Obama V. Romney

[vimothy]

lool

Hey, you were making fun of me, Luka, you bastard!

* * * *

One last thing to address is Mr Tea's point about the inadequacy on a single dimension to describe politics.

I disagree with this. I think that it's a remarkable and eternal truth of politics that it can be described with a single left-to-right axis.

On the right, we have the side of Natural Law and Transcendent Order. On the left, we have the side of Rationalism and Social Transformation.

If you don't want society to be ordered towards the Natural Law, then you're on the left hand side of the axis.

If we take that as given, how is society to be ordered? The two most obvious ways are by the market and by the government. Your left liberals think that the government should dominate the market. Your right liberals think that the market should dominate the government.

So what we see is that right liberals are right in a local sense, i.e., when compared to left liberals, but left in a global sense, i.e., when compared to people who think society should reflect a cosmic order. (Or you could think of it in terms of the drift of the mean to the left.)

If you go back and read the original conservative intellectuals like de Bonald or Le Play, what you do not find is that they are libertarians. Quite the opposite!

 

[IdleRich]

"i dont understand what the conversation is about/ i can understand individual comments."

I guess we were talking about what the Republican party is/wants to be/ought to be - maybe to do that you need to talk about liberalism, certainly a large part of the GOP's supporters define themselves in opposition to it. Although I'm pretty sure they mean something quite different from Vimothy when they do.

 

[vimothy]

Yes, sorry, that was a rather epic thread derail. I'll try to shut up about it now. Here's something to get us back on track:

 

[luka]

not making fun of you in the slightest. i was just laughing cos it was funny. i like talking to you. sometimes you are obtuse, sometimes disingenuous but i like it.

 

[luka]

like you i also believe in left and right as something objective. i think as i have said before that it is a real divide based on very basic assumptions/premises/starting points.

 

[baboon2004]

For example, why is there this great concentration of wealth? One reason might be that there is a great drive to concentrate wealth. And why would that be? Well, there are no higher principles other than the equal satisfaction of individual impulses and desires.

Now, this might lead to conflict and violence, because you might have "Nietzschean" or "Stirnerte" types attempting to dominate their fellows. On the other hand, if we restrict the choices that people can make to a more limited domain--for example, consumption choices in the market--then we might be able to produce an aoutcome where everyone gets to make their own choices about what it is that they desire and satisfy them, without ever coming to conflict because of exclusivity or antagonism between goals.

But you have to construct a theory of how people come to their desires, rather than leaving this unspecified. For starters, their desires are shaped to a (large) extent by the dominating political system, which of course helps that system to remain in place, because people feel that it is in their own interests to defend it (and of course their own interests have been shaped by it etc etc). So, to take the most obvious example, consumer capitalism's very survival is based upon continually making people feel as if they are lacking, and that consumption of objects and services can somehow fill this lack. Obv this shapes people's desires to a large extent, by creating an addiction cycle.

I think, once you start to pick people's fears apart, and see how these fears (both internal and intentionally/unintentionally generated by society) directly shape their desires, then you see how reducing/annulling these fears can create a situation in which people's desires are much less likely to lead to antagonism/conflict, because they are not so solipsistic any longer. And one way (the best way?) to reduce fear on a societal level is to make sure that everyone knows that, whatever happens, they will not be left destitute and without basic food/shelter.

 

[craner]

That's a rather a Masochistic view of existence, Baboon. I think you ought to adopt a Sadean approach.

George Will has just said that the big Republican winner from the election defeat is...Marco Rubio.

And we're off!

 

[baboon2004]

Why masochistic? There's been too much labelling in this thread! I was just trying to introduce an internal psychological perspective into the threa, cos as Luka said, left and right are built upon very basic premises, that are too often left uninterrogated.

 

[luka]

dont let craner bully you baboon. sock it to him!

 

[baboon2004]

i wasn't aware that he was bullying me; I will reassess once I understand what he meant

 

[vimothy]

Augustine of Hippo famously said, "Man has as many masters as he has vices."

For ancient thinkers, happiness was an objective state. The Greeks called it eudaimonia. To be eudaimon is not to have satisfied a bunch of immanent or animal desires. For example, the heroin addict might be happy in a subjective sense, smashed out of his gourd on opiates, but in an objective sense he is wretched and not eudaimon.

