#TheoryThursday: Occupy Love (Michael Hardt)
Posted 10 years ago on Feb. 12, 2014, 3:53 p.m. EST by OccupyWallSt
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"Happy Valentine's Day to all the Occupy lovers out there." - OSN
<p>♥+ Love More. Fear Less. http://t.co/Vua7p3yhRg #occupylove pic.twitter.com/vGrkCoFiHA</p>— Occupy Wall Street (@OccupyWallSt) February 13, 2014</blockquote>
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58 Comments
Where you find politics driven by love you will find fairness, but not only political fairness, economic, environmental, and social as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRtc-k6dhgs
http://sacred-economics.com/
We need politics driven by good logic and proper morals. The love thing is so 1960.
Good logic eludes many. Proper morals annoy many. Walt Disney loved his mouse which had come to share and Mickey IS the mouse that went around the world.
There were many mice near NYPD headquarter. One held on to a piece of a doughnut and ran while the other gave chase. Then one ran into a hole to hide the doughnut but the other found out. They wrestled, squeaked, rolled, and bit. Afterwards when they had had enough, both apparently forgot where the doughnut was and went around sniffing and searching. What would Mickey and Minnie of our Disney fairy-tale do on Valentine's Day? -- I wonder . . .
And where do good morals come from, Thrasymaque? And, where does logic lead the human being?
logic leads to good morals
humans are better off helping each other
Morals must be based on a very simple fundamental principle for them to be effective. The simplest I can think of is - Everyone should be as free as possible. When we realize that the freedom of one can impede on the freedom of another we can extend to - Everyone should be as free as possible as long as that freedom does not impede upon the freedom of another. From such a simple moral basis, we can extrapolate to create morals for various situations. Using logic, we can debate when situations are complex. Is murder moral? No, because it impedes on the freedom to live of the victim. Should gay marriage be accepted? Yes, because that increases the freedom of the gay couple without impeding on the freedom of others to get married. Should pedophilia be accepted? No, considering young people do not have a mind grown enough to give consent, the older party would be impeding upon the freedom of the young person. Should polygamy be accepted? Yes, if all parties involved are adults capable of giving full consent they should have the freedom to do as they wish since it does not impede on the freedom of others.
The problem with using religious texts for morals is that they are too complex. We really need to come back to basics. I think the axiom I wrote above is the most simplest and purest. I'm open to hearing another if you have one. Of course, I make the assumption that the function of morals are to make a society which is as happy as possible. I think freedom is the key to happiness. And love would be giving freedom to another.
Secular humanism has created a good moral framework in my opinion, leading to such things as universal human rights. I think this is the best moral compass we have so far.
Logic leads towards understanding which leads to applications. Using logic we can cure diseases for example. Logic can also be used in debate about morals for example. If we have a complex situations, we can use logic to try to determine where the freedoms of one stop and the freedoms of the other starts. Logic is the fundamental tool of proper discourse. It can lead to stronger arguments than if we base our positions on myths and legends. Logic can also bring people together because it can be used to debate. Religious people cannot debate with other religions because their positions are based on beliefs. Scientists who use logic to acquire knowledge can debate and will agree when logic points to one obvious solution. We see it everyday. Religions become more and more fragmented as people do not agree on how to interpret the text. Meanwhile, science is becoming more and more standardized across nations as logic leads people from various countries to similar solutions and understandings of the world.
Logic is what led Mr. Descartes to formulate a modern scientific method. That method is used to acquire knowledge about the world. That knowledge is used to create applications like planes, bombs, computers, medicine, etc... Morals are used to decide what should be done with those applications.
What about you? Where do you think morals come from, or should come from, beautifulworld? And, in your opinion, where does logic lead the human being?
Your simple principle for morals only works if we do not use it. The boundaries of each person's freedoms change all of the time. Does that mean that morals must be relative to what is actually at hand? Then there are people who do not comprehend what is at hand. They arrive at equally valid morals using perfectly good logic. Does that mean morals' worth has to await the judgment of history? If so, how long?
I say that morals can have core values that are absolute but their actual applications must be context dependent and therefore relative.
I actually surprise myself in defending religions here because I had been accused of being an atheist before. I say that religions had helped us crawl out of our moral depravities for some past periods but they need flexibilities to work with the modern globalized world. Religions provide good first approximations to what we need but they are by their nature OFF. Internet privacy was for example not covered in any venerable religions. There are nearly universal moral principles that withstand the test of time and I think that they can fall under the category of Love.
