Optional Illusions

[coberst]

Optional Illusions

The traditional mode of thinking (as opposed to Critical Thinking) assumes that today was like yesterday and tomorrow will be like today. In a world that changes, and change itself is an abstract idea, the world does not stand still; for the traditional thinker the response might be “stop the world I want to get off”.

In the world of change we are obliged to simplify where possible; in such a world we must generalize, form abstractions, simplify, create causal laws, and all kinds of means to live in a world of seeming chaos and confusion.

Thought processes that we engage to help simplify are often the very process that makes things more difficult to comprehend and to manage. We humans are abstract thinkers and thus we introduce a new can of worms with which we must deal. In a world of abstract thinking we constantly create varying aspects to reality. Reality does not stand still but moves about and evolves.

All of these modifications of reality, introduced by abstract thinking humans, show us that there is no clear cut separation between fact and fiction. There is no understanding of abstract ideas without the aid of metaphors. Metaphors allow us to communicate by way of linguistics that tells others that X is like A, ‘know is see’ and ‘understand is grasp’, see what I mean?

In a changing world we must be constantly ready to make judgments between options and to recognize when we are dealing with true options and not just optional illusions.

“Why We Borrow Until It Hurts”—an article in Sunday’s Washington Post says:

“Seeing Zero Percent Interest Until Next Year! on envelopes causes us to tear them open, find the Web address, enter some information and send new credit cards hurtling toward our mailboxes. Financing cars for three years is so passe; we finance them for six or seven. And now we buy -- or used to buy -- houses with pick-your-payment mortgages. We are leveraged from here to China. U.S. consumers spend more than 14 percent of their after-tax income just to stay current on household debt.

The question worth asking now is: Why do we love leverage so much that it hurts?

The simple answer, according to personal finance experts, is that we want more -- more money, more house, more car, just more, more, more. We often think we deserve more. Leverage gets us more. With historically low interest rates, leverage is the easiest and quickest tool to get more stuff.

The problem is that too much leverage has a downside that is easy to overlook. When everyone else is using leverage so successfully to get more, do we wonder what will happen if interest rates go up? Not so much.”

[nutronjon]

Wow, you are talking about a very different reality from the one I know. I am wondering how us poor people will survive the expected collapse of our abstract economy. This is going to be a huge social conflict, because folks who think we only use 14% of after tax income just to stay current on household debt, are living such a different reality from those of us who live below the poverty line, and in constant fear of homelessness, or even periods of homelessness. Those who are in power, hold such a different sense of reality, from our poverty reality, that talk of a recession is terrifying, and fear quickly becomes anger. That anger, which can explore into race riots, is justified, because those in power have exploited the poor, and when the economy collapses because of their abstract economic ideas, which are far from reality, the lives of the poorest, will be threatened even more seriously by the conditions of poverty in a time of economic collapse.

Try this reality- despite one's very best, there never is enough money to meet all the needs, and knowing you are socializing your children for poverty, not the world of those in power. Try liviing from crisis to crisis, because there never is enough money to take care of small problems, before they are crisis. Try getting your children to love and respect you and themselves, when they are going cold and hungry and are ashamed of their shabby clothing, rejected by peers and teachers, and have learned not to want, because to live with want is too painful. Get a grip on reality. Allow yourself only the income of a mimium wage worker for a year, minus expenses for child care and other cost of children, and then tell me about reality.

We do not have "affodable" housing for these people, because housing can not be built that is affordable to them. After purchasing the property and the materials for the building, and paying for the labor, rents have to be much higher than what the low income person can afford. People who think there is no such thing as over population, have a very abstract concept of reality. In the past, human labor was so needed, everyone could have a sense of being valued. Today, we don't need the human surplus, and it feels like shit to be among the unwanted, and according the Reagan, the cause of our economic troubles.

We have laws on the books that hurt the poor and protect a high standard of living. Policies for people in assisted housing, prevent family from helping family in times of severe need. If I took in my 21 year old granddaughter and baby son, I could get evicted! I remember the high unemployment of the last recession, and I am feeling desparate knowing I can not shelter my own, vulnerable family without ending up on the streets myself. I am angry about that, and am considering leading demonstration to demand change. When our laws prevent family from helping family, something is very wrong. It is wrong, especially if the economy collapses and poverty is the result of a collapse ecomony, not just personal failure. How do those of us who know this reality, get laws that protect us and at the same time enjoy social respect and dignity?

