Post Cards from ?

[donte]

RIP....  Cartoonist extra-ordinaire. Bill Leak was never frightened to air what needed airing and The Australian backed his ballsy comments despite oft-time hailstorms of “offended” letters to the editor.

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[cster]

I'm sure he would be happy with the efforts he had created. Taking the Piddle out of us was his Fav, practice. Bloody good at it too.

[donte]

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And let’s be clear. Bill Leak died of a massive heart attack after being dragged through a kangaroo pseudo-court by a bunch of jumped up, overpaid taxpayer-funded officials — paid by you and me, and offered a nice cup of tea by Malcolm Turnbull

[donte]

I find it rather chilling that those that lead this country can be so blind to the dangers that surround this now not so peaceful country...

There are mischievous people of our own ilk being paid big sums from the public purse to undermine the very ground we walk on.

I am talking about the suppression of free speech being enacted thru section 18C in particular.  

This particular fellow was a stalwart of opposition to those that would oppress us. He needs to be fully recognised for being the fighter he was. A statue covering the size of parliament grounds, in parliament grounds, would still not get the irony of self induced stupidity, through the thick heads of those that contaminate it by their presence.

More on Bill Leak.....       

....after a gag about a "Cartoonists Hit List", the cartoonist wound up on an actual hit list, from ISIS. Distinctive-looking persons started showing up around his house. "What do you mean, 'distinctive-looking'?" asked the coppers. So he got out his pencil and drew them. On my visit to Oz a year ago, Bill told me, in confidence (though he later went public with it), that as a result of death threats he and his family had been forced to leave their home, and live in a strange house in a new town under police protection. This is the life of an Australian artist in the 21st century: You exist in a kind of precarious semi-liberty. Having friends over for dinner is a gamble - because if a careless friend mentions it to a friend of a friend, you'll have to move again, to another house in another town, further and further away from what used to be your life. There is a price for not taking refuge in bland, self-flattering hooey about weeping pens mightier than swords.

......................................................................................

And they sit on their suckers in parliament maintaining there is nothing in the legislation for us to worry about.... as long as it keeps them from a closer inspection. 

[cster]

Bury the Parliament, then hang a sign out that says, temporary positions vacant. Termination notices found in the obituaries.
See if we can put together a Parliament of wiser men than what we got. A group of owls is a parliament a group of baboons is caller a congress or troop, a group of buffoons is called ? Perhaps a cowardice of curs. A bellowing of Bullfinches, Maybe the best one would be a Party of Adversaries. They be the only ones partying though.

So Bill was not ousted from his home by angry bikies or evil druggoes, but the religious peoples army.

[ducati]

Yes, yes and yes!! Difficult to understand/conclude WHO elected:
++I find it rather chilling that those that lead this country can be so blind to the dangers that surround this now not so peaceful country..++
++A group of owls is a parliament a group of baboons is caller a congress or troop, a group of buffoons is called ? Perhaps a cowardice of curs. A bellowing of Bullfinches, Maybe the best one would be a Party of Adversaries. They be the only ones partying though.++
++And they sit on their suckers in parliament maintaining there is nothing in the legislation for us to worry about.... as long as it keeps them from a closer inspection. ++
Elected by ..... It is a mystery, even for Ducat & Pali!!
Ducati & Pali

PSS. What a deafening noise!!! What WAS that!?!?!? Salami slices falling off the eyes of "forward looking preachers"? Carrots popping out of the ears of "hearing impaired" Aged Senior Citizens? Never YOUSE worry!! WE will rise to the challenge and ....organise the Aged Senior Citizens Forums and Square Bowls Bowling Clubs and Mensheds !!! If necessary WE will start Forums reserved for Spirituality & Philosophy Posts!! Let US pump up the tires of our motorised wheel chairs , 2 wheeled trikes and our caravans and 4WD ready to go camping ANYWHERE!!! Advance Australia (or ANY other nation!!) WE will never be....never be.....BLAST I forgot what I wanted to write!!

[ducati]

Difficult to see a solution (even a partial one!!)to OUR problems... the OLDIES have lost the plot and the "YOUNG" can't find/see/understand the PLOT!!

Pali & pali

[cster]

For someone sitting well back throwing stones at it all. It looks for all the world as if the same people who cant honour their own fellow citizens have borne or were born with the people who have found their feet in Parliament.
In one instance you see it as doing what the citizens are doing and in another you see it as doing it to the citizens as punishment for doing what the citizens do, or not being good citizens. I do wonder if its the later.

[donte]

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[cster]

Three Dog Night got their name from, listening to a national geographic report on the Australian Aborigines use of Dingo's to keep them warm on cold nights, having said "some nights are a three dog nights".

One cartoonist has both Turnbull and Hansen scratching their floppy ears, ensuring the readers are reminded of the saying "If you lay down with dogs you will get up with fleas".

Today they talk of the growing employment market. Nodders being a welcome addition to the market.
A nodder is a person who stands behind a party leader or spokesperson and nods in concert with each point made in political rhetoric.
The shame is, it's likely to become a large market.

[donte]

Mar 15, 2017 5:19:33 GMT 10 ducati said:

Difficult to see a solution (even a partial one!!)to OUR problems... the OLDIES have lost the plot and the "YOUNG" can't find/see/understand the PLOT!!

Pali & pali

I AM BUT A POOR BOY

I do not know what you guys really care about…  But the silence here is deafening. From the once Magnificent 7+ to the now almost defunct 3 Musketeers. Not forgetting of course D’Artagnon hanging in down south; complete with his ever faithful box brownie.

But to the point…
We currently have a leader, yeah, yeah, I know, but would you believe in this case… Turnbull, who I have it on good authority finally got off hissass and telephoned Musk! (birds of a feather) the Tesla shyster genius who thrives on lies and subsidies. TurdBull was getting the inside running on battery back up to provide a salve for SA’s mammoth energy blunder.

That is the Weatherill saga of perpetual green kockups.

