The injustice that really gets to people has changed from “bad things happen to good people” to “good things happen to bad people.”
I dunno, seems like a recipe for unhappiness and dissatisfaction to me.
The injustice that really gets to people has changed from “bad things happen to good people” to “good things happen to bad people.”
I dunno, seems like a recipe for unhappiness and dissatisfaction to me.
Yes, there’s spite abroad nowadays, walking up and down upon the earth. Not sure where that comes from– an overly material view of what felicity might be, that is, a quantitative idea of happiness, which never comes true? It strikes me that something like that may be the problem.
In material terms, I’m perfectly happy to hurt the relative position of those at the top in the effort to help those on the bottom– in fact, I think it’s entirely necessary, given the power of the 1% and .01%. But on the psychological, personal level, I think getting really upset about the success of those who are undeserving in your eyes is a recipe for being unhappy all the time.
Actually,au contraire, I think it opens a real possibility for eternal happiness, without changing anything of substance. When the top 1% are all black lesbians (each married to 5 women) denouncing racism, sexism, and homophobia 24 hours/day on TV, we’ll all reach Nirvana. That’s the future.
This is what I love about your comments, Mao.
I think worrying about whether other people are bad or good in general is a way to ruin your day.
I made this comment a few days ago; there is a trend on the liberal internet to throw a hissy fit when they discover that a white criminal defendant got a comparatively light sentence for something. It’s then stated directly or strongly implied that white people should be thrown in jail at the same rate and for as long as black and brown people are.
The is an attitude that is very discouraging to confront. It doesn’t seem to occur to them that, rather than achieving equality by throwing white people in jail for decades, it would be nice if black and brown people got the same consideration from the justice system that whites do. It’d be swell if, instead of subjecting whites equally to the most oppressive prison state in the world, we didn’t have the most oppressive prison state in the world. Just a thought.
For me, it’s more in the apolitical sense – I just feel like I know and read a lot of people that are personally angry because people they don’t think of as deserving are succeeding. It’s the opposite of schadenfreude. Life being what it is, I feel like this I’d always gonna be something you can get upset about.
Ah. Nevermind then.
Not that this invalidates your point!
Whenever the Internet decides to discuss issues related to unions, it is depressing and striking to me how often you see “Why should they have it so good when the rest of us do not? They need to be brought down to where we are” instead of “We deserve to be brought up to where they are”.
It really seems like so many people are unhappy and scared about where they’re at, so they take that and they project it around to everyone else.
I’d like to ask you a question related to your prior post, and I’ll place it here because of the hoopla the last one attracted: why do you lightly dispatch the track record of state socialism in the 20th century? Does it concern you at all? Why do you think your evolutionary socialism would (and could) avoid these pitfalls? What are the philosophical premises that justify the elaborate regime of coercion that your programme would necessarily entail? Why do you think a political regime that disregards private property would respect other private, individual rights like bodily autonomy?
Thanks – hope you don’t think I’m being glib.
Forgive me, because of course Freddie can speak for himself, but I’m trying to put off doing the dishes, so:
1. Whether a medium works isn’t solely a function of how it’s constructed, its own inherent qualities; its success is also contingent upon the environment it’s deployed in. (See, for example, how poorly the Clintons’ vaunted political strategies worked in the 2008 primary, not much more than a decade after they’d gotten a reputation for just schooling their opponents. They just couldn’t compete with Obama because he understood better how the internet had changed things.) Hypothetically, as our world changes, strategies that didn’t work before may become tenable practices; obviously, the converse holds as well. That was what I thought he was saying.
Does it concern you at all? Why do you think your evolutionary socialism would (and could) avoid these pitfalls?
2. As someone who’s read Freddie for longer than five minutes, I’m gonna go out on a limb here, and guess that, yes, that sort of thing concerns him and that even in the unlikely event he thinks state socialism 2.0 would or could avoid all the pitfalls of its progenitors, he is well aware that others will take their place.
3. I am genuinely not trying to be glib here myself, but: Are you aware that we presently live under an elaborate political regime that is reliant upon coercion and frequently disregards both private-property rights and bodily autonomy? (Truly not trying to be glib. The tone and phrasing of your comment suggest to me you think these things aren’t really the case with regard our current system, but my read could be off!)
(Meant to add to no. 2 the hopefully obvious caveat that I hope I haven’t spoken out of place and do not wish to put words in Our Host’s mouth; just taking a semi-educated guess there.)
The question was far too expansive to reasonably expect a response in the comments, so I don’t blame Freddie for moving onto more fertile pastures.
I don’t pretend that our political system lacks coercion and periodic disregard for individual rights & autonomy. It certainly does. My not-entirely-rhetorical question was premised on the notion that a socialist regime – even an evolutionary & “democratic” one – would depend on an even greater level of outright coercion than our present one does.
I think Freddie at least partially concedes this point. He acknowledges that such a programme couldn’t survive just by “soaking the rich.” It in fact would require confiscating the property of millions and millions of “middle class” Americans.
Sorry, didn’t mean to ignore the question. It’s just a big one and it will take time to answer.
Yeah, my entirely unsolicited, not at all qualified response to that would be that it’s just possible there’s a system out there that would involve some manner of greater contribution from all or almost all of the people in our society, but that it would yield markedly better results, to such a degree that most people wouldn’t think of it as coercion. I’d like to believe it’s more of a problem of design and approach than it is a problem inherent to human beings. But I dunno.
“Why do you think a political regime that disregards private property would respect other private, individual rights like bodily autonomy?”
A political regime arbitrates between various interests; upholding some (those of the elite), suppressing others (the rest of the population). To avoid this, what you need (theoretically) is an anarchist community. To form an anarchist community, you probably have to get rid of private property, which is the main source of conflicting interests, that require a political regime in the first place. Once everyone owns nothing, no one can own anything, and there is no authority, everything should (theoretically) fall in place: you find a community you like and you join it. End of story.
F*ck your ‘bodily autonomy’, and f*ck your ‘private property’.
Whenever I hear people nattering on about either one, I feel like I want the iron fist of the state to give it to them good and hard.