Philosophical Gangsters

The fact of there being nobody to judge what is good or bad but human beings - unless there are other alien intelligences out there who can - means two things first of all; that this is a claim to there being no 'god' that determines what is absolutely good or bad, and all judgments are ultimately equal in so far that they are only regarding values which are contingent to a specific time, place, event and perspective.

That being the case, an absolute relativism is the only logical result. Now, there is no 'God' and nobody's judgments and values mean anything at all outside and beyond their own immediate, personal existence, i.e., there are no ideas of what 'good' and 'bad' is out there in the world.

Now comes the fun part. One must become a nihilist in the passive sense and first admit that all morality is relative.. wait, I don't mean to say that standards of 'good' and 'bad' can't be kept in practical imperative terms. Of course we can have agreed objective definitions for such things as the quality of gold, or the efficiency of a machine, or the record of a professional athlete. In these instances we can say for sure.. that's bad quality gold or that machine is terribly slow or he had a bad year.

I mean to say that we can have no values that are founded on actual facts or states of affairs in the world. While both types are relative...e.g., this gold is so-so, that machine is a little faster than the other one, he threw whatever complete passes in the last two seasons... we have no real, material circumstances with which we could determine what is good unimperatively. Is that a word? It is now.

We have no way of measuring anything against anything. We couldn't make a meaningful general moral statement about the world and say "that man is good and that man is bad". You all know this already though you might not know you know, so I'm walking you through it anyway.

The first step then is the passive nihilism. N talks about this in the opening chapters of WTP. The next step is to commit yourself to something ridiculous (but necessary). My concern here is that you all understand the ridiculous part.

Asserting one's values and culture over another's is a logically illegal move.. if one is trying to call morality type X 'good' in the same way that one would call a tomato or a gas mileage or a golfers record 'good'. Many relativist don't understand this and unwittingly assert their arguments in the wrong form with the imperative mood.

So let's say that one such argument is the superiority of either one's culture or genes.

In the first case, there are no characteristics of culture that are identifiable like the characteristics of a tomato or gas mileage or a golfer's record are. There are, on the other hand, meaningful ways in which a person can assert their sense of superiority that are perfectly philosophically legal. Be aware of the form and mood of these kinds of arguments.

Of course, one could say X is not a good way of doing or being [ insert cultural value ] and that therefore person Y is 'bad' at doing or being [ insert cultural value]. But this will only get you so far. The type of argument cannot acquire any substantial force in philosophy and ends up only betraying the person of their ridiculousness... their putting the argument in the wrong form and mood.

I believe Biguous believes that this is what is happening when he calls some folks here 'objectivists'. Not sure though. I think he might think that you all think you can make statements about 'superior' and 'inferior' without having anything 'in the world' to measure it against.

So, if one were to say in the moral imperative mood "being X is good, and Y is a good way of being X, therefore Z is good when he does way Y", their argument would be circular. Why on earth is it good to be X? I know being Y is good if I want to be X, but I have no way of knowing if X is being good.

Empirical arguments and evaluations such as the agreed good/bad standards for the quality of gold, machines, golfers and tomatoes do not suffer this problem. They are different kinds of relative evaluations... they are absolute in the agreement on which machine is faster, which gold is purer, which golfer has more hole-in-ones. There is no way anyone could disagree on the definitions for theses kinds of evaluations and judgements. That would be just stupid. No Bob, just because it is good if a machine works fast, you can't say that a slow working machine is bad.

Clearly Bob and I agree that this would be absurd.

So about genes. You cannot bolster your arguments by becoming dependent on misunderstood features of natural selection.. which in fact is ABSOLUTELY unteleological. Did I just make up another word? Must be that cronic I just blazed up.

You can call certain physical and cultural characteristics of groups of people in isolation to others, good or bad dependent on how well practitioners of that group maintain quality X about group Y. So, if a genetic characteristic is something that contributes to PURE natural selection (which is ultimately unteleological and represents only a very limited period of time for evolution and a particular organism) the groups frequency of reproduction, it can be called good.

But that and only that vulgarizes evolution. To say that a cockroach is more 'fit' is not only offensive but it diminishes the integrity of the overall evolutionary process that has reached it's most sophisticated level in the appearance of intelligent humans. We don't want natural selection in its PURE form because that reduces our integrity. We want to believe that there is something more to the meaning of 'fitness'.

But there isn't.

Now you are past the ridiculous stage and this is what you must recognize. There is nothing more to it than the feeling of patriotism and tradition. 'Culture' is nothing more than a set of ways of being. Remember, moral statements are meaningless in the Wittgensteinian sense that they cannot be in a propositional mood. One cannot make an objectively meaningful statement about Bob's patriotism like one could make about Bob's height, for instance. It is a different kind of statement, one belonging to a different language game. Perfectly okay, but cautioning to the person who is about to talk about moral goods and bads in an indicative mood.

So now you're a competent active nihilist. Having realized that moral evaluations are meaningless and PURE relativism demands total submission to the equalization of all moral evalutions (all equally meaningless circular teleological statements.. being X is good, and Y is the way to be X, therefore Y is good), one does the most absurd; accidentally asserts that he is good or bad because he does Y, not because it is good to be X.

Very well then. What else are we supposed to do? The only thing left to do is become a philosophical gangster. One no longer needs justification for asserting one's values over another's. God is dead and I am better than you. My evaluation is ultimately equal to all others, is it not? We just established that. Pay attention people. You're starting to nod off.

The moment one surrenders one's ressentiment one can no longer make moral judgements. But we cannot not have our virtues, and we submit that they are worthless, but we have the audacity to demand that they are better.

Genetic characteristics that are called good because they promote fitness don't make us any better than a cockroach. There is something more. We feel enchanted by the feeling of power we have in the feeling of pride, physical strength, beauty and intelligence we have.. and all this culminates in the pride of one's group. Every group has it. It comes with the evolutionary package. Survival tactics and techniques are demonstrated every time an individual in a group feels a patriotism to a set of intersubjective values.

There is an evolutionary explanation for (cult)ture, but it isn't founded on or justified by the same kind of reasoning that other relative, evaluations are founded on and justified by. There is no empirical evidence that one should be X in the first place. Only that being Y was justifed on imperative grounds, i.e., one should be Y to be X, not teleological grounds.. which would have to argue that there is an ultimate, objective standard hovering over the whole of evolutionary process that can be the great standard by which we determine the value of the meager existence of that form of life that 'had to die as the star grew cold (N)'... something we could use to evaluate the sum total of all moral value statements made by an ephemeral group of organisms existing as only a moment in an inconceivably loooooooooong arrow of time.

The feeling of culture and identification with an ideology then is programmed into us biologically and intellectually, but it has no rational gound and cannot be argued philosophically. It is hermeunetic. Take the spirit of nationalism as a social phenomena. If you were to interview everyone who 'felt' the spirit of nationalism, you would have a collection of various particular testimonies. If the feeling of this spirit can be meaningfully talked about, there would either have to be a limited number of true statements about it.. which was accessible to everyone, or an unlimited number of ways to make it meaningful. We can't have the former because we cannot say Bob is good at being X in the same way that golfer is good at being X. Two different exes here.

The feeling of cultural and ideological superiority is founded on very simple mechanisms that identify the same things cross-culturally; psychological preference for one's group and identification with that. The brute fact exists because of the public nature of language. One cannot have a meaningful identity without using words from a shared language and understanding themselves with and through those words.

Whether or not a culture or group is more 'fit' stands to be shown, though. One cannot pick a meager thirty thousand years out of millions of years of evolutionary process, put a finger on it, and say 'this group of beings is superior'.

.. and then the star grew cold, remember.

Where am I going with all this rambling? Here. There is a very strong presence of patriotism and commitment to hermeunetic (I never spell that word the same way twice) narrative here at know yoself. I like it. I like it uh-lot.

Even though life is like a box of choc-uh-lets, values should not be. We discriminate between the choc-uh-lets and we know which ones we like uh-lot.

I don't mind the fact that I cannot defend my feeling of love and sense of friendship with people who share values and ways of living, philosophically. Perhaps this is what Heidegger meant when he put the human language in the dimension of poetry...  and maybe what Wittgenstein meant when he said that moral and/or religious feeling is mystical.. not in the sense of any transcendent spiritual stuff, in the sense of the meaning and therefore the feeling of meaning cannot be summarized or clearly talked about in the same way as intersubjective inferences and judgments of value made about the world that can be true or false.

One has to have some nerve to live for any set of values and to feel pride in them... if even at the expense of other's values. It can't be done any other way. One has to want to be different from what one believes is bad, and one rarely has the choice to not feel disgust and repulsion at something human, when they do. The identity is a socially dynamic thing that exists within another kind of Guattarian code, another kind of W-ian language game.

But now you have a better understanding of the circumstances surrounding the legitimacy of moral values and values such as better or worse, superior or inferior, and so on. For better or worse this might change the air around here. Put little disclaimers in everyone's sig box reading 'this is ridiculous, and I know you don't want to hear it, but I am better than you'.

If ya'll do it, I'll do it, but you gotta go first.

p.s. remember, all moral statements about the world would be meaningless if ever take as a total set; there would be no final statement about the meaning of the total set. It would just be, valueless, floating around wherever a total set of moral statements might float around.

Become active nihilists, know yoself, but competent active nihilists. Don't get punked by people who try to make your moral relativism illegitimate...coughiambiguouscough. One has to stand for something and have one's virtues, even if that means disregarding other virtues, or even being unable to clearly define or defend them, philosophically. What else can one do, for cryin' out loud? Bit of a philosophical fix don't you think?

Be not afraid to declare 'I couldn't ever justify my values, but I demand that I have them at any cost!'

Still I don't think there are any hardcore conservatives or traditionalists in moral foxholes, really. Virtues will change inna minnit if it means survival.

Zoot Allures wrote:

The fact of there being nobody to judge what is good or bad but human beings

The first claim you make that you contend is a fact is also not a fact, but outright false. Other animals also judge good and bad, the difference being that their judgment-making process is simpler and that they cannot articulate the words good/bad, or even if they can, like parrots, that they cannot connect the meaning of it to the word/sound produced. Good/bad means desirable/undesirable in relation to an ideal projected from an organism's biological needs. Then certain behaviors, types of food, etc. are judged as good/bad(desirable/undesirable) in relation to an ideal. For example, carnivores judge eating plants as bad because it doesn't contribute to their survival and they can't digest them so they'd cause digestion problems, while they judge eating meat as good. Or they judge another animal trying to damage their genitals as bad because their ideal is to reproduce, and having their genitals cut off isn't very conducive to actualizing that ideal.

Quote :

1. Isolation is "a fully arbitrary dismissal from consciousness of all disturbing and destructive thought and feeling".

2. Anchoring is the "fixation of points within, or construction of walls around, the liquid fray of consciousness". The anchoring mechanism provides individuals a value or an ideal that allows them to focus their attentions in a consistent manner. Zapffe also applied the anchoring principle to society, and stated "God, the Church, the State, morality, fate, the laws of life, the people, the future" are all examples of collective primary anchoring firmaments.

