Old Blogger

013104 - What is Nobility
Roy said - "You like to attribute certain actions to ideals and I prefer to look at them as selfish expressions. You used the word noble when discussing our fight against communism. I don't agree that there was anything noble about it. It had to be done, and yes more people are alive today than not for it. But nobility had nothing to do with it."

Well, first of all I would say that if something has to be done, we can attribute no moral value to it. People should not be blamed for what they had no choice over. Few people consider sneezing immoral, but people choose to or not to cover their sneezes. If people simply sneezed their way around and never covered their mouths, most people would consider that immoral. Though I am sure I am probably attributing more meaning to your usage of the phrasing that 'it had to be done'. We could, after all, had chose to do nothing about it (and that's what a lot of people wanted) But if an action that we were forced to choose ended up making more people alive that not how could it not be noble?

Roy said - "If nobility had been an issue, we would've done a lot of things differently."

No doubt, again, do not associate my claims with an absolute endorsement of everything the US chose to do, or chose not to do. There was a lot more that could have been done, and a lot more than could be done right now.

Roy said - "When it comes to using force, there is never any nobility in force. Nobility comes from sacrifice, and what we did in so many of those countries was enable others to sacrifice themselves for our cause."

I tend to have an aversion to arguing over the definitions of words, instead of the concepts we might disagree on. I don't think I would define noble as you have, in fact I would have to admit I am surprised to hear such a definition coming from someone who was influenced by Rand. Nobility is sacrifice? Consider our discussion about dropping the atomic bomb in Japan, by your definition, had we dropped that bomb on ourselves, that would have been noble! We would have, after all, been sacrificing ourselves to end the war instead of the Japanese citizens. Or consider Rand's example that Galt uses in Atlas Shrugged.
(Paraphrasing) 'Giving up a pair of shoes to by food for your baby is not a sacrifice, because you value your baby over the shoes. Giving up food meant for your baby and donating it to a neighbor's baby, while yours starves IS a sacrifice'

While I am sure I do not clearly understand what you meant by nobility, I don't think I would consider any act of sacrifice to be noble.

Returning to my post, I said "Clearly some states, such as North Vietnam, were far far less noble than the US counter client state, South Vietnam. While by no means perfect, Diem's state was a far better place to live than Ho Chi Minh's North Vietnam"

Perhaps 'Noble' was an ill chosen word. I think 'Just' would have been a better used term. I could present a hierarchal list of what I would consider a just state, but I think you understand what I was trying to say.

Aristotle, whom I am a big fan of (and Rand credits as the only person she ever owed anything to) is commonly referred to as the philosopher of common sense. Many of his arguments focused on finding virtue in the mean between extremes. Courage as a virtue is the right mean between cowardess and foolishly risking oneself. A proper sense of ones own value is based on a reverent love for the truth, a mean between not thinking to highly of oneself nor thinking to low of oneself. Instead, trying to accurately determine ones own value.

What is nobility then, perhaps a mean between selflessness and selfishness?

Going by such a definition, I would agree with you, the US's actions were not noble, they did not find the appropriate mean between selfishness (preventing the spread of communism) and selflessness (helping other countries to become stable democracies) The US's actions were almost entirely driven by self interest, but that is not an inherently unjust motivation. A entity not driven by self interest is driven by nothing or by others self interests, it is the difference of being an individual, and subverting oneself to a group.

Consider many of those countries did not want any US meddling at all, and would have probably been terrible communist states today. Colonialism is historically looked upon very unfavorably, both by post modernists in the west and by people who lived under it. But despite its flaws, it did bring modern concepts of human rights, women's rights, property, representative govt's, etc to places that did not have them. Today, the people of Sierra Leone BEG the English to re-colonize them, as they have lived under a brutal lawlessness since the English left. A significant portion of people in Sierra Leone have had one or both hands hacked off by machetes wielded by whatever gang happened to be in power.

Roy said - "In return, once our goals were accomplished, we left them high and dry. Yes, nobility comes from self-sacrifice and honor... honor comes from loyalty and sincerity."

But some would argue that it was not noble for us to do any meddling than was necessary to ensure our survival, and many people in those countries would have said either that, or that we should have done no meddling whatsoever.

Even today, spreading democracy to one of the worse countries in the world, ousting one of the worse murderous dictators that has ever existed, is despised by most of the world. Yet we sacrificed many billions of dollars and many lives to do it.

I suppose I am just echoing what I said when in my previous post I stated
"While I certainly don't think every decision the US made was wise or just ...in most cases they were forced to choose not from a good choice or a bad one, but from a bad government or a really bad one. No country has done more to spread democracy and freedom in the world than the US, unfortunately, it could have done a lot more."

