Byron Shaddock would have enjoyed the experience of combat whatever the rights and wrongs. Bad attitude.
He reflects that, by not dividing his inherited income and by not living on a peasant's budget, he is starving children but no comfortable American or European feels guilty so why should he? We are not obliged either to impoverish ourselves or to feel guilt and there is an urgent need for leveling up, not down. Poverty is somehow increasing in Britain.
Sorry for the terse summary. Posting over breakfast. Today, a Buddhist "retreat" from 10.00 to 4.00 and Lancaster Music Festival in the evening.
10 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
The real solution is to increase the number of pies, not divide up one pie into smaller and smaller slices! My view is that only free enterprise economics, when allowed to function, has done that. And I also believe that for that to continue, we need to get off this rock!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Increase the number of pies, yes. Free enterprise has increased both wealth and poverty. What has worked in the past is an insufficient guide to the future. Society now changes rapidly.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
But free enterprise economics works because of being based on how real people actually behave. And I see little or no reason not to think that will continue to be the case.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Behavior changes with society. Cultures can be competitive or communal.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And not everybody will want to be "communal." And any attempt to force all men to be like that is despotic.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Yes but who is talking about forcing all men to be like anything? The law puts limits on how people behave, e.g., prohibits racial harassment, but does not even attempt to police the inner thoughts of individuals who might harbor racial prejudices.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
But most people are not going to ever be "communal," however you define that word. Or want to be. The only attempts at "communes" which has ever succeeded has been monasteries, Christian or Buddhist. And only because they were resided in by small groups of people voluntarily agreeing to live together by certain rules to attain certain ends.
And that is exactly how it should be done: the law punishing acts, rather than mere words. Albeit, agitating to overthrow the state shades over from words INTO ACTS.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I think that our most basic disagreement is that you believe in an unchanging human nature whereas I believe that everything changes. Human nature has already undergone the greatest possible change, from nonexistence to existence. Everything is minor compared to that.
Paul.
Awesome day. No time for posting. I had to choose between an Extinction Rebellion Die-In and a Buddhist retreat so I chose the latter and the visiting monk talked about the climate crisis, saying, among many other things, that, out of interest and a wish to learn, he had, in his own words, wasted an hour and a half in conversation with a climate change denier and conspiracist.
Then the Music Festival. Every pub full of people listening to performers. Every street full of people moving between pubs. Strangers starting conversations. Meeting lots of people we knew. At a jam session, Sheila sang. I would have offered to recite a poem but the music kept coming. One guy got us to sign the words. It all starts at 11.00 again tomoz.
Kaor, Paul!
Yes, in a way, I do believe human nature to be unchanging. I see nothing in human history, past, present, and to come, that makes me think humans will not continue to be gravely flawed, prone to error, foolishness, superstition, tyranny, and follies of all kinds. All that has changed is that increasing knowledge has enabled mankind to make better use of resources. But we have not become WISER.
S.M. Stirling made much the same argument in more "evolutionary" terms.
I'm glad you had a good day in Lancaster! I don't deny climate changes, of course it does. But the nature and extent of that change can be legitimately debated. And there HAS been times when data about the climate has been falsified to advance partisan agendas.
Ad astra! Sean
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