[Peace-discuss] The Revolutiona ry Communist Party says.

[John W.]

On Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 9:17 PM, LAURIE SOLOMON <LAURIE at advancenet.net>wrote:

>  (SMILE)
>
> >Which is a small portion of the truth.
>
> > Which is another portion of the truth.
>
> I never said that either of these points were THE TRUTH or even hinted that
> they were the "whole truth."  I only suggested that they were each A TRUTH.
>
All right, good.  We have a point of agreement, then.



> >Come on, Laurie.  Absolutely central to the notion of free will is the
> idea that each individual >has both the right and the responsibility to live
> in liberty >and to pursue "happiness" (the >"abundant life", according to
> the Bible) without infringing on the life, liberty, and pursuit of
> >happiness by others.
>
> First of all, in your view,  the idea that each individual has both  the
> right and the responsibility to live in liberty and to pursue "happiness" is
> central to the notion of "free will;"  I am not so certain about it.
>
That's all right.  You're still not too old to learn.  :-)  But what else
could "free will" possibly be?  How could it NOT entail both an inherent
right and a corresponding responsibility?

Use common sense for a change.  Do you know anyone who does NOT possess and
exercise free will?  Even a baby.  Even a prisoner.  Even an elderly person
with dementia.  All of them exercise some measure of free will, even if it's
just token and ultimately futile resistance to some authority figure.
Observe them and learn.  Put your books and your esoteric theories aside for
a bit and just observe.


>Secondly, I do not have intimate or even good knowledge of the Bible
(either the Hebrew or the >Christian Bibles) or even claim to or, for that
matter, want to.  However, somehow my passing >encounters with it did not
bring me in touch with the concepts of "liberty" or "pursuit of
>'happiness'" or the use of those terms.

Good grief.  It's just elemental logic.  As for liberty, you must at least
be familiar with some of the Ten Commandments.  How could God tell humans to
do certain things, or NOT do certain things, if said humans didn't possess
the LIBERTY to exercise their FREE WILL to CHOOSE whether or not to obey a
particular commandment?  What sense would it make?

To me your reasoning is sometimes like wanting to argue about whether a
chair, for example,  actually exists, or whether we just THINK it exists, or
some convoluted variation on that theme.  Just sit on it, for God's sake.
If it supports your weight, it exists.  That's all you need to know.  (Even
if collapses under your weight and you fall on your ass, as occasionally
happens to me, it exists.  Hahahaha!)

As for the "pursuit of happiness", there are numerous references in the
Bible - and I'm sure in other so-called holy books as well - to "joy", to
"inner peace", to "living the abundant life", etc.  Those are all just
synonyms for happiness.  There's no need to over-analyze it.


>Nor do I recall any connections between "free will" and the inherent or an
intrinsic RIGHT or >RESPONSIBILITY to live in liberty and to pursue
happiness.

You don't need to "recall" the connections.  Just use your common sense.
You have free will; that's a given.  You have the freedom or the right to
pursue UNhappiness, I suppose, if you think that will make you happy.  :-)
The notion of "responsibility" enters in through a simple process of
deductive (or would it be inductive?) reasoning:  Since all men are created
equal, if YOU have the right to pursue your own happiness, then other humans
likewise have a right to pursue THEIR own happiness as well.  You therefore
have a mutual responsibility to TRY to avoid infringing on the other's
pursuit.


>That is not to say that, by implication, it might be related to an
individual  having what is >described by the "negative" notion of freedom or
liberty and associated with the pursuit of >happiness.

I have no idea what that means.


>Nevertheless this does not have to be as a RIGHT  or as a RESPONSIBILITY
nor does it >specify in substance what constitutes  either the nature or the
substantive contents of >"HAPPINESS."

No need to specify it.  You yourself have the right/freedom to define
happiness for yourself, though of course your definition may be verifiably
WRONG.  The only limitation is where your pursuit of your happiness
interferes with someone else's pursuit of his/her own happiness.

Of course in practice it gets a bit more complicated.  But you like to talk
theory, so that's what we're doing here.


>Thirdly, what references I remember to "Natural Law" and "Devine Rights" by
political >philosophers prior to The Enlightenment focused on the rights of
monarchs not individual >common men when they addressed men; otherwise, they
tended to refer to States, the >Church, and filial obligations not 'free
will" of individuals.  Of course, I could have forgotten or be >in error.