So what is the crux of our disagreement? Was the US's actions 'noble' I guess that depends on how we define noble, but I don't think under any definition would I say all of the actions were. I don't know, but I don't think we really disagree all that much on this point, aside from some semantic issues?

Michael

013104 - 'Yellow Fever' and attraction
Caroline said - "What's wrong with having Yellow Fever? They say it's a fetish, like having fetishes is bad, but isn't a fetish just a stronger form of attraction? Everyone has preferences, but so long as you get to know the person in more depth in the end, what does it matter how you were attracted to them in the beginning? I always counter with, well, what if you guys were only attracted to girls w/big boobs? Tonz of men have a fetish w/big breasted women and noone ever criticizes that! I swear it's a world of double standards between men and women! Hehehe"

I completely agree! I would only say that I hope you don't exclude non-yellow people only because of that! =) You might miss out on a good guy. I confess to having a bit of 'yellow fever' myself, but I am also attracted to fair skin dark haired girls as well (what's that called?)

But physical attractiveness to me is the lowest common denominator; someone has to have more than that. Of course, everyone says that, but my personal philosophy is that who we like is an expression of what we value. If we don't have clearly defined values, neither will who we like, and who we like will be easily wavered, or you may end up liking someone you despise! If we like someone only because of their attractiveness, we will quickly be swept away by the first person who is more attractive than the one you are with. Because I think this is an important thing, and few people recognize it, I invite everyone to read one of my favorite authors and who inspired my thoughts on this topic.

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"You'd better explain that"

"Did it ever occur to you that its the same issue? The men who think that wealth comes from material resources, and has no intellectual root or meaning, are the men who think, for the same reason, that sex is a physical capacity which functions independently of ones mind, choice, or code of values. They think that your body creates a desire and makes a choice for you, just about in some such way as if iron ore transformed itself into railroad rails of its own volition. Love is blind they say, sex is impervious to reason and mocks the power of all philosophers. But in fact a mans sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental convictions. Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive, and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life. Show me the women he sleeps with, and I will tell you his valuation of himself. No matter what corruption he's taught about the virtue of selflessness, sex is the most profoundly selfish of all acts, an act he cannot perform for any motive but his own enjoyment, just try to think of performing in an act of selfless charity. An act which is not possible in self abasement, only is self exaltation, only in the confidence of being desired and being worthy of desire. It is an act that forces him to stand naked in spirit as well as in body, and to accept his real ego as his standard of value. He will always be attracted to a women who reflects his deepest vision of himself. The women who surrender permits him to experience, or to fake, a sense of self esteem. The man who is proudly certain of his own value will want the highest type of women he can find. The women he admires, the strongest, the hardest to conquer, because only the possession of a heroin will give him a sense of achievement, not the possession of a brainless slut. He does not seek to..."

"What's the matter?" He asked. Seeing the look on Rearden's face, a look of intensity much beyond mere interest in an abstract discussion.

"Go on" said Rearden tensely

"He does not seek to gain his value, he seeks to express it. There is no conflict between the standards of his mind and the desires of his body. But the man who is convinced of his own worthlessness will be drawn to the women he despises, because she will reflect his own secret self, she will release him from that objective reality in which he is a fraud. She will give him a momentary illusion of his own value, and a momentary escape from the moral code that damns him. Observe the ugly mess that most men make of their sex lives and observe the mess of contradictions, and observe the mess of contradictions which they hold as their moral philosophy. One preceeds from the other. Love is our response to our highest values, and can be nothing else. Let a man corrupt his values and his view of existence. Let him profess that love is not self enjoyment but self denial, that virtue consists, not of pride, but of pity or pain or weakness or sacrifice. That the noblest love is born, not of admiration but of charity, not in response to values, but in response to flaws, and he will have cut himself in two. His body will not obey him, it will not respond. It will make him impotent to the women he professes to love and draw him to the lowest type of whore he can find. His body will always follow the ultimate logic of his deepest convictions. If he believes that flaws are values, he has damned existence as evil, and only the evil will attract him. He has damned himself, and he will feel that depravity is all that he is worthy of enjoying. He has equated virtue with pain and he will feel that vice is the only realm of pleasure, then he will scream that his body has vicious desires of its own which his mind can not conquer. That sex is sin, that true love is a pure emotion of the spirit. And then he will wonder why love brings him nothing but boredom, and sex, nothing but shame."

