[evilgenius]

Also, I don't want to get trapped in supporting ethics as an alternative to Capitalism. It would be, if people could pull it off, but people can't. That's why, instead, I suggested the structural reforms to corporate ownership that I did. In lieu of ethical man your only resort is to appeal to human nature as it is. Pitting various interests against each other, to vie for philosophical control, and making certain that the way you do it seeks a kind of equilibrium rather than one side's victory seems logical.

[onlooker]

Evil your proposed scheme is too limited even if it works. It does not confront the comprehensive and full challenges that would lie ahead. Economic matters will be minor problems compared with problems of pure survival and getting along together and rebuilding some semblance of a functioning society. Of course Ethical Man is an abstraction yet it is the ideal which we should all be striving for and it can be done with a personal appeal to every single human. Others think like you Evil that humans cannot progress to this level. I remain optimistic because we have the potential to do so.

[SeaGypsy]

The assertion by EvilG that ethics requires more than fear of negative consequences of behaviour outside the social ethics of your environment is spurious.

The problem isn't lack of ethics or religion in the population, it is the mental & intellectual weakness of the population & defenselessness against manipulation via base instincts only too well understood by- religious institutions, political machines, advertisers, media moguls, bankers, developers, lawyers & legislators, military industrial complex. It is at these levels decisions are made & the populace are led like sheep to the forgone conclusion.

That's flat out wrong. It is fear which provides the basis upon which all of the things you mention can thrive. Mostly, fear that love has no solution for them. That it has no efficacy. Just try training an animal by brutalizing it every time that it fails to do what you want as opposed to rewarding it when it does right and you will see what I mean. In order to understand ethics you have to believe that right works, and that it works for you. Once there you will see that being good is its own reward. The unbelief of fear, that short circuit is an easy out. It comes because your average person is not capable of seeing enough of the pieces to put two and two together.

As I've said before, it would require super human memory for a truly ethical human to exist, and that only after trial and error. People don't have those kinds of memories. Instead they reinvent themselves in light of their own view of themselves as whatever construct their own selfishness has created for them at the time they do so. As a way to cope with the troubles this creates for them most people turn to the collective in order to measure themselves and make sure they at least fit in somehow. They don't realize the collective can't be trusted. Wisdom is a much better alternative, but to achieve that one must endeavor to at least partially solve the memory problem, so that comparison of like situations, at various levels, can be gotten at. Even then you can't be certain that your memory isn't fooling you, so that your analogies actually match in enough ways to pass a standard of validity pertinent to the situation you are attempting to solve.

"That's flat out wrong" then a paragraph agreeing with me? Huh? Everything you counter with is an extension of my argument, are you one of those 'must disagree' people? It is very basic psychology we are talking about- carrot & stick. All humans respond more effectively to one or the other. The society which has plenty of carrots needs fewer sticks. (This is the insanity of the USA, plenty of carrots, plenty of insane use of sticks, a whole lot of people in the horrid position of having an insane monkey on their back dangling a carrot & flogging their arse non stop regardless how hard they go for the carrot).

You have a highly individualised view of ethics. This ignores the fact that ethics always emerge in groups. You have an ethic, sure, but it is shared ethics which are of consequence, ie. group & task/ objective specific ethics define culture, which defines the people in the culture as well as what is anomalous to the people & culture. There is no need for proscribed universality in the practical development & application of ethics, any more than 'God' or the 'Singing Stones' or whatever local deity needs to be real for it's followers to develop moral/ ethical/ religious maturity. Of course there is always history involved in developing culture, but history is flawed, unknowable in fact, therefore culture developed nominally on a sense of history is in fact building on an aspect of poetry, (AD's fascination with dialectics) while cultural confirmation in historical confirmation is held as mere collective bias, not subjective truth.

I can't see your position much differing from singularists who ultimately want to hand authority over to the machine, as soon as the machine proves clever enough. Without going into a diatribe on the merits or otherwise of AI, there is not much to indicate mass following of applied wisdom in how culture & ethics are being developed now. Ask anyone you consider wise, if they think society is progressing wisely, you will all get the same answer. Same goes when a computer spits out the perfect plan for humanity on the planet, the people won't play without carrot & stick. As I began, basic psychology.

[americandream]

It dawns on me AD, that unfortunately, the evolution of this social circular reasoning did not compel mankind to take more care of Mother Earth. I wonder what is your take on why we in all the span of human civilization not come to the point of rationalizing the importance of Earth. That is why I think reason alone may not suffice, mankind can most respond to a profound emotional message and I am persuaded to believe this message must point to the profound dysfunctional nature of our ethics and value system. Because at its heart I cannot quite accept that it is a problem of reasoning but rather of ethics whereby we are not prone to wars, destruction and domination but rather a creed of empathy, nurturing and care as I described above in the timeless virtues. Only by adopting this value system which incidentally speaks to the above posts about what we assign value too or how much value we assign, so we MUST assign the highest values to actions and thoughts that are positive in all respects.