It doesn't matter.  You and I, being Enlightened, understand that All Men
Are Created Equal, don't we?

It's "divine", by the way.  Andy Devine was that overweight sidekick with
the funny voice on about a thousand TV and movie westerns back in the 1950s.


>Free will also allows for folly, the making of bad choices that are
> inconsistent with the long-term (or short-term, for that matter) happiness
> of oneself and others.  There's no conflict whatsoever.
>
> I do not disagree that free will allows for folly, error, and the making of
> bad choices that are inconsistent with happiness of oneself and others or
> with HUMAN plans; but I do not think that allows for this with respect to
> predetermined  Natural Laws or predestined overarching absolute plans of an
> all-powerful omnipotent God.  If it does, then, in my view, predestination
> and predetermination are meaningless as is omnipotence of Natural Laws or
> Devine Plans.  Natural Laws and Devine Plans  then become  probabilistic
> affairs which can be  ignored, violated, modified, or avoided at will by
> individuals.
>
This is where it gets interesting.  If you can manage to forget about
"predestination" and all the baggage appertaining to that word, there's no
conflict at all.  There's no such thing as "predestination" when it comes to
humans endowed with free will.  God's "foreknowledge" or "omniscience" is
not at all the same thing as man's "predestination".  I can easily
illustrate the difference if you really need me to.

I'm going to attempt an analogy.  Please be patient with me, because all
analogies are imperfect.

Think for a moment of God as an immensely wealthy human who wants to
establish a nature preserve somewhere in Africa.  We - all of us humans -
are the animals with which He wishes to populate the game preserve.

Now animals have free will too, though it's not nearly as complex as that of
humans.  If what they perceive as a predator is chasing them, they can turn
right or left, jump into the water or over the water, find a hole to crawl
into, run really fast, or whatever.  They're limited by their inherent
physical design, but still they have a certain amount of free will which
they can exercise.

So God as the immensely wealthy philanthropist is going to capture as many
animals as He can for his nature preserve.  He has Land Rovers, helicopters,
tranquilizer guns, lots of helpers, etc.

Still, some animals, through the exercise of their free will and cunning,
are going to escape God's dragnet and avoid going to the nature preserve.
They're going to continue living out in the wild until poachers or some REAL
predator or disease or famine or old age gets them.

But an individual animal's exercise of his free will is not going to prevent
God the wealthy human philanthropist from carrying out His plan of
establishing the nature preserve, is it?

Yeah, it's a pretty bad analogy, I know.  :-(



> >Also, there IS an overarching plan which is capable of being known.  You
> exercise your free >will in refusing to know it.  :-)
>
> How do you know that there is an overarching plan which is capable of being
> known,
>
Lots of ways.  Reading.  Observation.  Logic.  Personal experience.



> that I recognize or know of such a plan (or even care about if it exists or
> what it is),
>
You do NOT.  Read what I said above.


>that the plan has anything to do with any exercise of free will by me, or
that it entails my >refusing to know it.

Just elemental logic, Laurie.  See above.




