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I'm slogging through Plutarch's Lives (damn long read!), but I find it so centered on military campaigns as almost entirely to neglect other important human factors that were cycling through the times. Mainly, I'm reading Plutarch as a duty. Kind of like reading the Koran ---to see how it's not all that. That's what makes Durant so splendid! He shows how, in many respects, the ancient people of the Mediterranean were not so different from ourselves. His lessons point up the signs of recyclings to come.
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I suspect the "glories of Islam" had more to do with military spoils than creative thought. Anyone who takes Islam at face value has got to have some seriously loose screws. I suspect the creative thinkers of the Islam world, like those who groaned under superstitions of the West, had their own dog whistling devices. Islam remains Exhibit IA for coloring my protectionist viewpoint. I don't want to protect America from decent civilization, but I do want to protect decent civilization from mind control freaks, elites, cronies, and jihadonies. So I don't quite get the absolutist thinking of the "free trade people."
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I don't think the choice is between free enterprise and socialism. I think the overarching choice is between availing decent middle class civilization versus being sucked into a new system of serfdom. As society becomes wealthier and machines take over more and more of our work, the day to day stuff will of course be availed to nearly everyone. Soon, society will want every citizen to have an Ipad. In that way, Socialism will spread. But the cutting edge should still be largely open to unfettered experimentation and enterprise. As the cutting edge sinks back into the routine, more and more functions will be socialized. And so on. So I think Durant had it right about Hegel: Thesis, antithesis, synthesis does not mean that either capitalism or socialism is right. It means they describe the ongoing, fluxing perimeters of a synthesizing process.
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I'm slogging through Plutarch's Lives (damn long read!), but I find it so centered on military campaigns as almost entirely to neglect other important human factors that were cycling through the times. Mainly, I'm reading Plutarch as a duty. Kind of like reading the Koran ---to see how it's not all that. That's what makes Durant so splendid! He shows how, in many respects, the ancient people of the Mediterranean were not so different from ourselves. His lessons point up the signs of recyclings to come.
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I suspect the "glories of Islam" had more to do with military spoils than creative thought. Anyone who takes Islam at face value has got to have some seriously loose screws. I suspect the creative thinkers of the Islam world, like those who groaned under superstitions of the West, had their own dog whistling devices. Islam remains Exhibit IA for coloring my protectionist viewpoint. I don't want to protect America from decent civilization, but I do want to protect decent civilization from mind control freaks, elites, cronies, and jihadonies. So I don't quite get the absolutist thinking of the "free trade people."
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I don't think the choice is between free enterprise and socialism. I think the overarching choice is between availing decent middle class civilization versus being sucked into a new system of serfdom. As society becomes wealthier and machines take over more and more of our work, the day to day stuff will of course be availed to nearly everyone. Soon, society will want every citizen to have an Ipad. In that way, Socialism will spread. But the cutting edge should still be largely open to unfettered experimentation and enterprise. As the cutting edge sinks back into the routine, more and more functions will be socialized. And so on. So I think Durant had it right about Hegel: Thesis, antithesis, synthesis does not mean that either capitalism or socialism is right. It means they describe the ongoing, fluxing perimeters of a synthesizing process.
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The main reason I loathe Obama (and commies) is not because he's a socialist, but because he's a one world socialist who has little respect for the desire of ordinary, competent Americans to be free of know it all regulators like himself. I don't think of life's game as being mainly about linear, material acquisition and progress. I think of life as being mainly about seeking immaterial, conscious fulfillment. Since I don't believe in materially objective "progress," I don't believe ordinary, competent people should subjugate their wills to know it all materialist technocrats. However, I can see how a technocrat would want underlings to believe the choice between ideologies is a matter of black versus white, in favor of whatever school best serves his/her interest.
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1 comment:
Bumhead received a vision: There is no god but bumalooahoo! Bumalooahoo does not mind being called under other names. However, bumalooahoo does not like being interpreted as desiring the torture or death of persons merely because they are unbelievers. Rather, bumalooahoo would like that all such persons be put in a quarantined, private holodek, where in such virtual land they can feast on one another of their own kind, albeit of different clans and sects, to their hearts' content or until such time as they recover their minds, whichever first occurs. All who interpret bumalooahoo as desiring the torture or death of persons merely because they are unbelievers should be accorded choice of receiving mental health counseling or being quarantined. To evangelize that bumalooahoo desires the torture or death of persons merely because they are unbelievers is to promote mind disease, not religion. Otherwise, bumalooahoo simply does not much care whether you know or believe in the name. Bumalooahoo, bumalooahoo, bumalooahoo!
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