(Click title above.)Moderating Empathies:
The founders of America were guided by empathetic genius for checking and reconciling competitions among interests and powers.
The founders appreciated that empathy does not consist unambiguously or only in love. Rather, empathy also alternates and twists in currents of existential despair, rage, and deceit. Often, wisdom delayed is mistaken for youthful or innocent love. And, often, love is skillfully feigned. Not all sheep wear their own wool. And not all patricians unambiguously wish well for their posterity.
Often, those habits that rise to success depend upon Machiavellian deceit and evil ruthlessness. And, often, those habits that fail give rise to warring gangs and aggrieved cultures for rationalizing victimhood and entitlement.
Liberals may feign to feel our pain, Libertarians may feign to respect our gratification, and Conservatives may feign to afford us opportunity. However, the beginnings of Wisdom and Virtue arise only as we come to will, as Moderates, to reconcile inherent ambiguities in our common, existentially cracked, predicament.
In capacity to crack, compartmentalize, synchronize, and delay illusions and resonances of sets within sets, out of mere math, the Will that each of our perspectives represents has no limits. Such Will respects no real differences in time, but only differences in associated perspectives of time.
Armed of underlying Will, each perspective chooses how to reconcile with its existential angst. Wisdom consists in appreciating how not all perspectives frankly show their intents. Some prefer to view everything through pan gloss’ian glasses; some prefer to gorge on gratification of glands; some relish achieving skills in deceit and ruthlessness; and some wish to come to independent, mature appreciation of all. Depending upon context and purpose, each, from time to time, will co-opt strategies of the others.
In my judgment, at this juncture, neither the World, nor America, should afford for America to surrender independence, lay aside borders, indulge false entitlements, or abet rising aristocrats.
Search the underlying sympathies, associations, intentions, desires, and habits of would-be leaders. But also search the same of their major sponsors.
The founders of America were guided by empathetic genius for checking and reconciling competitions among interests and powers.
The founders appreciated that empathy does not consist unambiguously or only in love. Rather, empathy also alternates and twists in currents of existential despair, rage, and deceit. Often, wisdom delayed is mistaken for youthful or innocent love. And, often, love is skillfully feigned. Not all sheep wear their own wool. And not all patricians unambiguously wish well for their posterity.
Often, those habits that rise to success depend upon Machiavellian deceit and evil ruthlessness. And, often, those habits that fail give rise to warring gangs and aggrieved cultures for rationalizing victimhood and entitlement.
Liberals may feign to feel our pain, Libertarians may feign to respect our gratification, and Conservatives may feign to afford us opportunity. However, the beginnings of Wisdom and Virtue arise only as we come to will, as Moderates, to reconcile inherent ambiguities in our common, existentially cracked, predicament.
In capacity to crack, compartmentalize, synchronize, and delay illusions and resonances of sets within sets, out of mere math, the Will that each of our perspectives represents has no limits. Such Will respects no real differences in time, but only differences in associated perspectives of time.
Armed of underlying Will, each perspective chooses how to reconcile with its existential angst. Wisdom consists in appreciating how not all perspectives frankly show their intents. Some prefer to view everything through pan gloss’ian glasses; some prefer to gorge on gratification of glands; some relish achieving skills in deceit and ruthlessness; and some wish to come to independent, mature appreciation of all. Depending upon context and purpose, each, from time to time, will co-opt strategies of the others.
In my judgment, at this juncture, neither the World, nor America, should afford for America to surrender independence, lay aside borders, indulge false entitlements, or abet rising aristocrats.
Search the underlying sympathies, associations, intentions, desires, and habits of would-be leaders. But also search the same of their major sponsors.
5 comments:
See http://www.statesman.com/opinion/content/editorial/stories/07/25/0725palaima_edit.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=45:
COMMENTARY
Palaima: Stomping all over Americans
Thomas Palaima, REGULAR CONTRIBUTOR
Friday, July 25, 2008
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of Jack London's dystopian novel "The Iron Heel." In it, a super-wealthy oligarchy has used savage capitalism to destroy the middle class, bankrupt small independent businesses, and turn farmers and laborers into serfs. This no longer sounds like fiction.
….
In December 2006, I heard a Federal Reserve Bank official explain that the role of the United States in the world economy was to buy things and we should keep on buying things, despite the weakness of the dollar and our record levels of household and government debt. I was dumbfounded until I understood that there is a powerful segment of our society that profits from such policies.
….
