 |
lucifers taxi
said:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
This a a wonderful learning tool to refresh ourselves with the primary concepts at play in modern politics. Please don't be turned off by the rudamentary graphics, it's the message that is important. It's a illuminating narrative with crystal clarity which unwinds the abstractions at play under the radar of daily political theater. In this episode we see how these two primal forces affect "rights"
 |
Very well said! And of particular significance- the right of defense of one's self & family- are paramount. (Which also implies- that the 'law' is an ass- and the 'government' is comprised of self-serving pinheads.) And Mao Ze Dong, was correct! |
|
report abuse
vote down
vote up
|
Frozen Tex
said:
 |
consent to govern comes from the governed not some self generated authority ascribed to government I thought supreme executive authority came from some watery tart flinging sabres about? |
|
report abuse
vote down
vote up
|
WL Mackenzie Redux
said:
 |
Only in a Python sketch Tex. Moistened bints lobbing scimitars in some farcical aquatic ceremony is not the basis for a limited representaive government  We still (should) ensure that government executive power is delegated from a mandate from the masses...of course the core element of the mass is the individual who delegates to government no more oer less powers than he himself has. |
|
report abuse
vote down
vote up
|
lucifers taxi
said:
|
"Help, help- I'm being oppressed!" "Aw-shuddup!"-The Quest for the Holy Grail, Monty Python. |
|
report abuse
vote down
vote up
|
truepeers
said:
|
It's not true that rights grow from the barrel of a gun. Howevermuch one sometimes has to fight for a right, rights ultimately rest on, or emerge from, shared opinion. Rights exist to defer violence, not to institutionalize it and it always takes more than one to tango; even the "rights" of dictators rest on the shared opinion by which others will serve their dictates. We fall for easy answers about politics ultimately resting on violence because it is much more of an intellectual challenge, one that never ends in absolute clarity, to investigate how power ultimately emerges from a market in language and opinion. |
|
report abuse
vote down
vote up
|
WL Mackenzie Redux
said:
|
truepeers said: It's not true that rights grow from the barrel of a gun. Yes it is. This is the unequivocal lesson of human social history. Just as tyranny emanates from the barrel of a gun. The gun is just a metaphor for "force". Freedom was never willingly given by authority because it is authority from which the individual must take his freedom back. rights ultimately rest on, or emerge from, shared opinion. More precisely a common need un fulfilled...and again the act of revolt is individual responses to lack of freedom across a collectively oppressed population |
|
report abuse
vote down
vote up
|
truepeers
said:
|
WLMR, let me know if you want to get into this at length, since it's something often on my mind. In order to defend your argument here, it seems to me you need a convincing hypothesis of how language/religion/culture could have first emerged in a contest between freedom and authority. It's kind of a chicken and egg thing: does authority emerge from freedom, vice versa, simultaneously? The earliest human societies are notably different from animal pecking orders. The pecking order is hierarchical, but not like a human hierarchy since the alpha animal maintains his position by dominating all rivals in one-on-one relationships, but not by addressing the pack as a whole. Human culture takes the form of a centre and a shared periphery. There is no such collective consciousness in the animal world, only shared instincts that are hard wired. The early human society is equalitarian: no wealth is banked and cultural authority comes from the shared religion or ritual: the mask one wears at the various stages of life is relatively more important than the individual performer as an individual. The rise of big men and heroic individuals with great authority is a relatively recent phenomenon that comes with the growth of agricultural (or sometimes fishery) surplus that a big man learns to control or contest. So to understand what a right is, we have to understand the birth of human religion/culture first in a context that is more equalitarian - all share in awe of the gods - than humanly authoritarian. Men model themselves on the gods; we don't construct God in our fallen image. The rise of the big man is the rise of a new kind of authority, but it is also the rise of a new freedom first enjoyed by the big man though eventually aspired to by all. Human freedom is ultimately the freedom to bring new words and ideas into the world. It is from this freedom, when seconded and thirded, exchanged and modified, by others that we then build consensus and authority. However, the need for yet more freedom never wanes because we inevitably come to resent the limits in any order we have previously constructed, and people do contest authority in search of new rights and freedoms. Still, it is a mistake to see violence or authority as the beginning of all things. Human violence (whatever its animal-biological roots) is rather the result of an erosion of a pre-existing order. And when violence destroys an old order, we can not find in violence or brute force itself the explanation for any new cultural order that arises. That new order is a won by men who may well bond together to defeat the old order; but that bonding is something we need to explain in terms of an anthropology that can explain how people share ideas or religion so that they can bond themselves in a cause of freedom. IN short, before we band together to fight for freedom, we first need to have the sign of this new freedom. So, I ask you, where does this sign come from, if not in the first place in the exchange of opinions? Alternatively, try to imagine a tyrant who does not rely on the accommodating opinions of at least some of those he rules... |
|
report abuse
vote down
vote up
|
Fenris Badwulf
said:
 |
truepeers: OK, so after the Bonobos ban together to share resources, how are they going to handle the Sarmatians, Huns, Goths, Roxolani, Burgundians, Franks, Jutes, Saxons, and Dacians, let alone the collectivists in Byzantium, Rome, and Antioch? Early human society is egalitarian? Lovely. I am going to let MacKenzie deal with you. If you swear homage to me, I will protect you. |
|
report abuse
vote down
vote up
|
truepeers
said:
|
