Now if all of us said that WE were the Chosen People of God and that the Jews were to be slaughtered, man woman and child, taking no survivors, as is endorsed by the Holy Bible whenever God picks his enemies (the very Old God of the Tribal Pastoralists… a coincidence, surely, that a Warlike People should have a Warlike God) then it could be said that WE hate the Jews if it were us going after them. But that is exactly NOT how it is. The way it is presented in the Scriptures is that the Jews have been ordered (that is, they have God’s explicit permission) to annihilate us all and to take all of our Land. For themselves. Everything is okay as long as the Chosen People are happy.
But who is exploiting who?
Who is now victimizing who?
Why is it that Nazis were wrong to be the Master Race, that Caucasians are wrong to be White Supremacists, but it is totally fine for Zionists to be the Chosen People of God. If looking down is ‘hatred’ then how much clearer could it be? Who can’t see that “Chosen” means good and that everybody else must be inferior by comparison.
If the Jews present circumstances are the measure of being hated, then it would be a virtual blessing for any Nation or Ethnic Group to be ‘hated’ as much as the Jews. Such ‘hatred’ would guarantee that America would bestow more money upon them than America even spends upon their own Education or Health Care. And such Hatred would assure that the World, at large, would blink their eyes at ‘God Chosen’ aggressions while approving of the severest of murderous crackdowns whenever the victims of the Chosen People’s aggression so much as squirmed even in the least. The Occupied Peoples really should just smile and hand over the deeds to their property to the People who have decided to describe themselves as the Chosen People of God. I’m sure the Jews have copywrited it by now. After all, the Nazis wouldn’t have used “Master Race” if they could have gotten “Chosen People of God”.
Back in 1975 the Israelis minted a coin for general distribution, a part of their currency… for cigarette machines… for making change…. It was to be in everybody’s pockets, it was worth about twenty five U.S. pennies… it was to be everywhere… anyway, on the back of that coin was a map labeled “Greater Israel” and it showed a boundary starting at the Mediterranean where we understand that Israel now starts, but it went on Eastward to subsume the entire territories that we now should think of as Syria, Jordan, and Iraq. Israel was practically declaring War in ever so clear a way. On their money. Is there anything else they take more seriously than their money?
And all this time they have been complaining that people hate them.
I guess they confuse fear for hate.
And since most Powerful America has volunteered to be the most virtually enslaved Colony of Israel (the Fundamentalist Protestants think that God will favor them for it), it has become very reasonable to fear the Jews. When it is the Truth of Truths that no American President, or damned few Senators or Congressmen, can be elected without the support of the Jewish-Zionist Lobby, then it is tantamount to concluding that it is not America that is the World’s last and most powerful Super Power, but the Jews, who have a strangle hold upon the American Government.
So, no, nobody hates the Jews. Or they are too afraid to admit it.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Short Essay or Long Essays
As they say, damned if you do, damned you don’t.
If you write an all inclusive essay that incorporates all human and metaphysical knowledge into a System that answers all things and provides all Knowledge and reconciles to all Wisdom, but it takes more than 200 words, then you are derided as being a boring windbag. But if you are brief and don’t completely nail down the entire physical and spiritual universe, then you are called stupid. Like I said, damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
The answer is “Moderation in all things”. For an introduction, simply make your assertive point. What are you going to present? For the relatively short body of your essay simply state the bare outline of your evidence. If anybody takes the bait… that is, if anybody pursues your Thread, then you can expand on your evidence. But you do not want to drown people with detail all at once. Perhaps there is no wiser aphorism than to not give one’s advise until it is asked for.
If you write an all inclusive essay that incorporates all human and metaphysical knowledge into a System that answers all things and provides all Knowledge and reconciles to all Wisdom, but it takes more than 200 words, then you are derided as being a boring windbag. But if you are brief and don’t completely nail down the entire physical and spiritual universe, then you are called stupid. Like I said, damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
The answer is “Moderation in all things”. For an introduction, simply make your assertive point. What are you going to present? For the relatively short body of your essay simply state the bare outline of your evidence. If anybody takes the bait… that is, if anybody pursues your Thread, then you can expand on your evidence. But you do not want to drown people with detail all at once. Perhaps there is no wiser aphorism than to not give one’s advise until it is asked for.
Really Stupid People
What they say of insanity is this, that a true lunatic will not suspect that he is crazy. So a genuine schizophrenic will never doubt the voices he hears. So here we find an instance of a true contradiction, that is, that if you think you are crazy, you’re not. I think they have called that a logical catch.
The same must be true of really stupid people, that they do not suspect themselves of being stupid.
