I don't claim to have given this matter much thought, so what follows is probably little more than a rant. Nevertheless, it's something that I must write down somewhere lest I forget it, and it turn out to be something significant after all. Besides, there is no good reason not to analyze one's thoughts and ideas as and when they flit across the screen of one's mind, for that is what our evolved brains are supposed to do.
My US History class is openly Marxist (and I knew that before I signed up for it), and I thought it would be useful in understanding Marxism or what the devotees of Karl Marx think is Marxism. (As I have never read or been directly exposed to Karl Marx's thoughts, except in the form of the less than useful quotations by him that are flung around like dung in political debates on the Internet, it might prove a bit too hasty to denounce the ideas as being his.)
I shall save this as a draft while I marshal my thoughts; and indeed, my thoughts need much marshaling, for I just lost the will to go through with this.
On the other hand, I am reading a history of Japan by David Murray that is rather interesting. Watching Samurai Champloo, I felt a great desire to be a Samurai in the Edo period. Shows like that are doubtless overly romantic; but what would we be without a touch of romance in our lives? By romance, of course, I don't refer to that thing on which modern society is so inexplicably fixated, of course, since I have no use for that sort of delusion; rather, I refer to that noblest school of art that upheld beauty as the greatest ideal. (I will not countenance any attempt to prop the vile corpse that is the modern love of ugliness against the marble columns of the house of art.)
What the hell, I shall write down my thoughts as I marshal them, for I can't be bothered to organize them today. (Not that I'm good at that anyway. I find analyses of any sort rather hard to do, mostly because I dread the thought of being wrong. We learn from our mistakes, yes; but we also learn from the mistakes of others; and given the choice, we would much prefer learning the same lesson from the mistakes of others to learning it from our own.)
There are some questions that need to be answered. Intellectual discussion today has been infected by that whose proper station is in art and the private lives of people - emotion. We are injoined to think with our hearts, and reason and rationality are dismissed with contempt as being the tools of the wealthy to oppress the poor. These so-called intellectuals make certain assumptions about people and the construct known as the "society" that they explain in terms that contribute little to the human understanding.
Why, for instance, is poverty so feverishly exalted in academic circles nowadays? Don't tell me I'm wrong: any man nowadays who talks about poor people accepts as self-evident that poor people are virtuous, and expects his audience to do the same. If it be a matter of justice, then there ought not to be any talk about the person's character: for an unjust action is unjust whether committed against a saint or a villain. I'm not trying to establish by these elegant phrases that which modern intellectuals so confusingly term "moral absolutism" (confusing thereby the objectivity of moral values with their independent existence in nature): I'm just stating that once an action has been deemed unjust, after reviewing all the available evidence, it ought not to matter whether the victim be poor or rich, a criminal or a man of unimpeachable social standing. The reader (for I choose to address my imaginary audience in this fashion) must not imagine that I'm suggesting that punishment leveled against a saint or a sinner must be considered either equally unjust or equally just. But this is not an exposition on jurisprudence; and in spite of my pontifical tone, I don't claim to know everything about the subject that I am in fact dealing with here.
The subject is the assumption of altruism that inheres in every delusional academic's daydreams about utopia. The conservatives of an earlier age (an age when people still respected knowledge and the ability to read and write, at least in the most elevated contexts) used the term "immamentizing the Eschaton" to characterize such thinking. It is a disapproving way of referring to the utopians' attempts to establish in this world the paradise that only belongs in the next. But I want to exclude from my conception of the world the complexities and extravagances of religious philosophies. I will merely say that the utopians are wrong in their assumptions about human nature, and the relevant refutations may be found in Stephen Pinker's book The Blank Slate and the works of other psychologists and biologists who research the same subject. (How do I know that they are right and not the utopians? That is an epistemological question that it would be best not to address here. I will just say that that Stephen Pinker and the others are right is far more likely than that the utopians are right.)
Where people are born with varying abilities and inclinations, economic inequality is only bound to develop. The free market system, moreover, is the most "democratic" system of economics there can be. (The utopians term "democratic" that which they believe benefits the most people - or everyone, namely the poor.) One can't force someone to pay a mediocre musician whose songs he doesn't like to listen to him. If one attempts to do that or thinks it just to do that, one needs to be slapped three times on each cheek with a wet fish, and then dangled by his ankles over the edge of a skyscraper while vultures circle overhead. So there will always be economic inequality.
Does that mean that "rich" and "poor" are arbitrary labels applied to people? In some sense, yes. In others, no. In a society of billionaires, would a millionaire be considered poor? One's first answer might be "No". But if one pause and think, one will soon realize that if no one who was less wealthy than the millionaire existed, then the millionaire would indeed be poor. Why is that? Because the billions would no longer be relevant, and the value of money would necessarily drop. Much of the confusion that exists in the minds of these poor little academics who believe themselves prophets of the Truth, high priests of the finest human knowledge arises from the fact that they think that money is something tangible, something that exists in the real world.
At any rate, the basic humanity that exists in human hearts (not in mine, but in the hearts of others) should never let people starve and die from poverty. To the extent that taxation saves people from starving and makes sure that they have the basic needs of food and shelter, I am not opposed to it. And education is necessary, too. But beyond that, I don't think it is anyone's duty to make sure his fellow men enjoy the pleasures of the senses that only the wealthy are able to enjoy. If one wants, for instance, to drive a fabulous car or drink expensive liquors, one will have to work for it. Expecting to be provided these through someone else's charity is stealing. Fucking stealing.