Strewth….. is there no end to this blind f…..ing stupidity. The world is full of dunderheads from the top down… all contributing to our world of subsidies.
From AC to DC and then into the grid as AC…..WTF, but watt ever!!! Mammoth inverters will also be a requirement along with those batteries. Though I am but a poor boy when it comes to amps and whaaaaats ….. I do detect blind Freddie waving furiously in the background….

    
Gentlemen if you are not poor now you will be soon. In more ways than one. I am not arguing a case for or against the obvious green folly, or conservative/liberal initiatives taking us absolutely nowhere ….apart that is, to, from, or past the banks. Nevertheless should this lunacy continue I would strongly advise the purchase of a good torch for future illumination of the game being played before us… and if batteries are by then producing more dollars than volts or vomit, then may I suggest laying in a stock of candles. Plus a match or two… may not go amiss

You are correct Pali….. we have totally lost the plot….. and the young will never know the difference. … though I did often dream of a political class with moral qualities being a prerequisite beyond the normally accepted low IQ requirements for the sheltered workshops of our parliament…

 
….I cannot help but think of Karl Jung who said that society was the sum total of mankind in need of redemption. I know I have said that before, its just that I cringe when I realise how long ago Jung and other wise men have been saying that.

[cster]

Nothing changes but the weather, they say. Yesterday if any of us actually bothered, Senator Richard Di Natale spoke of the need for a four day week. Yep I missed it luckily as I'd no doubt need counselling by now. SO the good Senator doesn't like seven days, perhaps too Odd for him the number seven. So work for four days have three off. How this fixes things I don't know. Perhaps I should of chanced watching it.

I've no idea why we have DC links across the country for our electrickery. We do however shunt many mega watts of DC about the place. I'd personally plumb for another form of battery, in either gravity physical or gravity waterwise, a dam can act quite well in saving power in a manor that wont depreciate much (barring evaporation I guess) We do have a great divide up and down the east coast we could use.

Molten salts that can create steam on demand is another less expensive way I can think of that don't involve highly technical chemicals.

However, Mr Musk has a handy little device for our home, just buy one and plug it into the overnight off peak plug for the hot water service. It'll be topped up and ready for when the fan become covered in political matter.

We seriously have a battle on our hands, with on the one hand gas trying to pinch all out gas and then declare we need more because we're short. Then double up and stick a story up on Batteries as farcical as possible to obscure the mess they're making. Or is it stick up the obvious and use it as a mask. How can Senator Di Natale have a case ofr the 4dayweek in amongst this mess, can it be yet another stunt to bewilder the mob

[donte]

Yeah Cster, I believe Musk does have an interesting battery system for small scale solar management and I did notice Di Natale doing a daily green dribble from the house of dill repute. I was about to award him a gong for ability to actually recognise there are workers on a coal face, but than I realised he would have been chasing further and bigger rewards for a select civil service that already shows up for far less time than they are currently over remunerated for.

I could not swallow it all as I was still puking from a local article I had just finished reading over/on remuneration for operatives in the BBC, being compared to those of our own thief’s of available energy and air space; the ABC.
But unlike the ABC in Australia (whereby remunerations remain a closely guarded secret) the BBC have to declare to the populace their ill-gotten gains on an individual basis.

With the BBC; from the top poncing, politically anointed executives, down to Joe Blow the S bend cleaner, you only have to put the operatives name into the appropriate slot on a Govt website and bingo right before your eyes, on an all revealing spread sheet, one can see at a glance what he/she gets paid on a monthly basis, complete with all ancillary claims for reimbursements such as taxis, opera, air fares, latte’s…etc, complete to any massages and/or tai chi experiences from unsolicited sources down in SoHo.

The article was quite justifiably assuming...(with a jack on jack similarity) that the ABC would be comparable in all respects.

Now should you wish to compare vomits and volts in broadcasting terms rather than the Di Natale global wank on energy and hours, I could include the article for all our readers ... being The three Musketeers plus D’Artagnon; in total 4.

I am still at odds with the guest numbers for this site…. I do not mind talking to almost myself though… its good therapy….

[cster]

Yes there is a lot to be said for the Poms ability to provide clarity on their govco officers. Pity we didn't follow suit. But then that would really leave the governmenors at a loss to explain half of what they do.

Getup is on the prowl to stir up pooh on the banks. They've spent several Billion on Coal and Gas over the last couple of years. Apparently upsetting some who thing they should match it in renewables.

Still in a throw away society what exactly isn't renewed.

There seems to be an absence of personnel on here. Its hard to have an opinion on everything, it starts to sound too off the cuff if I do.

Still we have friends who don't call every day so It's all fair in the scheme of things.

I have no idea who maketh up the numbers in the guest department.

[cster]

Personally seeing as the banks carry toxic derivatives losses in the Hundreds of trillions, 10 or 20 Billion on coal and gas don't matter that much. Does it???

[donte]

An interesting read..... and a challenge.... to those whose superior ego always knows best 



Insisting on the truth in times of chaos — Jordan Peterson


“This man could single-handedly save Western Civilization, if people would listen.”

A typically bombastic quote from a Youtube commenter on one of Jordan Peterson’s online lectures. But in the last week of listening to him, I’ve come to think that he might have a point.

Jordan Peterson is a clinical psychologist and professor at the University of Toronto. I would say that what gives his words such impact is the way he combines the deep insights into the individual human psyche he has gained from clinical practice — working with people in states of psychological crisis and personal transformation — with a deep engagement with the ideas and thinkers who have most clearly grappled with the deepest existential questions of the human condition.

And more than that, his is a voice deeply engaged with the problems of the present moment, and he himself believes that the stakes are high: “I do believe we are in a period of chaos — and in a period of chaos the time horizon shrinks — because the outcome is uncertain … sometimes the outcome is catastrophe.”

In the last few weeks, I suddenly started hearing the name Jordan Peterson everywhere, on mailing lists, discussion groups and from friends’ recommendations. I checked out one of his lectures and suddenly I was hooked.

