I have read a similar analysis in a fiscally conservative but socially liberal magazine, a rather middle of the road newspaper and a decidedly left wing news outlet, that the ongoing nature of our economic woes, despite the bailouts across the world, are evidence that the bailouts didn’t work.
I say nonsense to that! And wow, would things ever be a disaster if if they had done nothing.
I see these results of evidence that, had governments reacted as they did 75-80 years ago, we would quite likely have faced a Depression-like outcome. As it stands, we can take comfort in that it is not nearly so bad: we’re only looking at the worst recession in the industrial world (possibly) since world war 2, rather than one that is on par with the worst recession ever.
The argument that the present status of the economy is evidence that bailouts don't work brings the following picture of a literal bailout to mind (and if I were an artist of any sort, I would surely offer up an actual visual rendition of it).
Two sailors in a rapidly sinking boat with sharks swirling around... One of them is bailing water for all he's worth, and says “I’ve got this covered for a minute. You mind figuring out how to patch things up?” The other stands by idly, saying “I can`t see why he even bothers. With all this water left in the boat, he’s wasting his time.”
Hey, we need to let the shitty boats sink sometimes, but when the whole fleet springs a leak at the same time, it would be pretty stupid to take ongoing problems as evidence that all the bailers should be sent packing.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Monday, January 19, 2009
A recent cause of discontent in Florida
There was a recent story about an Islamic group in Florida who put up a bunch of ads on buses promoting Islam. An ensuing public discussion saw a Muslim leader in the community say that, in his view, since all Muslims are people of God, then Abraham, Moses and Jesus must also have been Muslim.
I think the whole notion is ridiculous to start with, since there was no such thing as Islam when these guys were alive, but it got me thinking about something.
Only a misinformed Christian (i.e. most of them) is unaware of the fact that Muslims explicitly worship the same God as Christians (although this depends on whether you think God 'sans Jesus' is the same God). However, nearly every Muslim is aware of this, since the Koran states early on that they are following the tradition of the teachings of the Jews and the Christians. The main difference is that they see Mohammed as the last prophet.
So what did I get thinking? Well, just imagine this...
We come to an agreement that all Christians and Jews are "people of God." We then come to an agreement that Muslims are also "people of God", but that we don't agree that Mohammed was a prophet.
Muslims can then also agree that all Muslims are "people of God" and that the Jews and Christians are also "people of God", but with the knowledge that the Jews and Christians are greviously mistaken in their disbelief of the virtue of Mohammed's sacred nature.
Rather than discussing theological sounding, technical sorts of phrases, such as "Ambrahamic faiths", or "people of the book" (which refers to the Torah and emphasizes differences), we can begin to embrace a common ground that we are all people of God.
With such a striking commonality, we can then see each other somewhat more as humans before getting back to the nitty gritty of details such as whether prayer must be towards Mecca, priests must intercede between us and God, or more importantly whether one's decision to accept the word of one holy man or another as God's most recent message is a legitimate basis for eternal harmony or damnation. After all, these are mere details, right? What really matters is that we Jews, Muslims and Christians can commune together in a spiritual development that questions what God would really want our societies to make of themselves.
As for me? I largely see religion as an evolutionary factor in social and cultural development that promotes social cohesion. I'm not too concerned if that sounds like mumbo jumbo, 'cause it makes sense to me and I'm not really interested in explaining myself for now. But why on earth should my atheism get in the way of the "people of God" seeking some commonality?
Of course, there's nothing particularly original in what I'm saying. I'm just using different words to say it. As Freud discussed, with respect to his concept of "the narcissism of small differences", I'm not sure that accepting our commonalities would solve much - after all, much more insignificant theological differences between sects of Christianity were historically quite sufficient cause to mobilize the populace to fight foreign nations. All the same, I don't expect rejoicing our commonality as "the people of God" could make things worse.
Since Florida was the lead-in ... I just have to say that I can no longer point to the ongoing rise on coastal property values in Florida as one of the most costly results of global warming denial among Americans. Perhaps I will have to write a piece knocking Floridian home owners when the housing markets sorts itself if coastal property values join the rise. Then again, I guess if you plan to be dead before the house gets flooded out then it doesn't really matter, right? Or does it?
I think the whole notion is ridiculous to start with, since there was no such thing as Islam when these guys were alive, but it got me thinking about something.
Only a misinformed Christian (i.e. most of them) is unaware of the fact that Muslims explicitly worship the same God as Christians (although this depends on whether you think God 'sans Jesus' is the same God). However, nearly every Muslim is aware of this, since the Koran states early on that they are following the tradition of the teachings of the Jews and the Christians. The main difference is that they see Mohammed as the last prophet.