[coberst]

Originally Posted by nutronjon

How do those of us who know this reality, get laws that protect us and at the same time enjoy social respect and dignity?

I know of only one answer and that is a citizenry that is much more intellectually sophisticated than that which we have today. The only answer I see is for adults to become self-actalizing self-learners so that they can comprehend the problem and perhaps develop a solution for those problems.

We can spread the word and start the process.

[Thunderbird]

Originally Posted by coberst

I know of only one answer and that is a citizenry that is much more intellectually sophisticated than that which we have today. The only answer I see is for adults to become self-actalizing self-learners so that they can comprehend the problem and perhaps develop a solution for those problems.

We can spread the word and start the process.

The process of improving society for everyone comes by individuals sacrificing themselves to their fellow man. Its a dirty thankless and sometimes even dangerous business that on rare occasions leaves a trail of action for others to follow, therefore...... “Do not ask for who the bell tolls it tolls for thee.” What are you doing? What is your involvement in the community on the grass roots level? What type of volunteer work have you done? How much money do you contribute to charity?

[Galapagos]

Originally Posted by Thunderbird

The process of improving society for everyone comes by individuals sacrificing themselves to their fellow man. Its a dirty thankless and sometimes even dangerous business that on rare occasions leaves a trail of action for others to follow, therefore...... “Do not ask for who the bell tolls it tolls for thee.” What are you doing? What is your involvement in the community on the grass roots level? What type of volunteer work have you done? How much money do you contribute to charity?

You are wrong in both your perception of moral priority and formula for economic prosperity; individuals must give primacy to their own rational self-interest in order for a society to improve.
Talking about self-sacrifice in the sense above is nothing but inordinate, feel-good rubbish. Generating[producing] more wealth for yourself, and thusly global economy, is the key to improving the entire human quality of life. All else is peripheral.

[Thunderbird]

Originally Posted by Galapagos

You are wrong in both your perception of moral priority and formula for economic prosperity; individuals must give primacy to their own rational self-interest in order for a society to improve.
Talking about self-sacrifice in the sense above is nothing but inordinate, feel-good rubbish. Generating[producing] more wealth for yourself, and thusly global economy, is the key to improving the entire human quality of life. All else is peripheral.

That sounds like it comes from the straight out of the Bush-Cheny Republican play book. I think we know how thats turned out. The world is held together from the bottom up my friend, and always has been. Any time we forget that and give the helm over to the powers of the "global economy" minded, poverty and wars will follow. Look around and wake up!

"Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago." --Bernard Berenson, Notebook, 1892

"In the past our politicians offered us dreams of a better world. Now they promise to protect us from nightmares." --BBC television special

"The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion." -- Thomas Paine

"Small scale is critical to local life, to the ability of local people to control what happens where they live." -- Paul Weyrich

"The best way to protect your own freedom is to watch everybody else's back. That's the essence of community." -- ski racer Bode Miller

"What good shall I do this day?"
--Benjamin Franklin

"Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people."
-- Harry Emerson Fosdick

One true measure of ones life is in the ratio between what we have decided,.. and what we have allowed others to decide for us....
The other true measure of ones life,.. is in ratio between the decisions we make for our own benefit... and the sacrifices we make to benefit of others. Thunderbird

[Thunderbird]

Originally Posted by Galapagos

You are wrong in both your perception of moral priority and formula for economic prosperity; individuals must give primacy to their own rational self-interest in order for a society to improve.
Talking about self-sacrifice in the sense above is nothing but inordinate, feel-good rubbish. Generating[producing] more wealth for yourself, and thusly global economy, is the key to improving the entire human quality of life. All else is peripheral.

Is Greed Ever Good?
No, Say Ethicists; and It's Not Even Good for Capitalism, Some Argue
By MICHAEL S. JAMES
Aug. 22, 2002



When stock speculator Ivan Boesky declared "greed is healthy" in 1985, his audience cheered. And when the comment was echoed a couple of years later by the infamous "Greed … is good" line in "Wall Street," moviegoers flocked to the film.
But in the intervening years — following a high-tech stock bubble gone bust and amid a wave of corporate accounting scandals — "greed" has become a bug nobody wants to catch.

