On 1/26/2013 1:06 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
On Saturday, January 26, 2013 12:28:01 PM UTC-5, Stephen Paul King wrote:
On 1/26/2013 12:13 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
On Saturday, January 26, 2013 11:55:22 AM UTC-5, Stephen Paul
King wrote:
On 1/26/2013 11:45 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
On Saturday, January 26, 2013 11:36:45 AM UTC-5, JohnM wrote:
Craig, I read many of your posts, none was so
pessimistic so far.
Ah, maybe I was being more sarcastic than the internet
allows. I was intending to mock those ideas by quoting
Scrooge, as I think that there is nothing further from the
truth than the idea that character is completely independent
from their circumstance - that people with no shoes can pull
themselves up by their bootstraps or who have been born into
a system of oppression can free themselves by belief in the
free market or some such thing.
Craig
Hey!
What exactly is a system of oppression? Could you
describe an actual situation in Nature that is
"oppression-free"?
Slavery, or apartheid are systems of intentional oppression, but
poverty in a land of plenty is oppressive also, even if
oppression of the poor is an unintentional effect. If it takes
two million peasants to prop up one Imelda Marcos, then being
born into the system which does that is an oppressive one, and
not one which you can escape by adopting a positive attitude.
Just because life isn't free of oppression doesn't mean that if
an Imelda Marcos manages to tyrannize a country that it is the
will of Nature. To the contrary, the will of Nature is for the
oppressed to kill and eat their oppressors at the earliest
opportunity.
Craig
Hi Craig,
Setting the drama of humanity aside, can you point to some
actual cases of this in Nature?
http://phys.org/news/2011-05-predator-prey-role-reversal-bug-turtle.html
Hi Craig!
Interesting! "The K. Deyrolli is a native bug from Japan and is
listed by the Japanese Environment Agency as an endangered species. "
Umm, why is that? Must not be doing something right!
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/272/1575/1929.full
"That predators attack and prey defend is an oversimplified view. When
size changes during development, large prey may be invulnerable to
predators, and small juvenile predators vulnerable to attack by prey."
Very interesting! The entire abstract:
"That predators attack and prey defend is an oversimplified view. When
size changes during development, large prey may be invulnerable to
predators, and small juvenile predators vulnerable to attack by prey.
This in turn may trigger a defensive response in adult predators to
protect their offspring. Indeed, when sizes overlap, one may wonder 'who
is the predator and who is the prey'! Experiments with 'predatory' mites
and thrips 'prey' showed that young, vulnerable prey counterattack by
killing young predators and adult predators respond by protective
parental care, killing young prey that attack their offspring. Thus,
young individuals form the Achilles' heel of prey and predators alike,
creating a cascade of predator attack, prey counterattack and predator
defense. Therefore, size structure and relatedness induce multiple
ecological role reversals."
This seems to imply that there are no Nash equilibria for this case.
But where is the "oppression", exactly? My point is that
"oppression" is in the eye of the beholder as there does not exist an
objective measure of such. But I digress...
Any deer "oppressed to kill and eat their oppressors [wolves] at
the earliest opportunity"?
Deer are herbivores, so they aren't interested in eating a wolf, but
a herd of even peaceful herbivores can potentially kick the crap out
of a single predator.
Yes, but that only knocks down my bad analogy of deer and wolves,
as I intended. I want to explore the idea of "oppression" and see if my
proposed thesis (that government is the actual instrument of all human
oppression) can be adequately defended. I could be very much wrong here!
No! I dare say that you are building a flawed argument on a flawed
premise. I submit the entire idea of "oppression", as you are
using it, is a figment of human imagination.
If you mistreat a dog, does it not become damaged or vicious? It must
be the imagination of dogs too...
Good point. Dogs can "oppress" each other by this reasoning, and
thus we see oppression in Nature, in support of my implied point.
Oppression is a natural condition. How we deal with it is the better
question. 'Eating the rich' works until we run out of the rich; then we
all starve.
We humans have the unique ability to behave in ways that do not
actually solve problems but instead just "make us feel better"
about our crappy living conditions and the problem that is causing
us pain does unchecked. Every case in history where the "oppressed
to kill and eat their oppressors at the earliest opportunity" was
one of chaos and malice, nothing good ever came of it alone.
The American Revolution wasn't a case of throwing off oppression?
Ah! But note that unlike the French revolution, Americans didn't
generally rape, pillage and murder their oppressors, they just killed
the ones that tried to beat them down. Self-defense is not oppression!
Sure, there was a 'looting" of what was previously the possession of the
Crown, but we can follow the line of thinking and note that almost all
such lands (US colony) where wrestled by force from "natives" (who
themselves came from elsewhere). How far back does the chain of blame go?
Are you suggesting that whoever is in a position to oppress someone
else is fully entitled to do it, but those who they oppress will only
cause trouble by fighting back?
No, why would I as that is very easily seen as a straw man. Note
that there is an implied ability to "fight back" in the oppressed that
you are stipulating. Good thing that they where not disarmed! (I would
like to read your thoughts on gun control).
It is only when we face our situations factually and rationally
and solve the problems that we improve our situations.
Freeing yourself from bondage isn't facing up to your situation
factually and rationally? If someone has enslaved or imprisoned you
unjustly, what other solution to the problem could there be?
OK, now we need to consider the means by which the oppressed can
free themselves. We need rational arguments here, not appeals to emotion.
Let's consider the case of Imelda. How was it that she was
able to do what she did? She had the force of government to
implement her 'oppresion". I submit to you that it is government
that is unique in its ability to oppress, as it has the monopoly
on the *legal* use of force.
The use of force need not be legal to be successful.
non sequitur!
It doesn't matter whether they are police, secret police, army, or
mercenaries who do the torturing and killing and threatening. In the
absence of government, as in Somalia, we do not see any reduction in
tyranny or mayhem. "In the absence of a central government, Somalia's
residents reverted to local forms of conflict resolution, consisting
of civil law, religious law and customary law."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somalia). In the absence of a central
government here, the largest corporations would be completely
unopposed to exercise total authority over the population, through
private security, surveillance, and economic control. The separation
of government and corporate power, while offering little protection to
the expanding underclass, at least offers better than nothing, and it
offers more than Imelda Marcos offered her servants.
I never stipulated that only a "central government" has the *legal*
right to use force... Just let's set that aside for a moment and address
this segway to "corporate power". Does it operate outside of the law? If
yes, how is government innocent of the charge of allowing it? Bribbery
and corruption are flaws of government that corporations or individual
citizenry use to leverage governmental action to their exclusive
benefit, no?
Any line of reasoning that leads to the implication that
government (or a proxy thereof) can can alleviate or otherwise
assuage "oppresion" is only substituting one Imelda for another.
It would have been hard to have an American revolution without an
American government. Who declares Independence from a government if
not another authoritative body?
A good question! Got any tentative answers?
--
Onward!
Stephen
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
