Efficiency, centralization, and lack of agency v. resilience

POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Friday, March 28, 2025 15:44
VIEWED: 4079
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SECOND

Friday, March 28, 2025 2:12 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Scanning a description of his books, I think we're talking about entirely defferent things.

I have no problem with "reason".

What I'm trying to point out is that we are being driven by faulty assumptions, and out-of-control behaviors and processes.

Some of our behaviors are inbuilt (altho we also have other contravening drives) and some - like economies of scale- are driven by physics.

Without INSIGHT, our societies become dysfunctional.

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

Why not download John Ralston Saul's 1992 book Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West?

Quote:
Voltaire and the other thinkers of the eighteenth century could be criticized, with the facility of hindsight, for the passion with which they embraced reason. But they lived in societies still ruled by the demeaning vagaries of court life. All of them had been thrown in jail or risked it simply for expressing their opinions. In most countries justice still used torture as an official method of interrogation and the condemned faced a variety of brutal punishments; being broken on the wheel, for example. This and other tools of arbitrary power constituted a social form of darkness. The philosophers of Europe, England and America threw themselves into the arms of reason, convinced that birth would be given to new rational elites capable of building a new civilization. This love affair was fertile to the point of being miraculous and society was subsequently reformed for the better beyond what any of these thinkers had imagined.

And yet the exercise of power, without the moderating influence of any ethical structure, rapidly became the religion of these new elites. And their reforms included an unparalleled and permanent institutionalization of state violence. This was accompanied by a growing struggle between democratic and rational methods, with the rational increasingly at an advantage.

Were Voltaire to reappear today, he would be outraged by the new structures, which somehow deformed the changes for which he struggled. As for his descendants — our ruling elites — he would deny all legal responsibility and set about fighting them, as he once fought the courtiers and priests of eighteenth-century Europe.

What does the phrase mean "the exercise of power, without the moderating influence of any ethical structure"? Chapter 16: The Hijacking of Capitalism explains in detail. A sample:

Quote:
These legal but dishonest actions by the oil companies are considered to be among the great exploits of modern capitalism. Their complex ruses were admired by other business sectors and raved over by stockbrokers and merchant bankers. At first glance it would seem that such an attitude was in direct contradiction of the principles of reason. After all, in the original Encyclopédie, Diderot began the entry on the “Morality of Richness”: “The means for enriching oneself may be criminally immoral, although permitted by the law.”

Of all the integrated energy corporations involved, only one or two were owned or controlled by an individual or by an identifiable group of individuals. The mass of unnamed shareholders at no time pushed their companies to so betray the public trust and damage the fabric of the state. Like most stock market investors, they were in the passive position of watching their money grow or shrink. It was growing and so they were glad. They did not really consider the implications of that growth on their own society. The entire direct responsibility for carrying out what may have been the most irresponsible private economic act of the century lies with the managerial class, who are the flower of methodology and the children of reason.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, wh

SIGNYM

Friday, March 28, 2025 4:01 AM

Not my point, but interesting thesis.

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

6IXSTRINGJACK

Friday, March 28, 2025 5:20 AM

Why not pay for a book?

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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

SECOND

Friday, March 28, 2025 3:37 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Not my point, but interesting thesis.

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

John Ralston Saul said it in three books starting in 1992 and you said it in 2013, but both of you are talking about the same thing, whether you know it or not. No, I'm not gonna summarize three books into one sentence so that you can see the connection between Saul and Signym.

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM: Monday, April 8, 2013 7:39 PM

Oh, you might be wondering what the post has to do with the title.

One of the reasons why we don't plan for abundance is because prices would collapse if there was more than enough of everything for everyone. The reason for this drive to efficiency is because we all think that everything can be valued by market forces. It's all about business. Except that it's not.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

SECOND

Friday, March 28, 2025 3:44 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Why not pay for a book?

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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

Like with your obsession with Hollywood's ticket sales, why the hell would you pay for images that you can see for free? Free images on TV screens rather than on movie theater screens. Free images on computer screens rather than from printed pages. Plus you don't have to travel in your car to the theater or the book store. Plus, you can have your free images immediately, without waiting for the book store to open and the movie showtime to arrive.

I forgot the biggest advantage of free. If the movie stinks or the book doesn't have a point, you hit the off switch because you haven't invested time and money and your ego in convincing yourself the movie or book deserves more attention.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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