In fact, "infectious greed" was the diagnosis from Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, who last month told Congress it was the reason for the current business crises.
The prominent central banker blamed greed for causing business executives to embellish balance sheets and artificially inflate stock values, adding, "The rapid enlargement of stock market capitalizations in the latter part of the 1990s … arguably engendered an outsized increase in opportunities for avarice."
So how did greed go from "good" to "infectious?"
Greed Is Good — No, Bad
It's happened before in American business, and likely will happen again.
Robert Brent Toplin, who has written on the history of business greed (and on the films of "Wall Street" director Oliver Stone), says for more than a century, from the robber barons to the junk-bond arbitrageurs, American capitalism has run in cycles.
Often in American business history, amusement over greed precedes revulsion with it, business leaders go from glamorized to demonized, and deregulatory atmospheres yield to cries for reform.
"Greed can get out of control, and you need rules," says Toplin, a professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. "You need a level playing field. That's the challenge, to make sure this system of competitiveness works for everybody and provides no unfair advantages to those who are in privileged positions."

[nutronjon]

"Bad men cannot make good citizens. It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom. No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue; and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles."
Patrick Henry

It is philosophy that argued in favor of greed and also against it. Is greed a virtue? How so? The virtue of greed is__________________. Why did Christianity say greed is a sin? What of justice? How does greed lead to what is just? What of duty? Cicero claimed we have a duty to our country, and what is the value of a human being who has no sense of duty, and cares nothing about the public good?

[Galapagos]

Originally Posted by Thunderbird

That sounds like it comes from the straight out of the Bush-Cheny Republican play book. I think we know how thats turned out. The world is held together from the bottom up my friend, and always has been. Any time we forget that and give the helm over to the powers of the "global economy" minded, poverty and wars will follow. Look around and wake up!

I could make a guess as to which book your "self-sacrificing" philosophy came from, but I'll spare the discussion any more derailment ; it seems as though you've kind of run off with what I said.

You have made a false dichotomy splitting the spectrum of selfless altruism and rational self-interest. Fortunately, humans have more choices than "sacrificing themselves to their fellow man" or avariciously lending out dishonest loans.
In fact, I would argue what has happened was the result of businessmen not being rational, but immoral, irrational, and dishonest in dealings- which if you are rational, you will realize is not in your best interest(and even if you're irrational you can see it wasn't in our best interest now in the article provided).
The point I was making before you ran off with your ski racer quotes and article with an Objectivist condemning dishonest greed(surprise), what I was saying is that a man achieving autonomy is his foremost moral duty. Just to work to the best of his ability, and not cheat himself and others; and to expect the same from others in return. Charity, especially self-sacrificing charity, is not a moral duty or obligation. If someone would like to, that's really great, given that they do it for the right people and reasons, but it isn't required for them to just be a good person.
I wouldn't look down on someone simply because they didn't want to share what they earned; I'd probably just feel a bit of pity, as giving to those who have naught can be one of the most personally rewarding and fulfilling acts one can partake in, and some people will just never know or try it.

Also, I like these two quotes posted! The founding fathers made for some good quotin'!!
"The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion." -- Thomas Paine

"What good shall I do this day?"
--Benjamin Franklin

[Thunderbird]

Originally Posted by Galapagos

I could make a guess as to which book your "self-sacrificing" philosophy came from, but I'll spare the discussion any more derailment ; it seems as though you've kind of run off with what I said.

Wrong, this is not a religious veiw point but an historical, mostly an American western civilization veiw point.

You say my counter point was running off from what you said. Well lets reveiw..

Quote:
Originally Posted by Thunderbird
The process of improving society for everyone comes by individuals sacrificing themselves to their fellow man. Its a dirty thankless and sometimes even dangerous business that on rare occasions leaves a trail of action for others to follow, therefore...... “Do not ask for who the bell tolls it tolls for thee.” What are you doing? What is your involvement in the community on the grass roots level? What type of volunteer work have you done? How much money do you contribute to charity?

Originally Posted by Galapagos

You are wrong in both your perception of moral priority and formula for economic prosperity; individuals must give primacy to their own rational self-interest in order for a society to improve.
Talking about self-sacrifice in the sense above is nothing but inordinate, feel-good rubbish. Generating[producing] more wealth for yourself, and thusly global economy, is the key to improving the entire human quality of life. All else is peripheral.

You are clearly stating that the pursuit of wealth is key to improving society.
Imagine a society made of the people I describe, and then a society made up of the people you describe. which one do you think would produce a higher per capita income.

A civilization flourishes when people plant trees under whose shade they will never sit.
--Greek Proverb