Evolutionary timescales play out in eons, not our mortality induced notions. And we have only in the past few hundred years been able to articulate this process. Whole civilisations, some mercantile others feudal have yet to absorb this knowledge and will as capitalism forces them to be more utilitarian.

[americandream]

The assertion by EvilG that ethics requires more than fear of negative consequences of behaviour outside the social ethics of your environment is spurious.

The problem isn't lack of ethics or religion in the population, it is the mental & intellectual weakness of the population & defenselessness against manipulation via base instincts only too well understood by- religious institutions, political machines, advertisers, media moguls, bankers, developers, lawyers & legislators, military industrial complex. It is at these levels decisions are made & the populace are led like sheep to the forgone conclusion.

This is absolutely on the nail and says it all.

[onlooker]

The problem of Ethics is the emotional basis of ethics. We cannot simply with reason arrest or suppress our emotions as we are emotional beings and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Basically I do not buy the whole Vulcan Spock thing. The way to get people to have positive emotional and ethical thoughts and feelings is as Sea pointed out applying it consistently and universally. Meaning I do not favor the stick approach just the carrot. Rewards are more effective then punishment. Witness some studies about torture and they highlight this point. They say Love spreads love and vice-versa. An appeal or manipulation of our base instincts is countered with the proper ethics. Reason is separate from emotions. A computer can calculate and to some degree reason but has no emotions. No amount of rationalization can temper an emotion. Only its opposite can. Hate cannot be undone only overridden by Love and so forth. That is why I keep insisting that the basis for a second chance for Humanity lies in embedding what I call timeless virtues into the very foundations of whatever society emerges. Only caring people together and united with these virtues can celebrate life and the Earth and have a true desire and will to go on amid the difficult challenges ahead.

[SeaGypsy]

So AD, given that 'landed wealth' is the primary basis of the rentier economy no developed country is going to willingly forgo: a revolutionary position on land holding is mandatory. The breathing space of direct control of collective surplus through rebellion against the land control system is the only way to begin to establish a truly collective economy. A side door may be for wealthy benefactors to freely hand full control to collectives, as has happened occasionally. However the lack of such a benefactor should not be an insurmountable object to establishment of collectives in the way it is.

A legal pro-forma needs to be designed to support establishment of alternative tenure. This needs to be done at the top brass legal level, with challenges ready for every level of the legal system, which should buy at least a decade of time for the emergent claimant collective to become established & to spawn further such land rebellion communities.

would you agree?

[ennui2]

The problem isn't lack of ethics or religion in the population, it is the mental & intellectual weakness of the population & defenselessness against manipulation via base instincts.

That's a contradiction. Intellectual weakness of the population is in itself a failure. The lack of ethics occurs in the people who front the list of boogeymen (bankers, etc...). That's why I bristle at attempts to separate the world into the pious plebes who fall prey to the evil elites, as if the elites are some foreign species. We get the government we deserve because of our gullibility. Also, if power corrupts, and people aspire to wealth and power, then it's just a constantly revolving door (ala Animal Farm). Yesterday's plebe is tomorrow's dictator. It's all part of who we are. Victim one moment, victimizer the next.

[SeaGypsy]

Another post nominally against but vocally extending what I am getting at. It is quite well established that ethical behaviour is the domain of the poorest working class folk while the ruling classes are culturized to perjury, setting the example for aspirant classes. The closer to the top the more educated & aware of weaknesses in the system, closer the bottom the more subject to the whim & abuse of petty officialdom.

[onlooker]

On a personal note how are things in the bush so to speak Ibon? Your posts seem to conjure up this pristine setting which you are fortunate to have. I guess it is tough for us to have the personal experience of nature that you have had. Something some city folk like me envy. By the way Ibon stands for bird right?

The nature here is breathtaking and we live essentially in a national park. The project is demanding. The situation: I am almost 60 years old. Access to Mount Totumas is 10km up a 4WD road. The place is spectacular and borders an immense upland wilderness. The managing and running of it is slowly getting beyond the scope of an older couple. I am right now in the beginning phases of creating a non profit foundation whose mission will be to preserve this as a wilderness for as long as this legal entity will be respected by modern governments. I hope to open up ownership of the foundation to other individuals who share our vision for this place. Folks who can also commit to the sweat equity of spending several months a year here. Since this will never be a business any foundation member will be putting in funds that is not an "investment" so much as "benefactor" funds for preservation. Other members will have to have a degree of independent financial wealth. I hope to be a part of this project into my old age as a member of this foundation with others.