Well, one might ask, how do these extremely stupid people account for a World that must to them make no sense? What do they make of people who talk in complexities that they themselves cannot possibly follow? Well, they have a surprising method for dealing, and I’ve seen it again and again from stupid people. They turn it around and say that the Smart People are the ones who are not making any sense. They say the World isn’t making sense. They revert to simplistic philosophies of self justification and insist that all of the effete intellectuals and the overly complex societies are the real problems. Everything is really simple and easy but the effete eggheads are only trying to muddy the waters.
If it all went no further than indulging their self-delusion, than it would not be much of a problem. But they are allowed to vote.
The Solution for this Problem? Well, yes, certainly, we could do something. Everybody should be made to take some objective universal test and and then, depending upon the results, they should wear hats or arm bands that signify the band of their IQ Ranking. White for 150 and above. Gray – 140 to 150. Purple 130 to 140. Blue 120 to 130. Green 110 to 120. yellow 100 to 110. Orange 90 to 100. Red 80 to 90. Brown 70 to 80. Black absolute bottom – duh! Online one would be obliged to affix a signature indicative of one’s intelligence color code…. As though we don’t already know who’s stupid.
Once we know how smart people are, then we could identify who we could really take seriously. Oh, and yes, people with less than a 130 IQ should not be allowed to vote.
Oh, yes, and the good news for stupid people – they should not be considered as being capable of Moral Responsibility. No stupid person, that is, no person with an IQ of less than 110 should ever be sent to jail… what good would it do anyway? Certainly we can’t speak of “teaching them a lesson”? But the bad news is that there would have to be some institutional monitoring of stupid people. No matter how nice the Zoo is, they still don’t leave the cage doors open.
The same must be true of really stupid people, that they do not suspect themselves of being stupid.
Well, one might ask, how do these extremely stupid people account for a World that must to them make no sense? What do they make of people who talk in complexities that they themselves cannot possibly follow? Well, they have a surprising method for dealing, and I’ve seen it again and again from stupid people. They turn it around and say that the Smart People are the ones who are not making any sense. They say the World isn’t making sense. They revert to simplistic philosophies of self justification and insist that all of the effete intellectuals and the overly complex societies are the real problems. Everything is really simple and easy but the effete eggheads are only trying to muddy the waters.
If it all went no further than indulging their self-delusion, than it would not be much of a problem. But they are allowed to vote.
The Solution for this Problem? Well, yes, certainly, we could do something. Everybody should be made to take some objective universal test and and then, depending upon the results, they should wear hats or arm bands that signify the band of their IQ Ranking. White for 150 and above. Gray – 140 to 150. Purple 130 to 140. Blue 120 to 130. Green 110 to 120. yellow 100 to 110. Orange 90 to 100. Red 80 to 90. Brown 70 to 80. Black absolute bottom – duh! Online one would be obliged to affix a signature indicative of one’s intelligence color code…. As though we don’t already know who’s stupid.
Once we know how smart people are, then we could identify who we could really take seriously. Oh, and yes, people with less than a 130 IQ should not be allowed to vote.
Oh, yes, and the good news for stupid people – they should not be considered as being capable of Moral Responsibility. No stupid person, that is, no person with an IQ of less than 110 should ever be sent to jail… what good would it do anyway? Certainly we can’t speak of “teaching them a lesson”? But the bad news is that there would have to be some institutional monitoring of stupid people. No matter how nice the Zoo is, they still don’t leave the cage doors open.
Democracy Is Dictatorship
To hear the universal propaganda, one would think that Democracy was the most recent of revealed religions. But we need to see it clearly in terms of the results of elections, even fair elections, where there are winners who are represented by Government, and where we have the losers who are disenfranchised and become powerless victims to unresponsive policies set to target and exploit them.
We see it time and time again. The new French President, What’s His Name, who isn’t even French (and neither was Napoleon …it seems that the French rather take to non-French Dictators) – with the recent transportation strike he pretended to be surprised that a great many people were almost violently opposed to his extremist programs designed to make them work more for less for the benefit of those who, receiving the benefits of the newly transferred Wealth, would now get more for doing less. He argued that he had told the Voters exactly what he would do. Well, were the Losers supposed to be happy about it? The Election was NOT a landslide, and almost half of France lost that Election. Perhaps there should be a law that only the Winners of Elections should be the victims of the New Policies. Voting NO should be enough to shield you from the Government. Its not really Democracy if half the people aren’t represented, is it?
