Nothing to do with Anything

So, out of curiosity, I decided to 'calculate' my 'carbon footprint', googled the term, and tried three different services. One was carboncounter.org, a local [to portland] based aplication, another was climatecrisis.net, which was ?affiliated? with an inconvenient truth, and the last was the nature conservancy. I produce 15, 8, and 33 tonnes of carbon yearly, respective to each website. Wait, what? Same types of questions at each place, answered them all as similarily as I could, and got three vastly different answers. Okay then. Guess I'm not going to believe in all that without being more discerning than usual.

Security? Bah.

Why do governments think that they need to protect their citizens by stealing sensitive information about them when it's already been proven that governments are notoriously bad about keeping and using that information appropriately? Need I remind everyone of the times, yes, that's plural, and within the span of a week, intelligence documents were left on a train? [For details see: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7449255.stm] Forgotten, like an umbrella. I guess in the states that shouldn't be a problem, since civil servants don't take public transport here. The Patriot Act is the singlemost irresponsibly invasive bunch of tripe of a law ever. For those who argue 'only the guilty need fear the information collected', I say Bah! Humbug! Don't we live in the Age of Identity Theft? Some criminal, or terrorist for that matter, could use the 'innocuous' information collected and lost to impersonate me, thereby making me guilty of all the things they commit in my name. See, the Patriot Act does what the TSA does with all their new regulations: make the terrorists smarter. The harder something is to make happen, the smarter the person who eventually makes it happen. And meanwhile, your average civilian suffers horrible inconveniences and possible recriminations due to illkept data.

Motivation?

Why would people allow themselves to be dehumanized in the manner described by Huxley? That's my biggest question, how the 'brave new world' came into being in the first place. There's nothing 'brave' about it; anyone who would allow that to happen to themselves, their offspring, is a bleeding coward. Yellow-bellied, lily-livered, gnat-brained, godforsaken coward. For all the conclusions the story comes to, I cannot but get stuck on this question every time I read it. I can understand the 'advantages' of a system that allows corporate manufacture of consumers, but not what cataclysmic event could convince people to go along with it.

The Nature of Terrorism

So, on 30 November, the BBC posted an article online entitled "The Age of 'Celebrity Terrorism'", a response to government and news speculation into the cause of the Mumbai attacks last week. To read the article, here's the address. Otherwise, I'll try to paraphrase.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7755684.stm

Paul Cornish lays out his interpretation of how the attacks on Mumbai have changed the face of terrorism. Before, and as in V for Vendetta, terrorists laid out their purpose. This dictated the kind of response they received. In Mumbai, the attackers left everything to be infered by the government.

'And perhaps so little is known of the terrorists' cause, because they simply did not feel the need to have one. [...] This could also have been a plan which had a large gap where mission, cause or vision statement ought to have been.'

Instead of terrorism with a purpose, 'we have come to the point where casually self-radicalised, sociopathic individuals can form a loose organisation, acquire sufficient weapons and equipment for a few thousand dollars, make a basic plan of action and indulge in a violent expression of their generalised disaffection and anomie.'

He also points out that at least one terrorist was wearing 'versace' [or a rip off]. Where V wears a mask, the Mumbai terrorists made no effort to hide their identity, but wore 'designer' clothes. Makes a person wonder.

Creation of Empowerment

Fascism unites people through their insecurities, not their strengths. Our critical culture has bred "confidence issues". Perhaps this is due to the competitive nature of capitalism; perhaps due to the culture of entitlement that identifies the haves and the have nots. Regardless, the current society in America is one which promotes victimization and therefor violence.
When reality clashes with what is purported to be reality, disenfranchisement occurs. When there is talk of a level playing field, but all monetary aid given to school districts for special programs goes to ESL classes, or special ed. classes, the majority comes to know that the playing fied is being leveled against them. When a student isn't being challenged to their full potential because the teacher is stretched too thin by dealing with the students who should have been held back for whatever reason, society fails that student, and that student will either teach himself or ensure that others cannot learn either. Probably through violence. When a teacher neglects to spend time with the student who has no difficulty with the subject matter, that student can become starved for attention, and jealous of whatever group seems to be dominating the teacher's time. As Time is a zero-sum entity, this inequality fractures society, leaving it ripe for fascist agendas.