3. Distraction is when "one limits attention to the critical bounds by constantly enthralling it with impressions". Distraction focuses all of one's energy on a task or idea to prevent the mind from turning in on itself.

4. Sublimation is the refocusing of energy away from negative outlets, toward positive ones. The individuals distance themselves and look at their existence from an aesthetic point of view (e.g., writers, poets, painters). Zapffe himself pointed out that his produced works were the product of sublimation.

Roughly distinguish four types of people that exist in vague combinations. Anchoring + Distraction = Mass Man, Anchoring + Isolation = Determined Man, Sublimation + Distraction/Isolation = Art Man, Sublimation within the Anchoring = God Man (generally). Which are you?????

Interesting thought fart you have there, Mr. Allures. Dont see how it's much different from iambiguy's sentiment.

Let me ass you a question, hmm. Which is superior/inferior? A legion of starving zombies, with decayed bodies, body parts falling off, in constant pain and hunger...or an egalitarian group of evolved ponies, who are well fed and emotionally and socially and sexually satisfied?

Which is superior/inferior? An amish community, or a community of sand people too dumb to figure out how to build a well, constantly starving because theyr too dumb to scavenge? Which is superior/inferior? Don't know, hard to say. Which is good/bad? Getting stabbed in the knee, or having your clitoris massaged by a hot girl? Dunno, can't tell. Which is good/bad? Can't say. God is not real because you say so, therefore there no such thing as good/bad, superior/inferior, everything is subjective, we are but products of dasein and political economy and economic goods.

Justifying his own degenerate state, and excusing his lack of all principles, except the cRAP battles of shit-talking, I'm fucking more women than you, Americanism.

Being cynical and standing for nothing but "I", is cool.

A culture is defined by its values, how it evaluates, and its idea(l)s what ambitions it considers useful, superior, creating a population behavior, like a herd of cows is characterized by their behavior exposing their values, their object/objectives governing this behavior.

Something is evaluated, judged, in relation to an objective.
If I value intelligence I value accordingly what exhibits intelligence. Intelligence is judged by behavior in relation to world - what choices were perceived, and which were taken; what patterns are perceived and how can include them in a comprehensive model in relation to world.

No morality outside a desired behavioral standard.
All is is evaluating otherness, subjectively, and this judgment being more or less accurate, more or less useful, in relation to world.

The rest is some clown making excuses, and wanting to remain free from judgments, or wanting to not be seen, no matter what he has exposed himself as being, despite how he flatters himself.

There is no objective world and so all subjective positions are equally valid.
No value judgment is superior to another, as there is no absolute (no God), and no certain, final, way of deciding either way.

Therefore, all self-identifiers, all life-choices, all lifestyles, all behaviors, are morally equivalent.

Parity via weakness: ignorance is a gnosis.
Weakness is a strength.
Either/Or: no absolute = all is possible, all is valid, all is true = chaos.

And the coward escapes the penetrating eye.
To every perspective you have the "That's only your opinion" escape.
Using your anus as a pleasuring orifice is not reprehensible nor does it signify a mutation, or an emasculation, as in beta-male behavior.
There is no objective usage for any orifice and so the individual can choose to use his own orifices in any which way and nobody can pass judgment on him/her.
Using your mouth for a sperm depository is just as valid as using it to eat.
Chopping off your ear and sticking a banana there, is not something anyone can make a value judgment about - as there is no God.
Having intercourse with an infant is no different than having sex with a cow.

Find a flaw in all positions to remain comfortable in your own, without having to justify them to anyone.
No alternative need be provided, as all you must do is hint at a weakness to dismiss it entirely.
No juxtaposition to determine superior from inferior - it's an either/or.
Give me the absolute or I remain as I am: unconvinced and content.
No effort needed.

The knowledge, and appreciation of the individual’s past is the affirmation of this past/nature (sum of all nurturing).
A partial knowledge and affirmation results in an incomplete, and/or erroneous, acknowledgement and appreciation.
A partial incomplete self-knowledge will warp the projection of an object/objective (ideal), often making the self-annulling seem self-affirmation.

The idea(l) is the projection of a goal, a desirable object/objective.
The self is what one is, as this has been determined by the past, and the idea(l), is what the individual wishes to become – it is the projection of self-knowledge in time.
Both this awareness of self, as what has been manifesting in a presence, and what one wishes to become, is part of what is called identity.

The idea(l), the object/objective, may be in harmony with this past/nature, or it may be, to varying degrees, contrary to it; nullifying this past/nature by forgetting it, dismissing it, rejecting it, ignoring it.
This is called a Nihilistic idea(l).
Whether the individual has a complete, honest, self-affirming relationship with his past, or not, really does not matter in regards to his fate.
The past is present through the genes; it appears, is apparent, because the individual is the manifestation of this past, whether he knows it, acknowledges it, accepts it, or not.
When the projected destination in time, (the goal, the desired idea(l), the object/objective) is in tune with the individual’s past (in harmony with it, aligned with it), then it is self-affirming.

As there are idea(l)s (object/objectives), which are self-affirming, or that are self-negating, so are there idea(l)s which are more, or less, realistic.
The degree of realism present in the object/objective is determined by how many sensual references (empirical connections) it maintains with the (inter)active world.
These connections might fluctuate, as the world is Flux.
This is why the healthy individual is continuously reaffirming its connection to reality using its senses.
The deranged individual is reaffirming the world as it is connected to via a proxy, a mediating authority/institution.
It is not the individual who decides the realism of his projected object/objective, but the world itself determines the individual’s degree of connection to reality.
The individual may be convinced that its object/objective is realistic, but the world remains indifferent to all particular subjective appreciations, understandings of it.
It is the individual itself that pays the price for being detached from reality.
It is the individual itself that bears the burden for not knowing or acknowledging or appreciating self, as sum of all past, all nurturing.
Objectivity is the degree of connection between the individual’s subjective interrelations (of self and of the world it finds itself in) and the world which is independent of all subjective interrelations of it.
Judgment is how the individual evaluates this connectivity.

Nobility is accepting the responsibility for an error, and striving to correct it.
Nobility is striving to harmonize the determined past/nature, with the projected object/objective.

First step towards this goal, (this object/objective, this idea(l)) is to know thyself as fully, honestly, lucidly as possible, and to then accept this self, as it has been determined by the past/nature.
Essentially to know thyself is to know thy nature, where nature is the sum of all nurturing.
Second step is to rid your object/objective of all corruptive elements that may divert it from reality; which may detach it from the world; the world as it is, and not the one you wish it were.
This requires constant vigilance.
It also demands courage, and a motive.
Emotions, particularly fear, creeps into all minds, warping all its constructs (its abstractions).
An inflated ego, an overestimation of self, is a by-product of this wrapping – it compensates for an insecurity with an exaggeration.
Underestimating self is no less corruptive.

How realistic your object/objective is, is determined by how many references to the real world it maintains.
How attainable it is for the individual is determined by the quality of his self-knowledge and self-appreciation.



On Values and Value Judgement


I am shipwrecked on a deserted island.
I find a crate of food, a jug of water, a gem, and an axe.

How do I evaluate the value of these items?

First of all my past, my nature/genes, force me to evaluate the food and water as above the other items. I need. This need makes me value food and water more than a gem which has no value on a fuckin' desert island, and only has value within a human system - within a human socio-economic, political system.
Even between food and water there is a value hierarchy dependent on how pressing the need is and the duration of its satiation.
For example, water is more precious to me because I can only last a few days without water, whereas I can survive a week, or more, without food.
The objective here is my survival, my objective is to continue existing to continue having a choice, and to continue valuing, judging...being conscious.

Next in my hierarchy of value judgements, given the circumstances, would be the axe.
Why?
Because the axe promises the accomplishment of an objective that may, or may not, get me off this fuckin' island.
Are all the chimps following, so far?

My objective, my motive, my goal, determines the value of the phenomenon, which, in this case is an axe.

The gem is worthless to me in this situation.
It is only valuable if my second objective is accomplished and I return to a human environment, a human socio-economic system, and then only if within this system gems, shiny objects, are considered precious as ornaments, or because of some trait this particular gem might have.
It is potentially valuable, in relation to an other, who might be taken by its shine, and sparkle.
By itself, the gem is worthless, unless I find a use for it.
USE, utility, in relation to an objective.  

There is no value separate from need, and from a projected pre-emptive preparation for satiating needs.
I need to survive....the item are evaluated in accordance to this need.
I also need to get the hell off the island, and so this becomes a secondary need that needs to be satisfied.
If I do not want to get off my island, my value judgements change.
There are no value judgements outside needy organisms.
To judge evolved to satisfy needs, to deal with needs.
To discriminate, consciousness, evolved in order for an organism to survive, to self-maintain, then with the excess the mind can project goals, objectives, ideals.

So, there are two types of needs, corresponding to the above example, but also to nutrition and sex as a further reference point from biology.
A primary need is one determined by my past.
It can be ignored but it will inevitably bear a cost.
I cannot escape or change my past - I can endure it and deal with it, or suffer the consequences.
My subjectivity cannot save me from an objective world.  

There are secondary needs, which are projected objectives, of how I want to become, or what I wish to accomplish given my primary needs - sex falls in this category, as does the desire to build a raft to get off my island.
The gem is a projection into the far future if I survive, and if I get off the island.
It has no value in my presence, in my present state, as stranded and alone.

Chimps cannot understand how and why minds fight over values.
Conflicting values, it says.
Which ones are better and why?
As in natural selection onto a memetic scale...but using such words will confuse a chimpanzee who has a major in philosophy and has read Nietzsche, Heidegger and Rand, more than twice.
We need to dumb-it-down for chimps to follow, and then typically reject...because the motive in them is not to understand, as they pretend, but to dismiss so as to remain as they are, and to justify all the choices they made in the past.

Here the objective is to be used as the motivator.
As with me, on my proverbial island, motivated to get off it, projecting an idea (a raft), as what will increase the probability, without making it certain, of getting off the island, so do humans, having satiated their primary needs, project ideals as desirable objectives which might increase their chances of becoming what they wish to be.
The axe, and the trees are my means towards this end.
They rise in my estimations because of it.  
These projected ideals are hypothetical, uncertain, and so they vary in method and in essence.

This projection is founded on my primary needs and upon my past, my nature.
Some projecting minds dream of overcoming these primary needs, overcoming this past/nature, forgetting them.
Others desire to accentuate them, to sharpen and direct them.
Others surrender to them, making them a goal in itself.

To bring it down to a chimp-level of comprehension, an ideal, an objective, is based on what the projecting subjective mind values in himself and wants to preserve.
In my case, on my island, I value my freedom, and so getting off the island is a secondary priority, after my primary needs are met.
Without satisfying my primary needs my secondary need is meaningless.
I do not want to live in isolation and on an ocean confinement and so I am willing to risk my life to get off the island.
It may be pleasant for a while but can it promise a lifetime of safety from the world?
The ocean still washes upon the islands shores....the island is connected to the world no matter how isolated it is.
A chimp wallowing in pleasure for years, eating bananas of shoving them up its rectum for fun, is not immune to a human on a ship.

