We all are architects of our lives. No matter what happens, we have the natural ability to define our dreams, and to build; given the chance.
Individually, and collectively, our lives are governed, at least in part by chance. A hurricane here, a tornado there, winds of economy, games of dice, chess, and politics; all have a tendancy to wipe out even the best of plans or intentions. People have trouble understanding how a thousand years of effort can be wiped out with a single fire, but that is reality. On an individual and a collective level we are subject to the whims of chance, of "God" when he plays dice with our lives. On both these things represent "risk" and "opportunity."
This chance nature of individual fortune leads some people to see life as like a poker game. For one person to win, someone else must lose. To these people there is no room for compassion because to have winners, there must be losers. You see this attitude a lot in ideological conservatives. To them the notion that "Gubbornment" should or even can help the average person or level the playing field is something they cannot believe is possible.
These people also don't see anything wrong with looking out for number one and cutting the legs out of their opponents. They tend to see life as a kind of warfare, in which the only way to win is to kill, defeat or destroy ones opponents. These people know that winning requires them to play a game in which the stakes are high. Winning that game means admittance to a country-club. Failure means washing dishes, cleaning streets, or dying. When they get ahead they attribute it to their skillfulness. When they fail they blame God, their opponents, or some other skapegoat.
I'm sure you know people like this. Yet, the reality of life is that while individually our lives are subject to chance. Collectively, that very matter of chance gives us a way to mitigate risk and ameliorate problems. Individual chance is random, but our collective lives are statistically pretty predictable. One can look at a population over time and figure out ways to spread out the risk so that no one person has to bear it all. My odds of getting stomach cancer might be a given percentage. A single person with stomach cancer might have a nasty doctor's bill that he couldn't possibly bear, yet if we determine the odds and spread them out, we might find that the collective cost of such a condition is far lower. That is the logic of insurance and large scale social programs. They can't eliminate risk, but they can make it manage-able.
And they can help fund things that benefit everybody by lowering the risk of a particular outcome.
For example, New Orleans is below Sea Level. So what do we do about it? The first view would put the costs of protecting New Orleans as purely up to the City of New Orleans, and morally, to the individuals living in New Orleans. If their house is below Sea Level and the Dykes break -- "well that's not our business" people will say. But it is our business.
Do we collectively need the oil rigs, sea-ports, and shipping channels? Yes. Do they benefit us individually? yes? Then it is in the functional national interest to have a healthy New Orleans. Therefore it is in our evident collective self interest to help that city -- as a nation. A functional Sea Port at New Orleans directly benefits everybody in the Mississippi Watershed, and most of us on the coasts as well.
Now that we've seen the cost of a relatively low risk event, we can see the value of minimizing the chances of that event; New Levies, restoration of the wet-lands and lagoons of the lower Mississippi, raising the level of the streets and building new buildings that are more resistant to hurricanes; all are in the national interest and are not just the risk of the people living in New Orleans.
Understanding chance also means appreciation of the full meaning of the line from John Donne's poem "no man is an Island." Man as a single creature has a poor chance of surviving very long, or doing anything worth while. For every human being who can survive, the odds are bleak that he will be able to unaided. Yet collectively we can do things to mitigate the random chances that make such life possible. We human beings have been doing that since we started evolving a brain. It is a shame to see so many people refuse to use their brains on the notion that they should be like rogue elephants or other solitary creatures. The odds are a hundred percent that you or I individually will suffer disease, cancer, or other life-threatening disease. Yet using the power of being part of a larger aggregate our own individual odds can be mitigated. I can help you pay for and fight something you are suffering now today, and tomorrow you can help me deal with something I'm suffering from.
That is the value of things like insurance, social programs, and health systems. It is also the value of international trade and international law. The laws of probablity dictate that things may happen to us that we cannot individually bear. Like Job each of us may be tested even if we are humble, hard working and pious. Yet, when looked at on the aggregate, each of the probabilites can be accounted for and dealt with. We can look at each risk factor and calcluate the aggregate costs of something that individually would be more than any one person can bear and then spread those costs across society that we, collectively can afford them. Collectively we have to stand together or we will all fall together.
This is common sense, this is scientific, and this was taken as unassailable logic to the point where social scientists and "liberal democrats" were supprised when these assumptions came under assault.
Chris
Posted by cholte at August 27, 2006 11:00 PMO.K. not as good as totalitarian communism but at least a step in th eright direction.
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Totalitarianism of any kind does not work because it involves concentrated power. Communist totalitarianism doesn't work because of this and, because there is an inherent conflict/"contradiction" between any elite, especially a "vanguard of the proletariate" and the proletariate it purports to lead, and because no one person is smart enough to architect a complex project such as an entire country or world by him or herself. The one party becomes a class and class conflict starts all over again usually on an even higher level of absurdity/naked lying.
Posted by: Chris at August 29, 2006 08:23 AM I don't accept your argument that this must be so.
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You don't have to accept my argument. Examine the premises carefully and the facts and draw your own conclusions.
1. Given a look at the history of every single Communist Country that followed a Marxist-Leninist model, can you tell me of any of them where the ruling elite voluntarily gave up power once established? Has there been one "melting away" yet?
2. The more common pattern has been for the elites to follow the "China Model" and become a class of their own; ruling over the "people" in the name of the people, while spying on them so that they don't dare complain about it.
3. This is entirely predictable if one follows marxist logic and applies it rationally instead of simply turning it into a secular religion.
Marxism is "the Opiate" of the intelligencia and of those who would change the system radically. However radical systems can disinherit and dispossess, but they rarely allow people to express the power, and resources, they need to be given to succeed.
Posted by: Chris at August 29, 2006 03:32 PM I've heard that on paper bumblebees can't fly. I find that hard to believe but if it's true the math is wrong not the bees. Back when we thought the earth was flat it really was flat,and no one will ever break the four minute mile. The conditions that cause revolution will increase and if mankind survives will one day be successful. I'll be long gone. Any way the only alternative to that dream is to blow stuff up just to bring on the end of the human race that much sooner, so I'll stick to my belief in utopia in the future.
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If communist revolution had a chance in hell of making life better for anyone but senior party members then I still would not be impressed by the ideology -- at least it's Marxist-Lenninist variants.
It is as 19th century limited thinking as are any other 19th century concepts. Give it a rest, move on. Violence is not the answer. Nor does one accomplish any good by disenfranchising and dispossessing people intentionally. The pigs always rise to the top of the herd and things always get worse when that happens. People are good at lying, cheating, and manipulating words so that if one "gives" them power they will take it.
On the contrary the way to oppose class oppression and repression is for people to enfranchise themselves, to assert their stake-holding in society, and to create new markets, break barriers to participating in them, keep an eye on all "leaders" and when we see someone with something better; find a way to make it possible for everyone to do better too.
Chris
Posted by: chris at August 30, 2006 02:15 PM I'm not for the idea of doing better either. Progress is a myth.
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