The United States presents the best example of Democracy’s abuses. Bush, who did not even win a majority of the popular vote, who won only when the Conservatively packed Supreme Court manipulated the Electoral Vote (a vestige from the American Constitution that never trusted the vote of the Common Man but would rather elections be decided by the Party Power Brokers back in the smoky rooms). Bush announced that he would assume he had a Full Mandate to impose an extreme rightwing political agenda. He won, everyone else lost. Losers simply deserve no consideration, and in point of fact, who can argue? To him it was simple. Dictatorship always is.
But Americans are not overly fastidious when it comes to consistency, as the Right Wing argues for Winners only when it is they who win. When they don’t like the elections they see in the rest of the World, they scream that the Winners are Dictators and Terrorists, and then force the U.N. and all of America’s Allies to withdraw diplomatic recognition and impose Sanctions that destroy entire economies and societies. America claims that both Venezuela and Palestine were dictatorships, the one under democratically elected Chavez and the other under the democratically elected Hamas Party.
But really, democracy has much the same problems whether the Right Wing or the Left Wing win. In either case a great many ‘losers’ are violated of their representation.
Then we can see empirically that democracies tend to reward complete idiots. The only person in the entire world that may be any stupider than George Bush might be Hugo Chavez, that moron in Venezuela. One a Right Wing imbecile, and the other a Left Wing imbecile. The second thing they have in common is that they are both electable. I wonder what it is about stupid people that makes them so electable… I guess it is that the majority of voters are stupid and suppose they are best represented by Stupidity. Then the elections swing from Right to Left and Left to Right more or less by fad.
Or maybe not. The Right Wing believes a bit more in Self Help. The News Media does not spell it out very well, but the Right Wing wins mostly by assassination. The Nazis assassinated all of the popular Socialist Politicians, leaving an open field for the Nazi candidates. In Japan it was not organized, but crazy fanatical lieutenants were shooting all of the moderate and reasonable legislatures in their Government until only the extreme Right Wing remained. In America there was actual corporal assassination and then the Media was used to engineer character assassination. In Israel they had to shoot Rabin before the Zionists could charge off on the policy of Settling the Occupied Territories and establishing a Greater Israel.
Is Democracy really fair when the Right Wing really does shoot many more people than the Left. It is ironic that it was Mao who said that “Democracy comes out of the barrel of a gun”. Most of the bullets being fired come from the Right.
Then we have the problem of Wealthy and Powerful Corporations being willing to funnel corrupt bribes and ‘contributions’ to the Right than to the Left. Look at Germany. Hitler was a big hit among the big companies.
Well, if people would ever really vote for their own self interest, then the Left, with its advantage in sheer numbers, could perhaps make up for the deficit they have in Will to Kill and Money for Corruption that is clearly the Domain of the Fascist Right Wing. There are indeed so many more Poor People than Rich People. But then stupidity comes into play, and money directed toward Brain Washing Propaganda does indeed get what it pays for. For instance, in America more than 80% of the people who voted for George Bush, because he said he would cut ‘their’ taxes, are actually paying out more than before (as local taxation and price structures had to devolve to compensate – somebody has to Pay and if it isn’t the Rich, than it will be the Poor… more and more), and Bush only cut taxes and funneled Wealth to the smallest minority of the Super Rich (his Texas buddies in the Oil Business… their Oil has now gone up in value 300%, and that in addition to being exempted from Taxes). Oh, and this brings up a point, often used by the Propaganda Perpetrators, that Average Wealth is Going Up. What they mean is that the Total Wealth of Everybody that is divided by the number of Everybody is Going Up. They make it sound like the Average Guy is getting more money. What it really means is that they are counting Bill Gates with his 50 Billion Dollars in the same category as a Walmart Clerk who is only making Minimum Wage. Bill Gates is 20% Richer every year while the Walmart Clerk stays the same, oh, while paying twice as much for gas. When Statistics only track Poverty, we get a more realistic picture… that Poverty is expanding along in the same proportions as the trends toward Concentration of Wealth – the money going to make the Rich even Richer must be coming from somewhere. The Rich say they hate Distribution of Wealth, unless of course it is they who benefit by it.
Anyway, the stupid and victimized 80% are so stupid they still don’t know they’ve been screwed, and will likely vote Republican again. Its never said, but mostly I suppose the American Vote is mostly White against Black. As Woodrow Wilson said, Democracy resolves to Ethnic Self-Determinism. All other things being equal, Democracy will be a fight for power between competing ethnic groups or race. And those type of Political Parties are all Right Wing Extremist Nuts with guns. Hitler is not only our Past, but our future. People conveniently forget that Hitler didn’t usurp power. He was elected….well, no, not fairly, but neither was George Bush. We need to remember that Cheating also seems to be an integral part of Democracy, as we know it.
