is this board for the left-wing only?

[kool maudit]

The scientific fact is that human primates are social animals and thus socialists by evolutionary nature. Medical science has proven that we are hard-wired for compassion and empathy which embodies collective intelligence which balances the functions of the amygdala and cerebellum.

jesus christ, hugh.

now you are using evolution to try and claim that there is only one acceptable political doctrine (socialism), and that it just happens -- miracle of miracles! -- to be your favored doctrine.

if evolution says anything about such things, it is that we are full of competing and contradictory impulses.

claiming that there is only one acceptable political doctrine due to some "natural order" is julius evola-style fascism.

you are an absolutist and a fiend.

[Cordelia]

Medical science has proven that we are hard-wired for compassion and empathy which embodies collective intelligence which balances the functions of the amygdala and cerebellum.

Huh?

[JackRiddler]

Sweejak, I responded to the passage you quoted. All the good things about Blond that you say may also be true, I didn't follow links and stayed with what you quoted. That passage was a word game to me, but Blond may elsewhere engage in things I find more concrete. Or agreeable.

To my embarrassment, I misunderstood his critique of Rawls of being a summary of Rawls! Ouch, and sorry. So much for what I think I remember reading in the distant collegiate past.

Rereading the passage I'll stand by what I wrote as a response to that passage. Whether it's Rawls or Blond critiquing Rawls, to search for the failures of totalitarian outcomes from the supposed attempt to realize liberal ideas (or other ideas) necessitates a look at the history, and can't be derived by putting the blame on a kernel idea attributed to Rousseau. Or that's my view, standing on the old Hegel-Marx question (of idealism/history as ideas unfolding vs. materialism/empiricism/history as conflicts among groups unfolding within an existing social order and ideas often interchangeable though still very important because they are blueprints or wishes) much more on the latter side.

Yeah, he is a think tanker and I guess rotating is part of that bag, but people did indeed fight about hair, specifically, Peter the Great and his banning of beards, not to mention the 60's, and c'mon, he also says "sexual access, assets, and income", that's all real enough for me.

Yes, his critique is about "equality" as expressed thru liberalism and how it can result in authoritarianism. He goes on to bolster his thesis in ways I find quite convincing. I value his ideas for the paradoxes, because, well, for me they are shiny things.

Oh, hair and couture conflicts have been central, and they continue today in Afghanistan and France alike. The question is the degree to which these conflicts (and the authoritarianism or rebellion that is expressed through them), is the product of ideas of equality (or ideas of submission to authority or anything else), or the epiphenomenal expression of conflicts of what is conventionally described as class, caste, culture and group. I'm prejudiced perhaps to see the latter.

[Sweejak]

Sweejak, I responded to the passage you quoted. All the good things about Blond that you say may also be true, I didn't follow links and stayed with what you quoted. That passage was a word game to me, but Blond may elsewhere engage in things I find more concrete. Or agreeable.

To my embarrassment, I misunderstood his critique of Rawls of being a summary of Rawls! Ouch, and sorry. So much for what I think I remember reading in the distant collegiate past.

Rereading the passage I'll stand by what I wrote as a response to that passage. Whether it's Rawls or Blond critiquing Rawls, to search for the failures of totalitarian outcomes from the supposed attempt to realize liberal ideas (or other ideas) necessitates a look at the history, and can't be derived by putting the blame on a kernel idea attributed to Rousseau. Or that's my view, standing on the old Hegel-Marx question (of idealism/history as ideas unfolding vs. materialism/empiricism/history as conflicts among groups unfolding within an existing social order and ideas often interchangeable though still very important because they are blueprints or wishes) much more on the latter side.

Yeah, he is a think tanker and I guess rotating is part of that bag, but people did indeed fight about hair, specifically, Peter the Great and his banning of beards, not to mention the 60's, and c'mon, he also says "sexual access, assets, and income", that's all real enough for me.

Yes, his critique is about "equality" as expressed thru liberalism and how it can result in authoritarianism. He goes on to bolster his thesis in ways I find quite convincing. I value his ideas for the paradoxes, because, well, for me they are shiny things.