I wish you well Ibon it is a laudable project, I hope you entice others and maybe just maybe this place will endure longer then we may imagine. I myself along with GF would love to visit.

[evilgenius]

The assertion by EvilG that ethics requires more than fear of negative consequences of behaviour outside the social ethics of your environment is spurious.

The problem isn't lack of ethics or religion in the population, it is the mental & intellectual weakness of the population & defenselessness against manipulation via base instincts only too well understood by- religious institutions, political machines, advertisers, media moguls, bankers, developers, lawyers & legislators, military industrial complex. It is at these levels decisions are made & the populace are led like sheep to the forgone conclusion.

That's flat out wrong. It is fear which provides the basis upon which all of the things you mention can thrive. Mostly, fear that love has no solution for them. That it has no efficacy. Just try training an animal by brutalizing it every time that it fails to do what you want as opposed to rewarding it when it does right and you will see what I mean. In order to understand ethics you have to believe that right works, and that it works for you. Once there you will see that being good is its own reward. The unbelief of fear, that short circuit is an easy out. It comes because your average person is not capable of seeing enough of the pieces to put two and two together.

As I've said before, it would require super human memory for a truly ethical human to exist, and that only after trial and error. People don't have those kinds of memories. Instead they reinvent themselves in light of their own view of themselves as whatever construct their own selfishness has created for them at the time they do so. As a way to cope with the troubles this creates for them most people turn to the collective in order to measure themselves and make sure they at least fit in somehow. They don't realize the collective can't be trusted. Wisdom is a much better alternative, but to achieve that one must endeavor to at least partially solve the memory problem, so that comparison of like situations, at various levels, can be gotten at. Even then you can't be certain that your memory isn't fooling you, so that your analogies actually match in enough ways to pass a standard of validity pertinent to the situation you are attempting to solve.

"That's flat out wrong" then a paragraph agreeing with me? Huh? Everything you counter with is an extension of my argument, are you one of those 'must disagree' people? It is very basic psychology we are talking about- carrot & stick. All humans respond more effectively to one or the other. The society which has plenty of carrots needs fewer sticks. (This is the insanity of the USA, plenty of carrots, plenty of insane use of sticks, a whole lot of people in the horrid position of having an insane monkey on their back dangling a carrot & flogging their arse non stop regardless how hard they go for the carrot).

You have a highly individualised view of ethics. This ignores the fact that ethics always emerge in groups. You have an ethic, sure, but it is shared ethics which are of consequence, ie. group & task/ objective specific ethics define culture, which defines the people in the culture as well as what is anomalous to the people & culture. There is no need for proscribed universality in the practical development & application of ethics, any more than 'God' or the 'Singing Stones' or whatever local deity needs to be real for it's followers to develop moral/ ethical/ religious maturity. Of course there is always history involved in developing culture, but history is flawed, unknowable in fact, therefore culture developed nominally on a sense of history is in fact building on an aspect of poetry, (AD's fascination with dialectics) while cultural confirmation in historical confirmation is held as mere collective bias, not subjective truth.

I can't see your position much differing from singularists who ultimately want to hand authority over to the machine, as soon as the machine proves clever enough. Without going into a diatribe on the merits or otherwise of AI, there is not much to indicate mass following of applied wisdom in how culture & ethics are being developed now. Ask anyone you consider wise, if they think society is progressing wisely, you will all get the same answer. Same goes when a computer spits out the perfect plan for humanity on the planet, the people won't play without carrot & stick. As I began, basic psychology.

You said two things. First you said that ethics doesn't need anything outside of fear of negative consequences in order to work, then you said that our ignorance leads not to our learning, but our manipulation.

What I said was really in reaction to the first thing you said. Yeah, sure, you can get behavior from negative consequences, but can you get obedience born out of an agreement? I hear you saying that probably you can. I'm saying that, using that method, you will always arrive at a kind of trust but verify dichotomy. This kind of dichotomy has never worked to solve the kinds of things that plague man on a deep level, like how abuse is handed down from abusers to victims, who then become abusers. To break that chain you've got to have an ethics that gets inside.

