Ed
says,
Ah yes, but a church minister I know says that animals don't have souls, so
it's probably OK.
arthur
replies,
After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my
hands.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 - 1900
Hitler claimed the same about Jews and
Gypsies.
REH
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, October 31, 2003 9:23
AM
Subject: Re: You are naive (was Re:
[Futurework] Walmart and the American dream
Yes,
Animal experimentation.
REH
Ah yes, but a church minister I know says that animals don't have
souls, so it's probably OK.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, October 31, 2003 9:25
AM
Subject: Re: You are naive (was Re:
[Futurework] Walmart and the American dream
Yes,
Animal experimentation.
REH
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, October 31, 2003 9:00
AM
Subject: Re: You are naive (was Re:
[Futurework] Walmart and the American dream
REH:
That is my problem with "social"
experiments like economic systems that have been put in place based upon
theory but with inadaquate "checks and balances" to assure the "guinea
pigs" that they can still survive and even be happy should it fail or
need "tweaking." Mengele assumed Jews and
Gypsies were "guinea pigs" and that simply burning them rather than
"using" them for science was a waste. Today our economists
ruin individual and professional lives in the service of market theories
for the "greater good" in "Mengele" like experiments that require that
their lobbying representitives be impotent for the "experiments" to
work. Why else would everyone be so anti-labor union in
such situations? Personally I have both belonged to and been
abused by labor unions but they are a part of the system that checks and
balances the abuse of individual workers by other groups i.e. the
wealthy share holders.
Just a few comments, Ray. Economists
aren't all bad. It's the defunct ones that one has to go
after. As Keynes put it: "We are all the slaves of defunct
economists", or some such thing. Defunct economists enslave us,
present day ones try to fix things up and, in turn, become defunct and
enslave us. What a dastardly profession!
However, I would suggest that there is a
difference between economist and Mengele. Even if theoretically,
economists attempt to understand reality. Mengele's world was one
of complete and utter unreality, except of course for the unfortunate
people that were thrust into its madness. For
example:
Twins in the experiments describe
three days of what must have been psychological examination and three
days of laboratory experiments. "Three times a week we were marched to
Auschwitz to a big brick building, sort of like a big gymnasium. They
would keep us there for about six or eight hours at a time - most of
the days. ..... We would have to sit naked in the large room where we
first entered, and people in white jackets would observe us and write
down notes. They also would study every part of our bodies. They would
photograph, measure our heads and arms and bodies, and compare the
measurements of one twin to another. The process seemed to go on and
on." (Echoes from Auschwitz, Kor).
The laboratory experiments were
described by Kor as follows: "Most of the time, they would take blood
from one arm, and they gave us shots in the other." (Echoes from
Auschwitz, Kor).
Experiments did not end with the death
of the twins. Dissection of the corpses for final medical analysis is
well documented by Nyiszli and by Lifton. (http://www.candles-museum.com/mengele.htm)
Can you imagine anything more
bizarre?
Ed
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2003
2:14 PM
Subject: Re: You are naive (was
Re: [Futurework] Walmart and the American dream
Bravo Harry,
Very elegantly put. Now for a
couple of things. "Simple" is an interesting
word. Would you not not agree that
"simple" for Horowitz (on the piano) is not the same as
"simple" for Liebowitz (the writer) even though their names are
similar? Complexity always depends upon competance
and simplicity is what has become "natural" to the person
i.e. "walking" is simple to an adult who is healthy and complicated to
a person who has had a knee injury or to the child just learning
to stand.
The second part has to do with
cooperation. Just as there are levels of competance i.e.
complexity, for individuals, so are there levels of competance for
groups. The group that has the highest level of competance
and the lowest complexity level is the most successful, would you not
agree? So what seems almost casual in your comments
is really a lot more interesting than that in reality.
Does not the future of work depend upon such expertise in analysis as
systematically exploring what you are describing in a more deep and
layered fashion?
And finally are not the "simplicities" of
science based upon predictability? In the end, does
not science accept a certain degree of sloppiness if it
"works"? Is not the problem for science, the
necessity of experimentation for the purpose of nailing down
"predictability?" As a result do you not need a
certain number of "smallpox" experiments to know if the vaccine works
or not? (or on the extreme you have the experiments of Mengele with
the twins.) That is my problem with "social" experiments
like economic systems that have been put in place based upon theory
but with inadaquate "checks and balances" to assure the "guinea pigs"
that they can still survive and even be happy should it fail or need
"tweaking." Mengele assumed Jews and Gypsies
were "guinea pigs" and that simply burning them rather than "using"
them for science was a waste. Today our economists ruin
individual and professional lives in the service of market theories
for the "greater good" in "Mengele" like experiments that require that
their lobbying representitives be impotent for the "experiments"
to work. Why else would everyone be so
anti-labor union in such situations? Personally I
have both belonged to and been abused by labor unions but they are a
part of the system that checks and balances the abuse of individual
workers by other groups i.e. the wealthy share
holders.