So what did I get thinking? Well, just imagine this...
We come to an agreement that all Christians and Jews are "people of God." We then come to an agreement that Muslims are also "people of God", but that we don't agree that Mohammed was a prophet.
Muslims can then also agree that all Muslims are "people of God" and that the Jews and Christians are also "people of God", but with the knowledge that the Jews and Christians are greviously mistaken in their disbelief of the virtue of Mohammed's sacred nature.
Rather than discussing theological sounding, technical sorts of phrases, such as "Ambrahamic faiths", or "people of the book" (which refers to the Torah and emphasizes differences), we can begin to embrace a common ground that we are all people of God.
With such a striking commonality, we can then see each other somewhat more as humans before getting back to the nitty gritty of details such as whether prayer must be towards Mecca, priests must intercede between us and God, or more importantly whether one's decision to accept the word of one holy man or another as God's most recent message is a legitimate basis for eternal harmony or damnation. After all, these are mere details, right? What really matters is that we Jews, Muslims and Christians can commune together in a spiritual development that questions what God would really want our societies to make of themselves.
As for me? I largely see religion as an evolutionary factor in social and cultural development that promotes social cohesion. I'm not too concerned if that sounds like mumbo jumbo, 'cause it makes sense to me and I'm not really interested in explaining myself for now. But why on earth should my atheism get in the way of the "people of God" seeking some commonality?
Of course, there's nothing particularly original in what I'm saying. I'm just using different words to say it. As Freud discussed, with respect to his concept of "the narcissism of small differences", I'm not sure that accepting our commonalities would solve much - after all, much more insignificant theological differences between sects of Christianity were historically quite sufficient cause to mobilize the populace to fight foreign nations. All the same, I don't expect rejoicing our commonality as "the people of God" could make things worse.
Since Florida was the lead-in ... I just have to say that I can no longer point to the ongoing rise on coastal property values in Florida as one of the most costly results of global warming denial among Americans. Perhaps I will have to write a piece knocking Floridian home owners when the housing markets sorts itself if coastal property values join the rise. Then again, I guess if you plan to be dead before the house gets flooded out then it doesn't really matter, right? Or does it?
It wouldn't be a slogan if it wasn't short
I was thinking about how it would be good for the environment if people would use their resources to buy a smaller amount of really high quality goods and services rather than a large quantity of low quality goods and services. Hiding within are the seeds of a pro-domestic goods slogan that one would never wish into formal trade policy discussions, and a subculture reference that may appeal to potheads and should innocently bypass just about anyone else. Without wasting any more words, here it is
Go green with the good stuff! Buy quality, not quantity.
Go green with the good stuff! Buy quality, not quantity.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Back at it ... The Absurdity of Eugenics
After a gloriously unproductive hiatus, I'm back at it with an article on eugenics that I planned to finish up before the break. Actually, it’s more like a list of points, since there isn’t a whole lot of structure.
Evolution is not directional. (Not in nature, that is. I suppose we could make it that way ... but I suggest considering the final two lines of this piece for some reflection about how much direction we could offer.) We should certainly try to survive as a species, but we don't know what attributes will help us the best.
However, as pointed out by Marx, we both create our (social) environment and face evolutionary pressures from it. Sure, we can influence all aspects of our environment, but reality is way to complex to know exactly what will happen.
If reality is too complex at the macro level, then eugenics is eternally bound to be useless, except as a morally corrupted tool to enhance the benefits of some particular social group (who define their own characteristics as being the most fit, then try to make it true by imposing their vision on people). It is therefore eminently beyond our ability to figure out which specific bits of the complex whole should become the target of any such eugenics-minded project.
Even if we were to disregard the distasteful elements of eugenics, I quite strongly believe that an absolute precondition would have to be perfect equality of opportunity. Any other starting point would bias the whole process and lead to suboptimal results. (Haha... eat that! Pure socialism as a logical and necessary pre-condition to eugenics. If that’s the precondition, I’d like to know just how many of these neo-Nazis would still embrace the project.)
___________________________________________________
While we can conceptually grasp the pieces of the whole (individuals) and think we can understand it, and we can also grasp the whole (humanity, and the infinite ways that it relates to our environment), and think we understand it, each of these are filled with uncertainty and poor knowledge.