>
> *From:* John W. [mailto:jbw292002 at gmail.com]
> *Sent:* Tuesday, January 13, 2009 4:20 PM
> *To:* LAURIE SOLOMON
> *Cc:* Bob Illyes; peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
>
> *Subject:* Re: [Peace-discuss] The Revolutiona ry Communist Party says.
>
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 3:20 PM, LAURIE SOLOMON <LAURIE at advancenet.net>
> wrote:
>
> Just for the sake of provoking the discussion, I offer the following
> comments:
>
> 1. " Oddly, both the radical Marxist and the radical Libertarian camps tend
> to
> ignore human nature, designing societies for hypothetical beings if pure
> reason. So I think they are not as different as they appear superficially."
>
> Not so oddly; both do not tend to ignore human nature as much as they both
> make the assumptions of the historic period that they came out of
> philosophically (i.e., the Enlightenment) in that they both presume man to
> be a rational animal and the world to be a rational place capable of
> understanding, knowing, and controlling if not molding.
>
>
> Which is a small portion of the truth.
>
>
>
> While the Libertarians assume an English Liberal tradition of a Utilitarian
> bent
> coming out of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, James Mills, Jeremy Bentham, and
> J.S. Mills as their basic grounding; Marxists come out of the Continental
> Idealist tradition assuming a less atomistic and more organic bent (i.e.,
> the whole is greater than its parts and gestalt approach) which came out of
> Comte, Saint-Simon, Hegel, etc. as their basis.
>
>
> Which is another portion of the truth.
>
>
>
> 2. " I think that Christianity gets it right in a lot of ways. I would say
> that
> rights are inherent and that the capacity of people for folly is not to be
> underestimated."
>
> Aside from disagreeing with the whole notion of "inherent rights,"  I think
> that Christianity and its doctrines tend to be a little confused if not
> uncertain about the estimating the capacity of people for folly, depending
> on if one gives priority to pre-determination or free will.  If one holds
> pre-determination as the prime directive, then people have no capacity for
> folly; God has the capacity for folly and people do as they are
> pre-ordained.  If one accepts free will as the prime directive, then the
> notion of inherent rights as formulated is undermined; but people have
> great
> capacity for folly although without some overarching absolute plan that is
> capable of being known it is hard to define folly or irrationality, or
> deviance/sin.
>
>
> Come on, Laurie.  Absolutely central to the notion of free will is the idea
> that each individual has both the right and the responsibility to live in
> liberty and to pursue "happiness" (the "abundant life", according to the
> Bible) without infringing on the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness by
> others.  Free will also allows for folly, the making of bad choices that are
> inconsistent with the long-term (or short-term, for that matter) happiness
> of oneself and others.  There's no conflict whatsoever.
>
> Also, there IS an overarching plan which is capable of being known.  You
> exercise your free will in refusing to know it.  :-)
>
>
>
> 3.  "A more orthodox Christian position would be that rights
> are God-given and that people are prone to sin. No matter which way it is
> said, if these statements are correct then human nature represents a severe
> constraint on what sort of political systems will work and how well they
> will work."
>
> Again leaving aside my disagreement and assuming for the sake of the
> discussion that these statements are correct, then I have to ask if human
> nature does not represent a severe constraint on what political system is
> possible, if any at all will work, and/or if they could work well enough to
> be significantly different from none at all.
>
>
> That's precisely what I - and I think Bob - am/is/are saying, Laurie.  :-)
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net
> [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Bob Illyes
> Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2009 11:33 AM
> To: peace-discuss at anti-war.net
> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] The Revolutiona ry Communist Party says.
>
> John and Noam are addressing roughly the same issue, in my opinion. "An
> instinct for freedom" is a way for saying that human nature matters when
> designing a political system or strategy.
>
> Oddly, both the radical Marxist and the radical Libertarian camps tend to
> ignore human nature, designing societies for hypothetical beings if pure
> reason. So I think they are not as different as they appear superficially.
>
> I think that Christianity gets it right in a lot of ways. I would say that
> rights are inherent and that the capacity of people for folly is not to be
> underestimated.  A more orthodox Christian position would be that rights
> are God-given and that people are prone to sin. No matter which way it is
> said, if these statements are correct then human nature represents a severe
> constraint on what sort of political systems will work and how well they
> will work.
>
> Bob
>
> -------------
> Carl posted: "If you assume that there's no hope, you guarantee that there
> will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, there
> are opportunities to change things, there's a chance for you to contribute
> to making a better world. That's your choice."  --Noam Chomsky
>
> John W. wrote:
> >... The generic, unspecified "revolution" as the solution to all the
> >enumerated ills of the capitalist system - which the Communists/Socialists
> >always do a pretty good job of enumerating. *yawn*  Been there, tried to
> do
> >that.
> >In my dotage I disagree most profoundly with this statement by Chairman
> Bob:
> >"What has proven to be possible-and what has proven NOT to be possible-has
> >nothing to do with "human nature" or "personal responsibility"...and
> >everything to do with the system that was put in place to ensure "the
> dreams
> >of our founders."  I now know most assuredly and emphatically that there
> IS
> >such a thing as "human nature", which goes a very long way toward
> determining
> >the types of self-seeking "systems" we humans put in place and have ALWAYS
> >put in place.  Unless "human nature" is understood and taken into account,
> >there is absolutely no possibility that human society can ever improve.
> Our
> >Founders tried to take human nature into account with their system of
> checks
> >and balances, but of course they did it in such a way as to leave many
> >loopholes in which they could protect their own privileged status.
> >JBW
>
>
>
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