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That's just a part of it, but something to make one think perhaps. This is from Ayn Rand's book 'Atlas Shrugged' (Ayn Rand was a women, btw)

Regards,

Michael

013104 - Price controls.
Roy Said - "Congratulations.... Kristin Kreuk is hot! You have good taste young grasshopper"

Hey, I'm older than you!

Roy sums up our discussion well about pessimism and optimism, it seems odd that we had such a long discussion yet that was what it was all about! Oh well, I cant think of a better summary to it. Except, I would add

"Always plan for the worst and hope for the best!"

And do something! Planning and hoping aren't enough, ideas must be expressed in physical action.

"but if you take a look at the oil shortages at the end of the 70's, you see the repercussions rippling up through time. American car manufacturers took forever to adjust their vehicles for mileage,... This shows to me that market forces can sometimes take too long to recover from a scarcity, when indications that a scarcity was possible should've prompted research into the alternatives well before the scarcity event"

As I understand it, Carter's price controls played a significant role in this, as my economics degree friend mentioned to me today after that 'remember the 70's' show on VH1 was talking about Carter's death defying ordeal with a killer swimming rabbit (seriously!) and initiated a conversation about the former president between my friend and I.

Gas was selling for the same price, the shortage was not reflected in its price, and thus you had very long waits to get any. Once you had to pay the extra cost for it, everybody starting making more fuel efficient vehicles and conserving on their driving much more. Cars of the 70's polluted and used more gas when OFF then modern cars do when idling.

"Hey, did anyone read my Bobby Kennedy assassination dream?"

Yeah, I was at a loss to comment about it. You have strange, vivid dreams sir.

Regards,

Michael

013004 - US Client states
Roy said - " United States client states were no less noble than the Soviet's. We failed in almost every case where we applied Machiavellian 'Real Politik""

If you are referring to the political legitimacy of the state prior to any US / Soviet intervention, without an in depth study, Id probably have to agree with you, but only to a limited extent. Clearly some states, such as North Vietnam, were far far less noble than the US counter client state, South Vietnam. While by no means perfect, Diem's state was a far better place to live than Ho Chi Minh's North Vietnam. This is no doubt why 900,000 people fled from the north to the south and only 10,000 fled from south to north during the free passage period. The north was certainly not content to let people freely choose after that. Diem became progressively tyrannical and was followed by a similarly repressive military regime after his over through and death. While his oppression of Buddhists gathered world wide notice (through well publicized self-immolations) the very closed north was busy rounding up land owners and executing them, initiating 'murder quotas' destroying every remnant of religion including thousand year old Buddhist temples and statues, and murdering many Buddhists. By 1954, the land reforms of the north were estimated to have killed 50,000 people.

Conversely, in Korea, Rhee's regime was also quite corrupt; estimates put his death toll around 5,000. But today South Korea is democratic, free, and very progressive. In North Korea every year is 1984, and is estimated to have killed 4 million people since its origin. The similarities between the Korean War and the Vietnam War are striking, yet one we won, and today South Korea is one of the largest economies in
the world, and recently hosted the Olympics. The Vietnam war was lost,
when the US by a democratically controlled congressional decree and the strong domestic anti-war movement *abandoned* South Vietnam (and
Cambodia) to the communists, and a blood bath ensued.

But I digress, let me merely emphasize that not one single country supported by the Soviet Union ever became anything but a communist hell hole until after its collapse (some delayed their inevitable turn to
communism) but many countries propped up by the United States, though corrupt at the time, became prosperous democracies, or at least significantly less murderous tyrannies, and orders of magnitude better than any communist nation.

While I certainly don't think every decision the US made was wise or just (especially the abandonment of Indochina) in most cases they were forced to choose not from a good choice or a bad one, but from a bad government or a really bad one. No country has done more to spread democracy and freedom in the world than the US, unfortunately, it could have done a lot more.

And I certainly wouldn't agree that in every case we failed, the communist containment policy failed primarily in Vietnam, it did not fail in South Korea, Greece, or Afghanistan.

" If you want to know one reason why we have so many problems with violent hot spots, in countries we once supported, you can find it in American foreign policies that encouraged any faction which we thought had a chance at accomplishing our goals."

Of course this is some of the cause of the worlds current problems, but it is not the sole cause. Islamic fundamentalists are ideologically opposed to everything the West embraces, and would be regardless of whether we supported Hussein against Iran and the Mujahadin against the Soviet Union, then abandoning them to the Taliban.