Youtube has made his ubiquity possible — his philosophy is tied into the concept of truth as a performance, an embodiment of aligning oneself with the creative principle itself — so watching and listening cannot be replaced with articles like this one. But I’ve transcribed a lot of his words as an introduction for others, and quote him extensively below — with links at the bottom for the curious to go and listen to the lectures.

I have rarely if ever felt so clearly that one person’s thinking resonated so deeply with me, that his words were both crystallising thoughts that were partially formed in myself, AND felt like they were cutting new tracks in my brain at the same time. Even more importantly — that this was an essential voice for the times.

And I’m clearly not the only one, as he says in a different lecture:

“That’s another hallmark of truth, is that it snaps things together. People write to me all the time and say it’s as if things were coming together in my mind. It’s like the Platonic idea that all learning was remembering. You have a nature and when you feel that nature articulated it’s it’s like the act of snapping the puzzle pieces together.”

In a way he applies Darwinian evolutionary theory to the history of ideas (memes). In particular he brings an understanding and appreciation for mythology and religion and the deeper truths hidden inside them, and explains how it is essential to understand the mythological structure of western society — and how not understanding it has led to ideologies that caused untold suffering in the past, and may well do again.

Since discovering him I have been bombarding friends with clips and links — I am writing this as a brief introduction to his thinking, with transcribed quotes from him, with some of my interpretations, with links and references to allow anyone interested to go and listen to the man himself.

And you should go and listen, because the core of his philosophy is about learning to embody truth more and more in yourself, becoming more and more aligned with this truth which gives your words more power and impact. That actually this process is the hidden message of the unfolding story of western culture that goes back millennia. Listening to him speak is to hear that process itself unfold.

“Truth is something that burns”

He distils the essence of his religious and mythological thought to the point where even atheists online are saying that they finally have an appreciation for religion — but it is also deliberately challenging to many — especially a set of ideas on the ‘left’ that have hardened into a kind of distinct ideology — often called post-modernism or post-structuralism.

He sees the process of arriving at truth as a process of personal growth and transformation which can be extremely painful to undergo. It’s a harder-edged version of the spiritual idea that we must overcome the ‘ego’ to arrive at the truth of our being.

“The truth is something that burns. It burns off dead wood. And people don’t like having the dead wood burnt off often because they’re 95 percent dead wood. Believe me I’m not being snide about that. It’s no joke. When you start to realise how much of what you’ve constructed of yourself is based on deception and lies, that is a horrifying realisation. It can easily be 95 percent of you and the things you say and the things you act out.”

Listening to Peterson is to begin, or continue this journey of self discovery — to dare to learn just how much of yourself is made up from ideas you have inherited from others, and how many of the words you speak and thoughts you think are not your own. Are you ready for that journey?

As a Jungian psychologist he explicitly links this journey to the concept of the encounter with our personal ‘shadow’ — the part of ourselves we repress or deny. He also links it to the great stories of mythology from prehistory onwards — how the hero goes into the underworld, encounters the dragon and comes back with the gold. Echoes of Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey.

How do we do that? We begin by really paying attention the things that we say:

“If you’re not using your own words, you’re the puppet of an ideology or another thinker or your own impulsive desires. You can tell when you’re speaking like that because it makes you feel weak — it makes you feel weak and ashamed, and you can localise that feeling physiologically if you listen to yourself talk. When you are speaking properly you will experience a feeling of integration and strength and when you’re speaking in a deceitful or manipulative manner you’ll feel that you’re starting to come apart at the seams. What you need to do is practice only saying things that make you feel stronger. At first you’ll notice that almost everything you say is a lie. It’s either a lie or someone else’s words. It’s very hard to find your own words — and you don’t actually exist until you have your own words.”

Peterson’s journey was highly influenced by the Cold War, and the sense in the 80s that we were potentially only moments away from annihilation. This sparked something of a personal crisis in himself and he looked closely at how ideologies were created, how totalitarianism seemed to result regularly from these ideologies.

Though he himself says it’s almost impossible to simplify his thought — a speech earlier this year came closest to doing it:

“There’s a principle at the heart of western civilisation and it’s older than Christianity and it’s older than Judaism, although Christianity developed it to a great degree. It’s the idea of the Logos — which means something like coherent interpersonal communication of the truth — and from an archetypal perspective it’s the action of the logos that extracts order from chaos.

We make order by articulating truth and then we inhabit the order. The order is the negotiated social agreements we come to to live among each other without tearing each other to shreds — which is basically what chimpanzees do to each other — so we need to negotiate the social order and we do that through articulated speech.

What Christianity did was take that proposition — derived partly from Mesopotamia, partly from Judaism and partly from Egypt and turn it into a symbolic doctrine — taking the figure of Christ, who from a psychological and archetypal perspective is the ideal man — an image of the ideal — which is the word made flesh, the instantiation of the logos in the body so that it’s acted out in the world. It’s the fundamental proposition of western culture — and we’ve lost it, and we will not survive without it.”

Rise to fame

His current moment of fame started in at the end of 2016 when a couple of Youtube videos he made about changes to the law in Canada went viral. The law was enacted supposedly in favour of transgender rights, and which in effect would compel people to use specific gender pronouns under the threat of the law.

He argued that — far from just opposing oppression and discrimination, the law was in fact built on a set of assumptions about human nature that were not only controversial, but also highly dangerous, a form of postmodern ideology that had echoes of totalitarianism. A longer explanation of how this controversy played out is at the start of this podcast with Joe Rogan.

“So then the argument started in the media and online as well; “What the hell was going on, was I just this bigoted transphobic fossil dinosaur, or was something else happening?” And I believe when I made the videos that the legislation itself and the policies were signifying a crisis, a disjunction in western society — of which the gender pronoun argument was only a tiny tendril. I put my finger on a nerve.”

This is a central feature of his thought — that the universities in particular (and culture at large) have fallen under the sway of a new version of Marxist thought — hidden inside a worldview of ‘opposing oppression’. How even if this worldview has elements of truth, and is followed by people driven by compassion and a desire for justice — it has become a fixed and divisive ideology.