You bet my ethics is internal. It's also love based, however a person might define that outside of abuse(certainly not ownership). I understand herd mentality and the importance of extroverted patterning, but I don't maintain that they are as important as you do, I don't think. You probably heard me say that the collective can't be trusted. That isn't borne out of a fear of extroverts. It's borne out of realizing that man's selfish nature pollutes even that. For, you see, that selfishness is the enemy of memory. It is the use of memory which allows us to both learn and to compare outcomes, thus seeing that ethical behavior works. "Judge not," and all that stuff is actually making this same point. As such I am probably aligned against things as pure things, that they don't have layers of meaning underneath them which drive them one way or another. And that this layering is not physical, but psycho-spiritual.

Instead of descending into more gobbledegook, though, I should better give an example. William Carlos Williams once said, "No reality but in things." As a student of a more mythical and spiritual type of poetry I heartily disagreed with him. My favorite poet at the time was Pablo Neruda. Neruda was very good at describing reality using imagery that strayed away from pure "thing". When I hear you talk about ethics emerging in groups I feel the same way. It isn't that it doesn't. It is that there is so much more to it than that, so much more beauty, that to describe it that way is almost an injustice. But, then, you would have to realize this is the point of view of an introvert, wouldn't you?

[evilgenius]

Evil your proposed scheme is too limited even if it works. It does not confront the comprehensive and full challenges that would lie ahead. Economic matters will be minor problems compared with problems of pure survival and getting along together and rebuilding some semblance of a functioning society. Of course Ethical Man is an abstraction yet it is the ideal which we should all be striving for and it can be done with a personal appeal to every single human. Others think like you Evil that humans cannot progress to this level. I remain optimistic because we have the potential to do so.

But haven't we used money, amongst other things, to that end very effectively already? Capitalism is a very evolved way of looking at money. A lens, if you will. What is wrong with admitting that it is time we tried out bifocals?

[SeaGypsy]

Evil, yours & Ennui's replies guess I am making a complete statement when I am just trying to keep the conversation grounded, as your & his responses do. I felt the way it was going ignored some key issues so I mentioned some, others have been brought up & more will be. Let's see where it goes this time around, for sure if the doubtful keep quiet it will again just spin off into orbit as per usual.

[americandream]

So AD, given that 'landed wealth' is the primary basis of the rentier economy no developed country is going to willingly forgo: a revolutionary position on land holding is mandatory. The breathing space of direct control of collective surplus through rebellion against the land control system is the only way to begin to establish a truly collective economy. A side door may be for wealthy benefactors to freely hand full control to collectives, as has happened occasionally. However the lack of such a benefactor should not be an insurmountable object to establishment of collectives in the way it is.

A legal pro-forma needs to be designed to support establishment of alternative tenure. This needs to be done at the top brass legal level, with challenges ready for every level of the legal system, which should buy at least a decade of time for the emergent claimant collective to become established & to spawn further such land rebellion communities.

would you agree?

Absolutely SG. There are no fixed approaches to the nuts and bolts as long as we have grasped the core issues as you eloquently summarised. The next step would be to let momentum build up, tackling the legals for tenure is dead on, and of course, the structures as Ibon contemplates. For my contribution, I will kick off at my end and probably borrow ideas from others. I think if as many of us can kick the ball off so to speak in our corner of the globe, its a start..like you said, its getting the bull out of peoples heads.

[SeaGypsy]

I think we had better get on with it while we still have some semblance of rule of Law & there are clear substantial basis for legal challenge to tenure.
I don't think the land rebellion movement should be challenging existing private title, but fair slather on- orphaned estates, degraded crown & disused industrial & residential, abandoned farms.

I feel that to be successful will require as mentioned, fully developed legal backbone, enough size & current productivity (income) to both back the highest level of legal support in existence, and to make rapid advance in systems deployment. A mini Manhattan project. By time high courts are looking at the legal challenges, they are facing permitting or destroying a leading light community.

[SeaGypsy]

From what I saw in over a decade in communities in Australia, perhaps the most difficult thing to do is getting a group together which is functional, hard working & mentally normal, yet rebellious enough to buy in to a radicalism against the status quo. However I believe now is perhaps a better time than ever when you look at how many highly functional people are locked out of RE markets by ludicrous conspiracy.

[onlooker]

http://www.businessinsider.com/worlds-b ... 011-3?op=1
Here is a nice little link to 15 or so of the biggest land owners in the world. By far the biggest is her Royal Highness Queen Elizabeth. Maybe a delegation representing humanity should meet one on one with her and iron out the legal framework for a transference of Title or Deed. That is if she is interested.

[SeaGypsy]

There are holdings of the British royal house, which are massive, but in Commonwealth countries, 'Crown Land' means in fact land claimed illegally from dispossessed aboriginal people which has yet to find a title under the Torrens system, which in most countries allows for community benefit development at peppercorn land cost. The legal aspect is a series of challenges, none of which reinvent the wheel, but so rarely taken on that the establishment will throw everything at preventing usurpment of the tenure status quo. The core argument is a Common Law argument, which implies very drawn out High Court proceedings, potentially Privvy Council in Britain. The community benefit clause in relevant lands acts is very likely a prime loophole. There is also a strong case under international human rights charters.

