tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3549928.post7044256836546951563..comments2023-09-06T05:30:01.029-04:00Comments on <br><br><center>An Unenviable Situation</center>: The purpose of life is the pursuit of pleasure. For some people, pleasure is work.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3549928.post-49302065665700348802009-01-27T13:50:00.000-05:002009-01-27T13:50:00.000-05:00Hypocrisy is most annoying, I agree.You think Chen...Hypocrisy is most annoying, I agree.<BR/><BR/>You think Cheney doesn't think he's civilized? I suspect he thinks he is super-civilized. Everybody feels super-civilized. <BR/><BR/>He probably thinks both that he is super-civilized and that common morality is for suckers, half-wits, inferior people. That's, I think, a typical neocon position.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3549928.post-65522643784543592232009-01-27T11:50:00.000-05:002009-01-27T11:50:00.000-05:00Curiosity is key, and disinterested curiosity is t...Curiosity is key, and disinterested curiosity is the purist form of curiosity. Between people you learn more by asking than by taking.<BR/>It gets a little more complex when you're dealing with animals. I like steak for example.<BR/>Laws are things we invent to simplify decision making. They're not pure forms but they diffuse tension by diffusing authority. "We do things this way here." And laws in a democracy come closest to treating people equally. Are people equal? No. But I'd rather live under the fiction that people are equal than under the fiction that certain people are superior, for the same reason I prefer disinterested to instrumental curiosity. The ridiculousness in academic political philosophy is the attempt to construct a formal non-contradictory model of law.<BR/>It's theology. And in the context of liberalism, instrumentalism -a secondary form of curiosity- is treated as foundational. It may be practically necessary to construct laws on that foundation but that's not philosophy that's politics. Liberal political philosophy might as well be the philosophy of the Catholic church. It's foundations are in social constructs taken as absolutes.<BR/>The hypocrisy is what's annoying.<BR/><BR/>And Abb, Cheney doesn't think he's civilized, he thinks civility's for suckers.D. Ghirlandaiohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06283931383770759507noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3549928.post-57083420255745790332009-01-27T04:11:00.000-05:002009-01-27T04:11:00.000-05:00In the Soviet Union they used to charge those who ...In the Soviet Union they used to charge those who choose to emigrate the cost of their college education. <BR/><BR/>What you're talking about here is communitarianism, not socialism, at least not in the modern sense; socialism doesn't require any habits, it's purely a top-down concept: the technocrats on top decide ('policies'!) how make the system fairer, more stable, more productive, etc. Whether the population is mostly communitarian-minded or individualist - it only matters so far as they may adjust their 'policies' ("let them keep their guns if that's what they want"). <BR/><BR/><BR/><I>There's no one definition of the just.</I><BR/><BR/>True that.<BR/><BR/><I>There's only what civilized people prefer.</I><BR/><BR/>"civilized" is just as subjective as "just". I think I'm civilized, Dick Cheney thinks he is. <BR/><BR/>It's all in indoctrination.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com