05-08-2017, 07:27 PM
(05-08-2017, 12:46 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(05-08-2017, 11:45 AM)Cynic Hero Wrote: France has Just been subjected to globalist tyranny and Human Rights tyranny. A sad day for civilization.
I guess we have as strong a values clash as anyone on these boards. “Human Rights tyranny” to me seems almost an oxymoron, perhaps a paradox. People are being forced to treat each other decently? Would this be a problem if people treated each other decently? I for one am not in fear of being forced to respect other people’s human rights. I already respect people’s human rights.
I guess it’s Kinser’s tribal morality in play. Humans behave well towards members of one’s tribe, but are willing to oppress and disrespect anyone belonging to another tribe. Well, we use the word ‘tribe’, but it could be by world view, political affiliation, region of origin, religion, skin pigmentation or many another thing. I will recognize that many to most humans naturally think that way, all for ‘us’ with a blatant disregard for ‘them’.
But the point of human rights is to note that all human are ‘us’. There are no ‘them’. That’s the dream, anyway. It will not come lightly. ‘Us’ have been abusing ‘Them’ for a long long time. It will be a hard habit to break. Yes, it seems France is taking a few steps towards fighting the habit. I for one approve, though I don’t anticipate an easy road. There are too many people like you and Kinser.
Excellent work on one sick screed. Tribalism is obsolete -- terribly obsolete -- in a time of supersonic missiles and aircraft for military use, atom bombs, the Internet, swift travel, low food costs, and other attributes of modernity that have the potential to make life extremely satisfying and precarious at the same time. The homogenization of living standards is well underway.
Quote:“Globalist tyranny” is something else. I’m not at all pleased by how globalism is playing out. It has been implemented too much for the benefit of the capitalist ruling class, too little for the benefit of the general population. Still, one element of it is division of wealth. In this world, in may ways, too few have too much. It is 'us' oppressing 'them' again. If strife is to be avoided, the goal ought to be to spread the wealth around, to assure everyone has enough.
Maybe the problem isn't so much with globalism as it is with the elite use of globalism to drive living conditions down in the First World for all but the few. Maybe it is the rise of an exploiter elite of executives, political hacks, and shyster professionals who unlike the nobles and capitalists of an earlier time can exploit people without owning the assets. A lobbyist who can get a political reward of $10 billion in easy money to a well-heeled special interest would need to own an incredible amount of land to make similar income the old-fashioned way -- whether that way means owning a gigantic plantation complete with slaves or leasing it to huge numbers of peasants and sharecroppers. What Milovan Djilas saw happening in 'socialist' Yugoslavia goes on effectively in America. with the big landowners and the plutocratic capitalists in full conclusion.
Should things go so badly in America that we have hunger as the result of severe exploitation despite our productive potential and our wondrous technology, then it will be easy to predict what people get sent to the 21st-century equivalent of the guillotine.
Our American institutions were made for a world of craftsmen, small farmers, and shopkeepers unable to get fantastically rich by inflicting great suffering upon others. It was not designed for shameless narcissists, let alone gangsters, rendering people helpless against them. In this Crisis we see either the full imposition of a new feudalism, perhaps complete with the infamous jus primae noctis, a pathological order in which the elites offer perverse entertainment perhaps more sophisticated than the Roman-style gladiatorial games and damnatio ad bestias (this time casting criminals and penniless debtors to crocodiles, sharks, or pythons instead of to bears, lions, and tigers in Roman times), the establishment of a social order as inequitable as the pre-Civil War South with the repression of Stalin's Soviet Union... the nightmare scenarios are all too obvious.
We can also have a system well fitting human nature in which practically everyone can do modestly well with modest talent and effort but few do spectacularly well. Experiences will matter more than possessions; just imagine what life would be like if status symbols have lost all meaning. As Mohandas Gandhi said, the world can meet all human need but it can never meet all human greed.
Quote:There is still a big divide between the former colonies and the former mother countries. One thing globalism is doing is putting industrial jobs in the poorer places. This is not being done well. The capitalist elites are not doing it out of charity. They are looking for regions with low wages and no labor unions. They are out to maximize profits for the most part, not to equalize wealth.
Switzerland never was a colonial power and has one of the highest standards of living in the world; Afghanistan was never colonized, but it is one of the world's poorest nations. Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Taiwan, and South Korea used to be colonies, and they seem to be doing very well. Industrialization in its earliest stages fosters economic strife that leads to either revolution or to the reduction of poverty. A democracy will have unions.
Quote:But an awful lot of what’s going on is the well off people resenting the less well off, trying to protect their privileged position. Many conservatives that are ahead of the norm economically are striving to stay that way. "I've got mine, up yours" is all too prevalent a meme, not just the base principle of Republican health care. I’ve no opposition to some people getting ahead. I will object to individuals being drastically and deliberately left behind.
I’m still with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 25.
HDHR 25 Wrote:(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
(2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.
Making these things happen is not tyranny.
We face the prospect of political and economic instability should plutocrats try to impose the living conditions of the early industrial era. That's how I understand "Make America Great Again" -- when life really was great for about 2% of the population and miserable for almost everyone else.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.