For example, set a better example. The large number of examples of police violence that we know about cannot teach anyone to use other, less violent methods, to resolve disputes.
It also cannot help matters that we live in a police/surveillance state where all of our communications are monitored.
Nor can it help that so many people are out of work, underemployed, or working at undesirable menial labor.
Nor can it help that so many people are languishing in prison for whatever reason without any hope that their lives will be any better when or if they ever get out.
It is also curious that no one is addressing the issues around the reasons there are so many of these shooters. It has been claimed that many if not most have been on prescribed anti-depressant medications and that it is these drugs which have set these people off. The fact that this is not an issue reflects the occult power of the pharmaceutical industry in our politics.
Finally, it cannot be that the people can be blamed so much for violence in general when they are under the stress of so much poverty, a failed democracy, and bad examples from their leaders. The guns, or the knives, or the baseball bats, cannot be blamed for the violence, or the ferocity of the violence when, in fact, they are just inanimate objects. Instead, I want to blame the lesson that our culture teaches everyone, that life is cheap, that individuals don’t matter much in the big picture, and that appeals to morality, justice, or even practicality, can make no…nada… difference to someone who thinks that if they control enough violence, sneakiness, and deceit, they can get done anything that they want.
These are the lessons that our country lives by, and they are why we will continue to have social conflict well into the future until somehow, they are countered.
I want to discuss a part of the Book of Genesis where God has made a garden and has Adam and Eve living in it. God warns these two that they are allowed much, but, they are not supposed to eat of a certain plant, or else.
I want to make the claim that this story depends on a metaphor, that our understanding of this story depends on our having this metaphor in mind. Furthermore, part of my claim is that when this story in Genesis was written, it was understood by the writer and those who read it, that there was a metaphor involved in it, and that it’s purpose depended on keeping that metaphor in mind.
Is there Rising Conflict in the United States? // How should we understand the question?
From where I’m sitting, one could have at least two positions on whether there’s more conflict in the country now than before.
Of course, I could look out my window and see house roofs, trees, the wet pavement on the Portland streets, and basically conclude that there isn’t any conflict at all. The claim that there is more conflict just isn’t supported by my casual examination of the streets outside my house.
This response, that there isn’t any conflict, and it’s support, that there isn’t any conflict outside my house, would be short sighted, and naïve. That is, no one should think that going outside their house and looking up and down their street should be an adequate study of the country. We cannot get an idea about what’s going on unless we look at enough of it.
Understanding Wittgenstein // What is a “philosophical theory” and are they of any use?
It seems to me that Wittgenstein was very much interested in the political goings on of his time. He was interested in the conflicts that had been causing great suffering in Europe and the world in general. I take it, his interest in Dostoevsky and his novel The Brothers Karamazov stoked this interest. The following example taken from an essay arguing that Wittgenstein was interested in the world, supports this claim.
What is the use of studying philosophy if it doesn't improve your thinking about the important questions of everyday life? Contradicting the standard academic account of what Wittgenstein was up to, we believe that this is the pressing question he asked himself throughout his philosophical career. It was also a question Wittgenstein thought of as outweighing any specific philosophical theses or theories. But it is also exactly the question that has been forgotten and even laughed at by the mainstream of today's professional philosophy.
What is a “toxic idea” according to the powers that be?
The official story of 9-11 is considered to be “fact-based” and rigorous in its reliance on the best rules of reasoning our civilization can provide.
Supposedly, the arguments offered by the official story, and it's critics, are as different as night and day.
Two questions about the 1% // 1) given the 1%, what does the 99% do about them? and 2), what justifies this metaphorical way of looking at our predicament?
In speaking with a friend of mine, we came to the conclusion that the economy could be described by two main claims, 1) the crooks are in charge, and 2) we don’t make anything here anymore. I supported my contention that the crooks are in control here by talking about the ideas put forward by the protesters, that the 1% have rigged the system to make them rich and undermine the 99%’s ability to support themselves. The other idea that supports this claim is Greenwald’s that the country is no longer run by the ‘rule of law,’ but run by the powerful. The powerful in this country are above the law. As for the problem of making things here, I referred to Paul Craig Roberts arguments about how the manufacturing part of our economy has been transferred out of the country and how almost impossible it will be to bring it back.
…If change comes, the leadership will come from below through citizen action that originates from outside of the institutions that are failing us on so many fronts. Change from below can succeed only when a large number of people have a shared understanding of the roots of the problem and share a vision of the path to its resolution.
As a society, we cannot create a future that we cannot see in our collective mind. One of the most important tasks of the moment is to define a vision of the life-serving New Economy it is ours to create and to build popular commitment to its realization.
If we are one of the kids on the playground, we have to be careful not to be cornered by the bully. The bully if he gets you in his clutches will slap you around a bit and take your lunch money. The financial sector in the United States has been slapping us around a lot and has been taking our lunch money. Marx and Korten have thought that the way the little kids on the playground could have safer lives is to work together, or form a gang, so to speak, and threaten the bully with their collective action, as a response to his bullying.
"Time for the Rich to Leave Tokyo"
It appears there is a cover-up as to the severity of the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster. We in Japan are being told by the government that there is a plan to monitor food safety to ensure the public will not be exposed to dangerous levels of radiation. Yet some experts dispute whether there is any such thing as a "safe dose." Further, the government is not honestly telling the public the extent of the problem or how they propose to resolve it (see this rolling update from a resident living near the Fukushima plant: http://candobetter.net/node/2428 ).