To then suppose that the individual (the eugenicist) is able to unite such completely flawed packets of information so as to find the most 'perfect' ways that they must match up, counting for all possible future effects, is not exactly an endearing example of the sort of intelligence they claim to favour. The sheer absurdity of the proposition is, in fact, my primary thrust. This paragraph largely constitutes my entire argument.
____________________________________________________
Consider the following possibility ... In the year 2100, a person with a low IQ but great sensitivity to social situations becomes a political leader and staves off what would otherwise have been a nuclear holocaust. The leader on the other side agrees, because his schizophrenic nephew, on new meds, was full of a certain joie de vie during a recent visit, which rubbed off on the guy and made him more conciliatory.
YOU JUST DON'T KNOW! My God, how much more clear can I get! There is only one group of people that I find more frustrating than hard-core fundamentalists, and that's hard core eugenicists. Let me tell you why.
A fundamentalist is typically unshakable in their position and takes honour in such. They see such inherent truth in their views that it would never cross their mind to pretend that you might be half-way right just to turn around and try to convince you. But the eugenicist will pretend to agree with you in any way that is conducive to opening the space for an argument that makes eugenics sound palatable.
Self-censorship and social admonition with respect to reproduction? Sure, sounds great. Our evolutionary direction is almost sure to be affected by "sexual selection" (in the Darwinian sense) that includes greater knowledge about our genetic composition. Individuals will, or will not, choose to have babies. Certain social and economic incentives affect these choices. However, I'm hard pressed to think of anything that is more fundamentally an inherently natural right, as a living organism, be it a cell or a rabbit, let along a human being, than the right to enter the market of sexual activity and reproduction, if one so chooses.
Evolution is not directional. (Not in nature, that is. I suppose we could make it that way ... but I suggest considering the final two lines of this piece for some reflection about how much direction we could offer.) We should certainly try to survive as a species, but we don't know what attributes will help us the best.
However, as pointed out by Marx, we both create our (social) environment and face evolutionary pressures from it. Sure, we can influence all aspects of our environment, but reality is way to complex to know exactly what will happen.
If reality is too complex at the macro level, then eugenics is eternally bound to be useless, except as a morally corrupted tool to enhance the benefits of some particular social group (who define their own characteristics as being the most fit, then try to make it true by imposing their vision on people). It is therefore eminently beyond our ability to figure out which specific bits of the complex whole should become the target of any such eugenics-minded project.
Even if we were to disregard the distasteful elements of eugenics, I quite strongly believe that an absolute precondition would have to be perfect equality of opportunity. Any other starting point would bias the whole process and lead to suboptimal results. (Haha... eat that! Pure socialism as a logical and necessary pre-condition to eugenics. If that’s the precondition, I’d like to know just how many of these neo-Nazis would still embrace the project.)
___________________________________________________
While we can conceptually grasp the pieces of the whole (individuals) and think we can understand it, and we can also grasp the whole (humanity, and the infinite ways that it relates to our environment), and think we understand it, each of these are filled with uncertainty and poor knowledge.
To then suppose that the individual (the eugenicist) is able to unite such completely flawed packets of information so as to find the most 'perfect' ways that they must match up, counting for all possible future effects, is not exactly an endearing example of the sort of intelligence they claim to favour. The sheer absurdity of the proposition is, in fact, my primary thrust. This paragraph largely constitutes my entire argument.
____________________________________________________
Consider the following possibility ... In the year 2100, a person with a low IQ but great sensitivity to social situations becomes a political leader and staves off what would otherwise have been a nuclear holocaust. The leader on the other side agrees, because his schizophrenic nephew, on new meds, was full of a certain joie de vie during a recent visit, which rubbed off on the guy and made him more conciliatory.
YOU JUST DON'T KNOW! My God, how much more clear can I get! There is only one group of people that I find more frustrating than hard-core fundamentalists, and that's hard core eugenicists. Let me tell you why.
A fundamentalist is typically unshakable in their position and takes honour in such. They see such inherent truth in their views that it would never cross their mind to pretend that you might be half-way right just to turn around and try to convince you. But the eugenicist will pretend to agree with you in any way that is conducive to opening the space for an argument that makes eugenics sound palatable.
Self-censorship and social admonition with respect to reproduction? Sure, sounds great. Our evolutionary direction is almost sure to be affected by "sexual selection" (in the Darwinian sense) that includes greater knowledge about our genetic composition. Individuals will, or will not, choose to have babies. Certain social and economic incentives affect these choices. However, I'm hard pressed to think of anything that is more fundamentally an inherently natural right, as a living organism, be it a cell or a rabbit, let along a human being, than the right to enter the market of sexual activity and reproduction, if one so chooses.
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