Two of the greatest stoics were Marcus Aurelius, Emperor of Rome, and Epictitus, a slave. Both men emphasised the importance of accepting one's place in the world and doing one's duty to living a happy and good life.

By today's standards, of course, this is crazy. Happiness and the good is about doing whatever the hell you like, whenever the hell you feel like it, with no restrictions or responsibilities.

So there's a huge gulf between the way people traditionally understood the world and how they understand it today.

 

[vimothy]

 

[baboon2004]

Well, not everyone accepts that definition of happiness today; more that it is the one propagated by the media and the consumer industry constantly, and obv taken up by a large section of the public.

But then of course that conception (for most people except the most rich, perhaps, and even then...) is rooted in self-deception - start to actually do what you want, rather than follow what you're supposed to want, and come up against the Truman Show-esque walls of this space of alleged freedom. You can do what you want as long as you show deference to the appropriate masters at the appropriate time. Know your place.
Sounds pretty much like a mixture of stoicism and meekly doing what you're supposed to during the week, and then being allowed to indulge in 'leisure' at the weekend, as long as it's within set boundaries of course. Eternally infantilised, but pretending to be free, because the truth is painful/ you feel like you are impotent to create anything better.

Which altogether sounds like what the Greeks were saying, or indeed what Zen Buddhism says, or progressive conceptions of psychotherapy. That idea of happiness (working out what you really want, and not simply dulling your consciousness) became marginalised, but it never went away. And surely there were precursors in history to the idea of 'having "fun all the time" ' = happiness; what's different is the ubiquity of that idea nowadays, which obv has something to do with modern media enabling the idea to be relentlessly pumped into people's brains, and consumerism requiring that idea to be ubiquitous in order to survive and self-perpetuate and generate ever-greater profits.

Augustine of Hippo famously said, "Man has as many masters as he has vices."

For ancient thinkers, happiness was an objective state. The Greeks called it eudaimonia. To be eudaimon is not to have satisfied a bunch of immanent or animal desires. For example, the heroin addict might be happy in a subjective sense, smashed out of his gourd on opiates, but in an objective sense he is wretched and not eudaimon.

Two of the greatest stoics were Marcus Aurelius, Emperor of Rome, and Epictitus, a slave. Both men emphasised the importance of accepting one's place in the world and doing one's duty to living a happy and good life.

By today's standards, of course, this is crazy. Happiness and the good is about doing whatever the hell you like, whenever the hell you feel like it, with no restrictions or responsibilities.

So there's a huge gulf between the way people traditionally understood the world and how they understand it today.

 

[craner]

start to actually do what you want

Like what, though? What do you mean? What is outside of the "Truman Show-esque walls of alleged freedom"? Infinite space? Cosmic love? Child rape? We are all bound by some limits in any form of society -- norms of behaviour, moral codes or tribal tradition. They are fairly loose in modern Western neo-liberal states. You are restricted by moral and legal codes and the necessity of earning a living. But for that you get protection, order and a certain amount of freedom and opportunity, plus space for transgression. This "liberal state" is the bourgeois ideal, mass tranquility. People subject to this state miss...passion, commintment, blood. See where that gets you.

 

[baboon2004]

Like what, though? What do you mean? What is outside of the "Truman Show-esque walls of alleged freedom"? Infinite space? Cosmic love? Child rape? We are all bound by some limits in any form of society -- norms of behaviour, moral codes or tribal tradition. They are fairly loose in modern Western neo-liberal states. You are restricted by moral and legal codes and the necessity of earning a living. But for that you get protection, order and a certain amount of freedom and opportunity, plus space for transgression. This "liberal state" is the bourgeois ideal, mass tranquility. People subject to this state miss...passion, commintment, blood. See where that gets you.

Cosmic love, I'd hope.

Complex questions to answer, I didn't say it was simple. People have written books on this kind of thing (Fromm is one of the ones that springs to mind, obv there are many others), since working out your true desires pretty much holds the key to the meaning of life!

A few points though:
You could take those limits to freedom as being either internal or external. Usually only the external are examined, and I was making the point both that people also have internal restrictions that they impose on their own freedom/the satisfaction of their own real desires, and that these internal restrictions interact in a complex way with external restrictions, according to the designated overall aims of the society.

One of the problems is that " protection, order and a certain amount of freedom and opportunity" is afforded in massively varying degrees to different people. It doesn't always apply to 'you'. Especially in the present order, which tolerates massive inequalities, which many people accept because they are told, like dutiful children, that it is for the greater good.