And also that the vast majority of people who use the language of the postmodernists, the arguments of ‘power and privilege’ and oppression, are unwitting exponents of a neo-Marxist ideology which is essentially identical to the worldview that caused mass murder wherever it was implemented in the 20th century.

My reading of him is that he isn’t saying he thinks it is likely that this ideology will take over the world in the same way that communism did (although the Canadian law he objected to was a real world example of it being put into practice) — more that it’s a prison of the intellect — an enfeebling of the powers of reason — that corrupts the individual — taking a generation of ‘left-wing’ or ‘progressive’ students out of the game — leaving the field clear for the authoritarian right.

“The best you can do with postmodern philosophy is emerge nihilistic, at best. The worst case is that you’re a kind of anarchical social revolutionary who is directionless apart from that you want to tear things down. Or you end up depressed, which I see happening to students all the time because the postmodernists take out the remaining structures of their ethical foundation.”

In particular the postmodern idea that there is no such thing as truth, only competing truths hiding oppressive power structures, has hollowed out western thought.

He convincingly argues that this ideology has enfeebled academia — the humanities in particular — to the point that 80% of all academic papers that are now written are cited (referenced) only once by anyone else — meaning that as a contribution to the progress of knowledge they are basically worthless.

“The old Marxist notion was that the world was a battleground between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. That failed to have any philosophical or ethical standing after the working class actually saw its standard of living massively elevated as a consequence of Western free enterprise democracy. Also as a consequence of the revelations of everything terrible that happened in every country that ever dared to make equality and the Marxist communist dogma part of their fundamental structure. It resulted in nothing but murderousness and oppression.

By the 1970s it was evident that game was up — the postmodernist Marxist just basically pulled a sleight of hand and said OK if it’s not the poor against the rich it’s the oppressed against the oppressor. We’ll just redivide the subpopulations in ways that make our our philosophy continue in its movement forward. And that’s where we are now. And so for the post-modernists the world is a Hobbesian battleground of identity groups. They do not communicate with one another because they can’t — all there is is a struggle for power.

They believe that logic is part of the process by which the patriarchal institutions of the West continue to dominate and to justify their dominance. They don’t believe in dialogue. The root word of dialogue is Logos. Again they don’t believe that people of good will can come to consensus through the exchange of ideas. They believe that notion is part of the philosophical substructure and practices of the dominant culture. So the reason they don’t let people who they don’t agree with speak on campuses is because they don’t agree with letting people speak. You see it’s not part of the ethos.”

He argues that very few people consciously realise that they are ‘mouthpieces for the value system of a dead philosopher.

“You might say well does every social justice warrior activist know this? No of course not.

Not any more than every Muslim knows the entire Muslim doctrine or Islamic doctrine or every Christian knows the entire Christian doctrine. You know it’s fragmented among people. But then when you bring them together the fragments unite and the entire philosophy acts itself out.

They regard that if you’re in one power group and I’m in another — the idea that we can step out of that group, engage in a dialogue, have our worlds meet and produce some sort of understanding — no that’s part of your your oppressive patriarchal game — that whole idea is part of your game. So if I even engage in the dialogue and playing your game you win.

People don’t understand that postmodernism is a complete assault on two things. One it’s it’s an assault on the metaphysical substrate of our culture, and I would say that the metaphysical substrate looks something like a religious substrate. So it’s a direct assault on that. And the second thing it’s an assault on is everything that’s been established since the Enlightenment — rationality - empiricism — science. Everything. Clarity of mind, dialogue. The idea of the individual.

It’s not only that it’s up for grabs, that’s not the thing. It’s to be destroyed. That’s the goal — to be destroyed just like the Communists wanted — to destroy the capitalist system. It’s the same thing.”

Power Games?

He then examines the psychological underpinnings of the postmodern worldview

“There are no shortage of flaws in the manner in which we’ve structured our society and compared to any hypothetical Utopia is an absolutely dismal wreck. But compared to the rest of the world and the plight of other societies throughout the history of mankind we’re doing pretty damn well and we should be happy to be living in the society that we’re living at.

So the first thing that you might want to note about postmodernism is that it doesn’t have a shred of gratitude. And there’s something pathologically wrong with a person like that. It doesn’t have any gratitude especially when they live in what so far is the best of all possible worlds.

And so if you’re not grateful you’re driven by resentment, and resentment is the worst emotion that you can possibly experience apart from arrogance. Resentment, arrogance and deceit. There is an evil triad for you and if you’re bitter about everything that’s happening around you despite the fact that you’re bathed in wealth, relatively, then there’s something absolutely wrong with you.”

If the ideology of postmodernism and ‘oppression’ is partial, and mistaken in many key aspects, what is the truth?

He argues that the reduction of western society to mere ‘power games’ is a gross simplification and a distortion.

“I use the words dominance hierarchy because that’s a shorthand. People understand what that means. It’s not clear that hierarchies are in fact dominance hierarchies. And one of my insightful colleagues once told me that I shouldn’t use the words dominance hierarchy because Marxism is built into that conceptualization — that the reason that hierarchies exist is because of power.

And I thought. Jesus, that’s probably true. And it was quite a devastating criticism in some sense. It could easily be that the reason that hierarchical structures were formulated as dominance hierarchies was because the biologists who were doing the investigations and the people who were formulating the ideas had already been saturated with the Marxist view of power relations.”

He argues, drawing on the developmental psychologist Jean Piaget, that society works by mutually agreed upon games of cooperation, not dominance.

“Post modernists also don’t take into account the fact that value heirarchies — or power structures for that matter can be predicated on competence and not just oppression — competence and ability — skill and talent and beauty and all sorts of things that seem to be intrinsically worthwhile. AND also that there’s a multiplicity of value structures within a complicated society like ours — so even if you are oppressed by one standard — which is almost certain to be the case. Because you’re too ugly, or too fat, or you’re too stupid, or your skin colour disadvantages you, there’s an indefinite number of ways that you don’t measure up and that society is somehow set against you with a critical eye. But then there’s a very large number of games you could play — and just because you are a loser in one of them, or two of them — or ten — doesn’t mean you have to be a loser in all. The post modernists don’t take that into account. they consider THE value structure — that’s the patriarchy — and it’s universally oppressive and all the victims are the same. No, no they are not. It’s wrong. it’s foolish — it’s unidimensional, it’s low resolution, it’s pseudo-intellectual. It dominates the universities — because you can learn it in about a week — you sound like an intellectual to outsiders — and you don’t have to do any real thinking. Perfect solution.”