Universal human rights did not emerge from secular humanism. It was more the product of struggles, some not that bloody but some awfully bloody. Fundamentally, rights are abstract concepts made real by the threat or actual usage of force.
Logic is limited in its application because it can go astray with false premises. Science can be more internationally coherent because scientists tend to question the premises, the methods, the logic, the results, etc. more than the practitioners of religions. I think that the passion accompanying strongly held religious values blinds a person emotionally whereas most scientists can accept skepticism.
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Should polygamy be accepted? The sex ratio is close to a half. Polygamy could infringe on other peoples' freedom to be married. Some powerful people can be married to hundreds or even thousands of people.
Using my axiom, the answer would be yes. Assuming all people involved are consenting, I see no reason why they should not have the freedom to live in a polygamist relationship considering that given freedom to them does not impede upon the freedoms of anyone else. People should be allowed to do anything they wish in their own homes as long as it does not hurt others.
Polygamy often involves partners of greatly unequal power and is therefore often unfair to the weaker partner. It also invites bickerings for rank, status, and inheritance rights for offspring under the dominant person (most often a male). Even if polygamy is consensual, it can still deprive others (often younger males) of potential mates as sex ratio remains close to a half.
Polygamy may be far more troubles than it is worth (although we do have unofficial polygamy through promiscuous couplings).
do humans couple because they are socially tribal as opposed to competitive?
Coupling is the basic drive for ALL sexual lifeforms, human included. Human families are our great heritage for incubating and socializing (perhaps civilizing) our next generation. For that reason, societies have interest in fostering strong and stable families but they are walking a very fine line between containing and constraining the sexual couplings so that there will not be too many unsocialized youngs and yet encouraging the sexual couplings so that there will be many well socialized youngs.
Marriage was invented to reduce competition and foster stability of the families. It was a hand maiden of civilization. In the olden days, we had the clans and the tribes to impose taboos, traditions, and customs that we have largely lost (perhaps to our detriment). Underlying all families is hopefully Love, especially the motherly love, perhaps the greatest of all.
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Is murder moral? How do you define murder? Would the premeditated withdrawal of life support be considered murder? Would it be immoral then? Would the premeditated killing of a person be moral if that act could have preserved the lives of many? What about the life of just one? What about a fetus, an embryo, or a zygote?
Murder is taking the life of another person. Plain and simple.
If we use the flawed moral system of religions - thou shall not murder - then murder is amoral. The problem with this system is that it does not provide a reason why murder is amoral. It simply tells us it is so because God says so. If you murder, you go to hell. Because there is no evidence for God, one has only to stop believing in God for the moral system to collapse. Thus, it is not universal, as it as the prerequisite that you believe in God. Many religious people will say that atheists have a problem because they have no moral compass. False (I explain below). What religious people have is a flawed moral compass.
Using my axiom (one should be as free as possible as long as it does not impede upon the freedoms of others), it becomes possible to answer your questions. In the general case, one man murdering another is amoral because the freedom to murder takes away more freedoms from the one being murdered. The one being murdered is left with no freedoms at all because he or she is dead.
If we take a more complex example, of a bomber preparing to kill 200 people and the only way to stop him is by murdering him, then murdering the bomber becomes moral. Why? Because, if the bomber kills 200 people he impedes the freedoms of more people than if we kill the bomber.
There are more and more complex cases of course. My axiom is a base, not an answer to all those situations. We must use my axiom accompanied by logic to judge on a case per case basis. This is how law works. We have general laws, but people have individual trials to decide on a case per case basis what the fairest punishment is. That is the law system in theory. With the religious system of morals, there is no possible debate. No flexibility. Murder is simply always wrong.
Taking the life of another person is not necessarily murder and it is rarely plain and simple. This is why we have so many different kinds of charges pertaining to killings and murders.
If as the Bible commands, "Thou shalt not kill," didn't God kill nearly everybody except Noah's family in the Great Flood? Religious people exhort us to be more like God, doesn't that give excuses to psychopaths and sociopaths to commit mass murders? I like the idea of Love better than the idea of a mass-murdering God.