If I was stranded with a chimpanzee who did not care about getting off the island, because all it wanted was to eat bananas and coconuts, which are abundant on this island, then we would have conflicting values.
Are all values equal?
NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
If I get off the island I can return and trap the chimp, taking it as my pet.
The chimp stuck there and content, has no such option.
Its values determines its fate, determines its possibilities.

If a retard does not value intelligence he will remain a retard for life.
Ignorance is bliss, but it is not immune to reality.
He will be exploited, manipulated by those who do value intelligence.
The retard is not immune to the other's value judgements because it is a retard, or because it has conflicting values.
The world, objective reality, determines which values and value judgements dominate and are better.
Not "I say so".
Not "Might is Right".
Noooooo, because "Right is Might".

Is being blind as valuable as being sighted?
Conflict in value judgements.
"How to decide?"....the chimp asks..."It's all relative" it concludes, because it is a chimp.  
Noooo, because sight gives you possibilities, options, a blind stupid chimp may never perceive.
Is being retarded more valuable than being smart?
Nooooo!!!
Because being smart, no matter the burdens and costs, has options a retard can never fathom.
Because despite the pains, and suffering, being smart, aware, offers you option, choices, advantages.  
This is not based on a subjective evaluation, but on an objective one; based on a correct assessment of reality...to be right is to acquire might.

Therefore the fight over values is a survival fight determining the fate of the ones involved and of humanity, in general.
What do you value and why?
Do you value life at all costs, or are there living conditions you will never tolerate, preferring death?
Do you value pleasure for its own sake?
Then your every decision and subsequently your possibilities will be shaped by this value judgement.
Do you value awareness, then any risk, any cost will be worth it so as to attain it.
Worth!!!!
As in value.
Are all values equal?
Again, nooooooooo!

Some values are totally subjective in that they do not even want to approach objectivity, but only want to be left alone on the fuckin' island, as if the world disappears there, as if the world cannot touch it there, as if the ones who did get off the island accomplished nothing superior to sitting around eating bananas and shoving them up your rectum.

The gem, for example, only has value in relation to other humans, within a socio-political context, where shiny ornament, displays of self-worth, satiating the need to be appreciated by others, to be acknowledged, to find a mate, and so on.
The gem, if it has no other useful qualities, is with no value if it is not given an objective by the one in its possession.

Properties are not values.
Properties are in reference to patterns of behaviour, patterns of (inter)action.
Value requires an evaluator, a judging mind, and an objective, a need.
Value is evaluating a pattern in relation to a goal.  

Your needs and your awareness determines your objectives, because if you are a chimp on that island with no clue that the ocean connects to other islands where other creatures live, you will have no use for the axe, and would value the gem more, because it is pretty and feels nice and it is pleasing, and you can play with it from dawn to dusk.
Here, play being a secondary need.
The objective is determined as superior/inferior by the objective world, independent from all subjective interpretation.
If I value understanding and this results in me inventing a spear, and then a bow and arrow combination, and the chimp values shoving coconuts up its arse for hours....the value judgements are not equal, not at par.
They have real world implications.

This is why the subjective mind closest to the objective real is dominant, and the subjective mind dismissing objectivity, careless as to the sequences of cause/effect, reinventing and inverting the causal chain, not interested in reality and in clarity, is always a chimpanzee.
It cannot be but a chimpanzee.
It is stranded on the island - happy, content, ignorant.  

Even chimps can imitate human behaviour.
Some even get trained in school, and are given diplomas in philosophy...
What's the difference between an old chimp and a young chimp?
The old chimp picked up some branch swinging tricks over the years.
It has also mastered walking on its hind limbs, like a human.

The young chimp has a lot to learn, in the swinging from the branches department.
Take the chimp out of the jungle, clothe it, teach it human ways...and what do you have?
We come full circle back to identity.

Quote :

inna minnit.

Is that Latin?

So because there is no god I can fuck a baby because there is no way of telling to what kind of traits (or gender) I am attracted to - that the ancient peoples of Europa and many other people never did fuck babies in masse was pure coincidence. There are no biological mechanisms determining values, there are no biological specialized designs so a man and a woman are equal in all potentials and thus the cultural gender roles have always been a mere social construct.
Very enlightening.

Something is called valuable when it meets the criteria of being conducive to achieving either a hypothetical or categorical imperative. Goodness and badness are evaluations that cannot exist without one or the other imperative at work.

The difficult part is distinguishing which kinds of values can be identified as categorically virtuous values and which kind can only be meaningful only as hypothetically valuable.

If we say that having values X is good, and doing or believing Y is what one does or believes when one has values X, so Y is categorically good.. we are only making a categorical imperative out of Y, not X.

Values X can't justify itself as an end or a means, while at least values Y can be meaningful as a means to the end, values X.

Regarding judgment, consider this. Does an animal practicing an evolutionarily stable strategy of behavior judge his environment and decide to act in one way and not the other (an unstable strategy)? Is an animal aware of himself and can he decide to take one course of action instead of another?

If he can't have any understanding of what a bad course of action would be, he can't have an understanding of what a good course of action would be, either. He would be acting reflexively, a behavior trait that is genetically determined; fit animal X behaves this way because behaving this way contributed to its survival and reproduction.

A human on the other hand can.. a conscious human who has a working language.. has an understanding of what strategy means, and can therefore purposely act unstratigically if he chooses. An animal cannot do this.. it cannot 'choose'.. I mean it doesn't have the language with which to reflect about a behavior and define it as strategic or unstrategic... and take one course of action or the other, intentionally.

Arbiter, you're still trying to use some vague notion of natural selection as a defense for the set of values you hold. If they were purely determined through natural selection, you values would not entail any possibility for unstrategic behavior. But they do; you can purposefully uphold a value or not. You have a set of values that you can intentionally disregard if you chose.

If this tendency can be linked to a behavioral trait that is heritable, it wouldn't make any sense. Why would the ability to chose wrongly be a behavioral trait that had any fitness value? You'd think this capacity to think and choose would have never evolved because of this glitch.

---

Again, there is nothing wrong with asserting one's values provided that one doesn't make the mistake of defending them in the wrong way. It's tacky. You can't make a categorical imperative out of a value. Only a hypothetical imperative. Kant kouldn't do it and neither kan you. Consequence of there being no teleology.

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Is that Latin?

Not Latin, Staten..Staten island New Yoak, tough guy.

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Roughly distinguish four types of people that exist in vague combinations. Anchoring + Distraction = Mass Man, Anchoring + Isolation = Determined Man, Sublimation + Distraction/Isolation = Art Man, Sublimation within the Anchoring = God Man (generally). Which are you?????

I don't think people can be defined with text so I don't pay much attention to the classiciation systems of personality type. I keep hearing people talk about INTJs like they were high level dungeons and dragond characters or something. Ever get that? Was trend at ILP for a while.

I like the distinction the behaviorists make between a mental event and its relevenacy in understanding human behavior. Not that there are no mental phenomena, but that they ultimately don't matter in the analysis of behavior.

Like the beetle in the box that everyone has.. each one not being able to see what is in any of the boxes but able to talk meaningfully about beetles nonetheless.

[

The beetle is synonymous to the mental events that accompany behavior.. the reasons for one's intentions cannot be observed, but this fact makes no difference in the interpretation of behavior. It just changes it a bit.

Take any of the adjectives there for distinguishing these 'four types'. Anchoring, or sublimantion, or Isolation. Each of these concepts are already intentional concepts so one could not get a disengaged objective definition for each in the first place. We cannot straightjacket the adjectives for describing and defining behavior and say 'person X is type Y' because there will always be exceptions, anomalies and variations.

Where is the end of type X Distraction and the beginning of type Y Anchoring? Is there a total set of behavioral descriptions in text for each type so that a single behavior could be identified as either being one or the other?

They say that the line between black and white is so vanishingly small its width cannot be distinguished from zero. But I believe there is some grey area... where narratives of human typing are disregarding the problem with these classification systems and assuming the content of mental phenomena can be observed from/though behavior.

But we can't see into another's box.

What If I called your 'great business sense' set of behaviors X. Then one day you do something that isn't part of that set.. you give money to a bum on the corner. Total financial loss, not a move from the book on how to have a great business sense. But then we could argue that this move isn't necessarily bad in the context of having a great business sense, so wasn't a contradiction. Now you have changed behavior set X and it's meaning. Now part of the definition of 'great business sense' is 'giving money to a bum on a corner', where previously it wasn't.. not until the behavior was re-interpreted. Now you have a subcategory, behavior set X and behavior set X.a.

Beware of classifications involving the interpretation and understanding of human behavior. They are already embedded in intentional narratives where such rigid categories cannot exist for long before they start to subdivide.

Your arguments are boring and stupid.

Genetic fitness and natural selection culminated in intelligent, they are not separate or inferior to it. Beauty, intelligence, power, which are all things you mentioned, can be determined and ranked by juxtaposition and comparison with alternatives all referencing criterion which are observable in the natural world (as in beyond the artificial or humanistic world which is characterized by human interventions and humanized environments). Intelligence therefore, which is provably superior to deterministic emotions and biologically ingrained reactions based on the observable dominance of our species, is not some floating inorganic phenomenon which is divorced from earthly considerations, it is another component in the arsenal of an organic species and it evolved because it offered a greater possibility of survival and propagation/reproduction.

The point is: you seem to consider that intelligence is or can be separated from body which contains it, like some type of God-consciousness, whereas in reality, the advantage that intelligence offers is a superior conception and identification of genetic fitness etc directly in the realm of needs, genes and survival, not above and beyond it.

In your worldview a large ripe yellow banana is not superior to a small black rotten one because you have divorced intelligence from its carrier, which is absurd. In my world view intelligence is a component of my existence which is only effectively utilized when it is directed towards improving the probability of increased health, strength beauty and overall survival chances. It did not evolve to consider absurdity and futility, it evolved primarily and most importantly to increase the odds that it's carrier would pick the ripe banana!!! (to eat, just to clarify...)

Intelligence recognizes order from the commonplace (ripe and healthy foodstuffs, sharp stabbing objects) to the complex and profound (philosophy, psychology, society) all to solidify the genetic fitness of an organism which developed in an earthly environment. Anything above and beyond this or detached from these fundamental and essential considerations is nihilism and or religious mysticism: a defective and non-beneficial mutation/application of what we call intelligence.

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Your arguments are boring and stupid.

You guys make a great welcoming committee. So far I have been insulted, kicked, cursed, punched twice, reprimanded, laughed at, disregarded, mushed (see urban dictionary) called stupid and targeted by malevolent airborne tomatoes.. and all I did was give a short class on evaluations.

Carlin you couldn't have better minsunderstood what I've said. Great work man.

I'm not disputing having one's values and pride in one's values, I'm encouraging it. I just find the ways in which philosophers defend and justify the 'betterness' of values, as an interesting practice.. something worthy of some garage philosopher/sociologist structural analysis which I have provided on behalf of the company at know yoself.

I didn't even charge you for my time and this is what I get; "Boring and stupid".

Well what do you want to talk about then? Gimme something to read with less than a thousand words. I don't do books or book length posts anymore because their all repeats of each other. I'll read a lengthy essay at most. You will make a 'what is not boring and stupid to Carlin' post, yes?