Anyway, what it comes down to is that Democracy gives us for Leaders the bought and paid for stupid survivors of continuous gun battles where Minorities can never hope to ever be represented. Not a very good Religion is it, for all of the Media Worship it receives.
This brings up another point – Media’s overwhelming support of Democracy. It might have something to do with the practical matter that every major political faction will support its own network of media outlets. For the Media democracy is simply good business. And they do not print the Truth. Like lawyers, they print what they are paid to print. Right Wing papers print Right Wing crap, and Left Wing papers print, well, the Truth, but they dumb it down a lot so that the largest number of poor uneducated idiots will go along with it. But in either case, the mendacious propaganda from the Right and the simplistic sloganeering from the Left is not exactly what we have been promised by the Free Press. Would Government Bulletins from a politically neutral Bureaucratic Meritocracy really be much worse than a Corporate or Party Media?
When will people begin to examine the possibility of setting up a Government by Law and Professional Civil Service, positions being determined by objective merit and consensus between candidates. Yes, not every profoundly intelligent person, good at taking tests, can be a practical and pragmatic administrator and statesman, but a system could be set up where, let’s say, the hundred most objectively intelligent political scientists in a Political Jurisdiction are locked into a room and are not allowed out until they select an Executive and an Executive Committee.
We see it time and time again. The new French President, What’s His Name, who isn’t even French (and neither was Napoleon …it seems that the French rather take to non-French Dictators) – with the recent transportation strike he pretended to be surprised that a great many people were almost violently opposed to his extremist programs designed to make them work more for less for the benefit of those who, receiving the benefits of the newly transferred Wealth, would now get more for doing less. He argued that he had told the Voters exactly what he would do. Well, were the Losers supposed to be happy about it? The Election was NOT a landslide, and almost half of France lost that Election. Perhaps there should be a law that only the Winners of Elections should be the victims of the New Policies. Voting NO should be enough to shield you from the Government. Its not really Democracy if half the people aren’t represented, is it?
The United States presents the best example of Democracy’s abuses. Bush, who did not even win a majority of the popular vote, who won only when the Conservatively packed Supreme Court manipulated the Electoral Vote (a vestige from the American Constitution that never trusted the vote of the Common Man but would rather elections be decided by the Party Power Brokers back in the smoky rooms). Bush announced that he would assume he had a Full Mandate to impose an extreme rightwing political agenda. He won, everyone else lost. Losers simply deserve no consideration, and in point of fact, who can argue? To him it was simple. Dictatorship always is.
But Americans are not overly fastidious when it comes to consistency, as the Right Wing argues for Winners only when it is they who win. When they don’t like the elections they see in the rest of the World, they scream that the Winners are Dictators and Terrorists, and then force the U.N. and all of America’s Allies to withdraw diplomatic recognition and impose Sanctions that destroy entire economies and societies. America claims that both Venezuela and Palestine were dictatorships, the one under democratically elected Chavez and the other under the democratically elected Hamas Party.
But really, democracy has much the same problems whether the Right Wing or the Left Wing win. In either case a great many ‘losers’ are violated of their representation.
Then we can see empirically that democracies tend to reward complete idiots. The only person in the entire world that may be any stupider than George Bush might be Hugo Chavez, that moron in Venezuela. One a Right Wing imbecile, and the other a Left Wing imbecile. The second thing they have in common is that they are both electable. I wonder what it is about stupid people that makes them so electable… I guess it is that the majority of voters are stupid and suppose they are best represented by Stupidity. Then the elections swing from Right to Left and Left to Right more or less by fad.
Or maybe not. The Right Wing believes a bit more in Self Help. The News Media does not spell it out very well, but the Right Wing wins mostly by assassination. The Nazis assassinated all of the popular Socialist Politicians, leaving an open field for the Nazi candidates. In Japan it was not organized, but crazy fanatical lieutenants were shooting all of the moderate and reasonable legislatures in their Government until only the extreme Right Wing remained. In America there was actual corporal assassination and then the Media was used to engineer character assassination. In Israel they had to shoot Rabin before the Zionists could charge off on the policy of Settling the Occupied Territories and establishing a Greater Israel.
Is Democracy really fair when the Right Wing really does shoot many more people than the Left. It is ironic that it was Mao who said that “Democracy comes out of the barrel of a gun”. Most of the bullets being fired come from the Right.
Then we have the problem of Wealthy and Powerful Corporations being willing to funnel corrupt bribes and ‘contributions’ to the Right than to the Left. Look at Germany. Hitler was a big hit among the big companies.