A basic fact of history is that debt comes due. When it does, as in the major economic crises that plagued Greek city-states during the seventh and early sixth centuries BCE, mechanisms may be found to make it perpetual. In the time of the Athenian leader Solon, many small farmers had become debt-slaves. Many Americans are effectively debt-slaves right now.
….
We have had 28 years now of deregulation and anti-government politics. We have had savings and loan, junk bond, Enron, Iraq contractor and sub-prime real estate scandals. Our government is off our backs. This leaves the poor, powerless and uneducated exposed to economic predators, what London called "the law of club and fang."
Quote Snippits from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Heel:
The Oligarchy are the largest monopoly trusts (or robber barons) who manage to squeeze out the middle class by bankrupting most small to mid-sized business as well as reducing all farmers to effective serfdom. This Oligarchy maintains power through a "labor caste" and the Mercenaries. Labor in essential industries like steel and rail are elevated and given decent wages, housing, and education. Indeed, the tragic turn in the novel (and Jack London's core warning to his contemporaries) is the treachery of these favored unions which break with the other unions and side with the Oligarchy. Further, a second, military caste is formed: the Mercenaries. The Mercenaries are officially the army of the US but are in fact in the employ of the Oligarchs.
Asgard is the name of a fictional wonder-city, a city constructed by the Oligarchy to be admired and appreciated as well as lived in. Thousands of Proletariat live in poverty there, and are used whenever a public work needs to be completed, such as the building of levie or a canal.
….
Further, London predicted that the middle class would shrink as monopolistic trusts crushed labor and small to mid-sized businesses. Instead the US Progressive Era led to a breakup of the trusts, notably the application of the Sherman Antitrust Act to Standard Oil in 1911; at the same time, reforms such as labor unions rights passed during the Progressive Era with further reforms during the New Deal of the 1930s. Further, economic prosperity led to dramatic growth of the middle class in the 1920s and after World War II.
From http://www.davidcogswell.com/Reviews/IronHeel.html :
On December 3, 1888, President Grover Cleveland delivered his annual address to Congress. Apparently Cleveland had taken notice of the Santa Clara County Supreme Court headnote, its politics, and its consequences, for he said in his speech to the nation, delivered before a joint session of Congress: "As we view the achievements of aggregated capital, we discover the existence of trusts, combinations, and monopolies, while the citizen is struggling far in the rear or is trampled to death beneath an iron heel. Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people's masters."
Behavioral Psychology 101:
WHERE LIBERALS ARE WRONG:
One ought not use positive reinforcement to condition or empower sloth, addiction, or other varieties of dead weight. Give positive reinforcement to incentive production by working class, but do not incentive deliberate burdens on society. Give the lazy and the addicted means proportionate to their readiness to rehabilitate themselves, but do not empower continuation of depredations counterproductive to a civilizing society. Moderators should side with the middle, working class.
WHERE CONSERVATIVES ARE WRONG:
Suppose a foreign agent comes and plants a flag in your backyard, therewith claiming it for his tribe.
You should say to him, “You are quite out of your mind!”
Now, suppose instead he bribes or otherwise convinces the city council to condemn your property as a blight, to re-zone it so he can “redevelop” it.
Should such an exchange of paper now put him in the right?
HOW GULLIBLE AND DEPENDENT ARE WE:
For leveraging power to divvy up property, just how much leverage should we surrender to those favored with position to enter into such exchanges of paper (money)?
A small time con practices sleight of hand.
A big time con practices sleight of mind.
Must you buy it?
FULFILLMENT BY SUBMISSION?
A taker will rationalize, convincing himself that his “inferiors,” lacking capacity for sophisticated understanding, need his supervision.
Were we to show him he is wrong, may he become more relieved than frustrated?
The question is, however: Is he wrong?
That is, are we so gullible or dependent as to require protection of such masters as may protect us against even more abusive masters?
Extreme Moderate:
From http://extrememoderate.blogtownhall.com/2006/11/10/what_is_an_extreme_moderate.thtml :
So what is the moderate process? The moderate process is opposite of reductionism. That is, instead of reducing a subject to a single issue, a person who practices the moderate process of thought will include multiple issues when formulating an opinion. So, to follow the moderate process when deciding on abortion, one includes the rights of the woman as well as the rights of the unborn child. This does not imply that the moderate process will always result in a middle of the road position. It just means that a moderate person will consider as many issues as possible when determining a matter rather than using only one issue.
Post a Comment