Your point was that moral relativism is unavoidable and that no one thing can be said to be superior to another outside of a determined context.

Not a rare or difficult to understand position. In fact in our time it is the norm.

MY point, which seems to have eluded you, is that intelligence evolved within an earthly environment and in order to facilitate survival and reproductive success. In this way, objective analysis of nature and juxtaposition with the values of people can determine, is as much is humanly possible, what is the superior and or inferior morality, technology, social order, physiological attribute etc.

The reason this is boring and stupid is that dear camus666, in a more retarded form, has been saying the same thing. He too prefers to consider all values as equally true/untrue/valid/invalid rather than accept that some values and ideals and courses of action are superior to others based on the natural world and its observable determinations I.e. the environment which caused intelligence to arise in the first place and for the same fundamental reasons that all traits evolve.

Funny how of all the commentary Carlin offers you only saw the "you are boring and stupid"...which may be true, but it was not the only thing he said.
You are boring and stupid and....
You want something long enough, and short enough to keep your ADD and your hedonism both happy?
You like posts that can be read and processes, by a mind like yours, in the period it takes to pull one off.
I would say around 5 minutes.

So, for you there is no human nature, no human behavior?
Humans are the only organism that cannot be categorized...or is your mind-farting only a cautionary tale?
Be careful what you think because humans are complex....

Well, I don't know how complex, or simple, humans are in general, at least in relation to you, but you are predictably shallow and guided by some simple principles.
The quickest way to define you is an average hedonist, but that's not saying much because clowns raised in the U.S. are usually superficial hedonists.
They call it individualism, or "me, me", or capitalism, or socialism, but it boils down to the same shit.

Nihilist is good, since hedonism is the new candy for the more discriminating nihilist these days.
It reduces the complexities, which are dismissed for exactly this reason, to a feeling, an orgasm, an emotion, a high.

That you are a confused, lonely, man, with no principles, no goals, except escape, no values outside your selfish ones, your comforts and pleasures, is obvious.
That you crave attention, have a need to be validated and has, as of now, only found work, your labor, to get that fix, is obvious.    

That you will deny this and make some smart-as reply, is also obvious.

But why should I deny my friends the pleasure of discovering you on their own?

You are cAnus with a flare.  

Note:
There's a member on this forum who is female,  and is as hot as Echo was, is, and twice as smart.
Try to find her.

Quote :

MY point, which seems to have eluded you, is that intelligence evolved within an earthly environment and in order to facilitate survival and reproductive success. In this way, objective analysis of nature and juxtaposition with the values of people can determine, is as much is humanly possible, what is the superior and or inferior morality, technology, social order, physiological attribute etc.

Yes of course, but only hypothetically, not imperatively. That it is good to have and be X says nothing about whether or not it is good that it is good to have and be X.

Aha.

Not a very important point, but a point in any case.

I'm trying to strengthen the resolve of the spirit of patriotism and nationalism by omitting (or purging) some of the usual, confused philosophical nonsense that is ubiquitous throughout this narrative form.

So the feeling of an ethos is something more. It's not a set of true statements about all the facts in the the world. That would be impossible. There are no moral phenomena, only moral interpretation 0f phenomena, etc., etc.

One could never collect and summarize all of one's statements about their feelings of patriotism and nationalism and put them in text. No Derrida, we say there is something outside of the text.

I think I read something by Allan Bloom about the end of moral philosophy at analytical relativism, or some such thing. Maybe it was Rorty, I can't remember.

Satyr: I liked that be cool video you did on youtube with the audio narrative in the negroid, hiphop idiom and patios.. an den I'ma be a playa...yeah..an I'ma, etc., etc. It was good but it could have been better.

You need to put some better music to that video. I could hook that shit up on the movie maker.

There's a slight unexpected italian, upper state new yoak characteristic about your accent there, tough guy. I like dat. You got audiogenic potential I tink.

Wanting to save time...

I concede to Brian, because he will declare victory himself later on.
He was the victor the day he was born, and the winner gets to live in a truck on the streets, and be him for a lifetime.

I also concede victory to the cAnus who won the grand prize of being retarded for life.

Is being retarded good or bad, from an ethical perspective?
It's relative, I guess.
Who can judge who is retarded and who is not...and yet when we see it, we know it.
Some of us also go as far as to think, to judge, that we do not want to be like that, because it is "bad", and that to not be retarded is "good" - some are fascists.

Zoot Allures wrote:

Again, there is nothing wrong with asserting one's values provided that one doesn't make the mistake of defending them in the wrong way. It's tacky. You can't make a categorical imperative out of a value. Only a hypothetical imperative. Kant kouldn't do it and neither kan you. Consequence of there being no teleology.

Democrazy is a soft tyranny that relies on presenting hypothetical imperatives as freedom of choice.
Think about this.

The Tyrant cAnus mistakes the proliferation of free choices within a closed system and its predefined parameters, as Diversity.
Moralization of these "free choices" of whether I should or should not, I can or can not are only entertained and applicable as long as the system is let to run undisturbed and its basic premise of maintaining power by handing out such subsidies of 'free choices and freedom of expression and free thinking' while consent and dissent are already manufactured to give the appearance of a 'conflict' is not questioned:

Chomsky wrote:

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate." [The common good]

When scientists are themselves funded by those in power to produce statistics that support proof for either side, one can keep the dialectic going of whether GM food-crops are safe and good and economical or not... meanwhile, a market is already opened for experimentation that will validate both claims and create these artificial complexities... based on emotional manipulations of a world ending soon owing to climate change, energy deficits, etc. being responsible for them in the first place, all the while carrying on the pretence of a democrazy.

Any govt. that is not democratic as immediately tyrannical is a tyranical thought of a moral/political idealist.

The real conflict, is not if abortion should be legal or not, but the values that spawn the culture behind experiencing the need to see it as moral or immoral.

There is a tyranny of the middle, of negotiation and compromise that such a substraction leaves people anaemic of their particularities in a levelled, uniform LCD - which is the kind of tyrant cAnus is.
The kind of tyrant who is a hedonist building on the least worst and lesser evil that causes least harm to the max.; except that lesser evil just happens to be the worst of all evils.

sheltering causes such ignorance, that one now takes this for natural dasein, and then makes the argument for a consensus that should be arrived at after the averaging out of sheltered stupidities.

If a woman is not "intelligent enough" to have become aware that procreation is a natural instinct, because instituted choices have sold the idea of anything goes for freedom, dasein now is however she is thrown into the artificial culture and now objective resolution means, one must adjust and lower oneself to the consideration of such false ignorance,,, instead of engaging reality to whatever degree directly. Laws must be adjusted to widen the margin for depravities that con/fuse artificial and natural dasein.

The real issue is always political. And 'apolitical' solutions and wishes of Kingdumb on earth is not going to make it go away.
The tyrant wants to bring down Xt. to the flesh and blood,,, from the spires of the political church it has climbed upto in the skies.

He came here hoping someone can help him with how his stunting democrazy can be made to work.

Some turkeys are so ashamed of being born human, they find man shaping his environment, the Apollonian illusion of creating borders, the shape-forming power in man that has made him the most rich and beautiful creature to exist in the universe,,, a "sin".

This "sin" exists in the mind of this Xt. because it first presumes an abs. truth to compare to, that is naturally non-existent.

This turkey would want everyone to wallow in the same LCD mud - that's his idea of making the "conflict go away". In the same sludge where everyone is equally right and equally wrong.
The cesspool is his solution.

Without lies, we would be dead. And this is the oldest battle in the world, the oldest conflict in the world. How much truth can you endure? Nietzsche wrote:
"...to what extent one can endure to live in a meaningless world because one organizes a small portion of it oneself." [WTP, 585]

There is no truth apart from the whole; we are always implicated, always will be "erroneous", "lying" in trying to form judgements on the whole while being part of it...

That does not mean no truth is ever possible; degrees of it are, as Satyr explained, the world in relation to our consciousness doesn't change at the rate we are not able to "fix some portion of it'.
Superior and inferior have comparative amoral objectivity.

To deny in man - his cunning, his artistic impulse, his shape-forming organizing lust, is to deny his very evolution, his Human-ity beyond good/evil.

Its incredible how ashamed this turkey is of being born in the wrong level of evolution.

No wonder, abortion weighs on him so much.

Man does not just receive and is not just nurtured by his environment, he also shapes his environment... and that is an affront... to whom, but the lowest of turkeys...

Man is part of that very nature, and he is an environment himself, the on-going inter-activity of life's self-organizing.

aish

This is what the Democrank Tyrant cAnus writes, since Thriller here says he's not sure of cAnus' views:

Tyrant wrote:

Here, in my view, is one particular rendition of what I construe to be the "psychology of objectivism". Applicable to either Religion or to Reason.

1] For one reason or another [rooted largely in dasein], you are taught or come into contact with [through your upbringing, a friend, a book, an experience etc.] a worldview, a philosophy of life.

2] Over time, you become convinced that this perspective expresses and encompasses the most rational and objective truth. This truth then becomes increasingly more vital, more essential to you as a foundation, a justification, a celebration of all that is moral as opposed to immoral, rational as opposed to irrational.

3] Eventually, for some, they begin to bump into others who feel the same way; they may even begin to actively seek out folks similarly inclined to view the world in a particular way.

4] Some begin to share this philosophy with family, friends, colleagues, associates, Internet denizens; increasingly it becomes more and more a part of their life. It becomes, in other words, more intertwined in their personal relationships with others...it begins to bind them emotionally and psychologically.

5] As yet more time passes, they start to feel increasingly compelled not only to share their Truth with others but, in turn, to vigorously defend it against any and all detractors as well.

6] For some, it can reach the point where they are no longer able to realistically construe an argument that disputes their own as merely a difference of opinion; they see it instead as, for all intents and purposes, an attack on their intellectual integrity....on their very Self.

7] Finally, a stage is reached [again for some] where the original philosophical quest for truth, for wisdom has become so profoundly integrated into their self-identity [professionally, socially, psychologically, emotionally] defending it has less and less to do with philosophy at all. And certainly less and less to do with "logic".

Lyssa wrote:

How is your view Also not part of your own 7 points?

But that's your problem, isn't it?

You want a way to confirm those 7 points you listed as you being objective... but unable to assert...

What an irony, how even after saying points 4 and 5, you are still a democrat?

If the majority agree, how can one know it is an objective view and not a defence of ignorance.

What you seek is qualitative control for a good democratic procedure.

You want to be the most efficient Xt. out there.

cAnus Tyrant who defines things from the Moral Podium of moralizing things into a moral relativism.

Uncertainty is the gateway for faith... in the righteousness of many minds typical of fanaticist. Dialogue strecthing like a chewing gum foreverrrrr creating more and more artificial problems as they try to "solve" and "resolve" with their collective hive minds, knowing full well, the more they come together, the more complicated it will get and the more unsolveable a problem becomes and more subjectivity becomes precious in their slowly detached solipsistic slumber... 100 blind elephants are somehow better than 1 keen-sighted eagle... the J.-Xt. hedonist ic nihilist like canus valuing quantity over quality...