Perhaps a biblical Job-ism

When comparing Hitler's vision of fascism to Mussolini's, Hitler at least succinctly outlines his critique and vision. He believes in the holiness of natural selection, and that man must aid this process by mating only with men who equal himself. Suffering promotes improvement. Only when he brings his mistaken assumptions about Jews into the mix does he cease for a moment to make rhetorical sense. [I have no clue where the first came from, but once that is established, the rest simply build upon it] He then goes on to outline the supreme lack of logic in his opponents' methods of creating an ideal, 'peaceful' society "we would have to wage wars in order to arrive at pacifism". When the strongest are all that's left, he agrees that this kind of peace might be attainable, but so long as there is suffering to weed out the weak, let the weak suffer. Especially since "all great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning." America travels the path to sure destruction with her new president elect, a prime example of 'defilement of the blood'.

The urge to preserve the species leads men to form governments. As such, the stare is but the "organization of a community of physically and psychologically similar living beings for the better facilitation of the maintenance of their species". The state, however, requires the sacrifice of the individual for the betterment of the species; suffering for improvement!

Yay Anarchism!

Goldman makes some grossly positive assumptions about humanity. She goes back to the social contract theory, and says that 'wealth consists in things of utility and beauty'. People should join together only when they wish to. She assumes that men can protect themselves against injustice. In short, she states that Anarchism empowers the individual in a way that no other ideology does. It one-ups freedom.
I read Ayn Rand extensively, and her concept of creators vs. second-handers comes into play with anarchism as well. In a structured society, people doing what they hate to do will of course make it harder [via 'crime'] for people trying to create beauty. In an unstructured society, people are free to make great things, and trade those for things that other people make. The natural conclusion is that if everybody makes something that they want to make, they will make it well, thereby bringing both happiness and satisfaction to all.

Apropo...

Thought this would be fitting, as tomorrow is Bonfire Night, as well as the day after our election. Burn some effigies. Woo.

And we're starting Anarchism.

...

Like I said, fitting.

Found it at johngushue.typepad.com

Communism through the ages...

Today I'd like to go on a little segue from the reading [Bernstein vs. Luxemburg]. See, the 'Communist Manifesto' was published in 1848 in the German language in London, but as of that date in the Indiana Territory of the United States of America, two experiments in communal living had failed. [as have all but three in the world, though those are close as of the date of composition...] I'm talking about a little place called New Harmony, Indiana, where I happen to have spent the past summer.
In 1814 a gentleman named Johann Georg Rapp bought a tract of land on the Wabash river to establish a religeous commune for his fellow immigrant/persecuted sectarians. I find this entertaining because he had to raise the capital to do so. I shall now paraphrase how he did so, a full description of his exploits may be found here:
{http://www.usi.edu/hnh/pdf/Expanded%20Text%20on%20the%20Harmonist%20Society.pdf}
Anyhow, by pooling the funds from his followers, he aquired 30,000 acres of prime Indiana swamp. The Harmonists moved there, made the land habitable, and then he rewrote the charter making it nigh impossible for those wishing to leave his sect to have their investment refunded. [One should want to leave if one wasn't a prominent member of the sect and wished to, say, get Married, as the Harmonist principles promoted chastity]

Rapp used capitalist principles to found his community living experiment, and when it failed, he sold the entire town and used teh proceeds to relocate himself. And some followers[Irony?] New Harmony failed because some members of the Harmonists from the old world [Germany] moved to New Harmony but had incredibly different views of how they ought to act while being members of the sect [return again to the previous example of marriage, though Trade and Malaria did figure in]. Wait, wait, wait! They were too far from a trade route, ergo move... we return to Bernstein's idea that socialism needs to change simply into giving means and power to the working class.

The second experiment stemmed from the guys who purchased the land from Rapp, William Maclure and Robert Owen. They tried to establish a commune for educational and equality reasons. Unfortunately, the scientific founding of this experiment meant that they didn't focus enough on agriculture, and it was torn apart because of inequalities in Labor. Hmm... 'Let us intellecutals study while you proletariates farm' doesn't sound like very well thought out communal living to me. Kinda like going back to serfdom. At least the 'leaders' were 'working' though.

New Harmony produced two examples of why communism/socialism fail. Human beings, and most other mammals for that matter, work best in a hierarchic society. This may be due to a lack of self confidence on a personal level. Perhaps socialists would do better to promote individual self confidence as the means to overarching equality, instead of, to borrow a phrase from Schlafley, neuterizing sociery.