So for me it ultimately comes down to
competance and the lowering of complexity through the raising of the
competance of indivduals and
groups. Simplicity then becomes "elegant
balance" and not just the most "stupid solution"
possible.
REH
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, October 30,
2003 12:08 AM
Subject: RE: You are naive (was
Re: [Futurework] Walmart and the American dream
Gentlemen,
As you might expect, I have a rather more
simple view of human behavior.
There seems to be a certain acceptance of
experimental research that is based more on the reports of these
efforts, than the actual research. Any scientific research is full
of maybe's, and perhaps, and possibilities, rather than
probabilities.
However, reporting such uncertainties doesn't
make for sexy news.
I know that people will survive or not
depending on how they behave. They surely have a better chance of
surviving in communities. Cooperation multiplies well-being.
We who have survived because we enjoyed the
advantages of community. If we are
nice to each other, if we help each other, if, on occasion, we even
sacrifice for each other - it may be because these are traits which
have made us welcome members of the community. Those without this built-in behavior are
probably long gone (or most of them). How this propensity to
cooperate moves from generation to generation is, I feel, less
important than the fact that exists.
Harry
Ed,
At 11:23 28/10/2003 -0500, you
wrote:
Keith, you seem to attribute almost all of
human behaviour to motives like gaining status and ensuring the
preservation of one's genetic code. Every
single lifeform acts to preserve its genetic code more than anything
else. In primate societies, rank order is the main device that has
evolved for the selection of sexual partners. It's as basic and
important as that.
By your view of it, a behaviour like altruism
is not something based on morality, on wanting to do 'right' by
others and wanting others to do right by you, but something that
it essentially selfish and that we can't help because we are
genetically programmed to behave that way. I simply don't buy
that. You are entitled to believe the above,
but the evidence is increasingly showing that all our principal
behaviours are predisposed by our genes. However, where we differ
from other primates is that our frontal lobes are able to embellish
all our deep drives in imaginative ways. For example, almost all the
goods we buy have been, at one historical period or another, status
symbols. Another example: almost all religions' rules about marriage
put a civilised gloss on the incest taboo which is followed
rigorously by all human societies that are not under stress.
Our sense of morality and decency is ancient.
It has been developed out of a vast array of interactions over the
millennia. It has been codified in religions, philosophies, laws
and institutions, and surely plays at least as important a role in
our behaviour, one to another, as our basic animal make-up.
Without a codified morality, we could not function as societies.
It is what distinguishes us from other
species. We could easily function without
detailed, codified moralities. But it's helpful to codify them and,
where they differ in detail from one culture to another it adds
colour to each.
The examples you give of morals that are
prefigured in our genes are not very convincing. Both mothers and
fathers have died to save their children.
Yes, but mothers try harder! In cases of bad
house fires in England where one of the parents perish trying to
save the children, it is the mother who nearly always dies rather
than the father. The ratio is something like 12 to 1 -- if my memory
is correct (the ratio might be more than that, but it's
significant).
And when, as in cases of intended rescues I
know about, brothers have tried to save brothers, the very last
things they were thinking about was the preservation of the family
genes. Of course, individuals don't actually
think about their genes! In primate societies, brothers will
nearly always come to the aid of their brothers. In the case of
humans, this could only be proved conclusively by a scientific
experiment which would be ethically impossible to carry out! But,
gosh! -- just think of the nepotism that goes on in buysiness and
politics and the way almost everybody writes their Wills.
As for altruistic work, I know of many people
who do things for strangers without any thought of getting
something in return. I personally am involved in a food bank, and
I demand no recompense. I and the other people who work with me
just feel that it is a necessary thing to do.
Yes, this is true. But this is quite rare,
and it nearly always involves individuals who are more intelligent
than the norm and are more aware of the importance of
community/social linkages. In Bath there are quite a number of
charities and voluntary societies. There is only one I can think of
in which working class voluntary helpers are almost as numerous as
middle class individuals -- this is the Refuge Centre for battered
wives (which is the particular charity that I support)..
My general point remains: quite apart from
our genes and what might be interpreted as our economic
self-interest, we are moral creatures. We
are only 'moral creatures' because we say there should be morals.
And the people who are the most insistent about morals are those who
want power -- churchmen and politicians
All I was suggesting in the posting you
challenged was that our morality needs to be applied more
forcefully to some of the more pressing problems that confound our
economy today. Something other than rounding them up and deporting
them needs to be done for illegal immigrants who enter the rich
world to do its menial work, and something must also be done to
help affected communities deal with job-loss problems arising out
of outsourcing. Perhaps because business has become so big and
powerful in society or because we have become more cynical and
less secure, we seem to have lost some of the focus that, for
example, Roosevelt, applied to the economy of his times via the
New Deal and, as another example, the Kennedys and Johnson applied
to civil rights in the 1960s. I believe that
we in the developed world are prosperous enough and should be
civilised enough to adopt a general duty of care to many illegal
immigrants. But let's not get carried away about this. I can only
speak of England. According to a BBC Radio 4 investigation, 2,000
children are brought into England every year from Africa. Some have
been brought here so that people here can claim children's benefits
from the welfare state, some are brought in as sex slaves and some
are actually brought in for ritualistic human sacrifice (and there
is strong police evidence that this goes on). Some come here for
entirely valid reasons, of course, for fear of persecution. There
are also at least 70-80,000 prostitutes who have been brought in by
(mainly Albanian) criminal gangs. Their passports and papers are
taken from them, they know no English and many of them have no
chance of escaping from the pimps' clutches. In effect, they are
slaves. At the present time, it is almost impossible to know how to
sort out all this substantial immigration because most illegal
immigrants entering the country simply destroy their passports and
identity papers on the plane as they fly here, or they hide them on
arrival.