Space for transgression - such as? Surely fake transgression, rather than real transgression, which would transgress those codes you talked about, most of which are not moral at all, but strictly amoral and pragmatic.

I don't agree with the assumption that codes of behaviour are that loose in the present Western situation. Of course that's the propaganda, but you have to justify why you think it true. In certain senses yes, but in other senses people are more tightly constricted by common codes.

Anyways, I still don't understand the 'masochistic' bit. Masochism and self-sabotage (through letting others define what you want) is precisely what i'm railing against.

PS Off topic perhaps, and I know you said it facetiously, but I think Saville if nothing else shows that child rape is hardly outside the realms of possible tolerable freedoms within our protecting society. Everyday abuse is certainly not, and 'protection' is certainly dependent upon who you are and what situation you find yourself in.

 

[craner]

The organisation of state and society in (say) the U.K. is partly the residue of tradition (see Burke) but also a contract that enshrines basic rights and protects individuals against crime and tyranny. It's not designed to answer philosophical questions of human happiness. This is only the task of politics for utopians. Political Utopias are not a problem, the Utopians who try to create them are. I suppose another way of defining the Left/Right in the modern liberal state is to talk about those who protect liberty and those who strive for equality; the former are conservative, in the sense that they seek to protect individuals from state intrusion, and the latter are utopians, in that they believe that state can be an instrument for creating a better society. The former protect individual happiness, the latter strive to create the conditions for universal happiness. So...

Especially in the present order, which tolerates massive inequalities, which many people accept because they are told, like dutiful children, that it is for the greater good.

People are not like dutiful children, but the "present order" (for what it is) believes inequality is a human reality and the state should not try to eradicate it (current conservative position) while the opposing view thinks that wealth should be redistributed to some degree to approach some sort of equality (Labour welfarism). High-tax countries (Switzerland, say, or Norway) exist in the West, are generally accepted by their citizens, are content and well-run to an extent, but have other consequent(ial) problems.

Our European democracies have space for transgression to the extent that they are permissive societies -- which they are. There are taboos and limits -- artists afraid to turn their "controversial" work in the direction of Islam, say, or sexual crime, or snuff movies. Most of these are uncontroversial crimes, which I would not consider to be "amoral" or "pragmatic".

 

[craner]

Anyways, I still don't understand the 'masochistic' bit

Don't worry about that, I was messing around.

 

[luka]

rather than steady progression of left i would conceptualise history as irregular pendulum swings some quite violent but with the balance of power always with the Right simply because at some level the right is power. power held within a group at the expense of another group/s/
the left has won a series of concessions all of which the right is constantly trying to take back, sometimes successfully.

 

[vimothy]

The movement of the progressive societies has been uniform in one respect. Through all its course it has been distinguished by the gradual dissolution of family dependency and the growth of individual obligation in its place. The Individual is steadily substituted for the Family, as the unit of which civil laws take account. The advance has been accomplished at varying rates of celerity, and there are societies not absolutely stationary in which the collapse of the ancient organisation can only be perceived by careful study of the phenomena they present. But, whatever its pace, the change has not been subject to reaction or recoil, and apparent retardations will be found to have been occasioned through the absorption of archaic ideas and customs from some entirely foreign source. Nor is it difficult to see what is the tie between man and man which replaces by degrees those forms of reciprocity in rights and duties which have their origin in the Family. It is Contract.​

Henry S. Maine, Ancient Law

 

[vimothy]

It seems to me that when we elevate freedom to the status of an absolute good, things stop making sense.

Firstly, you can only be free relative to some restrictions. You can’t really be free in absolute terms.

Secondly, being free from restrictions doesn’t help us to understand what to do with those freedoms.

Thirdly, it’s not possible even in principle for everyone to be totally free. Many people want to act in ways that are mutually exclusive or antagonistic.

What does this mean?

Well, I think that it means that there is tension but also co-dependency between rules and freedoms. No restrictions, no freedom.

It means that either a positive conception of the good is required, which is oppressive or restrictive of individual freedoms, or that the domain of free choices is restricted to one in which all outcomes are mutually compatible, like the (managed) market, which is also restrictive.

Finally, it means that some restrictions are necessary to prevent, mediate and arbitrate conflict.