Any intelligent layperson who considers the technical aspects of the disaster will be at a loss as to how the plant operators will be able to restore the cooling system, which may be badly damaged, to reactors that themselves may be unrepairable or in various states of melt-down. If the nuclear fuel in the reactors has melted through to the floor, what would be the point of setting up a cooling system to a dysfunctional reactor and a pool of melted fuel?
No one in the government clearly answers these questions nor has the international community come forth with a possible solution….
How can we oppose Mafia rule?
One way of looking at American foreign policy is to see it as a response by a homegrown mafia to the challenges coming from other mafias in world affairs. Suppose there’s been a hit on one of our mafia’s leaders. What then to do? One alternative is to start a war. Go out and knock a few heads and show them who the boss of all bosses is around here. The problem for the United States is that whereas at one time it had the overwhelming strength to make such an effort stick, that such knocking would put others, the upstarts, in their place, the U.S. is no longer that overwhelmingly powerful. And so, the chances of such a strategy protecting the American mafia and its interests is not assured. If the Americans start such a war, there are chances it won’t go in the way it would like.
The preferred strategy, then, seems to be to strengthen relationships with the American mafia’s allies. If we have our friends in various places around the world, and they are in a position to defend our interests, then we don’t have to be there personally to do that work. Examples of such allies, and in some cases our “policemen on the block,” are NATO in Europe and the coalition of dictators we have supported in the middle east.
The weakness of this strategy is that whereas the “dictators” our American mafia supports helps maintain its interests, in controlling the oil supply, for example, the people of these countries, the one’s that these dictators sit on in order to maintain the American mafia’s interests, will always try to overthrow these governments in the name of democracy and human rights.
That is, the people will always challenge the interests of the American mafia and their allies because as illegal conspiracies which rely on force and its attendants, violence, stealth, and deceit, the people will always resist the American mafia and its allies for these good reasons.
Thrasymachus eventually proposes a resounding slogan: “Justice is nothing other than the advantage of the stronger” (338c; tr. Grube-Reeve here and throughout, sometimes with minor revisions). He explains that each kind of regime (democratic, oligarchic, and so on) makes laws in the interest of the ruling party in it (the mass of poor people, or the very rich, etc.). “And they declare what they have made — what is to their own advantage — to be just for their subjects…. This, then, is what I say justice is, the same in all cities, the advantage of the established regime.” (338e-339a).
It is easy to return to Thrasymachus because it seems the Federal Reserve system, as one institution of the state, is all about how the powerful make something, like our money, and say to us how wonderful and just it all is, when really, it’s all about making something that will give advantages to them at our expense.
Thrasymachus is saying, well, what Socrates has been supposing cannot be the real story because, the meaning of words, words like “justice”, are really determined by the tools of power and force.
This goes back to what Kripke tells us of Wittgenstein, that he concluded that there can be no objective or factual determinants of meaning, that meaning therefore, has to be all about assertability conditions.
I’m saying Thrasymachus was only repeating what he heard from philosophers who realized then what Wittgenstein was onto only recently.
So, here is the discussion of the Federal Reserve and some of the details about that institution which Thrasymachus would have gone into if Socrates had given him the time. The point being, Mr. Griffin describes how the Federal Reserve system is described as just to the masses when in reality it’s a scam.
Mr. Griffin on the Federal Reserve.
When we grow up our parents take care of us. They protect us from ourselves as when we heedlessly walk into traffic or want to place our hands on hot burners. We look up to our parents because we realize that our survival has depended on their watchfulness and concern for our well-being. Our existence and how well we’ve held on is dependent on how adept these adults have been at watching. Adults with poorly developed “watching” skills can and have let their kids get injured or harmed by life’s dangers. But, we assume that our parents have nothing else going on in their lives except catering to our needs. They don’t have needs and desires of their own. We think sometimes that our parents don’t have lives outside what they do for us, their kids. But this is just naive.
People are not just parents. This implies that people can be just as crooked or principled when they are parents as anyone. This is not to say that parents are crooked. It’s to say that we shouldn’t deny the fact that parents could be crooked.
In the same way, we should not deny the possibility that people who work in government, or business, labor unions, or non-governmental agencies supposedly working for the common good, are themselves crooked, or capable of being crooked.
How do you establish that people are crooked? How is this discovered, especially when the people are public servants whose work is secret? Who watches the watchers, to use a notorious metaphor?
Could our watchers be crooked? Is it in them? This is another question implied by the Socratic conundrum about whether what is good is that way because it is approved by the Gods, or whether even the Gods approve of it because some standard of goodness tells us it is good.
I get the impression that whistleblowers assume that what is good, or in their case, corrupt, is so because of some objective commonly recognized standard. Because of this assumption, they believe that any activity contrary to the implications of those standards is corrupt, even if the Gods should tell you differently. It is not alright if the Gods tell you to steal from the poor, for example, because even the Gods, according to their assumption, appeal to their understanding of what’s right and wrong by looking to the same standards as have the whistleblowers.
I suspect our government is now filled with people who assume that it’s the Gods who determine what’s right and wrong and also what is corrupt and they think it’s therefore treason to go against the will of the Gods as these whistleblowers have been doing. Instead of applauding these people for pointing out where our watchers have been doing wrong, they go about arresting them, prosecuting them, and putting them in prison because they have gone against the Gods.
The problems discussed by Sibel Edmonds below, as well as the issues around WikiLeaks, involve this Socratic conundrum. What is the relationship between our understanding of morality, the Gods, and some objective standards?