Human nature, an idea that we know that we are good moral actors for some, for others an excuse for us not to be. Some folks claim greed as a natural facet of the species, stating that “if you could, then you would”, indicating that weakness or strength of will are merely circumstantial considerations, i.e. it’s easy to appear noble when there’s nothing that you need or desire, it is easy to appear charitable when you have a lot more than you require, it’s easy to appear kind when there’s nothing at stake. Those assertions are likely true, but I suppose they do not indicate the truth of any motivation.
My pal Bing and I converse from opposing positions, and we do this quite often simply because we both like to opine. Luckily for me he seems diametrically opposed to my perspective on every subject, though that may be just his arguing style. Sort of to take a position of opposition just to continue the argument in order to discover something. It’s called playing the Devils’ Advocate, a useful way of debating at times, pedantic at others. I’m a fan of the idea, from Hegel, that each position should face argument, but I mean reasoned not pedantic.
This is what I assume to be true, because I do not believe my pal to be a genuine believer of any position, and I think that is a good thing overall because it means he lacks dogmatism and can change if the argument sways him, though he does show dogmatism on one subject. Dogma is the description we give to the continuation of a disproved, unstable, faith-only based perspective, held beyond what is reasonable. We must at all times be reasonable, or we should cease to offer our thoughts, there is no progress in dogmatism just like there is no progress in a positivist perspective (all change is fermented in a vat of dissatisfaction). I’ll clarify that this is for statements, not questions. A question, or a speculation, is a position that arises from doubt.
I’ve talked about this subject before, stating that we must become reasonable again as a species. It was reason that brought us so much progress. In this post I’d like to explore why people argue rather than measure and agree that things that can be proven are correct, and things that cannot are just opinions. I personally believe that Stephen Hendry is the best snooker achiever in the history of the game, I base this on the gap between him and his contemporaries in his era, but that is the criteria I choose to measure with. Now for some that may be a compelling argument, but for others they may wish to use a different criteria concerning a different player to come to their own conclusion. That’s fine, the subject has no specific measure unless we choose and define it. The subject is subjective, but it does no harm for us to disagree because it does not matter to anything. Nobody lives or dies if I think Casey Stoner was the best motorcyclist ever to ride in the MotoGP, which I do.
The things that matter must have arguments that are supported by measures that prove something to all. The heaviest element on earth is demonstrable, even though I do not know what it is I know there is one and accept it because experts have tested this. My opinion cannot change or persuade it not to be, nor should it make anyone think it is not. But why is this important now? I’d say style, and what I mean by that is the method of conveyance regarding information that matters.
The title of this blog piece may be misleading so far, but why I named it so is that I wish now to, and maybe for the first time, dismiss before discussing anything that comes from a place of opinion if it belongs in a place of fact. The trivialities are for the pub or the club, the real conversations hinge on things that have impact on the lives of living things. The right way to treat people or animals or habitat, those are questions that must have an answer that is close to satisfactory and we should continue to strive to find it.
Utopia and universal agreement is likely an impossibility, but progress is not. As long as we are building on the past and progressing toward a better future we are doing good work. If it is better to have a toothache or cancer in this epoch than in any before it, because the likely outcome is more positive now, then we can call that progress. If it is better to be a free citizen in a society of rights and privileges now than it was 100 years a go then that conjecture also deserves the term progress to describe it.
In economic terms, if my life is festooned with technologies that my father did not have to hand at this stage, then we might mistakenly call that progress also, but we may be missing something very important in the comparison…. Is my ability to absorb and utilise those gains diminished in any comparison between the relationship I have in financial terms with my contemporaries, and the relationship he had with his? Looking at progress in this way we may find a regression. My father’s generation had the amenities of his day for a lower cost in relative terms, than I have those of mine, and the gap in income inequality between himself and the owners of his labour was more narrow than mine. Meaning his power to express his desires with his coins was greater then than mine is now, regardless of the fact that technology has indeed progressed.
We sometime call this sort of comparison a Mars Bar economy, meaning we can take a standard commercial object, a mars bar, and compare how many of them our wages purchase now compared to earlier. We take into account how the product has changed in the interim as well. Changes we can call ‘shrinkflation’ (where the product gets smaller), or ‘skimpflation’ (where the materials used are swapped out for lower quality items). The Mars Bar is smaller for sure, but methods of producing it have become more productive, and the materials it is made from have changed in purity. Yet this measure, the confectionary product, has existed. How do we measure the increase or decrease in value of an emerging good, since we cannot compare it to itself?
The internet is not an actual product that you have to pay for, the ability to hold the technology to actively participate in using the internet requires certain products. A SIM, a Satellite, a modem etc. We get charged for the access not the product. But we get charged by the mainstream content too, though not with money with time watching ads that sponsor the creator. And there are motivations behind what we can absorb or are offered. If we absorb without the knowledge that we may be being manipulated then we are being manipulated because power leave nothing to chance when it has an opportunity for affect.
It is in the knowledge that the world is a marketplace where we discover how our perspectives are formed and why. Bing, my pal, often seems to me to be completely unaware that he is an echo chamber for mainstream output, I mean the media, yet quite paradoxically he believe of himself that he is resistant to such forces. The test is this, and it is a simple one, find out if you have aligned yourself with the motivations of people, powerful ones, that act against the best interests of people who are just like you. If you discover that you happen to be spouting the propaganda of a class that oppresses yours, and if you happen to realise that that is what they need you to continue to do so they can continue to benefit from an unnatural relationship with your class, then you have been fooled and are foolish.
I’ll leave with examples… Side with those that are oppressed because they are oppressed and you just may be a moral person, a person who would not accept those circumstances for yourself so you do not wish them for others… but pick the oppressor as you have been told to by those that need or want the oppression to continue, and do so because they, not you, benefit in some way from it, thus choosing to support actions that you would not accept being foisted upon you, and you are again, to my perspective, a fool.
In my country some people oppressed some other people, and it was wrong and it was for the benefit of landowners, monarchy, and empire, it resulted in years of bitterness and strife and quite a few lives lost or ruined. The oppressors didn’t and have not yet, accepted that they were the oppressors, continuing to believe that they were and are the good guys. Neither side ended up the good guys.
In Israel and Palestine you do not have to weigh up the sides, one is a heavily armed regime of religious lunatics who are determined to move another people on from the real estate they want, the other is a lightly armed regime of religious lunatics that want to survive and not be oppressed. Again, to my perspective there is no way to arrive at a perspective where you are supporting that oppression without the intervention of some force that wishes you to and will expend a great amount of resources to make it so.
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