We the Slaves

One of the best points Marx makes, especially in light of our modern economic crisis, is that the current ruling class is 'unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery.' Every man deserves a chance to earn his own bread, and not have to exist on the handouts of those more fortunate than he. The other point of his that resonates with me is that 'In proportion, ..., as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases.' This is one that I have experience with.
Summer after sophomore year, I worked at Williamstown Theatre Festival. They have a reputation for doing good work and teaching their carpenters a lot. Also known as three days off over a span of eleven weeks and working no less than ten hours a day. Generally fourteen. Sixteen for three weeks in a row. I made an average of one dollar per hour. The running joke was that children in Bangladesh were making more than the carpenters at Williamstown. And I learned my lesson. I know what I'm worth now. I also know that had I not spent the time at Williamstown, I would not be the craftsman I am now. Only in a place where the contract is not made for me can I leave because of poor working conditions. And because of the poor working conditions at Williamstown, the talent of people going there to work is decreasing. In a capitalist society, you can vote with your dollars. You can vote with your labour.

On Being Female

Until I read Schlafly, I didn't know that others felt that feminists were inherently evil. Points of hers to that effect:
Feminists believe that 'Women must be made equal to men in their ability not to become pregnant and not to be expected to care for babies they may bring into the world.' While this comment brought a hysteric fit of giggles upon me, it's simply absurd.
Due to the movement to make the above statement true, we've moved from a world where 'women have always cared for their newborn babies. They didn't need any schooling to teach them how. They didn't need any welfare workers to tell them it's their social obligation.' But the feminist movement has brought more horrid layers to gov't.
I prefer to be called Miss and dislike how women's liberationists have gotten the gov't to 'forbid schools and colleges from identifying women students as Miss or Mrs.' As an unmarried woman, I deserve to have my accomplishments belong to me alone, unsupported by any male counterpart. When I am married, I shall be happily so, to someone with whom I shall enjoy sharing my accomplishments. When 81% of women would rather be addressed as Miss or Mrs., 19% have no right to legislate that I cannot be called thus.
"The women's liberation movement, which promotes unisexual values and androgeny, contains within it 'a social and cultural death wish and the end of the civilization that endorses it.'" Why would you try to be something that you're not? Lying to yourself doesn't make others believe you. Liberated Roman women destroyed their families ergo the whole bloody Empire!
The two basic errors of the feminist movement: 1) No emotional or cognitive difference between the sexes 2) women should strive to be like men. I am not a man. I have tits and am not ashamed of it. I will use them to my advantage when I choose to do so. They are not a disadvantage. Damnit.
Equality =/ Justice. Neither does reparation of past lacks of equality.
Uniformity does not trump diversity. Uniformity = boring and inbred. Inbred leads to cognitive issues. AKA mental retardation. Which is bad for mankind.
Sex neutral, or other 'politically correct' language is silly. And not silly in the clown at the circus kind of way. Silly in the retarded kind of way.
A woman who chooses to be a homemaker should not be looked down upon, Damnit!

As for the 'Good Wife's Guide', since the feminist movement got all up in arms, family life has suffered. Period. Most girls who move out on their own cannot cook or clean for themselves, and I know families today who live in refuse simply because the wife refuses to clean after her husband. Not to mention how all but four of the principles laid out in the article merely suggest ways to interact in a positive manner with other people. So long as the husband respects the wife, why should she be averse to doing nice things for him like making his favourite meal and providing means for him to relax?

I am not the traditional woman of the prefeminist movement. I work in what has been primarily a mans vocation since time before time. While I feel an added pressure to succeed because I am female, I am equally as chauvinist as the gents when it comes to other women trying to be a carpenter. I expect more of another woman than I do of her male counterparts because she is defying tradition. I also respect her more if she succeeds. (P.S. The only ones who manage to do work in the field after the age of 27 are balls-on with their work and generally better than the gents)

The Shadow Politics: Economics

According to our dear mentor Milton Friedman, a truly free market allows a truly free populace. Government exists to protect people from coercion. Every interaction and contract is voluntary. And from this tenet, I shall lay out a number of my arguments for a number of circumstances.

The idea that every interaction and contract is voluntary gives the in every circumstance to every individual. If the circumstance is disagreeable for any reason, either party can simply walk away. All a person has to do is decide that he no longer desires to partake in an exchange, and it's over. There is no obligation to anyone else or anything besides the individual. [Bless Ayn Rand for bringing me to this realization] If I make a contract with you, and it goes poorly for me but I do nothing to get away, I have no one to blame but myself.

Wait, the critics say, what if the person keeps you in the contract by threatening you with a gun? As Friedman says, 'the fundamental threat to freedom is power to coerce'. [Find here my nod to the second amendment and my editorial comment that this amendment is a way to keep oneself from being coerced, so purchase, carry, and know how to effectively use a weapon propelled by gunpowder] The Second Amendment grants us Americans the right, and duty, to protect ourselves from coercion. Thereby the government has become self limiting, giving me, as a citizen and freeman, more freedom.