First, Badwulf, none of the groups you name is an early human society: they are all of the agrarian age. Agriculture, as I mentioned, leads to a surplus that creates a new form of hierarchical society. Early hunter-gatherer societies are equalitarian: "equal" distribution of the kill - more or less, the spirit being more important than the exact measure - is the central point of their ethics. Second, an equalitarian ethic *within* any primitive tribe certainly does not mean there is not conflict between tribes. No doubt, as you imply, one of the reasons leading to the development of big men is the need for creativity in warfare, the place where value/valor is first conceptualized. But this is just another reason *not* to see rights as emerging simply in a fight against authority. We give the big man authority, willingly, if the freedom we give him can make him a better leader/organizer of us in warfare. Human society is not a conspiracy of one against the many or the many against one. It is an exchange premised on developing new technologies for our collective survival. To pay homage is not to give up your mind... It really matters, intellectually and culturally, whether we conceive human society as beginning with a conspiracy of power or with a collective act of free will. Today the left only believes in conspiracies of power. They have become Nietzscheans in a way the old man would have despised. Conservatives or classical liberals need to lose the Nietzschean and Maoist trappings if they are to develop a true counter to the leftist-Gnostic way of thinking. |
|
report abuse
vote down
vote up
|
WL Mackenzie Redux
said:
|
truepeers said: WLMR, let me know if you want to get into this at length No actually because this simple capsulization takes realities down to core essence. Nothing is gained by complicating and convoluting a simple self evident reality with needles abstractions or syllogistic suppositions and non sequitur fallicies. Sorry, TP I don't argue when the original premise is correct in it's original state. No offence TP However I feel you need to regravitet to the premise...this isn't about the dawn of man this is about organized structured societies. The forces at play are collectivism and individualsim. When individuals act in unison it is because they are either forced to (tyranny) or because they have common goals which will benefit them them individually. The "collective" or group in social structuring/governing terms is a syllogistic fallacy repropagated to falsely justify the tyranny of the ruling minority ( who claim they act for the group) when in fact there is no group just the individuals in it. Capiche? |
|
report abuse
vote down
vote up
|
truepeers
said:
|
Capiche? What is self-evident for you is not for me, and I doubt it's because I'm enamored of logical fallacies, or just dense. What I'm not is pragmatic. I forget too often that first impressions are mostly right and work for people most of the time. I have no great desire to push people to question these, though I'm always doing it myself. I'd only point out that serious questioning beyond first impressions has its time, when you can't survive without it. How we or any humans share a culture, share in that from which we develop our individuality, is not at all self-evident. If it were, no one would bother talking about religion, art, language, politics; we'd all just get it already; but people can't stop talking about it. There is something we need to work through... Don't get me wrong: asserting the sacredness of the individual is my cause too. But maybe we won't do a good job of making the individual sacred if we don't ask what it is for people to share an understanding of what is sacred. Or maybe that's wrong and I should be more pragmatic. It just seems to me that if others want to make the group sacred, it is not enough to say their religion is false, and we, as individuals, don't need any religion. No one is going to get your back in a fight if that is all you can offer them. Nor is invoking rational shared self-interest going to get many men to die for a "cause", or even for a "friend". What's a buddy if we can figure everything out in terms of a "common purpose". We may well need shared faith in a common purpose, but if the purpose were self-evident we wouldn't be buddies sharing the faith, we'd just be traders with a very refined sense of abstract value. If society were reducible to some utilitarian calculus of individual self-interest, how to explain why we spend so much of our time blogging... for what purpose... no one is paying us? to say it is always about conflict over authority, or about common goals, is a fair enough generalization, but one that settles little. How could we ever conceive of a common goal that we wouldn't fight over? I'm not saying we can't, but how to get to that illusive "yes" is what people spend lives trying to figure out. Often the fight itself is productive; but that just suggests that any attempt to explain conflict in terms of a rational, self-evident calculus is to engage in some myth making. If it could be rationalized, why the need to fight? Will authority never cut a deal? Is it always a zero-sum game? |
|
report abuse
vote down
vote up
|
Krazy
said:
 |
Playing Devils advocate here; Where is it writen that Man should have individual freedom? Is this self given? Is is God given? What if I don't believe in God? |
|
report abuse
vote down
vote up
|
Expat Texan
said:
|
Human rights are not for governments to bestow - they are for governments to protect. When government (or those in power) fail to meet that obligation - then one of 2 things will happen. Either the populace will be subjugated to the will of those in power, or they will rise up and fight for their rights. The first step down the dictatorial path is to disarm the citizenry. If you want to subvert the will of the people, it's best to be sure they're minimally armed first. |
|
report abuse
vote down
vote up
|
Ecclesiastes
said:
|
He has made a mistake in the first two minutes. Within seconds of saying that we ought to be serious about agreeing on a preferred definition and noting that the source of rights determines their nature, he assumes the answer to his question without justification or support. It matters not at all which source he has identified, he has claimed his bias, and the opposing view will not be fairly examined. We will not be seeing a considered comparison of one versus the other. The rest of this series is superfluous. |
|
report abuse
vote down
vote up
|
Ron Good
said:
|
Truepeers: re: "to understand what a right is, we have to understand the birth of human religion/culture first in a context that is more equalitarian - all share in awe of the gods - than humanly authoritarian." No. To understand what a right is, I need only to understand is what is required by me to survive as a human being. "Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place." from The Law - Frédéric Bastiat "Legal/illegal" doesn't count in my thinking except as a factor in risk assessment. - Me. I am a human being. I am no one's rightful property and no one's rightful subject, and I am likewise subject to no deity or deities. In other words, *I* am the only authority I recognize in my life. |
|
report abuse
vote down
vote up
|
Write comment
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
Sponsors
Riffing
Broom pics
Friends of the Broom
Blues Friends
