“I don’t recall all of the significance of Satyr’s arguments on nature, if you’d like I’ll reread them and respond to that. But, right now I want to address the idea of the weak being strong in numbers with out a strong hierarchy. That issue goes directly to human nature. I just can’t imagine the apes having evolved into humans without this constant necessity for every male to prove he’s worthy to breed. You may notice that all supposedly charitable organizations’ focus turns from charity to maintaining itself in competition against other charitable organizations and the people running it are in fierce competition to be on the top. It’s because we naturally feel we must dominate, obviously no matter how weak any individual is and how weak his father and his father and so on for several generations may have been, if one goes beyond 5-10 generations then nearly every father from then back to the dawn of humans was one who fought for his right to breed and succeeded (occasionally a weak one gets lucky even in the most hostile environment). So we have a nature to compete and to be on top that is impossible to ignore.”
Really? And by your description, it would equally be within the perimeters of human nature to rape and kill. Should we base our ethical and moral systems on that as well? If we are to give in to the notion that our primal nature is the last word in social policy, would it be alright for me to grab any girl that struck my fancy, bend her over, and give it to her doggie style? It really doesn’t matter how we got here. In terms of evolution, all that matters is that we are at a quite different point than back then, that we have evolved beyond such social arrangements.
Plus that you’re forgetting that mankind, for some time now, has primarily evolved through the social systems they have created. In other words, it may well be that humans have survived, as much as through competition, through cooperation. Nor would this surprise most social biologists since most of them have evolved beyond the rather obsolete point your making here to recognize that nature is both cooperative and competitive.
Not that it would matter anyway, since what you are basically courting here is the naturalistic fallacy of assuming we are somehow obligated to make nature the last word on social and ethical policy. As romantic and as appealing as it may seem to you, and the jackals you got it from, it’s based on a purely human construct: the circler assumption of the perfectly natural appeal to the natural.
Sure, it is hard to ignore. All you have to do is question everyone in prison to get an affirmative answer to that one. But the answer will come out quite differently if you put the question to most rational and civilized people.
Just be careful what Kool-Aid you’re drinking, Stuart.
“In these last post utopian stages of ideology whether be it how we define capitalism or socialism, fascism or whatever, spengler comes to mind, the decline of the west.
Universals or not, new world or not, the sleeping dragon china, is rising, and the east beckons at the door. The authoritarian personality is not really inherent in the east, the extended family is the thing of the future, social darwinism has brought us to the era of great phallic symbols of rocket power and atom smashing.
Technology may be a natural progression of ideas, but is it the way nature intended it to be? Intentions are like yesterday’s paper, we cast them aside for what’s upcoming and new, existentialism’s only remaining function is in the ontology of bundling phenomenon: vis: the last bastion against total disintegration. It’s a comfort, a psychological comfort come necessity. We can not let go of our primal perceptive processes. But that is all.
Beyond that, the natural/artificial anomalie brings fort the possibility for the leaders to emerge, now on this twilight, perhaps existentially and exponentially, at an ever increasing rate. There will come a time, and it is probably in the near future, when the east will meet the west head on, the quietism of letting go with the aggression of conquest by the alpha male.
At this point confusion will reign except in the supreme authority, will apparently be able to draw the lines. The uncertainty principle can rule only up until the critical moment, and. Then, divisive action will either further divide the world, or, the two sides meeting head on can quietly and subtly let go, inter penetrate and avoid the ultimate power struggle that an evil genius can manipulate. Total eclipse, regression to descartes’s absolute doubt would again bring in a new, catastrophic reign of terror.”
Zizek makes a very disturbing point concerning China:
It’s not that China works under an authoritarian political system that should concern us. It’s that such an authoritarian system is beating all other non-authoritarian countries at the game of Capitalism. In other words, we can no longer rest on the erroneous notion that Capitalism (and competition) must be supported by a free society. There is no longer a necessary connection between the two.
However, like Johannesburg where 5% of the population lives in wealth while the rest live in abject poverty, the only reason China gets away with what they do is because democratic societies provide enough of a consumer base to allow it to go on. But you have to ask how long it can go on when that base is dwindling.
Then you have to deal with a point Chris Hedges makes:
Right now we are dealing with an inverted totalitarian regime in which market forces, given privilege over state, justify the power of those at the top. But what happens when those market justifications are no longer there? Isn’t there the possibility that, rather than just give up their power, the more powerful among us will turn to the classical totalitarian state to maintain their power?