Oh, hair and couture conflicts have been central, and they continue today in Afghanistan and France alike. The question is the degree to which these conflicts (and the authoritarianism or rebellion that is expressed through them), is the product of ideas of equality (or ideas of submission to authority or anything else), or the epiphenomenal expression of conflicts of what is conventionally described as class, caste, culture and group. I'm prejudiced perhaps to see the latter.

Oh I do that all the time, don't feel bad. I sometimes respond early to a post because I just know for sure what they are going to say. I've got a whole story running in my head!

I wasn't up for transcribing the whole lecture but I don't think that snip was a word game, I think it's obvious, the main thesis anyway. Namely: "You can't distribute equality without hierarchy". Hierarchy in the area of police power and hierarchy in the selection of what is good. It's exactly what I see happen when stuff like a hate law gets run in reverse, "Hey, that law was for you, not us!". Blond says that to achieve this type of equality would require a very great deal of uniformity, conformity, and control. It makes sense to me, it works, but I'd note that he's talking about extreme versions. I presume he does this to illustrate his ideas. So, that's my thinking, but I'm wary of focusing on the extremes after a point has been illustrated because then it becomes merely divisive. I don't know him well enough to say if he does that. As for whether and how this fits into the world of political science I don't really know. I'm interested but not enough to make a subject out of it.

Well, here's part 2 of that Villanova lecture.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLdTzEgbxtE

[Nordic]

I just have to say that if somebody knows of any "right wing" philosophy that has any truth to it whatsoever, and isn't based on fearmongering, propaganda, hatred-spewing, downright lies, or magical or delusional thinking, or rewrites history to serve itself, I would actually be interested in reading it.

I have no idea if this exists. It don't think it does, but if I'm wrong, clue me in.

[8bitagent]

I'm a peace loving organic food buying pro gay marriage eco aware Californian musician/artist...

But sometimes the radical left and right do converge. Such on the issue of a "globalist stringpuller" or "new world order elite". Ive talked extensively on the agenda of the IMF, World Bank, big oil, war profiteering, mineral genocide in Africa, corporate corruption. And while I can't stand the gun toting "Christian patriot militia" types, I definitely agree that there is a sinister hidden agenda, globalist agenda and all that good stuff.

Notice Israel is one of the main issues both left wingers and far righters tend to agree on?

[Nordic]

I'm a peace loving organic food buying pro gay marriage eco aware Californian musician/artist...

But sometimes the radical left and right do converge. Such on the issue of a "globalist stringpuller" or "new world order elite". Ive talked extensively on the agenda of the IMF, World Bank, big oil, war profiteering, mineral genocide in Africa, corporate corruption. And while I can't stand the gun toting "Christian patriot militia" types, I definitely agree that there is a sinister hidden agenda, globalist agenda and all that good stuff.

Notice Israel is one of the main issues both left wingers and far righters tend to agree on?

Yeah it's funny when I'm out in the world, sometimes I'll encounter someone who seems to actually be clued in, but you have to tread carefully because sometimes it turns out their right-wingers who blame everything on "liberals" and the "socialist" Obama and shit like that. It's like they're on the right track, but go into some fourth dimensional never-never land without a road map and end up on the other side of the looking glass.

It's weird how their prejudices can affect them.

Of course it makes me wonder how my prejudices affect me.

Maybe the actual reality would be a shocker to me, too.

I dunno.

[Simulist]

Yeah it's funny when I'm out in the world, sometimes I'll encounter someone who seems to actually be clued in, but you have to tread carefully because sometimes it turns out their right-wingers who blame everything on "liberals" and the "socialist" Obama and shit like that. It's like they're on the right track, but go into some fourth dimensional never-never land without a road map and end up on the other side of the looking glass.

Quoted for truth.

You're so right. A lot of people go off into "some fourth dimensional never-never land" precisely because they really don't have a "road map" anymore — the one they thought they had turned out to be totally wrong! And they may be trying (and often failing) to draw a new one for themselves.

(The essential difficulty of this kind of "map making" should not be underestimated.)

