ignorance has to be broached. One can explain a point - yet the
ignorance usually remains because it's so hard to teach self-learning -
partly because it's so unrewarding in terms of jobs and so
uncomfortable to bear, I'd say the truth is we've been 'killing
hope'as Blum maintains, under what is a holocaust of the American
Empire (you can read his book free via googling for the pdf - you
won't have). The issue is about learning a positive history - but
many will see it as anti-American. To maintain a 'positive' (and
false) view against the evidence you exclude the evidence and form a
world-view that justifies what happens. I'm not for handing
government over to a bunch of Arabs or Pakistanis (to name a few) with
guns. I'm not for solutions bound it in our western clown
perspectives either.
One can see, as argument progresses, that unwanted ends (against
positive history in the real sense)emerge in that one might end up
leading just as leaders always have. How do we avoid such outcomes?
How do we encourage innovation (do you know what this is, or do you
think Apple and Microsoft are innovators?) without unwarranted power
accruing tgmalo the successful? Many innovations did not make the
inventors rich, or even those first to market.
In giving medicine to the third world, one often has to confront local
power. You need to know a lot of negatives to get round this and work
with it. I've kicked my way through some of that, often wishing I had
more than an AKM as back up. The solutions are fairly obvious in
terms of outcomes - the questions are all about how in the blinding
kitsch of eno-classical economics and general boneheadedness. This
latter may mean 'you'. Even you Chris might ask yourself (I take your
question as from a mate) who does put anything positive forward in non-
intercourse-the-paradigmal-synergistic penguin form.
We need to take the streets is the start - mostly because our clever
people don't care. Then come questions about what to do and how to do
it. But what use asking the questions until enough work is done on
what won't just lead to default positions and history repeating itself
because most are to idle to learn any etc. There no room for the
grand plan in here - literally on time outs - but also because most
just can't even imagine the depth of study needed to know about the
existing house of cards. I can say what's needed in a few lines - but
the nay saying they would induce is massive. Much of what needs doing
is to understand the relation between actual knowledge and what those
who have it do unto others (and themselves) by cornering wealth. And
to find broader methods of 'teaching' to bring more up to speed (this
would not be in schools or universities as now).
Try doing my lead carbonate experiment in the middle of a neutron
star. You'll find you need to know a lot about the 'environment' to
get it done. We know what needs doing - reasonable equality,
innovation-fair-competiveness and to stop power acceretion away from
democratic control without inane bureaucracy - but we're struggling in
a "neutron star" environment. How would you go about giving micro-
finance to someone in Yemen (Ido) or Rwanda (I do). Got a couple of
hundred quid and you can start. I guess you 'positives' ain't doing
this or would give the money to an agency that ensures it is wasted.
I'm not this hard onmy students - except the better ones.
On Oct 21, 9:37 pm, archytas <nwte...@gmail.com> wrote:
> My guess is that modern rationality starts with Descartes - though he
> doesn't provide a template, just some ground we can get into the
> issues through. The great warnings to us on 'solutions' is real
> history and the failure of Germany as the most cultured and scientific
> nation culminating in "Hitler" - the lesson being so-called triumphs
> in rationality, science and culture are dreadful fantasies. I would
> hope in this that German friends would not see any blaming in this -
> the culpability is wider-set in imperialism and our still stupid
> notions of leadership. In intellectual terms we are supposedly in
> postmoderism (really read that and weep in a different way from
> Gabby's sonnet). The crisis is one of legitimation and the need for
> an incredulous stance towards grand narratives like religion and the
> 'wealth creation' espoused in the status quo of oligarchy (rather than
> competitive capitalism).
>
> I'd say the big issue is dishonesty and the ease with which we swallow
> chronic lies whole as the facts stand up against them. The idiocy is
> in demanding paragons of virtue in politics. Honesty is not so easily
> produced. As a population we remain crudely ignorant and politicians
> can rely on this. I can prove over and again that voters don't know
> what they vote for - the result being my regard as a smartarse,
> "commie" or whatever suits. We get bogged down by popular opinion
> (Idols in Bacon) and inane rationalist fantasies as to whether god
> exists or not to which there is only 'answer' in sentient (Hume). We
> rightly point to failures in communism whilst failing to spot we have
> already been carried away in the anti-communism (even anti-democratic
> management - see the use of the UnAmerican stuff against quite mild
> adherents of such) that drives our resources into the hands of a tiny
> few, leaving even 1 in 5 Americans poor etc. and wars all over -let
> alone poverty through massive over-breeding and climate change.
>
> The answer is a massive change in our ways, including world-government
> - but the rub here is this can't involve the kind of people doing
> politics at the whim of banksterism and it does mean not allowing
> 'riches' as currently conceived, which many think 'fair' owing to
> propaganda. The statement on population ignorance itself needs review
> as it can't itself be just another bid for leadership and power. On
> the odd occasion I do chemistry for schoolkids I do experiments that
> go bang, flash light and then a tame one in which heating Lead
> Carbonate turns it yellow before it melts. The kids rarely understand
> (which isn't the point). Teaching economics is much the same in
> result - most end up with no clue and would need to be in intensive
> educational care to get a grok. I am much more confident in my
> scientific prognostications than on those of how we should live and a
> viable economics. Yet the world of science is much less authoritarian
> than that of public opinion, despite the techniques being much more
> reliable. If you don't want to listen properly on how to make,say,
> gunpowder - then you're free to blow your hands off. Yet how do I
> tell anyone not to have children in excess? Recruit Indira Gandhi?
> How do we get work done - sit around drinking tea voting?