You recognize the need for the circumstances to be examined by logic and that was my point that things are often complicated beyond being sorted out by a simple principle of maximizing freedom. I think that in addition to logic we need Love to transcend depravities.
Did you read my comments? I explained already why religious morals are highly flawed and why my axiom system (which is used all around the world in law) is much better. Are you here to learn, or to play the devil's advocate?
Yes, I read your comments but I disagree with you that religious morals are highly flawed. I would rather banish my mass-murdering God in favor of Love. I learn through literary sparring so please bear with me. I understand your axiom system but it is mostly covered up by other more specific and modern laws. We the peoples of the world saw the shortcomings of the maximum freedom principle so we had devised our fixes, similar to Hammurabi's principle surviving in spirit but not in body.
Murder - by it's definition is not moral - a killing though - can very well be moral.
Can relabelling everything as killings of different sorts be able to avoid them being considered as murders and therefore make them potentially moral?
"Stand your ground", does exactly that.
Yes, Florida sees it differently and Europe is also different. Garrymann's simple principle of maximizing freedom cannot apply in many places.
You do understand that Florida is but one State out of 50, and ALEC has pushed "stand your ground" into many of them?
All I'm stating is that your "rule" of relabeling applies to ALL the States in which it's been enacted, in one form or another.
"Stand your ground" laws in the various states are generally speaking bad laws because they allow or perhaps encourage edging people towards using violent confrontations with potentially deadly results (cf. Trayvon Martin case in Florida).
I am playing all sides here, as God's advocate, Devil's advocate, humanist's advocate, atheist's advocate, legal scholar's advocate, etc. in an attempt to examine various morally borderline issues raised by garrymann who claimed to have the simple principle of maximizing freedom to settle them clearly and easily. It just seemed far too easy to be applicable but I am open to arguments. It is in grappling with thorny moral issues that we progress in our moral trainings.
Yes, I follow the questioning traditions of the gadfly of Athens and of the debates about the Talmud.
let's make up some congretional laws
"Share the Wealth" initiative cut taxes to corporations so they may share the wealth with the people
"Freedom of economy" workers may not discuss how much they make with each other
Hmmm. So then you don't understand and would rather cloud the issue?
I'm giving you the perfect example of your own "relabeling" statement.
A statement without love in a thread that's supposed to be about love.
Irony?
No irony - you may understand if you know reductio ad absurdum used in mathematics and by the gadfly of Athens, Socrates.
Pure irony. Nothing less.
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It's not a relabeling - as murder is a killing - but it is a type of killing - no the circumstances of a killing speak for themselves.
See? My point is that the circumstances of the killing need to be examined before judgment can be rendered. There is no simple principle for deciding, as garrymann claimed.
Edit
True - circumstances tend to help definition.
So prior to a charge of Murder being levied - a charge of killing should 1st be levied and the following actions should be to determine what happened and by whom and whether or not the result was a crime or justified.
Yes, hence our reserve of judgment is important before the investigations have been reasonably completed.
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Yes - hence an initial/immediate charge of murder - is hasty and prejudicial. So even a charge of killing is at 1st prejudicial - as it should be an initial inquiry as to a death - prior to leveling a charge of any sort.
Absolutely.
death threats ?
Yes, what about death threats? I remember GirlFriday was threatened and ZenDog was often accused of issuing them.
I'm gonna go for a walk
society cannot exist without trust
Trust helps alright.
Should gay marriages be accepted? What if there was a person who wanted to be married to one of the partners to such a gay marriage? The gay marriage would then impede that person's freedom of marriage.
U gonna start an argument 4 polygamy now?
No, I shelled out my salvo to show that these matters can be complicated. It is not amenable to being decidable using the simplest principle enunciated by garrymann.
You're addressing garrymann? Well then - have at it as garrymann is our constant prevaricator using another name - but really consider your comments - unless of course you are inviting it just to illustrate it's failings - in which case you can be even more oblique or imprecise or judgemental.
Yes.
Should pedophilia be accepted? What if both the adult and the minor should desire such a relationship? Would society be impeding their "freedom" by prohibiting such a relationship?
Children need protection as well as guidance - when they mature = become adults ( if they ever mature ) - then they can make their own decisions as to what kind of relationship they want.