He explains how — contrary to the conspiracy theory of the oppressive society — societies based on the games we willingly play with each other will always beat those that are in some sense imposed. Forcing people to play a certain game takes far more energy because it incurs a “coercion cost”. Which is why a company or society that is run by motivated and self-directed people will always out-compete one that is dictatorial and authoritarian. One wastes energy in enforcing order.

(One way of looking at social structures is that) “…I get you to do something you wouldn’t choose to do. And you could say well the person who’s best at doing that is the winner. And I would say no that’s wrong. That isn’t how the evidence stacks up. Because the problem with being the person who gets the other person to do something by force is you have to enforce it. And that’s costly and you can be killed. You can be overthrown. And so even the most effective tyrannies suffer during times of power transition. Right. It’s unstable. That’s the problem is that a hierarchy built on power is unstable. It isn’t operating as a consequence of the will of the masses.”

He is both pessimistic and utopian — recognising the limitations and moral flaws in human nature that influence Conservative thinking, but also with a sense of the possibility of optimism and personal liberation that informs the best of left wing thought.

In the first of these he has similarities with the philosopher John Gray, who argues persuasively that our idea of progress is a delusion. As a psychologist Peterson would agree that the idea of moral progress is an illusion. No matter the technological advances of society — each human being starts again from zero at birth — and has to learn anew the moral lessons and how to live, with the same propensity to fall into habits of thought and belief structures that are influenced by the worst aspects of ourselves.

He also strongly criticises the ‘new atheists’ like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris for what he calls their naivety about the relationship between religion and science. And implicitly blames them and other materialists for the self interest and pathological tendencies of western corporate culture.

“This is why I have such frustration say with people like Sam Harris, the sort of radical atheists, because they seem to think that once human beings abandon their grounding in the transcendent that the plausible way forward is with a kind of purist rationality that automatically attributes to other people equivalent value. I just don’t understand that.

What the hell is irrational about me getting exactly what I want from every one of you whenever I want it at every possible second? Why is that irrational and how possibly is that more irrational than us cooperating so we can both have a good time of it. I don’t understand that.

I mean they talk as if the the psychopathic tendency is irrational. There’s nothing irrational about it. It’s pure naked self-interest. How is that irrational. Why the hell not every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost? It’s a perfectly coherent philosophy and it’s actually one that you can institute in the world with a fair bit of material success if you want to do it.

To me I think that that the universe that people like Dawkins and Harris inhabit is so intensely conditioned by mythological presuppositions that they take for granted the ethic that emerges out of that as if it’s just a rational given. And this of course was precisely Nietzsche’s observation as well as Dostoyevsky’s observation.

I’m not arguing for the existence of God. I’m arguing that the ethic that drives our culture is predicated on the idea of God and that you can’t just take that idea away and expect the thing to remain intact midair without any foundational support.”

Call to action

Most of all his philosophy links always back to the individual, the listener (or watcher). To learn and journey within oneself to understand oneself before acting in the world.

“My sense is that you don’t get to complain about the structure of the world until you stop falsifying your relationship with it, because you don’t know to what degree the pathology of your being is associated with the falsification, because it’s inherently bound up with your subjective experience.

What you’re doing is you’re twisting and bending your value structure. And that’s what determines the focus of your perception and your emotional responses. All of that. So get your aim right. Well what’s the aim. Truth. And I think it’s that has to be nested in love, and love is something like the notion that despite its suffering, Being is good and you should serve Being. And that’s what I try to do in my therapeutic practice.”

“I think the solution is an individual one. Because the other solutions are collective and the collective solutions are in some sense the problem. Now why do people become ideologically possessed. OK well some of it’s just confirmation bias. Temperamental bias. Then you can add ignorance to that. Then you can more specifically diagnose historical ignorance. There are things that we need to know in order to set ourselves right. And the people that I’ve found that have been most useful in that regard have been Dostoevsky and Nietzsche and Carl Jung and a smattering of others but I think they have their finger on the pulse.”

He talks about the support he has had for his statements from other professors and academics who say that they are too afraid to speak out themselves.

“One of the things that indicates is that it’s almost impossible to provide people with enough protection so that they feel safe to speak. OK, so we’ll address that directly. It is not safe to speak. It never will be. But the thing you’ve got to keep in mind is that it’s even less safe not to speak.

It’s a balance of risks — do you want to pay the price for being who you are and stating your mode of being in the world, or do you want to pay the price for being a bloody serf — one that’s enslaved him or herself. Well that’s a major price. Man that thing unfolds over decades and you’ll just be a miserable worm at the end of about 20 years of that.

No self-respect, no power, no ability to voice your opinions. Nothing left but resentment because everyone is against you because of course you’ve never stood up for yourself. Say what you think. Carefully pay attention to your words. It’s a price you want to pay if you are willing to believe that truth is the cornerstone of society.

The truth is what makes the world. The truth is what redeems the world from hell. And that’s the truth. And we saw plenty of hell for the last hundred years you know and we haven’t learned a bloody thing from it. It’s like wake up.”

[donte]

I did not check but I should imagine the Canadian piece of legislation he refers to is where the numb nuts in Canada legalised bestiality.... as long as there was no penetration.

[tute]

I have been rereading some of the old boards. There was a poster of times past who made a rather despairing departing comment, "I can no longer stomach the meaningless crap that dominates this site"

Ah well.... boo hoo! I did not particularly have a stomach for diesel fumes either. We obviously did not have like minds, but it is hardly a cause to chuck the toys from the pram.

..........................................................................................