Well, if people would ever really vote for their own self interest, then the Left, with its advantage in sheer numbers, could perhaps make up for the deficit they have in Will to Kill and Money for Corruption that is clearly the Domain of the Fascist Right Wing. There are indeed so many more Poor People than Rich People. But then stupidity comes into play, and money directed toward Brain Washing Propaganda does indeed get what it pays for. For instance, in America more than 80% of the people who voted for George Bush, because he said he would cut ‘their’ taxes, are actually paying out more than before (as local taxation and price structures had to devolve to compensate – somebody has to Pay and if it isn’t the Rich, than it will be the Poor… more and more), and Bush only cut taxes and funneled Wealth to the smallest minority of the Super Rich (his Texas buddies in the Oil Business… their Oil has now gone up in value 300%, and that in addition to being exempted from Taxes). Oh, and this brings up a point, often used by the Propaganda Perpetrators, that Average Wealth is Going Up. What they mean is that the Total Wealth of Everybody that is divided by the number of Everybody is Going Up. They make it sound like the Average Guy is getting more money. What it really means is that they are counting Bill Gates with his 50 Billion Dollars in the same category as a Walmart Clerk who is only making Minimum Wage. Bill Gates is 20% Richer every year while the Walmart Clerk stays the same, oh, while paying twice as much for gas. When Statistics only track Poverty, we get a more realistic picture… that Poverty is expanding along in the same proportions as the trends toward Concentration of Wealth – the money going to make the Rich even Richer must be coming from somewhere. The Rich say they hate Distribution of Wealth, unless of course it is they who benefit by it.
Anyway, the stupid and victimized 80% are so stupid they still don’t know they’ve been screwed, and will likely vote Republican again. Its never said, but mostly I suppose the American Vote is mostly White against Black. As Woodrow Wilson said, Democracy resolves to Ethnic Self-Determinism. All other things being equal, Democracy will be a fight for power between competing ethnic groups or race. And those type of Political Parties are all Right Wing Extremist Nuts with guns. Hitler is not only our Past, but our future. People conveniently forget that Hitler didn’t usurp power. He was elected….well, no, not fairly, but neither was George Bush. We need to remember that Cheating also seems to be an integral part of Democracy, as we know it.
Anyway, what it comes down to is that Democracy gives us for Leaders the bought and paid for stupid survivors of continuous gun battles where Minorities can never hope to ever be represented. Not a very good Religion is it, for all of the Media Worship it receives.
This brings up another point – Media’s overwhelming support of Democracy. It might have something to do with the practical matter that every major political faction will support its own network of media outlets. For the Media democracy is simply good business. And they do not print the Truth. Like lawyers, they print what they are paid to print. Right Wing papers print Right Wing crap, and Left Wing papers print, well, the Truth, but they dumb it down a lot so that the largest number of poor uneducated idiots will go along with it. But in either case, the mendacious propaganda from the Right and the simplistic sloganeering from the Left is not exactly what we have been promised by the Free Press. Would Government Bulletins from a politically neutral Bureaucratic Meritocracy really be much worse than a Corporate or Party Media?
When will people begin to examine the possibility of setting up a Government by Law and Professional Civil Service, positions being determined by objective merit and consensus between candidates. Yes, not every profoundly intelligent person, good at taking tests, can be a practical and pragmatic administrator and statesman, but a system could be set up where, let’s say, the hundred most objectively intelligent political scientists in a Political Jurisdiction are locked into a room and are not allowed out until they select an Executive and an Executive Committee.
Saturday, November 3, 2007
Legalism vs. Morality
Ancient China had a number of intellectual schools which vied for political influence. The Confucian Schools sided with Morality, the idea that people should be encouraged to appreciate an intuition regarding what is Righteous and what is not, and then to abide by what they thought to be Right. The Legalists, on the other hand, complained that Morality was too subjective, that goodness dodged rigorous classification… who could definitively decide what was right or wrong? The Legalists rather proposed that laws be legislated as regards to social and political utility. In this sense morality would be replaced by codified ethics. No shades of grey but the black and white of thing either being legal or illegal.
The Moralists insisted that while no strict definitions could be asserted that could entirely encompass what was meant by Righteousness, still, many hundreds or even thousands of particular examples could be put forward which could provide people with a sufficient idea of how Righteousness worked in real world practice. By being acquainted with a sufficient lexicon of Righteousness it could be expected that people would be good, for all practical purposes, even if not perfectly so. Confucian Literature gives us an example of numerous anecdotes of goodness while not attempting any precise moral definitions.