>
> The basic idea is often to get everyone up to western standards - yet
> what 'standard' do we offer? Planet burning firsts? A model that has
> always favoured a few rich with a minor blip after WW2 and is as debt-
> ridden as ancient Mesopotamia? A big part of the answer is the
> setting up of complex regulation that prevents undue power accretion.
> The human tendency in this is towards bureaucracy and that runs into n
> iron cage (Weber). I believe computing offers new avenues -but we'd
> have to guard against this being perverted in the usual ways. The key
> roadblock is world peace and not believing we could have it and the
> daft assumption just laying down our 'guns' would produce it.
>
> There's a massive literature that could help - the problem being few
> read and would even watch if our media could summarise it. Should I
> issue a bibliography? This doesn't even work at university.
>
> The first solution is getting resources into individual and collective
> control with banking as a utility (rather than designed to steal them
> as happens now even with micro-credit). This itself should produce
> enough argument to fill several books - but watch this space. The
> move is broadly capitalist but anti-oligarchy pro-democracy in the
> sense of (Popper's) control of those allocated 'power'. Questions
> immediately arise as to what is not allowable - like a bunch of
> Taliban mistreating women and trying to build an H-bomb or burning
> coal for the hell of it.
>
> To see this as other than 'castle-in-the-air' one needs an
> understanding of social economics and the mad stuff of the mainstream
> and what its results are. This requires a lot of negation -something
> widely perceived (still, long after science) perceived as negative
> because of Idols. Rigsy started a thread on Freud in which this and
> the paranoid-schizoid and 'depressive' positions could have been
> explored. This level of intellectualism can even lead to 'academic
> bullying' claims in universities in these dumbed-down days. A good
> start would be Naomi Klein's 'Shock Doctrine' would be a start, but
> only a start (you can get it on Movshare and the like).
>
> I'm much more positive than most people I know in spirit, from running
> myself into the ground and desperate tackles to trying new stuff. One
> meets this negative stuff everywhere from underperforming sports teams
> to simple changes like not buying vastly over priced ink and toner and
> getting advice from the data protection officer that means don't put
> anything on your project website. The 'highly positive', of course
> ain't going through the Pillars of Hercules because they'll fall off
> the edge. The positive question is nearly always 'what junk are we in
> thrall to now' - what is today's "flat earth theory". The big
> challenge isn't ignorance but incompetence even to the point of not
> recognising one's own. The arguments many think they take part in are
> carefully structured inside highly parochial propaganda (Idols).
> Rather than learning through gleaning the facts, most people just
> reinforce there dullard positions - this means you (or me if I don't
> check myself).
>
> Most, even in this group,lack enough knowledge to have more than mere
> opinion, whether on how to make TNT or understand what the banking
> crisis is. Much of what I say won't work would not be negative if you
> knew more, but seen as pointing to reasons for radical change.
> Classic moves include atheism meaning I must lack morality or am not
> open-minded about god possibilities - you know the form. With, say,
> nitroglycerin manufacture you can leave it to me (at a safe distance)
> - but why are we generally so reluctant to learn what is available on
> ideological and economic-practical issues? What model of the positive
> do you guys work with - Mollyarian letting fear slip away (which is
> complex in her elaborations, not barking), how would you get across a
> street under fire (the answer is you don't unless there is no
> alternative) - how do you assess what is negative?
>
> Many of the issues discussed in groups like this are deeply
> constrained because most people don't study and have false views on
> fact. I see this as key in developing 'democracy' - I'm anti-democrat
> in the same terms as Joseph Heller's lovely book - but how many have
> read it and would recognise I'm not being negative but asking for a
> review of the ideas and practices for better, wider control of
> authority and how we might achieve it? Try making nitro by just
> bunging the constituents together (goodbye you). There would be a lot
> of 'don't do that it's a waste of time' in my teaching on that. You
> don't get "democracy" through a voting system alone. We can't get
> near economic fairness until we realise just how negative the
> 'positive modern world' is and the complexity we need to handle.
>
> On Oct 21, 7:23 pm, Chris Jenkins <digitalprecip...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > I'd be interested to see that enumerated as well. A frequent meme in Neil's
> > writing is that he doesn't feel most offered solutions have any real value,
> > once percolated down through human greed and incompetence.
>
> > On Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 1:24 PM, Allan H <allanh1...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Neil how about listing the potential solutions as you see them? I would
> > > apperciate it as it is not something I have a talent for..
> > > Thank you
> > > Allan
>
> > > On Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 5:47 PM, archytas <nwte...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > >> I think there is always a standing excuse on the greater good - that
> > >> 'irrational capitalism' provides for it better than any rational
> > >> solution. Our thinking is puny at such levels and we have allowed
> > >> over-breeding into poverty just at the point we could have established
> > >> sensible regulation without cruelty. Much of the discussion is
> > >> barking - like Chinese oligarchs saying we will all have to work
> > >> harder and longer when There is actually not that much work to do
> > >> thanks to productivity (other than in making oligarchs richer).
> > >> We talk in moral argument only at simplistic levels - however abstruse
> > >> the language gets and have little grasp of how complex systems work
> > >> and how they might be controlled. Gabby is always right in my view to
> > >> point to the issue that control easily becomes the problem as even
> > >> legitimate authority is used illegitimately. Yet there is always a
> > >> default and this is what the oligarchs rely on. It's almost like
> > >> those pesky downloads that screw your browser settings Allan.
>
> > >> If one takes a concept like 'artifactuality' - roughly those things
> > >> produced as artifacts (which splendidly moves nothing) - we find...
>
> read more »
0 comentários:
Postar um comentário