However, freedom can only be preserved for 'people who are willing to practice self-denial, for otherwise freedom degenerates into license and irresponsibility.' So, now I have a gun. That means that instead of being the one coerced, I can do the coercion. Not so fast now y'all, having freed myself from coercion, I should now know it's evils, and disdain to visit them upon others.

Apparently by a number, I meant two. Please forgive my lack of cohesiveness as whatever filter makes inner dialogue understandable to persons outside of my brain is malfunctioning as of late. These blogs, since they are ?supposed to be collecting my gut reaction?, make sense to me in that when I revisit, I shall have some sense of what profundities traversed my neurons while I read, but ergo will not be horribly useful to my audience.

Barter!

The excerpt of Adam Smith's 'Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations' focused on two things:

A. The way in which production/manufacture of goods becomes faster when it is departmentalised

B. That if man had no propensity to trade goods of his production for the goods of another's production, man would have no reason to try to make more/better.

When man lives in society, he finds that no longer can he do all that he needs to survive. He has 'almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren' and must show that 'it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them.' And so a barter system develops in which goods are traded for goods. [best quote ever: 'Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog.']

And now a segue to The Fed! See, the Federal Reserve Bank has a series of educational comic book-style publications which can be found at http://www.newyorkfed.org/publications/result.cfm?comics=1 couple deal with the history of money, the more entertaining of which is entitled 'Once Upon A Dime'. On an island nation, there's a fisherman who wants to marry a doctor. They discover that to get flowers for the wedding, they have to trade fish for spears, spears for coconuts, coconuts for a net, and the net for some flowers. That's when they decide that barter is too much work and invent money. All through the second chapter of the excerpt, I'm reminded of the [poorly drawn, badly scripted] comic explanation of barter, and money, and thought I'd put this resource out there.

Imperiaist Tendancies

So, both the imperialists and anti-imperialists of the turn of the century compare America unfavorably to Spain. [This is when I decide I need to brush up on my world history] And then there's the issue of the Philippines, where there is violence and for some reason America decided to step in. [This is when I go off to wikipedia for a while] ... Okay, so after Spain lost the Spanish-American War, she ceded the Philippines, which were already in revolt, to America, along with Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Guam. The Filipino revolutionists were no more happy under America's banner, and continued to fight until 1913, with a final death toll of over one million Filipinos. [In 1946 we gave them Independence, after they'd been occupied by the Japanese for ten years]

So why did we keep the Philippines for 48 years? Especially when our gov't obviously wasn't working for them, anathema to our very premise of gov't [as set out in the first pph of the League's argument]. According to Sen. Beveridge, 'it is ours to save that soil for liberty and civilization.' He believes we have a duty to 'free' everyone. Wait, I thought we freed them from Spain... Where'd the logic go? Oh, the Filipinos are uncivilized, so we should govern them anyway, even though they've been trying to gain their freedom and govern themselves for twenty years and a million people are willing to die for that. Okay then. Perfect sense. His other arguments are equally untenable, one being that we 'need' the land to be able to export all the produce our country, which is 'perpetually revitalized by the virile, manproducing workingfolk of all the earth' [immigrants apparently procreate with more vigour than the rest of us] creates; that we must not be 'misers of liberty'; that God will favour us, as one parable in the Bible can be stretched to mean.

I ken our darling anti-imperialists much better than I do the aforementioned Beveridge. Dude, until we can sort the mess that we've made for ourselves on our home territory, we should stay the hell out of other people's business. 'The United States have always protested against the doctrine of international law which permits the subjugation of the weak by the strong.' The League argues that no ruler in the spirit of improvement may do something to break the social contract, as Abraham Lincoln stated that 'no man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent'. And then, the League proposes that, if you agree, you oust those criminals from office by Voting! Brilliant!

If you believe in [representative] democracy, protect it! Vote! As for subjugated countries, if they deserve liberty, they will make it happen. [We did, France did, Britain did; it's not our duty to give it to people who can't govern themselves. That'd be like giving a chipmunk a grenade] As for imperial countries, well, congratulations, you have military power and your colonies don't. Kinda like running into a large person, us wee ones just bounce off and get mowed down. Perhaps this connection comes simply because I have the '33000 calorie day', a History Channel special about the super morbidly obese, going in the background, but imperialism now aligns itself with glutton in my mind. Ooh, tasty country, let me gobble it up! Like canolli! And then you end up being confined to bed for years, living off other peoples' kindness, until your overworked organs explode and twenty firemen cannot get you out of your apartment. Congratulations! I'm glad you were such a model country. We all want to pave a road directly to doom!