The Legalists thought that their Legal Codifications would eliminate the moral uncertainty, and people would only have to worry about obeying the Law. This approach proved then, and still proves now, to be very naïve. Today every Secular Society in the World depends upon Legalist Institutions – legislating ethics while hoping or assuming that these laws would be automatically obeyed. But in practice the Legalistic Institutions rely upon saturating their societies with observers and enforcers – spies and police. The Legalistic States resolve into Police States. In America today there are more police than nurses, and more lawyers than doctors. No wonder there is no national health care. Incidentally, there are nearly more prison guards than teachers, and mostly they are paid better.
Today’s secularists suppose that the worst evils known to the World must of course source from Societies convinced of Religious Morality, but it must be admitted that to the degree in which the people are convinced of Religious Morality, the need for spies and police are far diminished. The people are good because they are self-motivated to be good, and not because they are afraid they might be caught breaking some law or another.
Ancient China was a special case in that the choices between Morality and Legality were intellectually evaluated and discussed in depth. Today that is not always the case, and so we have people doing all sorts of contradictory crap. We have Believers in Religious Morality who would legislate their Morality into Legality. This would not really be the best of both worlds, but the worst. Both Christian and Islamic Fundamentalists, ignorant farmers in both cases, wish to impose a Religious Morality by Legalistic means. This gives us situations where violence and duress are being utilized to advance essentially Religious Morality, which really should pose a contradiction in more minds than just mine.
Now, yes, Legalistic Institutions where they regard only practical and pragmatic details of social commerce – speeding laws, taxes and such – have their place. So also it is useful to have laws regarding the protection of property rights and public safety. But issues of morality should be matters of social indoctrination. If left to Legality then it would be necessary that every second person in Society be either a policeman or somebody who squeals to policemen.
But to be intellectually honest, today, where Information Technology could really possibly monitor every person, everywhere, twenty-four hours a day, we must concede that a totally Legalistic Society could become a more and more practical consideration. An All Knowing Information Technology can very much become an All Knowing Secular God. But still, it would not so much be a Society full of Goodness, as simply devoid of Crime. People would refrain from evil for fear of certainly getting caught. But there would still be no positive incentive for doing Good unless Society also encouraged positively Moral Institutions.
The Moralists insisted that while no strict definitions could be asserted that could entirely encompass what was meant by Righteousness, still, many hundreds or even thousands of particular examples could be put forward which could provide people with a sufficient idea of how Righteousness worked in real world practice. By being acquainted with a sufficient lexicon of Righteousness it could be expected that people would be good, for all practical purposes, even if not perfectly so. Confucian Literature gives us an example of numerous anecdotes of goodness while not attempting any precise moral definitions.
The Legalists thought that their Legal Codifications would eliminate the moral uncertainty, and people would only have to worry about obeying the Law. This approach proved then, and still proves now, to be very naïve. Today every Secular Society in the World depends upon Legalist Institutions – legislating ethics while hoping or assuming that these laws would be automatically obeyed. But in practice the Legalistic Institutions rely upon saturating their societies with observers and enforcers – spies and police. The Legalistic States resolve into Police States. In America today there are more police than nurses, and more lawyers than doctors. No wonder there is no national health care. Incidentally, there are nearly more prison guards than teachers, and mostly they are paid better.
Today’s secularists suppose that the worst evils known to the World must of course source from Societies convinced of Religious Morality, but it must be admitted that to the degree in which the people are convinced of Religious Morality, the need for spies and police are far diminished. The people are good because they are self-motivated to be good, and not because they are afraid they might be caught breaking some law or another.
Ancient China was a special case in that the choices between Morality and Legality were intellectually evaluated and discussed in depth. Today that is not always the case, and so we have people doing all sorts of contradictory crap. We have Believers in Religious Morality who would legislate their Morality into Legality. This would not really be the best of both worlds, but the worst. Both Christian and Islamic Fundamentalists, ignorant farmers in both cases, wish to impose a Religious Morality by Legalistic means. This gives us situations where violence and duress are being utilized to advance essentially Religious Morality, which really should pose a contradiction in more minds than just mine.
Now, yes, Legalistic Institutions where they regard only practical and pragmatic details of social commerce – speeding laws, taxes and such – have their place. So also it is useful to have laws regarding the protection of property rights and public safety. But issues of morality should be matters of social indoctrination. If left to Legality then it would be necessary that every second person in Society be either a policeman or somebody who squeals to policemen.
But to be intellectually honest, today, where Information Technology could really possibly monitor every person, everywhere, twenty-four hours a day, we must concede that a totally Legalistic Society could become a more and more practical consideration. An All Knowing Information Technology can very much become an All Knowing Secular God. But still, it would not so much be a Society full of Goodness, as simply devoid of Crime. People would refrain from evil for fear of certainly getting caught. But there would still be no positive incentive for doing Good unless Society also encouraged positively Moral Institutions.