Blogging as a fine art


This piece was first published at Quadrant Online.

In days gone by individuals of like mind might have met up at the pub and had an evening of fine companionship. This companionship would have consisted of people coming and going, of shouting and debating, disputing facts and comments, changing the subject, reminiscing about the good old days and so on. All up a somewhat chaotic environment with its own mores and habits that might bewilder the outside observer and even repulse that observer.

It used to be the coffee house; it is now the blog.

Rather than meet in the pub or in someone’s lounge room people can now meet on the internet. To be sure meeting on the internet is still considered somewhat disreputable. But those who would use the internet for unsavoury purposes hide their activities; while blogging is a very public activity. Bloggers reveal their thoughts and opinions for the whole world to see. While the use of pseudonyms is rife, the characters and personality of individuals is often well known and understood by fellow bloggers.

What isn’t well appreciated is that blogging is a very liberal activity and a very social activity too. It may not appear to be very social to one’s immediate family as the blogger is often at the computer; yet the blogger is not alone, the blogger is not off in their own imagination, the blogger is participating in the great conversation of humanity. To my way of thinking blogging is an Oakeshottian conversation.

Michael Oakeshott should be well-known to Quadrant readers. To remind ourselves, he is probably the greatest English language philosopher of the twentieth century. His finest work is collected in his ‘Rationalism in politics and other essays’ – the new and expanded edition was published by Liberty Fund in 1991. The final essay in that collection sets out Oakeshott’s thought and approach to ‘the conversation of mankind’. He tells us ‘Conversation is not an enterprise designed to yield an extrinsic profit, a contest where a winner gets a prize, nor is it an activity of exegesis; it is an unrehearsed intellectual adventure’.

Blogging is very much an intellectual adventure. If the conversation is Oakeshottian, the adventure is Hayekian. Friedrich von Hayek has gained a certain notoriety in Australia – being Kevin Rudd’s neo-liberal whipping boy. Hayek suggests that knowledge is not concentrated or integrated but rather exists ‘as the dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all individuals possess’. Prices and markets serve to coordinate those bits of dispersed knowledge in our economic lives, but it is conversation that ‘distinguishes the human being from the animal and the civilised man from the barbarian’ (Oakeshott).

Some readers might baulk at my lofty descriptions of blogging vis-à-vis the rudeness, sarcasm and indecency that they may observe in the blogosphere. Indeed Catallaxyfiles where I blog is often singled out as being particularly nasty. Many of those making that claim, however, are social democrats who are simply not used to being challenged by articulate, educated and intelligent individuals. They live in world where disagreement with their ideals can only be due to corruption or stupidity.

To be fair, that isn’t the entire explanation. Blogging may be a conversation but it is not genteel. It is robust; it is frank. Just as markets can be a bazaar so a conversation can be a cacophony. It is well documented that individuals can be more aggressive online than in real life; but, on the flip side, they can also be more considered, more eloquent – and, with the ability to link to other sites on the web, they can back up their arguments with evidence.

So to reject the legitimacy of conversation on the basis of tone is to place form above substance.

There is a difference to Oakeshott’s definition of a conversation. True, ‘nobody asks where they have come from or on what authority they are present’ but there is an arbiter. Individuals commenting on a blog do so in a very public way, yet they’re in the blogger’s private property. You shouldn’t say something on a blog that you wouldn’t say in someone’s lounge.

The arbiter, however, has little control beyond setting the broad parameters of conversation. For example, many visitors to blogs are ‘lurkers’, they read but never participate. Many threads are still-born; the regular commentators don’t wish to discuss that issue. Many threads get side-tracked; the commentators go off on a tangent to the original post. Some threads are derailed; the conversation degenerates into abuse and calumny. Of course, it is important to recognise that blogging and conversation is a process and not an outcome.

Just as conversation began in the primeval forests it now continues in cyberspace. The converse is our inheritance as human beings. Technology is moving to reduce the barriers and costs of conversation and so we can expect more conversation not less.

[cster]

Well I have managed to shrink down your earlier post to 6 pages and printed them to read out in the shed away from all the annoyances here.
Quite a read. Donte' Quite a read.

[cster]

Tute, where exactly is the Bloggosphere, So I can go read some of these things. All I've got is the websites I visit and have been doing that for 15 odd years so much of what you write about, I've not dealt with.

I have jumped from pillar to post in many things but don't really know squat about the bloggers.

[forge]

Very interesting dissertation on Something! Here is one of mine on Something Else:
++HOW TO WRITE A DOCTORAL DISSERTATION IN PHILOSOPHY
You were admitted to graduate school, you have completed all of the preliminary requirements for the Ph. D., you are now what Americans call ABD ["all but the dissertation"], and the time has come to write your dissertation. What do you do? How do you do it? Will you ever manage to finish it? Do not panic. Doctor Bob is here to answer your questions.

First of all, What is a doctoral dissertation? In theory, a doctoral dissertation is a masterwork, which is to say a work by an apprentice in a Guild that is presented to a committee of the Masters of that Guild as evidence that the apprentice is ready to be included in their company. It is a finely wrought silver bowl, if you are an apprentice Silversmith, or an elegant pair of lady's slippers, if you are an apprentice Shoemaker. The Academy is the last medieval Guild, so a doctoral dissertation is a piece of scholarship judged good enough by a committee of Master academics to admit you to their company. Or that is the story we tell each other on cold nights. The truth is somewhat less exalted.

In Microbiology or Anthropology or History, a doctoral dissertation is a research report, which is to say a report, in stylized form, of research that the candidate has been carrying out under the guidance of a Director. In Philosophy, a dissertation is The Defense of a Thesis. [That is why a dissertation is referred to familiarly as a thesis.]

What is a thesis? It is a proposition, expressed in a declarative sentence. Here are some examples of theses:

Contrary to popular opinion, David Hume and Immanuel Kant have almost identical views on the role of the mind in empirical knowledge. [This is the thesis of my doctoral dissertation]

God is dead.

God is not dead; he has just been on vacation.