[Ibon]

It is very basic psychology we are talking about- carrot & stick. All humans respond more effectively to one or the other. The society which has plenty of carrots needs fewer sticks. (This is the insanity of the USA, plenty of carrots, plenty of insane use of sticks, a whole lot of people in the horrid position of having an insane monkey on their back dangling a carrot & flogging their arse non stop regardless how hard they go for the carrot).

Would like to just add an ecological perspective here. Our planet has been giving us only carrots the past couple hundred years with no real sticks (consequences) to date.

Is our dilemma around ethics here that we are discussing partially a reflection of this? We are debating the ability of human nature to ever devise a set of ethics that could function independent of aspects of our human nature that will attempt to corrupt this. I am wondering where we could possibly be in this struggle if during the past 200 years we had an Overshoot Predator that held our population and consumption in check?

AD emphasizes that all life on this planet are subject like machines to their instincts and subjective reality not having evolved consciousness as humans have. There is a suggestion here that we are free of the bonds of our biological nature and that consciousness has allowed nurture its freedom to allow us to evolve to our full potential of ethical man.

I question whether we are so free of our nature as AD suggests here, not only from our inherent genetic predispositions to aggression, altruism, indolence, love, selfishness, etc. but also on a more "ecosystem" level. The fact that our planet has given us only carrots has reinforced certain hubris that has not been checked. How this hubris plays into ethics with our relationship with our planet and with each other has perhaps more far reaching consequences than we can imagine.

I brought up the analogy of a mother who scolds or slaps her infant when he or she bites her nipples. This mild "stick" is a lesson for the infant to not bite the source of life. We are now 7 billion plus biting down on mother earths nipple and she continues to give us only carrots. How can we possibly modify our ethics toward our planet or toward each other when we have received no guidance in the form of sticks?

The catalyst of consequences coming our way should not be viewed as punishment but rather in the same way a mother scolds an infant who bites her nipples. If we had such a relationship with our planet during the past couple of hundred years we would have a far better nuanced understanding around ethics.

This is a reason I embrace and should I dare say "worship" the return of The Overshoot Predator as this will have a great humbling affect on our collective hubris.

Humans are conscious but we are not liberated from being a species deeply inter twined in the community of life. Just because we have created our own artificial eco systems does not exempt us from the rules of ecology which at the end of the day not only trump ethics but also mold ethics.

200 years of being fed carrots speaks volumes to this when you look at where we are as a result. Read my tag line below.

[evilgenius]

Evil your proposed scheme is too limited even if it works. It does not confront the comprehensive and full challenges that would lie ahead. Economic matters will be minor problems compared with problems of pure survival and getting along together and rebuilding some semblance of a functioning society. Of course Ethical Man is an abstraction yet it is the ideal which we should all be striving for and it can be done with a personal appeal to every single human. Others think like you Evil that humans cannot progress to this level. I remain optimistic because we have the potential to do so.

Obviously, I agree with you. Ethical man is the only man who will stand wholly free under the sun one day. And man seems headed there over the arc of history. That's why things like global warming worry me. They have the potential to derail the progress man is making toward becoming ethical man. Peak oil does too, but not so much. Stepping back from overuse of resources isn't the end of the world, after all.

There's something else that stops us at this particular juncture as well, though. It has to do with a kind of forgiveness of sin. By this I mean things like how civilized educational systems were developed in order to produce a fairly educated workforce to put into factories. Individually, we have to become far more specialized today, and we have to learn how to learn on our own. The education that guaranteed a standard of shop floor problem solving, coming from a broad based cookie cutter approach, used to work. It supplied that day's need. It doesn't supply this day's. In the face of this dilemma there are all kinds of reactions within education, as they seek to get the philosophy of it lined up with the need that gives them purpose. The endless testing is one of these. Testing is great, it's one of those tools that, when used properly, really helps us to get a handle on subject matter. It's not being used, however, as part of a new focus upon the individual over the course of their educational career. Instead, it is being used to hire and fire teachers and determine the amount of funding which programs still meant to embrace whole groups at a time(as per the factory model, understand) ought to get. Just try to approach this with a modern mind, though, and the invectives fly. Without a whole lot of 'forgiveness of sin' there isn't going to be any coming together, not the kind that is really necessary to solve it. And this is just one of many examples of old order passing into new where forgiveness is really necessary to move on.