As if quality is ever undefinable or undemonstrable by objectivists and such mere mortals...

Only in sheltered environments, can "identity" take on the meaning of a "whim" and escaping judgements and avoiding feeling exposed as inferior feces in the face of reality be secured in the garb of "conflicting goods".

I think without this constant "dilemma" the Tyrant clings to like a bible, he fears he would have to really face a meaningless world and he is dimly aware he may have no good reasons to exist, and sustaining artificial questions like this in the pretext of non-resolution to which he alone has a solution, is how he drags and assists himself to breathe from day to day.

"Democrazy", "best of all" - more abstractionist bullshite.

Indeed, all one need but to do is to imagine the likes of canus actually being in possession of the political power needed to reinforce her "solution" and her "justice" of "best of all possible worlds" on an actual flesh and blood community.

In fact one need not imagine, because we can already see it... right now, in the flesh and blood, before us.

Dysgenics, feminization, schizophrenia and self-reinforcing solipsistic retards like canus is what it has resulted in.

More to the point [mine]: How is cAnus not really just one more rendition of that tyrannical hive mind here?

She has no trust in her own senses, and shivers to judge, discriminate, evaluate anything without resorting to her moral high ground, her external force of J.-Xt. righteousness, the tyrant, the good samaritan...

She cannot speak of human judgement without going through the anal tunnels of her God, her Morality, her Sec. humanist democranks...

Look at this self-hating hedonistic nihilist who distrusts and has severed her own senses...

For her words are like lego pieces. She stacks them into a contraption that obviates the real world.

Or, rather, whittles it down to her ordering the words into this "intellectual contraption" bristling from the internal logic derived from this:

1] I am right because I am relative
2] I am relative because I have access to the LCD
3] I have access to the LCD because I grasp the hedonistically least painful justice for all levelling down
4] I grasp the one true nature of the World because I grasp the one true nature of the Human Democratic world

The moralist will never define the words and then yank the phenomenal world down into her sewers of abstraction. Why? In order to hammer -- to torque and twist -- needless moralisms into human interactions that come into conflict over value judgment into this moral contraption.

Democrazy is the religion of comfort for the weaklings.
Why canus clings to it with such persistence. Without this "sheltering sky", she would be exposed for the retardation she is, and even calling a spade a spade would feel like a tyranny to her... it already does.

Coming to an lcd agreement is soft tyranny of stunting, dwarfing, reducing, feminizing, nihilizing human interactions within and to moral interactions.

Keeping man dwarfed within moral cages, through the dualities of pleasure (justice-for-all) or pain is the "best of all possible worlds" only to the slave mind, and the tyrant who is in need of producing slave minds.

The introduction of new drugs to cure ailments makes emerge new ailments requiring some other new drugs, which make emerge further new ailments... ad. inf.

Likewise democrazy makes emerge artificial problems, artificial dasein cocooning man further and further...

This is a FRAGMENTATION.

This is not a complexity sustaining diversity, but a Fragmentation coming apart, tearing apart, giving way... into the nihilistic abyss.

Democrazy's "justice-for-all" is not a complexity, but a fragmentation and a Tyrannical cancer.

The minute the other accuses you of insanity, you know they're losing theirs...

Its that Tyrannical threat... either/or... either you see my point of view or you're insane... the same frame of mind as Rand and her ilk...

Showing the mirror to their faces makes them only that much more hysterical and they start their Tyrannical threats, either/or,... either you agree with me or you are a liar, a lunatic, a retard, a kid, insane, satan, etc.

cAnus further wrote:

Tyrant wrote:

As though there are not any number of folks who hold in contempt many of Satyr's own values in the manner in which he holds in contempt the values of the pedophile.

Lyssa wrote:

Is there such a thing as selflessness?

Something or the other will always be sacrificed... inviting rationalizations connected to desired ideals, themselves product of rationalizations.

What is the selfish-ness of the base, and what is the self-ishness of the noble - are aesthetic degrees, not ethical degrees; taste itself informed by an a-moraline past.

If a pedo cannot help himself but be what he is,,, likewise the critique of a pedo cannot help himself but be what he is. So who should be condemned and how should he be condemned? - Tied to the ideal. These ideals are not ideally constructs but themselves organic growths of a particular climate, soil, livestock, ecology. Every ideal too has its own dasein.

This is not to be confused with modern idealists and their impositions. Just because something is abused, doesn't mean a concept itself loses reality or validity.

Even if there is innocence of being and no one is responsible for the station of life they are in, is it really all at the same level? Judging the mentally inferior from the superior need not be a moral stand.

Hear ye all, the solution is either Judge No One, we are all sinners [Xt.]  or  a consensus reduced to the lowest common denominator dubbed "reasonable", dubbed "agreeable", dubbed "I do not want to judge because I do not want to be judged" [Democrazy].

I think the concept of democrazy is less important than the history of its development. What is more interesting is how and why it happened.. not whether it is philosophically interesting or not.

I don't think democrazy was 'activated' by philosophers or politicians. I don't think it was something that was installed.. rather a situation that came about because a certain kind of material relations demanded such an arrangement and organization in order to function more efficiently. Democrazy was the self generating autopoiesis of the human being to the new industrial environment.. these relations could be better and work more effectively if the management was spread out. This is the beginnings of the workings of democrazy; letting more people make decisions and have a say in how things should run. First at an economic level and then a political level. This isn't something that philosophers poofed into existence.. it was already established and working in socioeconomic form before they put the idea on paper. The ideology came out of the analysis of it as it was already happening.

If and when a society has enough divisions of labor to require more management 'units' over these divisions, the democrazic process begins developing naturally as a synthetic solution to the problem of efficient management.

It is almost a golden rule among economists that societies that allow free markets to operate to some degree tend to work more efficiently. This is because of the spontaneous organization a free market takes, a self regulating principle that cannot be 'planned' and cannot be anticipated. Reducing the control of such a process to being regulated by only a few small parties never works. These people can't possibly make competent decisions about how to manage the production, distribution and consumption of commodities over such a vast scale of space and time. Because there are too many decisions to be made, the system naturally morphs into one which creates the need for many micro management groups to evolve and make these decisions.

So the first step was in the context of the material productivity of a group and how that could be better managed. Out of that then comes the philosophers analysis of how society is working at the moment. They suggest that maybe government might be better run by many of these... what did you call them.. micro management groups.

And what was utilitarianism, then? It was the very dramatic response to the sudden growth spurt that occurred during the industrial revolution in Europe. A free market had to evolve.. Smith is right.. we gotta try it, but how do we do it?

So they start theorizing about the best possible way to behave and interact in such a system that would help it function most efficiently.

Consider the soviet states that were set up to manage themselves. This is the implementation of that natural requirement.. that there be more governing bodies involved in the decision making processes of a system becoming more and more complex.

Timocracy in ancient greece gave way to participatory democracy, and it made sense then because they were all citizens who were raised on the same [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] more or less.

In modernity, institutionalization has seeped down to such a level, the individial is encompassed on all sides by artificial parameters and choices, a man-made box that he mistakes for objective reality  outside human concerns. Althusser takes it to extremes, but he has a point when he says the 'individual' itself has been [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], his subjectivity produced for him, that any "subjective resolution" only adds up to more dumbing down in the larger pov. and is a good joke.

Keeping Wig.(wittgenstein) in mind, dialogue/discourse strecthing like a chewing gum foreverrrrr creating more and more artificial problems as they try to "solve" and "resolve" with their collective hive minds, knowing full well, the more they come together, the more complicated it will get and the more unsolveable a problem becomes, more subjectivity becomes precious in their slowly detached solipsistic slumber... what Satyr calls the condition of Narcissism and Schizophrenia that is modernity:

Satyr wrote:

"The environment is dominated by man made artifices and reality is excluded or selectively allowed entry.

This is when the mind becomes self-absorbed, overconfident, fearless, convinced that its world is the only world or, at least, as probable a world as any other; it begins gaining an untested sense of self-esteem and a false sense of empowerment, eventually resulting in total disconnection from reality.
The mind has now been encased in its own conceptions, placed in a box, and given that it is sheltered against anything that might correct its delusions, it becomes lost in itself: arrogant and demanding...increasingly self-absorbed and self-referential.
The individual begins living in its own world, or one given to him, and since it is a pleasant world, full of of positive to it messages and flattering contexts, it abandons itself to the hedonism.

It will defend the other's right to exist in his/her own little world, if it does not disturb his/her own.
The mind is now conveniently convinced that reality is a matter of personal taste or a human construct that can be altered with mere thoughts or with further detachments.
It is able to do so because there is a system in place, a system that benefits from its complacent detachment, which protects it from its own stupidity and delusion.
A system which is not entirely successful and one which often cannot shelter the individual from reality completely, as it is itself a human construct.

So the individual is often corrected or offered a dose of reality it did not expect.
This correction may have traumatic effects, as the mind is often shocked by a reality that cares not for its self-referencing beliefs or what it thinks it deserves, and the individual is unaccustomed to anything outside its little mental box.
No amount of sheltering can fully protect the individual from a world that is indifferent to its hopes and assessments.
The first response to this sudden contact with a world it had no idea existed, contained as the individual was within institutional walls and social artifices, is that of fear.
Fear that then leads to a desire to destroy - nihilism - the source of its discomfort or to change it - idealism.
The mind dives deeper into itself or into the context it has been given to escape the jolt.

At no point does this mind considered reevaluating its positions, in other words changing itself in relation to the world.
It is the world that must be changed to accommodate its already established hopes and interests and beliefs. This sets up a relationship of animosity between the individual and the world outside its social and cultural paradigm, in other words a world outside its fantasies or what constructs it was given."

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I read y'day, kindergarten schools have now introduced neutral gender bathrooms..., only a matter of time, such attitudes splinter and splinter and what was supposed to be the 'uniqueness of each individual' becomes such fragmentation, you are left with chaos, noise-grains, indiscernible patterns - Bauman's "liquid modernity". When everything melts and flows, and every steadiness and stability, law,  is experienced as a repression/oppression, you have no material, no enduring foundation to build anything. This is the culture of victims.

Baumann wrote:

"As David Bennett recently observed, radical uncertainty about the material and social worlds we inhabit and our modes of political agency within them... is what the image-industry offers us...'.
Nothing can be known for sure, and anything which is known can be known in a different way -- one way of knowing is as good, or as bad (and certainly as volatile and precarious) as any other.
And thus there is little in the world which one could consider solid and reliable, nothing reminiscent of a tough canvas in which one could weave one's own life itinerary.
Like everything else, the self-image splits into a collection of snapshots, each having to conjure up, carry and express its own meaning, more often than not without reference to other snapshots. Instead of constructing one's identity, gradually and patiently, as one builds a house -- through the slow accretion of ceilings, floors, rooms, connecting passages -- a series of `new beginnings', experimenting with instantly assembled yet easily dismantled shapes, painted one over the other; a palimpsest identity. This is the kind of identity which fits the world in which the art of forgetting is an asset no less, if no more, important than the art of memorizing, in which forgetting rather than learning is the condition of continuous fitness, in which ever new things and people enter and exit without much rhyme or reason the field of vision of the stationary camera of attention, and where the memory itself is like videotape, always ready to be wiped clean in order to admit new images, and boasting a life-long guarantee only thanks to that wondrous ability of endless self-effacing." [Post-modernity and its Discontents]

Without frames, there would be no life; and superior and inferior are evaluations of the richest durable life-forms we can dare to create - the purpose of a healthy society.
Democrazy, as is evident, does not create those.
And unless you have norms, exceptions can't exist.
By exceptions, I mean aberrations like homosexuality, transgenderism, pedophilia, whatever else.
Again, depending on the ideals, you have laws in place.