In all situations, I am morally obliged to choose the act that will produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.

Here are some examples of things that are not theses:

Kant and Hume on the role of the mind in empirical knowledge

Nietzsche's view of religion

Act utilitarianism

Each of these is a topic, not a thesis. You cannot write a dissertation defending a topic.

Some theses in Philosophy are historical. For example, here is an historical thesis about American academic philosophy:

With the notable exception of Pragmatism, every school of philosophy that has held sway for a while in American academic circles has been an import from Europe, arriving just about when the practitioners of the previous school are getting tenure, with the result that American academic philosophy resembles an alluvial river bed in which now extinct species are preserved as fossils in layers of sedimentary rock.

In order to write a dissertation, you must be prepared to defend a thesis. If you cannot state the thesis of your dissertation in a single declarative sentence, you are not ready to write. Do not make the mistake of thinking that if you begin writing, your thesis will become clear eventually That way lies disaster. You ought to be able to begin your dissertation with the sentence, "In this dissertation, I shall defend the thesis that p." You should then be able to conclude your dissertation with this sentence: "Thus we see that p."

What should you do if, midway through the writing of your dissertation, you conclude that you are wrong? In Microbiology or Anthropology or History, that can require a great deal of re-writing, or even the selection of a new thesis. In Philosophy, this problem can be handled by inserting six words into the statement of your thesis in the first sentence of the dissertation. Instead of "In this dissertation I shall defend the thesis that p," you write "In this dissertation I shall defend the thesis that it is not the case that p." No one will care. What do you do if someone publishes first? Give her a footnote.

Now you are ready to start writing. A doctoral dissertation in philosophy is a story. It is the story of an argument. Like all stories, it has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and like all good stories, it only includes what is essential to the story. Since this is actually the most important thing I am going to say, let me start a new paragraph and expand on it a bit.

Suppose you are called on to tell the story of Jack and the Beanstalk to a little group of very smart children. [If you do not know this folk tale, substitute one from your own culture. The point is universal.] You would not begin by saying, "And so Jack climbed the beanstalk." The kids would yell, "Who is Jack? Where did the beanstalk come from?" And you would not put in little bits of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, even if you knew that story really, really well. All of us know how to tell a story -- we know that we should tell our listeners, at each stage of the story, just what they need to know at that stage to follow the story line. Never mind about foreshadowing and the non-omniscient narrator and all that stuff. When you are telling a seven year old the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, you do not drop in an obscure allusion to singing harps or speak darkly of Oedipal rages. You just tell the story. As a story teller, you know four crucial things: First, where the story begins. Second, where it ends. Third, what has to be included so that the story makes sense to the listener. And Fourth, what is not needed, and therefore should be left out.

As the writer of a dissertation defending a thesis, you need to know the same four things. In preparation for writing your dissertation, you may have done a great deal of reading, and you may even have written various fragments in which you sketched out an argument. Now, you are writing your dissertation, and since you have your reading notes and those fragments on your computer [or your telephone, or your class ring, or whatever], you figure, Waste not, Want not, I will incorporate them into the dissertation. Wrong! If they are not a part of the story, they have no business being there. Set them aside and publish an article some time, but do not cram them into your dissertation.

If you are like me, and work in your head, then you should be telling the story to yourself over and over again until you know every step of it and have filled in all the blanks and worked out all the kinks. If you do not work in your head, then buy a friend a beer, sit her down, and tell her the story of your dissertation. Ask her to stop you whenever she gets lost or cannot see how you got Jack up that beanstalk.

The very first thing you must tell your friend [or yourself] is the thesis of your dissertation. Don't tell her the topic and then wave your hands and, as they say these days, gesture at the thesis [God, I hate that locution.] State the thesis in a declarative sentence. If you cannot do that, then no matter how charming you are, and how much beer you ply your friend with, you are not ready to write your dissertation.

So, you have your thesis, you have your story line, you can tell yourself or a friend the whole argument from start to finish, and the time has come to actually write the damned thing. Herewith some important and valuable pieces of advice:
1. It does not matter a very great deal whether your dissertation is brilliant, and it matters not at all whether it is true. What matters is that it is. In fifty years, I have seen many students fail to get the doctorate because they did not complete their dissertations. I have never seen a student complete a dissertation and fail to get the Ph. D. If you write it, the Ph. D. will come.

2. An American dissertation in Philosophy should be about 200 to 250 pages long, and have five or six chapters. That is a very big pile of chopped chicken liver. But you have been writing seminar papers and term papers all your adult life, and you are good at it. Otherwise you would not be an advanced doctoral student. You can do this. Trust me.

3. A dissertation is quite unlike a book. When you write a book, you do not know whom the audience will be. You just put it out there and hope it finds readers. But when you write a dissertation [in America -- it may be different elsewhere], you know who the members of your committee are before you start to write. So you are writing for a small and pre-determined audience. Now, the members of your committee are also philosophers, which means they are compulsive arguers, so if you say the sun rises in the east, at least one of them will take issue with you. But unless they are total pigs [which happens, alas -- try to make sure that your dissertation director keeps the total pigs in the department off your committee, and for God's sake, do not choose a total pig as a director], they would like to approve the dissertation. This means that you have to give them something they can sign off on even if they think your thesis is false. What to do? After stating and explaining your thesis in Chapter One, you devote Chapter Two to a survey and critique of the literature. This contributes nothing at all to the story. It is like interpolating a discourse on beanstalks and giants into Jack and the beanstalk after you have introduced Jack and his mother. This just slows down the story, but it gives your readers something to nod their heads at approvingly. Needless to say, if a member of your committee has written something on the topic of your dissertation, be sure to mention it.

4. The same thing goes for footnotes. I rarely put footnotes in what I write. In the first place, if something is part of the story I am telling, it should be in the body of the text, and if it is not, it has no business being there. Besides, I can never figure out how to use the footnote function in my word processing program. But dissertation committees love footnotes, so put them in. Nobody will read them, but everyone will look at the bottom of the page to see whether they are there. Also, number them consecutively so they can see how many you have.