Elitist Gentlemen Racists vs Fair Minded Failures
There are a number of ways people can sell their souls for some material benefit – and usually people realize at some level that they are acting from over on the dark side, as business men and mobsters apologize by saying “its just business”. But sometimes evil is more insidious, especially the sin of Pride. Indeed, a lot of people think pride is a good thing.
But, concerning Pride, perhaps no other sin has such a great pay off. You see, nearly all access to great wealth involves having some ease with exploiting others, and in this regards, pride can be a great asset, a great lubricant. If one is sincerely convinced of one’s superiority over others, then placing one’s self in charge is no reach at all. One may even see taking charge as one’s responsibility. For instance, European World Conquest was once seen, by Europeans at least, as “the White Man’s burden”. They honestly thought they were doing everybody a big favor.
Also, this sin of pride, and the material advantages thereof, accrue to Cultures as a whole. Where it becomes a matter of cultural identity for people to suppose themselves better than the rest of humanity in general, then, perhaps not surprisingly, this increases expectations and actual performance. Where pride is ingrained into Character, people automatically tend to live up to it and become people that one can have pride in.
Inversely, where it becomes a cultural priority to notify all people, even the children, or especially the children, that everybody is a blend of the same bland mix of mediocrity, then it can’t help but to relax expectations. If nobody is conditioned to believe themselves superior, then nobody will act in a superior manner. ‘Good enough’ really isn’t good enough and it tends to continually spiral downwards, lower and lower.
Examining pride, we can take a look at Jewish Culture for a first ‘for instance’ – Jews are taught on their mother’s lap that they are the Chosen People of God, the rest of the World to be eliminated by genocide whenever convenient and their Lands usurped, being annexed to an ever expanding Promised Land. As dangerous and violent as this Ethnic Pride is manifesting, still, on the other hand we have to admit that they do very well in school and then push into almost any career field most comfortably snatching every bit of other people’s Free Will that may come within their reach. But Jews are not alone in this, while many Nations teach their children that they are inherently superior to everybody else. Or within homogenous cultures, certain Classes of the population condition themselves to a superiority of self expectations – in England, for instance, where all people are ‘Englishmen’, we have an Aristocracy that is convinced of their superior ‘breeding’.
Conditioned Superiority can lead to serious conflicts, especially in cases where two ‘Superior’ Groups collide, the best example here might be to mention the collision between the Nazi Master Race and the Jewish Chosen People of God. God did not prove to be overly supportive of His Chosen People, but somehow nobody’s faith had been terribly shaken. The Master Race might have been more humbled if it were not for the fact that they were stopped only by their own ethnic cousins (Aryan Germans defeated by Aryan Russians and Aryan Anglo/Americans… demonstrating only that Aryans must have some War God Religion of their own). Also, in the Far East it has been a problem where each Nation, convinced of their own superiority find it difficult to extend diplomatic equality to any of the others. It seems that Superior Groups more or less expect that the other groups will automatically accept the inferior role that is projected upon them, and calculations are seldom made in quantifying the opposing culture’s own collective Self Esteem. Zionist Jews are surprised when Palestinians are not happy to lie down and die at their feet, willingly handing over the deeds to their land as their last dying gesture. When the Japanese invaded China they were puzzled when they were met with contempt and condescension as well as with armed resistance.
Then we have cultures that are conditioned to inferiority. They have nothing to live up to, and they certainly don’t. Ethnic groups that had filled inferior places in society tend to stay down. We see this where slavery had once been endemic. We also see it in former Colonies, where the subjugated native ethnic groups continue on, well after their political liberation, in having no expectations for themselves. The problem of low expectations is largely self-perpetuating. Parents convinced of their own mediocrity will communicate no high level of expectations to their children. And the Teachers who are supposed to inculcate abilities and aptitudes, well, they are simply culturally conditioned to think that almost any level of performance is good enough. It is simply not in their cultural inventory to care whether the kids ever really do well or not. If one day follows the next without the roof falling in, they think they are doing fine. Indeed, abilities are often discouraged when high achieving students are reprimanded by their very Teachers for acting better than everybody else, and C level students are praised for so conscientiously fitting in, as though it took some great effort NOT to study.
But, yes, it does present a tricky ethical problem. Teach our children that they are all equal and that nobody is any better than anybody else, then we will have children with no will to succeed in a very competitive world, or who will not have sufficient skill or abilities to compete even if they wanted to. But condition children from their infancy to believe in either racial, ethnic or class superiority, then, at least in the World as we presently know it, they will succeed as though, well, as though they were conditioned to succeed. Do we want our kids to be good or do we want them to be successful?