"Our country's past attitudes toward client states was far from noble! But I think we have a better track record than most of the other countries in the world"

No doubt again, these states were used to fight communist expansion, but it was not our choice to freely engage them in the fight against communism, it was the Soviet union that forced us to choose. But consider the place those states would be in had we not opposed communism, they would be murderous communist hell holes *today*, and in fact, most of the world would be. Consider that Vietnam was used to drive a wedge between the Chinese communist and the Soviet communists; the Soviet's, losing their single biggest ally, lead to the Anti-Ballistic missile treaty. These events could have very well prevented a global nuclear war! But we will never know the histories the alternate choices could have made, but the soviet intent on expansionism was clear, despise revisionists historians desire to put the domino theory in quotes. Kruschev announced to the world in '55 that it would support all 'wars of revolution' around the world. On a side note, I met Kruschev's son, he lives in Rhode Island and lectures there occasionally.

There were certainly better ways we could have handled many of these events, especially after the Soviet threat was removed. But had we not been involved at all, I can hardly imagine the world we would live in today.

"As it always seems to happen, if the people who call for an American withdrawal from the world succeed - Trouble will happen!"

No doubt, America has saved the world twice, this century, once from totalitarianism, and once from communism. If the rest of the western world doesn't get of its lazy ill-conceived moral butt, the US will save the world from fundamentalist statists with little help.

"Never trust the media polls! They're skewed!"

I most certainly second this! You'll never read 'Millions of Iraq children return to school!' in the New York times front page. Good news doesn't sell.

Regards,

Michael

012904 - Outlook on life and motivation post
Roy said - "There were all those optimists leading up to World War II who thought,... There were the optimists who thought Saddam Hussein would come to his senses and conform to international human rights codes. I guess I equate optimism with justifications for inaction, and prefer pessimism because I think it gives me more options for action sooner"

That certainly is not the kind of optimism I am talking about. I basically am optimistic that if the world were full of democratic constitutional markets that there would be no war, and much much less suffering and violence. And while there tend to be more and more democracies coming about, I am not content to sit by and wait for the rest of the world to slowly move to the idea. This is why I supported the war in Iraq, regardless of any WMD issues, it was the right thing to do. Saddam was a murderous dictator and needed to go. Action should be taken by the entire western world against these types of Tyrants, the western world is the richest and most militarily powerful, and it is also the freest. That says a lot. Kim Jong Il needs to go, and so do the oppressive rulers and pseudo communists of China and Vietnam, Cuba, Laos, Iran, etc. etc. These countries are terrible places, and when something was done by one western country about one of the worse of these (Iraq) most of the rest of the western world denounced it. This kind of cultural relativism and ideological blinding ignorance is disheartening.

"But I don't have faith in human society, as a whole, to recognize resource shortages until after they're hit with scarcity"

What historical track record are you basing that pessimism on? Markets allow resource shortage to nearly instantly be reflected in the price of the product, the more control over the price, the longer it takes price changes to be reflected. When prices go up, alternatives become even more viable. Consider gasoline, right now one can manufacture gasoline out of thin air using a sabatier cell and some electricity, its more expensive than drilling and refining oil, but as oil prices increase and as electricity prices decrease, this will become more competitive. My pessimism lies in the problems that arise when governments centralize important decisions too much, but I would guess on that we would agree.

I do however have a lot of optimism in people and their capacity to
overcome problems when pressed.

" The optimists aren't helping these people in anyway, figuring we have enough current resources to last a good while. Naturally, the optimists are also optimistic about thinking that enough is being done to find alternatives. A pessimist would rather err on the side of caution.
The ingredients for action: pessimism to recognize a future problem, optimism to act on a fix for the problem... before the problem becomes a problem, not after."

I think we attribute the motivation that people get to make a difference to different sources. You suggest that pessimism in the way things will turn out continually makes people question the status quo and look to predicting problems that they can pro-actively resolve. I think its optimism that makes people recognize that the future can turn out well and work to make it that way. I suspect, no doubt, that a lot of optimism does lead to inaction, where people think the world will turn out good and doesn't require any action on their part. But similarly, I think pessimism can drive this inaction as well, where people don't think they can do anything about it or that whatever they tried to do would make little difference anyway. Both of these probably play a role in motivating people to action AND inaction, like all things, it probably just boils down to the individual and what ideas they choose to express in physical action.

" Why do I choose the Malthusian view? Because if people wake up and consider that our entire civilization depends on energy from fossil fuels, and minerals mined from the earth, they'll realize that these are limited resources. I'm a pessimist and think most Americans don't really give this much thought, and therefore they don't insist that more research be done on alternates."