5. Before you write a paragraph of the dissertation, write a chapter by chapter outline of the entire dissertation, with headings and subheadings, all in the precise order of your story. If you cannot do that, then tell the story to yourself or your friend a few more times until you can. Learn to think of the entire dissertation as one connected story.

6. Oh yes, a good piece of advice that my dissertation director, Roderick Firth, gave to me in the early Fall of 1955. If you manage to say something original, be sure to call attention to that fact in a footnote, so that your committee can give you credit for it. Otherwise, they probably won't know, sine you undoubtedly know more about your topic than they do.

And now, at long last, you are ready to write. Here is what I very strongly suggest: Start on Page 1, with the sentence, "In this dissertation, I shall defend the thesis that p." [Substitute your thesis for "p" of course.] Then start telling your story. On the first day, write one page and stop. The next day, write another page, and stop. if you do that every day, including Sundays and holidays, in eight months you will have a dissertation. If you are able to, write two pages a day. In that case, you will have a dissertation in four months.

Be patient. You are telling a long story. In your head are really nifty bits of argument that you are eager to get to, but do not rush. Tell the story as fully and clearly as you can, confident that your readers will still be there when you get to page 50, page 100, and page 200. [They have to be -- they are sitting on your dissertation committee. They are a captive audience.]

Do not, I repeat do not, rewrite. If you wrote a bad page yesterday, write a better page today. Remember, your goal is to finish the damned thing. You can polish after you get tenure. Also, do not write four or five pages on a really good day and then figure you can take a few days off. Those few days will stretch into eternity. You are a tortoise, not a hare. Slow and steady wins the race.

If you do not have the discipline to write a page a day all by yourself, cut a deal with a fellow dissertation writer. You will send her a page a day by email, and she will send you a page of her dissertation every day by email. You will read her page [it only takes a minute] and send back an encouraging word, and she will do the same for you.

And that is it.
Hope you DO like IT!! Let me know!!

Forge

[forge]

@

[buzz]

Aug 6, 2017 5:45:21 GMT 10 forge said:

@

Great article Forge...very informative.

[cster]

F-FuF-FuF-Fairgo Forge, who amongst us wants to write a DISSERTATION? I mean we'd just use other people's words. Might we be better off chasing up the Ethos and Logos of our being first.

Did you find your words in one of them Bloggosphere's?

Probably more than one of them are there just to shatter my opinion of my self no??

I am truth, just have to remove the four hundred tonne of timber I've put up as facades.

Hang on blinding flash, maybe I should just go look for words written by Jordan Peterson rather then delve into the hundred or so video's he's posted in the hope of finding the right one.

Cster in need of a siesta

[tute]

The bloggosphere contains what ever blog may turn your crank Cster. The likes of Facebook, Twitter etc and even here at Proboards they are all derivatives of net activity that in my book qualify as blogs. Though Face book, Twitter etc are examples of extremes in blog activity.

I regularly peruse ten or so selective online World newspapers. Russia Today, Al Jazeera, The American Thinker, New Matilda…to name a few. They may or may not have blogs attached, though you will find it can lead to further activity should you desire to follow a journalist therein that advertises his/her private website.

Personally, I have acquired, then condensed my blog sites to a list of a dozen or so favourites. Occasionally I broaden my horizons. Adding or subtracting to my list depending on my grumpy mood swings.
The site we use here has become habit, it suits me for being able to converse with a small versatile cross section of guys, its also a site one feels at home in. The rules of blogging apply… Don’t get too serious.

If you are into politics Cster the ‘Catallaxy Files’ is a top site and representative of alternative views. ’The Quadrant Online’ is top of the line and a serious site for libertarians…. Tony Abbot is a contributor. Pickering Post can also get hot but has more Facebook styled respondents. XYZ is also a paper of variable view. Those are a few I enjoy.

There are many sites that have subject specialities of interest that normally contain like minded folk who prefer smooth and familiar ground. As you are aware Metaphysics and Spirituality are my interest but I do not follow any particular sites in that respect…. I just let them find me. Seems to work OK.

[donte]

Hmmmm.... Like Cster I will need to sleep on that one Forge......

Well..... after a sound and rest full five minutes of shuteye, I must give you credit in providing to us such authentic material for our consideration.  Can we now expect more from Professor Forge of the Pampas University.

Footnotes:

1. Love your work ?  

   

[forge]

Aug 6, 2017 17:18:13 GMT 10 cster said:

++I am truth, just have to remove the four hundred tonne of timber I've put up as facades.++

++Hang on blinding flash, maybe I should just go look for words written by Jordan Peterson rather then delve into the hundred or so video's he's posted in the hope of finding the right one.++

Cster in need of a siesta

I don't have a facade...I burn IT (the facade) to keep the house warm in winter!
 I haven't got a clue on: who wrote the "dissertation or the meaning of it"...if there is any!! I can't produce mastodonic, endless & meaningless posts.  To be part of the Intelligentsia I do Copy & Paste...after all, who is going to read the attacks of verbal diahrroea!??!

Forge

[donte]

Whilst we do not answer every post Forge it does not mean we don't read them. Though some of the diarrhoea gets on the nose occasionally.... but then... to each his own  

[cster]

Now ya see I've always thought it was Verbal incontinence we suffered from, surely we're just a little bit Pissy at times? But diahrrea sort of suggests we've become a little bit Shittinski as well. Once again that might get on the nose

[Sediba]

One year ago today:

Mar 16, 2017 7:51:28 GMT 10 donte said:

the Tesla shyster genius who thrives on lies and subsidies.

Actually this is one of your failed prophecies. I see Tesla cars around everywhere. Silent, extremely fast at take-off, and proven to run much more efficiently than any similar vehicle, and with a lower carbon footprint. You're gunna need to backtrack, erase, and replace with a humble apology every-where-in-every-post where you wrongfully slandered this guy.


But then you never were a player who chips out of the rough back onto the fairway, were you? You'd rather bash your way forward thru the trees than lower pride.