Maturity is somewhat hard to define. I think that children do not really become mature until ages 25-30 because the wealthy people usually stipulate 25 as the age at which their children can get hold of the money and assets in their trusts. Younger than that and we see some killing themselves and others with the trusts' money.
I agree that maturity is a process that continues long after the law declares the age of adulthood - I also feel that some individuals will never mature no matter how long they live - be that as it may - children deserve and require all protection that society can give them while that society strives to educate and guide them toward maturity whether that maturity be mistakenly pronounced at the societies designation of the age of adulthood or not.
18
18 is still too young to be declared an adult by society. 22 may be more suitable. 22 is a compromise between 18 now and 25 that the wealthy people favor.
I think that one needs to be at least 30 before one has gained sufficient life experience to have sound judgments. 50 or more is needed to have gained some wisdom. The young people have the advantage of thinking big and "impossible" but of course, the big and "impossible" often takes a little while longer.
EDIT EDIT - While some ( extremely few ) mature exceptionally quickly - ages beyond their actual years. I could see merit in your breakdown = no-one can be made to go to war prior to their 50th birthday? And the extra qualifier = 50 to have gained some wisdom as long as that time was spent in the real world = having to work hard for a living - not 2 hardly work for a living or not at all to work for a living = wealthy brats? - U gotta really work to achieve maturity or wisdom.
So - I guess the very wealthy of any adult age should B the 1st 2 B sent 2 war on the front lines ( combat ) in every and all conflicts - drone driving not allowed! Command positions = DENIED!!!!!! Command positions denied = civilian as well as military = no spoiled out of touch brats in government - NONE !!!!
Now you must be young again, thinking big and "impossible." Let all societies have laws that require all soldiers to be 50 or older so that they may have a chance to have gained the wisdom about wars and whether to press for wars. It would be a whole lot better than sending the 18 years olds to the front line because I suspect that there would be far fewer wars and any that occur would be over quickly.
I'm an over 50 - but - I have always worked hard to get by - with the 50+ only going to war with the wealthy on the front combat lines being mandatory as well as no wealthy in government or positions of military command - Yeah - I think that there would be fewer armed conflicts.
Now my brain is going electric blue - why stop at 50 and wealthy? Go for 100 and broke!
EDIT EDIT EDIT - Well seeing as the conflict starters/pushers are generally the wealthy/greedy - starting at 50 years old on the combat front-lines should make a major change in ( surviving ) attitude - to start with the really old would be ( I think ) not as conducive ( as quickly ) to peaceful change.
That being said - I feel it would be best if the wealthy of ALL appropriate ages ( the naturally horny thru to the 4 hour Viagra employers ) be sent to front line combat duty prior to sending forward any 50 year old poor or working class individual.
PRIVATE McCONNELL TAKE POINT - MOVE OUT Boner!! Hustle-up!!! CAN'T-OR if I catch you fucking off one more time....... RYAN wipe that smirk off ur face before I have to............... Bitchelle STFU as I am sure that there is a sniper out there happy to have ur insane loudass stupid comments to help em find a target ,,,,, McConnell WHAT IN THE HELL DO YOU MEAN - THAT YOU DIDN'T RECHARGE Ur RASCAL?!???
s-ss-sssorry Donald
That's - The Donald to you Bitch......
Bernspanky: wait a sec - who put you in charge?
The Donald: no-one I just was at the ops when the assignment came out - don't believe me spanky? Fine - go to OPs and ask ur-self - I think the CO was just informed that he was ROBOFORECLOSED........
Bernspanky: n n nnnNo that's OK I believe you.....
The Donald: well OK then...........Bitch?
Bitch McConnell: ummm yeah d d d umm t Donald?
T Donald: Ur fired PA POW OW OW OW
Bernspanky: t Don ummm don'tcha think you will get in trouble 4 that?
T Donald: ?!? HEH heh heh NO I DON'T hell t CO would probably luv it if I fired a few more of U assholes starting perhaps with U spanky or maybe with Jamie D.....................
perhaps just in larger simpler blocks
or lacking larger data for pattern recognition
failure to categorize
Are you saying that the young people are lacking larger data for pattern recognition?
my brain is wrinkled
they have less to remember
They have the promise of new beginnings but sometimes the curse of "Here we go again!" Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address captures the ideal sentiments at its end.
there are just people out there that won't live up to your expectations
try not to put them in jail too often