"the municipal transportation council wants to construct a new rail line to ease congestion, that’s treated the same as if some train expert had convincingly argued the case to the public and the public had directly voted to build the new line."
do you mean in this example, that the public would get a direct vote upon the proposal, or just that it would be treated as if that were the case because the public voted on the institution?
and how can we treat an institution as equivilant to a train expert, unless it is staffed by train experts? in which case is your point that the public would vote a technocratic institution in, and the composition of it, and thereafter cede decisions to them?
also, with your three reconciliations:
isn't it the case that material conditions mean that we do not have a right to rule ourselves, at least isn't it more complicated than that - we a are helpless for time and cannot do so, and some people are disabled and cannot. our right to self rule is necessarily bounded by our physical powers and our relation to society surely, such that we can't treat 'everyone has a right to self rule' as a fundamental proposition, at least in all aspects of human experience? or do you mean just politically?
Why? We consider it necessary for the function of government to do all sorts of things requiring great effort and cost, why is this any different? I agree regarding every little issue, but I'd say at least every significant issue is possible once a month?
yes, but i think this is resolvable via the implemented structure of dd. So you don't get a vote on everything, just things that affect you. You can end up voting on something that doesn't directly affect you, but not on something that doesn't directly or indirectly affect you.
i struggle with the solution you present with creating powerless institutions, like you say i think it would be create appropriate checks and balances - they need some power to function.
this is a common criticism, that it doesn't scale.
but you're using corporations (walmart) and their organisational structures to argue this, when those are not democratic organisations (not even representative democracy). So ofc they can't work with democracy, they didn't come from it.
the same goes for the problems of nations and resource distribution - at no point was the system of commodity trade & exchange created or agreed upon democratically, the same is true of nation states.
in fact i'd predict that under dd, national borders would naturally drastically change or disappear, and the resource exchange mechanism (the world economy) would become much better adapted to fairly solve the distribution issue.
ppl only lose interest when they know they have no involvement in government, which most don't.
being able to fire your boss isn't the same as being your own boss, its still giving another power over your life - this is the trick of republican 'terms' in office, it gives the illusion of choice where you have none.
I'm convinced that dd is the only ethical way personally
the practicalities are a false question imo - we have been capable of dd since the dawn of civilisation, it is a matter of political choice and time/resource allocation, not a technological barrier.
representative democracy is a sham - you as an individual cannot be represented by another in politics, as politics is the art of choosing your destiny.
my idea of dd would be like an hourglass - as issues become more pertinant to you as an individual, the greater your ability to steer your destiny (i.e. the more involvement in democratic decision making). Since local issues will concern you and your life more directly, dd would work on a local issue with for example a small community forming the democratic committee deciding on the design and placement of a local park, or the exact implementation of some project decided at a greater scope. An issue a town over may not affect you, so you may not have a vote or say on it (at least directly).
As decisions become less spatially/socially (locally) relevant to you, you stop having such a direct say over them.
Of course, as issues become bigger in scope and affect more people, more people need to be involved. So these grand decisions that we have no say in now, such as resource allocation/production, infrastructure, R&D, military activities, social projects such as housebuilding and education (and are instead left to our representatives, or even orgs/bodies with no representative oversight), would instead be decided upon by everyone that the issue could concievably affect.
it would as a system require a great deal of thought and careful implementation, but that is the case with all good things, and once people can steer their own destiny, bound ofc to the destiny of others as is the nature of society, i believe that we would see a rapid evolution & advance in the art/technology of politics. Instead of our destiny being steered by a few parasites, which impedes our social/political development, it would be steered by all for all. So that the system of dd will by nature improve itself and find its best form.
And ultimately the greatest decision making body (making decisions on stuff like world economy, space programmes etc) would be all of humanity in a great congress or committee, deciding on the destiny of our species.
as for the practicalities - planned economies etc, if we were to plan an economy for the world, why not involve everyone in the world in the plans? It may be a slower or in some ways less efficient process, but the plan will naturally be vastly better than one or a few individuals may devise.
" What I’m more interested in is religion from the sociological standpoint."
yeah this is what I was asking mainly, and by other religious systems I meant just common knowledge about their espoused values.
but your answer is excellent thanks.
It's a really interesting topic these religious aspects in the US, it is a unique and in some ways historically unprecedented situation or maybe 'religious ecosystem'
Though it (religious evolution/development in the US) has i think enough similarities with polytheistic systems to assume some things about it's evolution - I think we can probably look to India, or the horn of Africa, or some other regions where we've had this mixing of religious thought in (relatively) newly formed states.
I guess what I mean is that you say worship of economy, I can say grain-god. You say worship of science, I can say wisdom-god. In this way of considering it, the god of christ has been forced back to it's pre-monotheist days, it's split into a couple of different expressions - evangelical mega churches are bacchus again for example.
The civil god even would be the lawgiver/justice god - which the empire usually associates with the state (in modern times the nation state).
all these 'fragmented' aspects of religious thought and practice we can see manifested in the US are present also in any place that is nominally strictly and rigidly monotheistic or doctrinal, they are just repressed or redirected, i guess you could say forced into grand narratives. And still throughout much of the world, grand religious narratives hold sway (though I appreciate that on a global scale this can be described as increasingly/already fragmented by globalism/modernity as much as anything else).