See:

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Within a given frame, anything can be defended correctly.

But objectivity is about the highest degree of reality it can reference... frame beyond frame beyond frame.

Within an economic framework, GM food crops would be a godsend to thirdworld nations.

But what if life is more than human economy, and is also culture beyond our current generation, and is also epigenetic... and if it feminizes a whole population by a certain time interval, a society passing a law against GMO would amount to an objective issue, not a moral one.

Any which way, someone is always going to lose, but affirming a quicksand, just so everyone can be compromised equally is what a nihilist does trying to pull down others to his level than climbing up.

Its like if you have a mate at home who is handicapped, laming yourself to enjoy the same disadvantages and advanatges the other does is stupidity. Some one needs to be healthy.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] is the continuation of J.-Xt. that said nothing should be sacrificed... but its effects?
Its the democranks who are the biggest tyrants killing of all real diversity, lowering all to the same lcd handicap.

Alain de Benoist wrote:

"The sickly types aspire to form a herd.
Quantity compensates them – at least they think it does – for what they lack in quality.
If several suffer together they believe their suffering is reduced.

Paganism does not reproach Christianity for defending the weak who are unjustly oppressed. It reproaches it for exalting them in their weakness and viewing it as the sign of their election and their title to glory; it reproaches Christianity for not helping them to become strong.
So it is not a question of opposing the strong versus the weak – today, in any event, it is paganism that is weak and Judeo-Christian monotheism that is strong – but purely and simply of opposing a system of remaining weak with a system of becoming strong.
It is also a question of making a world that is not a vale of tears, not a theater of shadows, nor a stage where a man with erratic happiness acts out his salvation, but that natural field of self-expansion for a man capable of asserting his autonomy and establishing himself as his own project."

They keep saying GMO's will lower food prices...but I just see fruit being more and more expensive...

Think about it like this. If the entire earth was run by one race and no other race existed, it would still be at the same dialectical point it is in now in the latest stages of global capitalism. Instead of racial conflicts standing out, class conflicts would stand out. There would be a lower class social category that would be the subject of contempt for the upper classes. Unless you had a socialism in which case all classes would more or less be the same, you'd have the same kinds of socioeconomic conflicts between groups of people... only they would be of the same race.

The spirit of nationalism has to transcend this problem by establishing an enemy external to itself, i.e., it only works if there is an enemy or an Other that can be discriminated against in some way. The moment a nationalist spirit isn't occupied in fighting against an enemy it relaxes, and capitalism starts to take over. When this happens, even the ethic pride of a group losses meaning and significance; the citizens are no longer working together against an enemy, and are now exploiting each other in a capitalistic society.

So, since the days of enemies and borders are pretty much over, you can't put text book nationalism into political practice ever again... because you can no longer be an economically isolated country. You wouldn't last a month. You'd still be listening to Motley Crew cassettes and wearing Levis when everybody else was in purple nanofiber space suits listening to opera-techno-metal-pop through wireless brain interfaces.

Zoot Allures wrote:

The spirit of nationalism has to transcend this problem by establishing an enemy external to itself, i.e., it only works if there is an enemy or an Other that can be discriminated against in some way. The moment a nationalist spirit isn't occupied in fighting against an enemy it relaxes, and capitalism starts to take over. When this happens, even the ethic pride of a group losses meaning and significance; the citizens are no longer working together against an enemy, and are now exploiting each other in a capitalistic society.

That is the cold-war tactics;

Satyr wrote:

"Mindless, consumerism - the brainless appetites of materialism and hedonism unleashed in a population, turned into a thoughtless, instinctive, herd.
We see the symptoms in the U.S. where this infection has been the most successful, having nothing to slow its spread down - like culture, a shared heritage, family.

To fight the disease of materialism and hedonism, we have popular zombie films suggesting one must make one's self ill since zombies attack only the healthy.
It is sickness that can preserve the individual from illness and all-consuming parasitism.

The individual is either a mindless eating, instinctive, machine, rotting because time is degenerating it, or it surrenders to the collective, finding identity in the mass, sacrificing self, to a greater Self which never grows old and never, presumably, rots.
But the zombies can recognize their own kind, and so when infected the one who just committed suicide, is recognized by the mindless flesh-eaters as one of their own: fellow Nihilists.

The internal, civil war, continues.
The dualistic lines make sure no alternative enters the fight.
One is either a mindless mass of need, obsessed with satisfaction,  or one kills oneself, and becomes part of an Ideal Self, Humanity, where one's mindlessness will at least never die.

We continue to see the Cold War dynamics still in play - this internal war over hearts and minds where both sides are offering a different variant of the same nihilism."

Zoot Allures wrote:

So, since the days of enemies and borders are pretty much over, you can't put text book nationalism into political practice ever again... because you can no longer be an economically isolated country.

Democrazies are for export, install them by hook or crook, and expect no blowbacks. As if.
Patriotism for a cause, a meme, an idea/l has replaced nationalist fevers, and borders have gone blurred, but not non-existent. Outsourcings is a typical body-without-organ.
The world is ruled by performativity for its own sake.

I forget where I tried to venture this explanation before, but I have. Instead of understanding democracy as a 'philosophical plan' for ordering government put in place by political theorists, reverse the conditions; out of the necessary mechanisms of a specific mode of material production and distribution came the form of efficient governing we call democracy.

It was the demand of more efficient organization and management that caused egalitarian models of government to 'loosen up' and distribute more power to more individual units of management.

Democracy as the social model of 'rule of many', by the time it became conceivable as a body of government, was already working in praxis, and proved to have great efficacy.

Philosopher's thought "if manufacture and trade can have such well structured administration, perhaps civil laws might also be decided by these kinds of governing bodies."

The fact that democrazy has it's many flaws, it evolved out of the need of a large system of smaller systems to arrange themselves into hierarchies of order so that they function better. One unit making decisions for fifty units would result in a slower productivity rate than would ten units making decisions for fifty units.

Out of the free and spontaneous organization of the modes of production into a democratically organized system of management came the philosophical precursors for the political concepts of democracy in its earliest stages. Hegel and Marx would tell you democracy was the synthesis of two antithetical economic systems in conflict, feudalism and capitalism. From a collision of these two systems came the need to organize democratically.

Actually factually there is no such thing as "spontaneous". Noting the differences between democracy and democrazyJ.-Xt.liberalism:


1.

Alain de Benoist wrote:

"The first idea we must do away with is the notion of certain people who claim that democracy is a specifically modern product, corresponding to the most ‘developed’ stage in the history of political regimes. Any such idea is unsubstantiated. Democracy is neither more ‘modern’ nor more ‘developed’ than any other regime. Democratic regimes or tendencies can be found throughout history. Once more, the linear view of history here proves particularly misleading. In relation to political regimes, the very idea of progress is meaningless.

For the same reason, we cannot accept the idea of the ‘naturalness’ of democracy, whereby certain liberals would have us believe that democracy ‘spontaneously’ arises in the political sphere, just as the market ‘spontaneously’ arises within the logic of trade. Thus, according to Jean Baechler, ‘If we acknowledge that humans, as a species of animal [sic], spontaneously aspire to a democratic regime that promises safety, prosperity and liberty, we are forced to conclude that as soon as the right conditions have been met, the democratic experience will spontaneously emerge, without the need for any appeal to ideas.’ What, then, are these ‘conditions’ that produce democracy, just as fire produces heat? Clearly, nowhere is this specified.

In contrast to the Orient, absolute despotism has always been exceedingly rare in Europe. Whether in Rome, in the Iliad, in Vedic India or among the Hittites, already at a very early date we find the existence of popular assemblies for both military and civil organisation. Moreover, in Indo-European society the King was generally elected: all ancient monarchies were initially elective. Tacitus[ relates how among the Germanic tribes, ‘They choose their kings for their noble birth, their commanders for their valour’ (reges ex nobilitate, duces ex virtute summunt). Even in France, the crown long remained both elective and hereditary. It was only with Pippin the Short that the King came to be chosen from within the same family, and only with Hugh Capet[13] that the principle of primogeniture was adopted. In Scandinavia, the King was elected by a provincial thing, and his election had then to be confirmed by other assemblies across the country. Among other Germanic peoples, the practice of ‘shielding’  is recorded. The Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire also was elected, and the importance of the Prince-Electors in German history is well known. In general, it is only from the Twelfth century onwards that elective monarchies all around Europe became hereditary. Until the French Revolution, kings nevertheless continued to rule with the aid of parliaments, whose power was far from negligible. In all ancient European communities, one’s status as a freeman brought political rights. ‘Citizens’ were organised in free popular communes, which, among other things, possessed municipal charters. Sovereigns were surrounded by councils with which they would make decisions. The influence of customary law on juridical practices is itself an index of the degree of popular ‘participation’ in the drafting of laws. In other words, the old monarchies cannot be said to have lacked popular legitimacy. The oldest parliament in the Western world, the Icelandic Althing, was established in the year 930. It consists of a federal assembly whose members meet each year in the inspired setting of Thingsvellir. Adam of Bremen wrote, around 1076, that ‘among them there is no king, but only law’.

The thing, or local parliament, refers to both a place and an assembly in which freemen possessing equal political rights met at appointed dates to legislate and deliver justice.  In Iceland, every freeman enjoyed two inalienable rights: to bear arms and to take a seat at the thing. The Icelanders, Frédéric Durand writes, ‘managed to set up and run what, by using a vague but suggestive analogy, may be termed a sort of Nordic Hellas, a community of free citizens who took an active part in the affairs of their community — surprisingly cultured and intellectually productive men united by bonds of mutual esteem and respect.’ ‘ Scandinavian democracy is very old: its origins can be traced back to the traditions of the Viking era’, Maurice Gravier observes. Throughout northern Europe, this ‘ democratic’ tradition rests on a particularly strong communitarian sentiment — a tendency towards zusammenleben (‘ living together’) which leads people to take account of common interests above all else. At the same time, this democracy is tinged with a clear sense of hierarchy, which justifies the use of the expression ‘ aristo-democracy’. This tradition, founded on mutual assistance and a feeling of shared responsibility, remains alive in many countries, starting with Switzerland.

The idea that the people are the original possessors of power surfaces again and again in the history of the Middle Ages. While the clergy limited itself to proclaiming that omnis potestas a Deo (all power comes from God), certain theorists argued that power only flows to the sovereign from God through the intercession of the people. The notion of ‘ power by divine right’ was thus assumed in an indirect way, without turning the people into an abstraction. Marsilius of Padua[ did not hesitate to proclaim the concept of popular sovereignty; significantly, he did so to defend the supremacy of the Emperor (at the time, Ludwig of Bavaria) over the Church. The idea of a lack of distinction in principle between the people and their leaders is again attested by the formula populus et proceres (‘ the people and the great ones’), which occurs again and again in ancient texts.

