flight' response. I think we have all felt it. When our beliefs are attacked, we get a tightness in our chests, our breathing increases, our minds close. Sometimes we even react violently to hear our strong beliefs challenged.
It may be as simple as that we interpret such attacks somehow as physical attacks; certainly, having several people around you telling you you are wrong about something is not unlike being attacked or provoked; one can imagine monkeys in a forest hooting at each other before violence ensues.
When somebody challenges your beliefs, they are also challenging your identity. When we are talking about racial groups, and our place in them, we are also talking about identity. What is this thing about identity which is so touchy that merely questioning it can send us into a rage? From a behavioral anthropological point of view, I would guess it has something to do with group dynamics. You gain power through your associations, so naturally you wish to empower those same associations.
But we're talking about belief here, right?
Serendipitously, I stumbled upon this interesting RSA animation on empathy. According to this we are 'soft wired' not for selfish survival, but for empathic responses, for being sociable, friendly. We desire to preserve and support the group; when our beliefs are challenged, the belief in our group is therefore challenged, albeit indirectly. Could it be that through sub-conscious intellection we make that connection, and that this is what leads to such a visceral response?
As I was watching the video, I also could not help but think of flaws in his position. If we all have empathic responses, then how come we can joyously watch an execution? But, of course, we have learned not to, at least in some parts of the world. There is also the objectification of the person who has committed crimes; it is as though we remove them from our social group, and therefore feel no more empathy toward them. Thus, whatever we do to them, it is not as though we are doing it to a 'person'.
There is also the obvious divisiveness of religion and other broader social groups. Suddenly, though before I would have empathized with my family and neighbor, now I see those with the same religion as my kin at the exclusion of my blood relations and neighbors.
This is no doubt why politicians spend so much time talking about who they are, and what they purportedly represent rather than about real issues or the actual changes they intend to make. We trust them because they have the same beliefs as us, and therefore we see them as being in the same group as we are; so we give them unearned trust. What is this awful belief that is so mingled with the primitive parts of our brain that makes us act so irrationally? Why would we trust a stranger based, not on how he acts, but on what he believes? Why is belief and not the proper application of belief the measure by which we judge others? Its not enough to just say it is wrong, or that people who do so are dumb, we 'all' do it! It seems to be something deeply wired into us, and yet our intellect creates the beliefs, supposedly understands us, so what is the tie between the intellect and our bestial minds?
Even Jesus excoriated us for this sort of behavior and told us that we would be judged based on what we do. Remember the sheep and the goats? Remember the Samaritan? Its supposed to be all about how we act, how we empathize, not what we believe. But why does the other come so naturally, when it seems like the less natural thing to do?
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
8/17/10
I spent some time in the Travis County Commissioner's court this morning.
Of greatest import was a justified complaint from a woman who owns and operates a farm in West Travis County along with several other families. At present, plans are in the works to surround their property on three sides with privately owned solar farms.
The immediate, primary material concern is the rising of ambient temperatures surrounding the solar farm by around 20 degrees. The deleterious effects of this temperature change on farming and on general livability cannot be overstated.
Of yet more pressing import is the fact that the County Commissioners, the proper representative body of these unincorporated citizens, have no rights over land use. Thus, the primary political right, the right over the lands within your political community, is withheld from citizens in unincorporated sections of Texas.
Of greatest import was a justified complaint from a woman who owns and operates a farm in West Travis County along with several other families. At present, plans are in the works to surround their property on three sides with privately owned solar farms.
The immediate, primary material concern is the rising of ambient temperatures surrounding the solar farm by around 20 degrees. The deleterious effects of this temperature change on farming and on general livability cannot be overstated.
Of yet more pressing import is the fact that the County Commissioners, the proper representative body of these unincorporated citizens, have no rights over land use. Thus, the primary political right, the right over the lands within your political community, is withheld from citizens in unincorporated sections of Texas.
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