So:
" in my opinion gods cannot be replaced with facts and logic, they have to be replaced by better gods which will look nothing like the anthropomorphized God of Abrahamic religions, but what this might look like is anyone’s guess."
I totally agree, except with the last as above I think we can make some good guesses at least - for example there will be an agriculture deity, that might be similar or different to the economy deity that will also exist, depending on conditions. there will be ancestor worship in some form (hopefully not faces on mountains) - probably the ppl who fought in the revolution or similar. Whatever the sex/love deity ends up like it won't be binary in manifestation, we know.
I wonder tho about anthropomorphism - look at US competing pantheons as expressed by the 'literati' and propagandised by the state, I mean superheroes. Yeah they're for kids (sort of), no they're not representative of religion or religious thought in the US, but at the same time they are I think (the marvel films for example) a good look at what the US would like thier pantheon to look like.
I agree it won't look like Abrahamic anthromorphism, but I wouldn't discount some amount or manifestation of it - it's a key method of religious thought, to make ourselves or parts of ourselves gods so we can see what we look like in extreme, which is a useful thing of course.
Also as a minor thought - while gods/religion cannot be replaced with facts and logic, for sure there is a facts and logic god - atheistic groups/cults have always sprung up through history alongside theistic ones, and there are usually gods of language and mathematics in polytheistic places. I think these things have probably already merged in scientism, the hard atheism & the math god.
"Practice shows that if one sits down with an express purpose of “creating a religion” that quickly fails or turns into a scam."
Yeah. A while back, I looked into UFOlogy briefly. I guess you could call this a religion (regardless of the truth of UFOs/aliens), in the same sense of your other US religions, but when I was looking at it in some iterations it has this idea that the US deep state is hiding tech progress from the people, progress that would end capitalism, eradicate poverty etc.
So in this theology/cosmology (or at least one common expression of it), there are gods (aliens), the state are corrupt and evil (there's a devil), the promised utopia is one that lines up fairly well with socialist ideals. The prophets are whistleblowers (prometheus i guess). And the gods, the aliens are peaceful and also prevent global war in a distant, indirect way.
Anyway, it was interesting to me because at least one common expression of this particular 'religion' is completely untroubled by a shift to a socialist economy/state, in fact that is it's goal (though the method involves a mysterious technological artifact to solve material problems). It's also heavily co-opted/influenced by the CIA (who understand in some way i assume religion - it's not like they can't read) which is interesting.
Are there any fragments of US religious thought (the economy, wicca, luck worship in casinos, whatever) that you think can be compatable with a socialist future, or aren't contradictory with it? Obv not the q cult...
"Not sure what you are referring to re Greek gods"
sorry it was badly phrased, i mean the morality systems not actual gods - if I remember rightly he prefers a more empowering one to the xtian version, when he's talking about slaves/nobles.
to rephrase better: do you agree with his analysis of xtian morality, generally speaking, as being undesirable/less desirable? especially with comparison to a more 'honest with the real world/empowering' morality, which i got the impression he thought the greek religious virtues were (not accusing him of supporting/following ancient greek religion)?
age 6-8 would be teaching via stories, and ethics and themes (by themes you mean a kind of introduction to thinking-about-thinking, or finding an extra layer to a narrative?)
8-11 is thought experiments and history of philosophy
I think that all makes sense - science tells us there are developmental stages to the body & mind and we should try to map what's taught to those.
A few thoughts tho in response:
"kids’ tendency to always ask questions and to encourage that, perhaps by answering questions in a way that nudges children in the direction of higher levels of abstraction."
This is something I wonder about a lot, because we teach children (and they teach themselves) praxis up to a certain age (I mean for example learning to put shapes in the 'correct' slots in a puzzle, which is presumably teaching a kind of abstraction in a practically applicable way). And then they sort of start asking for theory at some point, right - where they keep asking 'why' all the time.
So I wonder if that 4-6 age isn't a good place to start with basic theory? I guess this is what you mean by nudging toward further abstraction, and yes it's hard to envisage but it's one of the answers i'm seeking :D
or is the asking why simply a child experimenting with causality and social relations there's no reason to think of that stage as anything other - like you can answer anything and they won't care?
"read a simple fable, identify the moral/theme of the story, discuss whether they agree with the moral or not, and try to give their reasoning."
yes this is a good approach i think, but I wonder - should we teach first the methods by which you can reason about morals? I mean, for example, somehow introduce at that age deontology and consequentialism as concepts? Or do children naturally seek out approaches and that is the point of the lesson, to get them to form those methods on their own?
And also, other than ethics, should we be teaching for example epistemology in some manner at that age, even in the form of a fable or story?