One should mention here the democratic tendencies found in Rome,  as well as in the ancient Italian republics, in French and Flemish communes, in Hanseatic municipalities,  and in the constitutional charters of the free Swiss cantons. We should further recall the ancient boerenvrijheid (‘ farmers’ freedom’) that prevailed in the Frisian provinces during the Middle Ages and whose equivalent could be found along the North Sea, in the Low Countries, Flanders, Scandinavia, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Finally, it is worth mentioning the existence of important communal movements based on guilds and franchises, which fought for mutual support and pursued economic and political goals. At times, these clashed with royal authority and the Church, with the support of the burgeoning bourgeoisie, while at others they backed the monarchy in its fight against the feudal lords and contributed to the rise of the mercantile bourgeoisie.

The vast majority of political regimes throughout history can actually be classed as mixed. ‘All ancient democracies’, François Perroux observed, ‘were governed by a de jure or de facto aristocracy, when they were not ruled by a monarchical principle.’ According to Aristotle, Solon’s constitution[ was oligarchic for the Areopagus, aristocratic for its magistrates, and democratic for the make-up of its tribunals. Hence, he added, it combined the advantages of all forms of government.

Similarly, according to Polybius, Rome was an elective monarchy in terms of the power of its consuls, an aristocracy in terms of the power of the Senate, and a democracy in terms of the rights of the people. Cicero, in his On the Republic, adopts a similar perspective. Monarchy need not exclude democracy, as is shown for instance by contemporary constitutional and parliamentary monarchies. In 1789 it was, after all, the French monarchy which established the Estates-General. ‘Democracy, taken in the broad sense’, Pope Pius XII observed, ‘admits of various forms, and can be realised in monarchies as well as in republics’.

Let us further add that the experience of modern times shows that neither the political regime of a country nor its institutions necessarily constitute decisive factors in shaping the social life of its citizens. Comparable types of government may correspond to very different types of societies, whereas different forms of government may conceal identical social realities. (Western society today has an extremely homogeneous structure, although the institutions and constitutions of the countries it includes sometimes differ substantially.)" [The Problem of Democracy]

2.

de Benoist wrote:

"The notion of democracy never occurred at all in modern political thought before the Eighteenth century. Even then, it was only sporadically mentioned, and usually with a pejorative connotation. Until the French Revolution, the most ‘advanced’ philosophers fantasised about mixed regimes combining the advantages of an ‘enlightened’ monarchy with those of popular representation. Montesquieu acknowledged the people’s right to monitor, but not to govern. Not a single revolutionary constitution claimed to have been inspired by ‘democratic’ principles. Robespierre is one of the few figures of his time who — towards the end of his reign — explicitly invoked democracy (something which did not contribute to strengthen his popularity in subsequent years). This regime he envisaged as a representative form of government: as ‘a state in which the sovereign people, guided by laws which are of their own making, do for themselves all that they can do well, and, by their delegates, do all that they cannot do for themselves’. It was only in the United States, once people had started criticising the notion of a ‘republic’, that the word democracy first became widespread. Its usage became current at the beginning of the Nineteenth century, especially with the advent of Jacksonian democracy and the establishment of the Democratic Party. The word then crossed the Atlantic again and became firmly implanted in Europe in the first half of the Nineteenth century. Tocqueville’s essay Democracy in America, which elicited considerable success, made the term a household word.

Despite the many quotes inspired by Antiquity that adorn the speeches of Eighteenth century philosophers and politicians, the genuine political inspiration drawn from ancient democracy was very weak at that time. The philosophers admired Sparta more than Athens, and the ‘Sparta vs. Athens’ debate — often distorted by bias or ignorance — pitted the partisans of authoritarian egalitarianism against the tenets of moderate liberalism.[ Rousseau, for instance, who abhorred Athens, expressed sentiments that were rigorously philo-Laconian, which is to say pro-Spartan. In his eyes, Sparta was first and foremost the city of equals (homoioi). In contrast, when Camille Desmoulins thundered against Sparta, it was to denounce its excessive egalitarianism: against the Girondist Brissot, he attacked Lycurgus, ‘who made his citizens equal just as a tornado renders equal all whom it has struck’. All in all, it remained a rather superficial discourse. The cult of Antiquity chiefly functioned as a metaphor for regeneration, as exemplified by the words Saint-Just  hurled at the Convention: 'The world has been empty since the Romans; their memory can replenish it and augur liberty again!’ (11 Germinal, year 2).

In order to study ‘genuine’ democracy, it is necessary to turn to Greek democracy rather than to those regimes that the contemporary world wishes to describe by this term. The comparison between ancient and modern democracies is a common academic exercise. It is generally emphasised that the former were direct democracies, whereas the latter (for reasons that have to do, it is said, with their territorial extension and the size of their population) are representative democracies. We are also reminded of the fact that slaves were excluded from Athenian democracy, and hence that this regime was not so democratic after all. These two affirmations are rather simplistic.

Readied by the political and social evolution of the Sixth century BCE and the reforms carried out from the time of Solon, Athenian democracy met its founding moment with the reforms of Cleisthenes, who returned from exile in 508 BCE. Firmly established in 460 BCE, it thrived for one and a half centuries. Pericles, who succeeded Ephialtes in 461 BCE, gave democracy an extraordinary reputation, not without exercising a quasi-royal authority over the city for more than thirty years.

The Greeks primarily defined democracy in contrast to two other systems: tyranny and aristocracy.  Democracy presupposed three conditions: isonomy (equality before the law), isotimy (equal rights to access all public offices), and isegory (freedom of expression). This was direct democracy, also known as ‘face to face’ democracy, since all citizens could take part in the ekklesia, or assembly. Deliberations were prepared by the boule (council), but it was the popular assembly that was the real decision-making body. The assembly appointed ambassadors, decided over the issue of war and peace, launched and brought an end to military expeditions, investigated magistrates’ performance, issued decrees, ratified laws, bestowed citizenship rights, and deliberated on matters of public security. In short, ‘the people ruled, instead of being ruled by elected individuals’, as Jacqueline de Romilly writes, quoting the text of the oath given by the Athenians: ‘I will kill whoever by word, deed, vote, or hand attempts to destroy democracy … And should somebody else kill him, I will hold him in high esteem before the gods and divine powers, as if he had killed a public enemy.’ Democracy in Athens primarily meant a community of citizens, which is to say the community of the people of Athens gathered in the ekklesia. Citizens were classified according to their membership in a deme, a grouping simultaneously territorial, social, and administrative. The very term demos, which is of Doric origin, designates those who live in a given territory, as well as the territory itself as a place of origin determining civic status — inextricably linking the two. To some extent, demos and ethnos coincide: democracy is conceived here in relation not to the individual, but to the polis, which is to say the city as an organised community. Slaves were excluded from voting not because they were slaves, but because they were non-citizens. We seem shocked by this today. But what democracy has ever accorded suffrage to non-citizens?" [The Problem of Democracy]

3.

de Benoist wrote:

"The most essential feature of citizenship was one’s origin and heritage: Pericles was the ‘son of Xanthippus from the deme of Cholargus’. From 451 BCE, one had to be born of an Athenian mother and father in order to become a citizen. Defined by his belonging, the citizen (polites) was opposed to the idiotes, or non-citizen — a designation that quickly took on a pejorative meaning (from the notion of the isolated individual with no belonging came the idea of the ‘idiot’).

Citizenship as a function thus derived from the notion of citizenship a status which was the exclusive prerogative of birth. To be a citizen meant, in the fullest sense of the word, to belong to a homeland — that is, to a homeland and a past. One is born an Athenian — one does not become it (rare exceptions notwithstanding). Besides, the Athenian tradition discouraged mixed marriages. Political equality, established by law, derived from a common origin, which it also sanctioned. Only birth conferred individual politeia. Democracy was rooted in a notion of autochthonous[52] citizenship, which intimately linked its exercise to the origins of those who exercised it. Fifth century BCE Athenians constantly celebrated themselves as ‘the autochthonous people of great Athens’, and it was upon this founding myth that they based their democracy.

In Greek, just as in Latin, liberty stems from one’s origin. Freeman, *(e)leudheros (Greek eleutheros), is primarily he who belongs to a certain ‘stock’ (cf. the Latin word liberi, ‘children’). ‘To be born of good stock is to be free’, Émile Benveniste writes, ‘it comes to the same thing.’ Similarly, in Germanic, the kinship between the words frei, ‘free’, and Freund, ‘friend’, shows that originally freedom sanctioned a mutual belonging. The Indo-European root *leudh-, from which both the Latin liber and the Greek eleutheros are derived, also served to designate ‘people’ as belonging to a given folk (cf. the Old Slavonic ljudú, ‘folk’, and German leute, ‘people’). These terms all derive from a root evoking the idea of ‘growth and development’.

The original meaning of the word ‘liberty’ in no way suggests the idea of ‘liberation’ as emancipation from a given community. Rather, it implies a form of belonging — and it is this which confers liberty. Hence, when the Greeks spoke of liberty, it is not the right to escape the tutelage of the city that they had in mind or the right to rid themselves of the constraints to which each citizen was bound. Rather, what they had in mind was the right — and political capability — guaranteed by law of participating in the life of the city, voting in the assembly, electing magistrates, etc. Liberty did not legitimise secession, but sanctioned its very opposite: the bond which tied each person to his city. This was not liberty as autonomy, but liberty as participation. It was not meant to extend beyond the community, but was practised solely within the framework of the polis. Liberty implied belonging. The ‘liberty’ of an individual lacking any form of belonging, i.e., a deracinated individual, was completely devoid of any meaning.

If it is thus true that liberty was directly linked to the notion of democracy, then it must also be added that liberty meant first and foremost the liberty of the people, from which the liberty of citizens follows. In other words, it is the liberty of the people (or of the city) that lays the foundations for the equality of individual political rights, which is to say the rights enjoyed by individuals as citizens. Liberty presupposes independence as its primary condition. Man lives in society, and therefore individual liberty cannot exist without collective liberty. Among the Greeks, individuals were free because (and insofar as) their city was free.

When Aristotle defines man as a ‘political animal’ and a social being, when he claims that the city precedes the individual and that only within society can the individual achieve his potential, what he is suggesting is that man should not be detached from his role as a citizen — as a person living in an organised community, a polis or civitas. This view stands in contrast to the concept of modern liberalism, which assumes that the individual precedes society and that man, qua individual, is at once something more than just a citizen.

In a ‘community of freemen’, then, individual interests must never prevail over common interests. ‘All those governments which have a common good in view’, Aristotle writes, ‘are rightly established and strictly just, but those who have in view only the good of the rulers are all founded on wrong principles’. In contrast to what we find in Euripides, for instance, in Aeschylus the city is regularly described as a unit. ‘It was that sense of community’, Moses I. Finley writes, ‘fortified by the state religion, by their myths and their traditions, which was an essential element in the pragmatic success of Athenian democracy’.
In Greece, Finley adds, ‘freedom meant the rule of law and participation in the decision-making process, not the possession of inalienable rights.' The law merged, in practice, with the genius of the city. ‘To obey the law meant to be devoted with zeal to the will of the community’, Paul Veyne observes. It is liberty that brings legality: Legum servi sumus ut liberi esse possimus, as Cicero put it.