I don't think that's a difficult concept to grasp. The role of society (whatever that means) should be to save all of its members from starvation and lack of shelter and lack of education, and go a bit further if it can afford to do so. But people ought to keep their feelings to themselves, man up (or woman up - and equality means that this phrase must be used with the same meaning), and work.
My US History class is openly Marxist (and I knew that before I signed up for it), and I thought it would be useful in understanding Marxism or what the devotees of Karl Marx think is Marxism. (As I have never read or been directly exposed to Karl Marx's thoughts, except in the form of the less than useful quotations by him that are flung around like dung in political debates on the Internet, it might prove a bit too hasty to denounce the ideas as being his.)
I shall save this as a draft while I marshal my thoughts; and indeed, my thoughts need much marshaling, for I just lost the will to go through with this.
On the other hand, I am reading a history of Japan by David Murray that is rather interesting. Watching Samurai Champloo, I felt a great desire to be a Samurai in the Edo period. Shows like that are doubtless overly romantic; but what would we be without a touch of romance in our lives? By romance, of course, I don't refer to that thing on which modern society is so inexplicably fixated, of course, since I have no use for that sort of delusion; rather, I refer to that noblest school of art that upheld beauty as the greatest ideal. (I will not countenance any attempt to prop the vile corpse that is the modern love of ugliness against the marble columns of the house of art.)
What the hell, I shall write down my thoughts as I marshal them, for I can't be bothered to organize them today. (Not that I'm good at that anyway. I find analyses of any sort rather hard to do, mostly because I dread the thought of being wrong. We learn from our mistakes, yes; but we also learn from the mistakes of others; and given the choice, we would much prefer learning the same lesson from the mistakes of others to learning it from our own.)
There are some questions that need to be answered. Intellectual discussion today has been infected by that whose proper station is in art and the private lives of people - emotion. We are injoined to think with our hearts, and reason and rationality are dismissed with contempt as being the tools of the wealthy to oppress the poor. These so-called intellectuals make certain assumptions about people and the construct known as the "society" that they explain in terms that contribute little to the human understanding.
Why, for instance, is poverty so feverishly exalted in academic circles nowadays? Don't tell me I'm wrong: any man nowadays who talks about poor people accepts as self-evident that poor people are virtuous, and expects his audience to do the same. If it be a matter of justice, then there ought not to be any talk about the person's character: for an unjust action is unjust whether committed against a saint or a villain. I'm not trying to establish by these elegant phrases that which modern intellectuals so confusingly term "moral absolutism" (confusing thereby the objectivity of moral values with their independent existence in nature): I'm just stating that once an action has been deemed unjust, after reviewing all the available evidence, it ought not to matter whether the victim be poor or rich, a criminal or a man of unimpeachable social standing. The reader (for I choose to address my imaginary audience in this fashion) must not imagine that I'm suggesting that punishment leveled against a saint or a sinner must be considered either equally unjust or equally just. But this is not an exposition on jurisprudence; and in spite of my pontifical tone, I don't claim to know everything about the subject that I am in fact dealing with here.
The subject is the assumption of altruism that inheres in every delusional academic's daydreams about utopia. The conservatives of an earlier age (an age when people still respected knowledge and the ability to read and write, at least in the most elevated contexts) used the term "immamentizing the Eschaton" to characterize such thinking. It is a disapproving way of referring to the utopians' attempts to establish in this world the paradise that only belongs in the next. But I want to exclude from my conception of the world the complexities and extravagances of religious philosophies. I will merely say that the utopians are wrong in their assumptions about human nature, and the relevant refutations may be found in Stephen Pinker's book The Blank Slate and the works of other psychologists and biologists who research the same subject. (How do I know that they are right and not the utopians? That is an epistemological question that it would be best not to address here. I will just say that that Stephen Pinker and the others are right is far more likely than that the utopians are right.)
Where people are born with varying abilities and inclinations, economic inequality is only bound to develop. The free market system, moreover, is the most "democratic" system of economics there can be. (The utopians term "democratic" that which they believe benefits the most people - or everyone, namely the poor.) One can't force someone to pay a mediocre musician whose songs he doesn't like to listen to him. If one attempts to do that or thinks it just to do that, one needs to be slapped three times on each cheek with a wet fish, and then dangled by his ankles over the edge of a skyscraper while vultures circle overhead. So there will always be economic inequality.
Does that mean that "rich" and "poor" are arbitrary labels applied to people? In some sense, yes. In others, no. In a society of billionaires, would a millionaire be considered poor? One's first answer might be "No". But if one pause and think, one will soon realize that if no one who was less wealthy than the millionaire existed, then the millionaire would indeed be poor. Why is that? Because the billions would no longer be relevant, and the value of money would necessarily drop. Much of the confusion that exists in the minds of these poor little academics who believe themselves prophets of the Truth, high priests of the finest human knowledge arises from the fact that they think that money is something tangible, something that exists in the real world.
At any rate, the basic humanity that exists in human hearts (not in mine, but in the hearts of others) should never let people starve and die from poverty. To the extent that taxation saves people from starving and makes sure that they have the basic needs of food and shelter, I am not opposed to it. And education is necessary, too. But beyond that, I don't think it is anyone's duty to make sure his fellow men enjoy the pleasures of the senses that only the wealthy are able to enjoy. If one wants, for instance, to drive a fabulous car or drink expensive liquors, one will have to work for it. Expecting to be provided these through someone else's charity is stealing. Fucking stealing.
I don't think that's a difficult concept to grasp. The role of society (whatever that means) should be to save all of its members from starvation and lack of shelter and lack of education, and go a bit further if it can afford to do so. But people ought to keep their feelings to themselves, man up (or woman up - and equality means that this phrase must be used with the same meaning), and work.
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