Romantic Heretic's Open Salon Blog

Aristocrats, democrats and barbarians

Wed, 16 Feb 2011 11:02:54 -0500

Been a while since I blogged but these thoughts have been on my mind a lot recently and I needed to put them down somewhere.

My thoughts on politics have been influenced heavily by Thomas Jefferson. Most specifically this passage from his letter to Henry Lee on August 10, 1824.

"Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties. 1. Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes. 2ndly those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest & safe, altho’ not the most wise depository of the public interests. In every country these two parties exist, and in every one where they are free to think, speak, and write, they will declare themselves. Call them therefore liberals and serviles, Jacobins and Ultras, whigs and tories, republicans and federalists, aristocrats and democrats or by whatever name you please, they are the same parties still and pursue the same object. The last appellation of aristocrats and democrats is the true one expressing the essence of all."

That was how I divided people, politically, for much of my life. Not that the lines were hard and fast. No person is all one or the other, but generally the borders were clear.

The Tea Party threw that way of organizing for rather a bit of a loop. They seemed, to me, to be neither despite trending towards the aristocratic end of things. There seemed no principle behind their thoughts save anger and fear.

Then I was re-reading an old favorite book, Space Viking by H. Beam Piper and this passage jumped out at me.

"Every society rests on a barbarian base. The people who don't understand civlization, and wouldn't like it if they did. The people who create nothing, and who don't appreciate what others have created for them, and who think civlization is something that just exists and all they need to do is enjoy what they do understand of it - luxuries, a high living standard and easy work for high pay."

Now it clicked. The Tea Party are barbarians. They don't understand civilization and wouldn't like it if they did. They think it's just there and all they have to do is leech off of it.

This is where there anger and fear come from. They think the gravy train is going to end and it scares them shitless. So, as barbarians do when frightened, they're setting out to loot the train while there is still something to loot.

The fact that this will destroy the gravy train once and for all is something that escapes them. Not surprising since they don't understand civlization.

So now I've three categories of political people: aristocrats, democrats…

…and barbarians.

I've never been very happy

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 12:06:58 -0400

With the name of our species: Homo Sapiens, Thinking Man. Supposedly this separates us from the other animals.

Yes, some of us think. Indeed they are famous for it. But to say our species thinks, well, I'm not sure that's true.

Most of us aren't really much different from the computer I'm typing this on. We have data fed into us along with programming instructions on when to regurgitate that data but, like my computer, we often don't think about it.

So I think we should come up with a new name for our species. My Latin kind of sucks so some of the following may suck as well.

I've often thought Homo Instrumenta, Tool Using Man, would be a better name. If there's one thing that differentiates us from animals it's our ability to make and use tools. We started off simple with flint knives and axes and now we've got cars, planes, computers, cell phones and all kinds of other tools. Plus we've created abstract tools like government, bureaucracy, corporations and money.

The problem is that tools require a certain amount of thought to use carefully and wisely. Since we don't think as much as we believe we do we get into a lot of trouble with our tools.

Perhaps if we recognized we were tool using animals we might make more of an effort to think about what we're doing with our tools.

Another name for our species that might be appropriate is Homo Ludens, Game Playing Man. All humans seem to be fond of and spend a lot of effort playing games. Once again we started simply with seeing who could throw things the farthest and who could run the fastest. Now we've got poker, go, chess, Risk, Diplomacy, Dungeons and Dragons and Vampire: The Masquerade. Plus all the physical games such as football, baseball, hockey, rugby and lots of others.

Now there are problems involved with games as well.

One is when we take a serious activity like politics or economics and make a game out of it. "He who has the most toys wins!" and all that. Unlike actual games a serious activity reduced to a game hurts people. Bankrupting people in Monopoly is allowable. Bankrupting them in life isn't.

Another is when we take a frivolous game and make it serious. Soccer riots aren't fun. Hell, a war was fought over a soccer game once.

I'm thinking that if we believed ourselves to be game playing animals we might recognize when we're playing games and when we're serious.

Finally I sometimes think the best name for us would be Homo Superbia, Prideful Man. Because if there is one thing we humans are is prideful.

We always believe we have the best ideas, belong to the best group, are the strongest or smartest or God's; Allah to Zeus; chosen people.

The problem is that pride wasn't made a Deadly Sin because it sounded cool.