Keith
- ----- Original Message -----
- From: Keith
Hudson
- To: Ed Weick
- Cc: Harry
Pollard ; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
- Sent: Tuesday, October 28, 2003 2:16 AM
- Subject: You are naive (was Re: [Futurework] Walmart and
the American dream
- Ed,
- At 18:04 27/10/2003 -0500, you wrote:
- I believe I started all of this
by rather innocently posting an article from the NYTimes
dealing with cheap illegal immigrant labour doing cleaning
work at Walmart. Personally, because I have first hand
familiarity with what second generations can achieve, I'm not
against bringing in cheap immigrant labour to do menial work,
nor am I against sending work abroad to India and China.
What I am against is holding the threat of deportation over
immigrant labour's head and using outsourcing to undercut
domestic workers and their communities. There must be a
decent and moral way of doing both out and in sourcing.
Society, acting through its elected politicians, has to find
that way and not leave it up to Walmart and the
outsourcers. The matter has to be considered as an
important political issue and not be kept hidden under the
table. But perhaps I'm being naive?
- Ed
- I think you are being naive. Not because you are an innocent
but because you are trying to mix morals and economics. In
truth, consumers are greedy and will always go to the cheapest
sources. When the British car industry was dying in the 1960s
and early 70s in my home town of Coventry (we had eight large
factories there then: one now) and politicians of both parties
were appealing to us to "Buy British" whenever they were in
power -- with "Buy British" stickers everywhere you looked and
stuck on every conceivable product -- the very same workers who
were destroying the British car industry were also buying
Japanese cars. They were there, large as life, in the car
parks of all the factories when their owners were on shift. Why?
Because Japanese cars were better and cheaper.
- And why were Coventry car factories destroyed (the last
remaining one -- Jaguar -- is due to move abroad shortly)?
Because the car workers were greedy (they were already earning
twice or thrice the average UK wage for those days) and the
local management was weak. I know because I worked in one of the
factories for many years.
- We all deplore the demise of the corner shop, yet we
(Bathonians, at least) all do the bulk of our weekly shopping in
the superstores because there's more choice, the food is cheaper
and the quality is more reliable. When I first came to live in
my present house in Bath 17 years ago there were five corner
shops (literally) at the end of the road -- greengrocer,
butcher, grocer, newsagent, post office. They've all gone now.
What we have now is a deli (in truth, a posh takeaway) and four
antique shops, mainly for the benefit of tourists. Yet another
dagger in the heart of the local community.
- We don't have much by way of morals -- but all are deeply
prefigured in our genes. They are:
- 1. A mother (but not a father) will give her life in
sacrifice for her children in an emergency; in a period of
starvation, however, she will allow her child to die instead of
herself. (Why? Because she has a chance of having more children
if and when the starvation period goes -- otherwise, both might
die. Observe any and every TV clip you see of mass starvation,
as in Ethiopia and northern Africa.);
- 2. An individual will help another within his family in
order to maximise the survival of his/her particular cluster of
genes;
- 3. An individual will help another in his community (that
is, when there is a fair chance that the help can be
reciprocated sooner or later either by the recipient or by an
observer in that community);
- 4. An individual will tend to trust another (friend or
stranger) in any transaction if there is an almost certain
chance of reciprocation either immediately or at some stage in
the future;
- 5. It is permissable to use every trick in the book (that
one can get away with) to raise one's status in the community
because in this way one is able to choose a beautiful and
talented sex partner with survival-worthy genes for your
offspring.
- The first three are called altruism; the fourth is called
trade, the last is called art and/or science and/or philosophy
and/or organised religion (another version of politics) and/or
politics and/or economics and/or consumerism.
- This may seem a bleak list -- and so it is, because, ever
since we left hunter-gatherer times (after having extinguished
most of the easily-available animal prey) the majority of the
world's population are either suffering physically or are
experiencing unhappiness. Even the 'prosperous' developed world
is becoming increasingly stressful and will probably become
increasingly divisive (both inter-nationally and
intra-nationally). It will always be so -- until we have a more
realistic notion of what sort of creature we are and are able to
fashion our social and political units more in accordance with
our genetic make-up. Until then, I'm afraid, it's all pie in the
sky.
- Keith
- Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>, <www.handlo.com>, <www.property-portraits.co.uk>
Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>, <www.handlo.com>, <www.property-portraits.co.uk>
|