[Imperialism is bad]

Black Humor

Frederick Douglas' speech, and the way he treats upon delicate, especially to today's ears, subjects, have got to be the precursor to current stand up comics. Here he is, a fugitive slave, addressing the President of the white men who condone his misery, cracking subtle jokes at the irony of circumstance. 'Such a declaration of agreement on my part would not be worth much to anybody. It would, certainly, prove nothing, as to what part I might have taken, had I lived during the great controversy of 1776.' Hell, it's great for him to agree, but he's seventy-six years too late, and black to boot. Black meaning that no one would bother listening to him; black meaning that had he been alive and of fighting age seventy-six years previous, he should still have been a slave, ergo would have had to take the part of whomever owned him, be his master Torrie or Rebel. Douglas later plays up his ignorance, having taken his audience through the causes of the Revolution, then saying that they should instruct him in regard to those causes. Ah, but they have instructed the 'crushed and bleeding slave'. And I bet they instructed him quite well. Imagine an energetic Will Smith, charming, funny, blatantly pointing out that to a slave, 4 July does but mock exactly what it celebrates so voraciously. Perhaps it's still too soon to be giggling at that.

The Harm Principle

I could have underlined the entirety of the excerpt of John Stewart Mill's 'On Liberty'. Except then I'd be back where I started. Instead, here's a distillation with quotes in Italics and my comments in periwinkle. (I actually follow the chronology as presented, so if you desire to know the context in which the quotes come, it shouldn't be too hard.)

The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.
If you make a move to kill me, I can protect myself by either killing you or calling the law, who will keep you from killing me even if that means that you are imprisoned for the rest of your life. However, if you make a move to kill yourself, I mayn't stop you unless you plan to do so by driving a bus into a nursery school.


Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.
Can this be more explicit?

Those who are still in a state to require being taken care of by others, must be protected against their own actions as well as against external injury.
Thou must prevent those who would take advantage of children or fools. And ensure that said innocents don't harm themselves. Beware grandmothers who set their wards on kitchen counters; when they melt their shoe onto the stove, you are liable and shall be punished for said sinful act.

A ruler full of the spirit of improvement is warranted in the use of any expedients that will attain an end, perhaps otherwise unattainable.
Um, wait a minute. How does said ruler know that these things will benefit me? And how does said ruler classify people as barbarians in the need of improvement? So long as I have become capable of being improved by free and equal discussion, a ruler may do nothing more than facilitate the exercise of that capability. And if I'm disallowed to participate in free and equal discussion, well, there will be a small scale rebellion. And by small, I do of course mean a total coup, wherein those who tried to silence me will be permanently silenced in a gruesome and educational manner. Wait a minute. I just used any expedients that will attain my improvements. . . Oh yeah, I am justified because I enabled free and equal discussion. At least there was no circular reasoning involved. . .

I regard utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions.
Not to tread on questionable ethics or Bill Clinton, but that depends on how you define utility. I mean, look at the miasma around Terry Schiavo. In that case, what was grounded on the permanent interests of man as a progressive being? Man being mankind? Or the individual in question? And how can anyone outside of that person judge?

But there is a sphere of action in which society, as distinguished from the individual, has, if any, only an indirect interest; comprehending all that portion of a person's life and conduct that affects only himself, or if it also affects others, only with their free, voluntary, and undeceived consent and participation. [...] It comprises, first, the inward domain of consciousness; [...] secondly, [...] liberty of tastes and pursuits; [...] Thirdly, from this liberty of each individual, follows the liberty, within the same limits, of combination among individuals; freedom to unite.
Herein find an arguement for the legality of all currently illegal substances for human consumption. By making them legal, crime associated with said substances will neccessarily decrease. If one chooses to ravage one's own body, what business is it of even the family members near to that person? They may simply choose not to participate in interaction with said individual, and seek aid should that person choose to force his company upon the family. As for affected children, the state may protect them from physical harm, as the state already does.

No one pretends that actions should be as free as opinions. Then follows that opinions aren't exempt either if they instigate a mischievious act. Just because an opinion instigates doesn't mean that other thinking human beings will act. And if they do, so long as the person whose opinion informed their actions does not participate in said actions, so what? A person is responsible only for his own actions, not for the actions of fellow humans. Remember the sovereignty principle?

The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited; he must not make himself a nuisance to other people. I define nuisance as repeated badgering. Painting those of us who wear fur coats red, thereby ruining our beloved fur, and calling us murderers classifies. Wearing a fur coat does not. Protesting gatherings by shouting at participants as they try to enter peacefully classifies. Attending a controversial gathering does not so long as one does not attack the protesters.

Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing. Brave New World? Anyone?

allo.