So I generally try to sympathize with such people, and give them a little leeway — even when I totally disagree with them — because I've been there. A lot of us have. Because fully recognizing that nearly every essential belief you had ever been given is not only wrong but also damned wrong can be such a shock to the system that some people actually may never recover from it.

If important people in my life hadn't been patient with me during the worst parts of this process, I really might not have made it — and I don't think that condition is actually all that rare today.

(Who knows... Maybe "map-making" assistance will become a growth industry. )

[Nordic]

Well yes, that's why there are the Limbaughs and the Hannities and the Becks, there to fill in the new voids that are created.

I've never seen such a time as now, when so many people who realize that they've been completely lied to, like you say, people with whom we have a lot in common find themselves on the other side of the looking glass.

It's really weird.

I"m used to finding all these people who are just plain dead wrong, and who have the underlying assumptions all wrong. So many people now have the right underlying assumptions, but they end with everything inverted at the end of the day.

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

Cordelia and kool maudit-

I'm not slinging absolutism, just neuroscience (MRIs and CATscans etc) and asserting that as social animals (just like dogs and chimps) we are designed by evolution to look out for each other - even the weak -
even though there is also a survival expedient of organization and hierarchy included in parent/child socialization dynamics.

http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=11441

http://esciencenews.com/sources/cbc.hea ... esearchers

http://articles.latimes.com/2007/mar/22 ... -empathy22


The seemingly abstract concept of Morality is really a survival-based biological analysis.
That which enables the survival of the group instead of just the individual is judged to be 'moral.' This is why subliminal framing psyops uses a moral economy to sanction attitudes.

Charles Osgood's discovery of Semantic Differential ca. 1959 confirms the remnants of survival-based cognitive analysis at the subconscious level in the limbic brain which finds Militarism and group-think attractive.
Hence the psyops techniques of framing entities as:
> capable/strong OR not
> loyal/honest OR not

Right-wingers bias towards the authoritarian/narcissist role as primary, "fuhrer."
Left-wingers bias towards the egalitarian role as primary, "citizen."

[Simulist]

I'm not slinging absolutism, just neuroscience (MRIs and CATscans etc) and asserting that as social animals (just like dogs and chimps) we...

That's not fair.

I like dogs.

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

I'm not slinging absolutism, just neuroscience (MRIs and CATscans etc) and asserting that as social animals (just like dogs and chimps) we...

That's not fair.

I like dogs.

Me, too.

Perhaps my perspective sheds light on how 'Lassie' was a 1954 (post-Korea) Cold War asset used for conditioning future soldiers with concepts of loyalty. The Pentagon was shocked at the levels of complicity with the enemy in that war and this led to retooling conditioning programs for the National inSecurity State.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lassie_%28 ... _series%29

[Laodicean]

[Sweejak]

I just have to say that if somebody knows of any "right wing" philosophy that has any truth to it whatsoever, and isn't based on fearmongering, propaganda, hatred-spewing, downright lies, or magical or delusional thinking, or rewrites history to serve itself, I would actually be interested in reading it.

I have no idea if this exists. It don't think it does, but if I'm wrong, clue me in.

Hmmm, ya got me. I'd point to left equivalents but I don't see any out there right now. Maybe Alinsky's Rules for Radicals, or the Communist Manifesto or something, but you'll find lots of conservative ideologies that look honest even if one doesn't agree with them.

[Sweejak]

Yeah it's funny when I'm out in the world, sometimes I'll encounter someone who seems to actually be clued in, but you have to tread carefully because sometimes it turns out their right-wingers who blame everything on "liberals" and the "socialist" Obama and shit like that. It's like they're on the right track, but go into some fourth dimensional never-never land without a road map and end up on the other side of the looking glass.

It's weird how their prejudices can affect them.

Of course it makes me wonder how my prejudices affect me.

Maybe the actual reality would be a shocker to me, too.

I dunno.

Yeah, you're talking and trashing the bankers, bitching about government, even corporations, mercenaries and money, and all of a sudden you find out they love Palin or are all bent out of shape by a shoe bomber. After Obama all of a sudden I had my former adversaries nodding in agreement about the exact complaints I had about Bush. We ride down the rails and all of a sudden there's a train wreck.