Just some random blathering from me today. See if you can come up with a better name for our species.

A few thoughts on the nature of words

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 17:06:49 -0400

Words are interesting things. In the words of Humpty Dumpty, "When I use a word it means just what I want it to mean, no more and no less."

My first thought was triggered by a blog post here on Open Salon a few days ago. Most especially this line caught my eye.

"I love this country and I don't want to pay taxes to it."

That made me blink. Here's a man who claims to love his country and yet won't pay anything to maintain it.

At the root of this attitude, I believe, is that there are two contradictory meanings to the word 'free'.

The first meaning is freedom in the political sense, and let's face it, freedom costs. At the very least it costs money. Other costs are time, thought, and dialog. Sometimes freedom has to be paid for in pain, blood and death.

The other meaning is 'something for nothing'. You get something valuable and it doesn't have a cost.

Many people have confused the latter meaning for the former.

I encountered another example of the way words get confused at my grocery store. Recently they went through what's known as a 'rationalization'. They had cut back their staff a fair bit. The result was that even though the store was rather empty there were lineups at the only two registers open.

Now I understand why the store did this. It made the store more 'efficient'. They probably did time/motion studies that showed this was a more 'efficient' way to use their staff, and cut payroll.

However it wasn't very effective. People had to stand in line when they shouldn't have had to.

But, in our modern lexicon, efficient and effective are considered to be the same thing. Which I don't believe they are.

My final example of how words are used is a political one. It concerns the word 'libertarian'.

Now, most of the people I've met than claimed to be libertarian have seemed more like anarchists to me. It seems that their belief is that life should be lived with as few rules as possible and most especially by any rules imposed by a government.

Anarchy doesn't have a positive meaning though and few people want to claim it. So the anarchists rebranded themselves as 'libertarians'. This had two advantages.

The first is that it cut the libertarians off from their anarchist past. They no longer carried the unhappy baggage of history. They became something new and clean.

The other advantage is that the root of libertarian is 'liberty'. This made it impossible to dissent from their views. To oppose libertarianism is to oppose liberty. So anyone who questions or criticizes becomes an enemy of freedom.

Clever of them.

My point to all this is simply that words are slippery things. A word can have contradictory meanings that can get confused. Different words can mean the same thing when they don't. And words can hide rather than illuminate.

If we're aware of this we can feel our way through them to wisdom. If we're not we'll end up wandering in darkness wondering where we are going and confused as to our destination.

Rather like we're doing now.

Why I call myself a heretic

Fri, 5 Jun 2009 12:06:57 -0400

I just read a most interesting article in New Yorker.

This is something I've long known. My first exposure to the ideas in the article was with Sun Tzu. As he noted in The Art of War:

"Therefore those who win every battle are not really skillful – those who render others' armies helpless without fighting are best of all.

The superior militarist strikes while schemes are being laid. The next best is to attack alliances. The next best is to attack the army.

The lowest is to attack a city. Siege of a city is to be done only as a last resort."

As you may notice this is almost the opposite of modern military strategy where armies and cities are the first targets. This is where my understanding of the value of heresy started.

After reading the New Yorker article I recalled an article I read in Wired magazine many years ago: Conspiracy of Heretics. The sentence, "Organization would have to be systematically open to heresy." resonated in my mind. I haven't thought quite the same since.

Finally I decided that I was a heretic and my philosophy was heresy. Here's the reasons why.

Humans build systems, social systems especially. It's basically a good idea for it helps us live together.

Unfortunately such systems grant power to people. It's inevitable and not necessarily a bad thing. The problem is that people like their power and set the system that grants them that power in stone. The system stops being a useful tool and becomes a source of Absolute Truth.

Worse, in my opinion, is that such systems sideline extraordinary facets of humanity: ethics and imagination.

But the world changes and a system that can't adapt itself to these changes is one that will soon die, taking the people that live in it down as well. Only through heresy can change come about. Heresy questions. Heresy wonders. Heresy imagines. Heresy brings ethics to bear on the system.

So, I'm a heretic. I try to be one of those who challenges. I try to wonder about who we are and what we are doing. I try to make our world a better place.

May heresy live long and prosper.

I may be an agnostic

Thu, 4 Jun 2009 12:06:56 -0400

But music comes from God.