By showing that the fundamental principle of democracy is liberty,[64] Aristotle intends to emphasise that it is not equality. Among the Greeks, equality was only a means to democracy, not its cause. Political equality derived from citizenship — from one’s belonging to a given people. The underlying assumption here is that members of the same people (or city), whatever their mutual differences, are all citizens in the same way. This equality of rights by no means reflects a belief in natural equality. The equal right of all citizens to take part in the assembly does not imply that men are equal (or that it would be preferable if they were), but rather that from their common belonging to the city they derive a common capacity to exercise the right of suffrage, which is the privilege of citizens. As the appropriate means to the techne (skill) of politics, equality remains exterior to man. It simply represents the logical consequence of a shared belonging, as well as the primary condition for common participation. In the eyes of the Greeks, it was right for all citizens to engage in the political life not by virtue of universal and inalienable rights possessed by each human as such, but by virtue of their citizenship. Ultimately, the crucial notion here is not equality but citizenship. Greek democracy is that form of government in which the liberty of each citizen is founded on an equality conferred by the law, enabling him to enjoy civic and political rights." [The Problem of Democracy]

de Benoist wrote:

"There should be no doubt that ancient and modern democracies are two entirely different systems. The very parallel drawn between them is misleading. All these systems have in common is their name, for they are the result of completely different historical processes. Wherein do these differences lie? It would be wrong to assume that they only have to do with the ‘direct’ or ‘indirect’ nature of the decision-making process. Rather, they are due to two different conceptions of man, two different views of the world and of social ties. Ancient democracy was communitarian and ‘holistic’, whereas modern democracy is primarily individualistic. Ancient democracy defined citizenship by one’s origin, and gave citizens the opportunity to participate in the life of the city. Modern democracy organises atomised individuals into citizens, primarily viewing them through the lens of abstract egalitarianism. Ancient democracy was based on the idea of organic community; modern democracy, as an heir to Christianity and the philosophy of the Enlightenment, on the individual. The meaning of the words ‘city’, ‘people’, ‘nation’ and ‘liberty’ radically changes from one model to the other.

In this respect, to argue that Greek democracy was only a direct democracy because it encompassed a small number of citizens is again rather simplistic. Direct democracy need not be associated with a limited number of citizens. It is rather primarily associated with a relatively homogeneous people conscious of what makes it such. The effective functioning of Greek democracy, as well as of Icelandic democracy, was first and foremost the result of cultural cohesion and a clear sense of shared belonging. The closer the members of a community are to one another, the more likely they are to have common sentiments, identical values, and the same way of viewing the world and social ties, and the easier it is for them to make collective decisions concerning the common good without the need for any form of mediation. Modern societies, in contrast, require a range of intermediaries, as they have ceased to be places of collectively lived meaning. The aspirations expressed in these democracies spring from contradictory value systems that can no longer be reconciled through any unified decision. Since Benjamin Constant, it has been possible to measure the extent to which the notion of liberty has changed under the influence of the individualistic egalitarian ideology. Returning to a Greek concept of democracy, therefore, does not mean nurturing the constantly frustrated hope of ‘face to face’ social transparency. Rather, it means re-appropriating — and adapting to the modern world — a notion of the people and of community that has been eclipsed by two thousand years of egalitarianism, rationalism and the exaltation of the rootless individual." [ib.]

4.

de Benoist wrote:

"De optimo statu: what is the best political system? This is a meaningless question. No political system exists that is preferable in itself in all historical epochs, circumstances and places. Likewise, no ‘absolute’ solution exists for human affairs, nor any ‘ultimate way’ of living for societies and peoples. To argue that the best form of government is that which best meets the interests of the people is simply to sidetrack the issue, for various and mutually contradictory ways of defining collective ‘interest’ exist (such as prosperity, happiness, power, and destiny). It may certainly be argued that the optimum system is that which gives the best form to the values of a given people. But this too is a rather vague answer. Depending on the historical period, needs will change. Requirements in times of peace will differ from requirements in times of war, and it is well known how unsuited the État de droit[1] is for facing necessities engendered by an ‘emergency situation’ (Notfall).

If we take the case of democracy, a question which soon presents itself is whether this system of government may be applicable throughout the world. Good reasons exist to doubt that this is the case. On the one hand, democracy — in the best sense of the term — is rooted in the institutional and political history of Europe. On the other, liberal democracy is intimately connected to Judaeo-Christian morality and the philosophy of the Enlightenment. In the name of what should Third World countries be made to embrace this system? Once again, universality can here be seen to serve as an alibi for ethnocentrism.[2]

The intrinsic ‘goodness’ of a political system cannot therefore be proven. At most, one may attempt to prove that a given form of government is preferable to another in given conditions and in order to reach a particular goal. Besides, all authors who have argued that democracy is the best of all systems have given up on the idea of establishing its intrinsic ‘goodness’ and have for the most part simply adopted a comparative approach: democracy — they argue — has certain flaws, but it has less flaws (or less serious flaws) than the other systems. This approach, however, regularly has to face the problem of the validity of its own postulates and criteria. The simplest approach, therefore, is to accept that there is no ultimate or absolutely superior form of government and to measure the advantages and disadvantages of each system against the principles one has chosen to follow. Democracy has been made the object of two sorts of criticism. The first is directed against the principle of democracy itself, and is generally of anti-democratic inspiration. The second, in contrast, consists of deploring the fact that democratic practice rarely conforms to the ideal or theory of democracy, and in suggesting possible solutions to remedy the situation. History nonetheless shows that certain authors have adopted both forms of criticism at different stages.

Several recent studies (such as those by J. L. Talmon and Claude Polin[) have, in different ways, located the origins of modern totalitarianism within the context of the very ideology that has also spawned contemporary democracy, namely the egalitarianism and rationalism of the Enlightenment.[22] ‘In the Eighteenth century’, J. L. Talmon writes, ‘at the same time as liberal democracy and starting from the same premises , a current developed that pushed towards what may be termed totalitarian democracy … The two forms of democracy only branched off from the same tree after their shared beliefs were tested by the French Revolution’.[23] Finally, we should bear in mind that totalitarianism can take on different forms, and that the ‘soft’ standardisation we are starting to witness in liberal democracies today — a form of despotism that Tocqueville had already warned us about — is no less totalitarian than that which manifests itself through repression and concentration camps.

We should face the facts: no democratic procedure can serve as an absolute guarantee against autocracy and despotism. A popular government, as Aristotle rightly noted, may become tyrannical. Dictatorship is not typical of monarchies or oligarchies. Rather, it represents a corruption that is always possible and which threatens — in different ways — all political systems. Let us now return to modern criticisms of democracy. Ultimately, they may all be traced back to one specific criticism: the law of numbers. Jacqueline de Romilly sums it up nicely in just a few words: ‘It may seem right for each person to contribute to the governing of a country through an equal vote; but it may also seem dangerous, as not everyone is equally competent. This, to put it simply, is the dilemma which every democracy faces’. One consequence of the right to vote would certainly appear to be the fact that decisions are taken by the majority. Now, the idea that authority, a quality, may stem from numbers, a quantity, is rather disturbing.

It is on this very point that all criticisms of democracy centre. ‘Ten million ignorant men cannot constitute a wise one’, Taine wrote in his Preface to The Origins of Contemporary France in 1876. A collection of errors does not make a truth: quality cannot stem from quantity — a value is not a weight. The reasons of the majority cannot be taken as good reasons. After all, why should the most numerous section of society ipso facto be considered the best? If we believe that the majority ‘speaks the truth’, are we not identifying the inclinations of the masses with a fanciful ‘universal option’?

The above criticism immediately leads to another: not only does quantity not make quality, but indeed it often unmakes it. There appears to be a considerable risk, then, that the mathematical average on which universal suffrage is based may end up coinciding with the ‘average’ in the sense of the mediocre. It is then argued in this context that the ‘best’ are always a minority, and that the incompetence of leaders inevitably reflects that of the citizens who elected them. In his own day, Max Nordau[27] had already sought to ‘scientifically’ prove that the outcome of universal suffrage could only express the opinion of the mediocre. André Tardieu wrote, ‘The law of numbers ends up bestowing power on incompetence … The majority of voters are invited to make decisions regarding issues they know nothing about.’[28] René Guénon[29] proclaimed that the law of numbers is only the ‘law of matter and brute force’,[30] and that ‘what is superior cannot stem from what is inferior’. He thus concluded, ‘The opinion of the majority cannot be anything but an expression of incompetence’.[31] From another angle (for the aim here is to argue that the majority conceals the potential threat of tyranny), Bertrand de Jouvenel wrote, ‘So far from massive majorities in favour of a government and its policy giving us a feeling of the excellence of a regime, they render it suspect to us’.[32] Along much the same lines, Tocqueville stated, ‘I regard as impious and detestable the maxim that in matters of government the majority of a people has the right to do absolutely anything’.[33]

The keyword here is competence. The idea according to which the best government is comprised of ‘those who know’ stretches back to Antiquity. Also ancient is the notion that democracy operates a negative selection. Socrates himself, according to Plato, blamed the Athenians for discussing political matters ‘without having learned and without having any teacher’.[34] Similarly, out of hostility toward the law of numbers, public opinion very frequently accepts the theory according to which procedures for political selection should primarily promote ‘competent men’ — an expression which in our age is increasingly being taken as a synonym for ‘experts’ and ‘technicians’.

This stance in favour of ‘competence’ is ambiguous to say the least. First, no single definition of ‘competence’ exists, for competence can take many different forms. Most importantly, it is very dangerous to identify competence with knowledge, as anti-democratic critics almost invariably do. Max Weber [35] has shown what it is that makes the scientist different from the politician. The politician is not such because he possesses any specific form of ‘knowledge’, but because he is the one who must decide what goal knowledge should serve. The politician is not a scientist but a decision-maker. A statesman is not incompetent because he possesses little knowledge, but because he does not know how to draft a policy. The politician must no doubt surround himself with ‘competent men’ and ‘technicians’, if for no other reason than to entrust them with finding the means to implement his decisions (and in this respect, political action is not foreign to knowledge). But it is one thing to surround oneself with technicians and experts, and quite another to charge these people with identifying the objectives to be pursued. To wish to put the government into the hands of ‘experts’ is to forget the fact that the judgement of experts must itself be reassessed and re-evaluated, as political decision-making implies both conflicts of interest and a number of possible choices. Now, our age, which has previously bowed to the myth of decision-making via ‘technical knowledge’, is increasingly forgetful of all this. An acceptance of the operative role of experts may thus quickly lead to the legitimising of technocracy. Under the pretext that the increasing complexity of public affairs makes politics necessarily dependent upon ‘those who know’, the people are being stripped of their sovereignty, while the very notion of politics goes up in smoke." [The Problem of Democracy]