It reminds me of India, where the mothers pray that their children NOT become Saints.
But, concerning Pride, perhaps no other sin has such a great pay off. You see, nearly all access to great wealth involves having some ease with exploiting others, and in this regards, pride can be a great asset, a great lubricant. If one is sincerely convinced of one’s superiority over others, then placing one’s self in charge is no reach at all. One may even see taking charge as one’s responsibility. For instance, European World Conquest was once seen, by Europeans at least, as “the White Man’s burden”. They honestly thought they were doing everybody a big favor.
Also, this sin of pride, and the material advantages thereof, accrue to Cultures as a whole. Where it becomes a matter of cultural identity for people to suppose themselves better than the rest of humanity in general, then, perhaps not surprisingly, this increases expectations and actual performance. Where pride is ingrained into Character, people automatically tend to live up to it and become people that one can have pride in.
Inversely, where it becomes a cultural priority to notify all people, even the children, or especially the children, that everybody is a blend of the same bland mix of mediocrity, then it can’t help but to relax expectations. If nobody is conditioned to believe themselves superior, then nobody will act in a superior manner. ‘Good enough’ really isn’t good enough and it tends to continually spiral downwards, lower and lower.
Examining pride, we can take a look at Jewish Culture for a first ‘for instance’ – Jews are taught on their mother’s lap that they are the Chosen People of God, the rest of the World to be eliminated by genocide whenever convenient and their Lands usurped, being annexed to an ever expanding Promised Land. As dangerous and violent as this Ethnic Pride is manifesting, still, on the other hand we have to admit that they do very well in school and then push into almost any career field most comfortably snatching every bit of other people’s Free Will that may come within their reach. But Jews are not alone in this, while many Nations teach their children that they are inherently superior to everybody else. Or within homogenous cultures, certain Classes of the population condition themselves to a superiority of self expectations – in England, for instance, where all people are ‘Englishmen’, we have an Aristocracy that is convinced of their superior ‘breeding’.
Conditioned Superiority can lead to serious conflicts, especially in cases where two ‘Superior’ Groups collide, the best example here might be to mention the collision between the Nazi Master Race and the Jewish Chosen People of God. God did not prove to be overly supportive of His Chosen People, but somehow nobody’s faith had been terribly shaken. The Master Race might have been more humbled if it were not for the fact that they were stopped only by their own ethnic cousins (Aryan Germans defeated by Aryan Russians and Aryan Anglo/Americans… demonstrating only that Aryans must have some War God Religion of their own). Also, in the Far East it has been a problem where each Nation, convinced of their own superiority find it difficult to extend diplomatic equality to any of the others. It seems that Superior Groups more or less expect that the other groups will automatically accept the inferior role that is projected upon them, and calculations are seldom made in quantifying the opposing culture’s own collective Self Esteem. Zionist Jews are surprised when Palestinians are not happy to lie down and die at their feet, willingly handing over the deeds to their land as their last dying gesture. When the Japanese invaded China they were puzzled when they were met with contempt and condescension as well as with armed resistance.
Then we have cultures that are conditioned to inferiority. They have nothing to live up to, and they certainly don’t. Ethnic groups that had filled inferior places in society tend to stay down. We see this where slavery had once been endemic. We also see it in former Colonies, where the subjugated native ethnic groups continue on, well after their political liberation, in having no expectations for themselves. The problem of low expectations is largely self-perpetuating. Parents convinced of their own mediocrity will communicate no high level of expectations to their children. And the Teachers who are supposed to inculcate abilities and aptitudes, well, they are simply culturally conditioned to think that almost any level of performance is good enough. It is simply not in their cultural inventory to care whether the kids ever really do well or not. If one day follows the next without the roof falling in, they think they are doing fine. Indeed, abilities are often discouraged when high achieving students are reprimanded by their very Teachers for acting better than everybody else, and C level students are praised for so conscientiously fitting in, as though it took some great effort NOT to study.
But, yes, it does present a tricky ethical problem. Teach our children that they are all equal and that nobody is any better than anybody else, then we will have children with no will to succeed in a very competitive world, or who will not have sufficient skill or abilities to compete even if they wanted to. But condition children from their infancy to believe in either racial, ethnic or class superiority, then, at least in the World as we presently know it, they will succeed as though, well, as though they were conditioned to succeed. Do we want our kids to be good or do we want them to be successful?
It reminds me of India, where the mothers pray that their children NOT become Saints.
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