I don't think many Americans give it much thought either, but the second there is a shortage in fuel supply, prices instantly climb. They will react as though they give it a lot of thought because the market makes them. But I would not even agree with the principle of your argument, that we will ever even *run out* of any of these. They are all patterns of atoms which go from a desirable state to a non-desirable one. The application of energy will turn any waste product back into a useable one again. As mining raw forms increases in cost and complexity with reduced availability, other alternatives will become more viable, and recycling will become more cost effective. All waste products, with the exception of radioactive elements, can be recycled.

" Bush is pushing for research on alternate energy sources, which btw - goes against the claim that he's a puppet for the oil industry magnates."

Indeed, he is a puppet for the popular vote, like all politicians. But this is an example where ignorance and government control is driving things in the wrong direction. The hydrogen economy is much touted, but the problem with hydrogen is there is no large store of it ready to be mined and used, there is no infrastructure ready to move it about, and its an explosive gas, so it must be liquefied, held under pressure, or trapped in some other medium as a solid or a liquid to give vehicles that run on it any significant range. The best source of hydrogen is gasoline / oil still, since water requires extremely energy intensive electrolysis. And the best storage mechanism for hydrogen is, surprise, gasoline! There is more hydrogen in a gallon of gasoline then there is in a gallon of liquid hydrogen. This current political fad of a hydrogen economy is driven by public scientific ignorance and scientists who need a job vying for public funds from whatever happens to be the big problem on people's radar. The results from actions like these
*are* things that I am pessimistic about, as any ideology that is embraced contrary to reality is dangerous.

" Bush is pushing for space exploration. The media is decrying Bush's announcement that he wants America to go to Mars. Democrats are making fun of the issue."

Heh, of course, if you are a democrat, you are supposed to oppose anything republicans do, and vice versa, even if they are good ideas. In fact, especially if they are good ideas, because if they are, and they are implemented, it will make people more likely to vote for the other party. Progress is made only when both parties must reluctantly acknowledge that something must be done. This is the danger of voting purely on party lines, unfortunately this seems to drive most political opinions.

" The Mars goal is the icing on the cake, and I know that there isn't much on Mars we can use that can't be obtained more cheaply from an asteroid or the moon"

There are two important reasons why I support space initiatives. One is the technological advance that comes from these efforts, a good majority of the technological advances from the past 50 - 60 years came from the space industry. Second, we have all our eggs in one basket at the moment, Earth. And if anything should happen here, humanity is wiped out, and possibly all life on the planet, and possibly, as far as we know, all life in the universe and all intelligent life (since we have no evidence of either outside of our planet) We need self sustaining colonies spread out as far and as wide as we can.

" Michael said: I certainly couldn't agree with that. Karl Marx and Plato had lasting negative effect on multiple generations, conversely Thomas Jefferson, Voltaire, Democritus, and most certainly Aristotle, who nearly single handedly defined all the great aspects of modern western worlds, had lasting positive effects.
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That isn't what I meant. I think you know that too."

Actually, that is what I thought you meant, my apologies for mis-understanding. I suppose I too frequently hear that argument, that we cant make any difference anyway. This is obviously not true, but people are ready to believe it since it absolves them of any responsibility to do anything.

" I meant that no one has been able to exact a lasting change in the fundamental nature of humans to settle in a minimum comfort zone and not budge. A charismatic leader may be able to get enough people moving to action to do something, but that only lasts for one and maybe two generations. But lasting change toward active participation... The people you named changed societies, countries, and the world... But they didn't change people"

Do you really think that? Yeah, its difficult to get people to change there ways, and they mostly only do it when its really easy, really obvious, or they have no other choice. But *people* still do not support slavery in most of the world, and I think that clearly shows that lasting effects can be made, but I concede that the majority come through social changes and also usually finally take hold when the next generation grows up accustomed to the new idea. But by changing societies, countries, and the world, doesn't that necessarily imply people must change, since that is who those systems are made up of?

" In point of fact, the American Constitution was designed by pessimists who didn't trust human nature."

One could argue that communism was also designed by pessimists who don't trust human nature, and some would argue that it was designed by optimists who did. Similarly, many aspects of the American Constitution I would argue were designed to go with human nature (the invisible hand driving economic transactions and all) and not always against it. But it's very difficult to determine what human nature is in the first place, even with modern science. It seems very little of our behavior is only controlled by nature.

"Yes, if you want your world to come into being Michael. I'd suggest being a pessimist. It worked for our founding fathers, it'll work for you too. They were pessimists with high ideals. You can be too."

I think the important thing to get out of this is regardless of what motivates us, we must act on that motivation. This conversation has made me think about this and I think it's clear now that I am motivated by both optimism and pessimism, but I think you are as well. (cmon, admit it!)

Regards,

Michael