And lastly, would you say philosophy would be best taught as it's own subject (for children i mean), or always as part of others?
thanks so much for this! (tho tbh i really didn't want to ever return to spinoza i know he's like the philosophers philosopher but it was torture sometimes)
on replacing gods - what's your feeling/thoughts on what that'd look like (esp. in a leftist sense)? do you agree with N about christianity/greek gods generally? And about other religious systems, I assume you'd say there's worthy qualities/values discernable in them all (or not?); which are the big concepts/ideas that you prefer in various faiths or mythologies?
also have you ever read (i dunno if you read this genre) Lord of Light by R.Zelazney? It's sci fi but he studied religions it's a fun book.
i'll read that stuff through & probably bother you with questions at some point :D
i missed your previous convo on this, thanks for the link it was a good defence of the french academic cocaine scene :D
I do think there is a fundamental role for what i call religious thought there - in Virillio what he calls an interest not in the gaps between steps but the steps.
i don't know a good way to put what i mean, but roughly that kind of intuitive thinking i relate closely with the subconscious (i don't mean just in sleep) and with theology/poetry, and i can only assume it's a useful strategy for life & understanding things - or else we wouldn't do it, alongside developing stricter more structured methodologies of thought/philosophies.
i tend to also relate it more to society than the individual tho, it works best i think collaberatively with as much experience input as possible, so if it becomes too exclusive/technical in language & academic in practice it can lose it's advantage over other modes like analytics, which are better for an individual or small group arriving at truth.
"but i don’t think i’ve found the balance yet..."
nothing you've written seems at all unbalanced, i prefer an emotional response alongside the theory - its why i write 'this annoys me' etc about bits of the text to try to convey my own 'felt' reactions. like face-to-face we have expressions and vocal tone to tell us this stuff, the internet cuts out that emotional content which is to the detriment of thinking, especially as a social/shared activity.
"his interest in some sort of return to Christianity"
oh shit we killed god too soon, people are fucking insane :D
what is the best order to read the french theorists in btw, i've only read extracts of them - who should I start with and who can i skip, and who's the best current standard-bearer?
if you quantify qualities (put political values into numbers) you can play numerical tricks with them, like having a spatialy located centre - people associate the centre of anything with stuff, and same with edges or corners, and also signs like - and +.
so yeah its about putting people in groups, but also i think about disolving or warping the terms they use and reducing political debate.
reducing it all to keywords and numbers means not having to investigate the arguments behind the words/numbers, you can just use them as totems or arguments in themselves or reference points without having to argue.
There's a mysticism you can create with numbers, they're seen as invoilable or axiomatic so if you can map political arguments to them you can pretend the thing they reference is also axiomatic.
So when you say communism that's a bit problematic because you see communism is authoritarian left social right economic centre and also worse the closer you get to the corners.
I'm on the left and even I don't think we should abolish money or homes thats why I'm right on authoritarian issues and left on libertarian ones, I'm basically in the centre really, but on the left - I'm not a racist is what I'm saying, I just believe in a hierarchy of cultural values that happens to correspond to skin tone. So a centrist, yeah, as in not an extremist. Anyway, here's that in coordinates: -3,4,22,0.8; -23; +0.9.
yes, i read this instead of Lenin and let me tell you i am ready to put the revolution into practice it really opened my eyes to what they call the appeal of socialism
also in chapter 5 they use a non-violent bomb to non-violently kill all of congress and the president (they plot it earlier but passion gets in the way)
i would smile more but everytime i open my mouth the parasite that resides in my oesophagus extends its probiscus and antennae, starts wriggling about and eventually screaming until i feed it some long pig, which engorges it and makes it hard for me to eat or breathe.
this is pretty uncomfortable so i try to keep my mouth closed. also, I'm not weird or flawed idk what that's supposed to mean.
but I have a colorful metal circle on my head, and i wear the skins of a bunch of very rare animals, and look at my special chair too, look how it raises me up so that i'm at a higher elevation than others in the room
"the municipal transportation council wants to construct a new rail line to ease congestion, that’s treated the same as if some train expert had convincingly argued the case to the public and the public had directly voted to build the new line."
do you mean in this example, that the public would get a direct vote upon the proposal, or just that it would be treated as if that were the case because the public voted on the institution?
and how can we treat an institution as equivilant to a train expert, unless it is staffed by train experts? in which case is your point that the public would vote a technocratic institution in, and the composition of it, and thereafter cede decisions to them?
also, with your three reconciliations:
isn't it the case that material conditions mean that we do not have a right to rule ourselves, at least isn't it more complicated than that - we a are helpless for time and cannot do so, and some people are disabled and cannot. our right to self rule is necessarily bounded by our physical powers and our relation to society surely, such that we can't treat 'everyone has a right to self rule' as a fundamental proposition, at least in all aspects of human experience? or do you mean just politically?
Why? We consider it necessary for the function of government to do all sorts of things requiring great effort and cost, why is this any different? I agree regarding every little issue, but I'd say at least every significant issue is possible once a month?
yes, but i think this is resolvable via the implemented structure of dd. So you don't get a vote on everything, just things that affect you. You can end up voting on something that doesn't directly affect you, but not on something that doesn't directly or indirectly affect you.
i struggle with the solution you present with creating powerless institutions, like you say i think it would be create appropriate checks and balances - they need some power to function.