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Category Archives: Philosophy

FTAC: Reflection on the Political Power of the World Wide Web in America 14 Years After the General Uptake of ‘Broadband Internet’

09 Saturday Jan 2021

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, North America, Philosophy, Political Psychology, United States of America

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Absolutism v Democracy, medieval v modern, New American Anti-Totalitarianism, Responsible American Freedom

I don’t really want to introduce this lift of my own words 🙂 because it’s telegraphed well as is. Let’s try this that way.

From the Awesome Conversation


The World Wide Web is in civilizational terms still a new communications technology, and about 14 years ago, broadband and the advent of powerful search engines and networks made it an ideal tool for political friends and enemies alike. Here is the program of one of our enemies — https://conflict-backchannels.com/2020/02/13/active-measures/ Another term (on which I haven’t worked): “Hybrid Warfare”.

I try to sustain our broadest American Freedom of Speech character across partisan lines, but we must be aware — or become aware — of sophisticated agitprop, disinformation, disingenuous information, etc. across partisan lines. The vast majority here are Americans whether Democratic or Republicans. We work things out. We don’t choke down political language or presentations without critical facility of our own and an immense treasure in research capability.

The BackChannels blog is mine and represents probably the most consistently semi-productive thing I’ve been doing for about a decade.

I would view the former politically correct fascists on campus and the emerged Far White Right in Charlottesville as projects that have simmered beneath the former political surface and simply amplified and coalesced their national political presence by way of both surface and “dark web” social channels. They’re the “violent radicals” of our day and most of us should want to repopulate the positions around the aisle.

We have had enough bullying from extremists Far Out Left and Far White Right.


Additional Comment

Unlike our Russian counterparts who cannot today choose between lives in a modern and vibrant authentic democracy, Americans may choose at this time to live with modern demand for integrity and responsibility in their speech and thereby inhabit an authentically modern and revolutionary ever new world.

###

Open Query on the Meaning and Purpose of Immense Wealth

26 Saturday Dec 2020

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Philosophy

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Philosophy of Power, Philosophy of Wealth

One cannot propose following the Chatham House Rule on a public blog that hasn’t walls but for the defense of civil verbal behavior, but if I could, I should like to hear from those more than comfortable with affluence and wealth plus the beauty, freedom, leadership, and leisure known to the world’s post-medieval modern upper (way upper) class.

I offer questions.


What do the wealthy want?

What is reward or rewarding way up there in the stratosphere?

If I were to meet in Davos one of the Masters of the Business and Finance Universe, what would we talk about?

How would the conversation sound?

What would it be about?

Where would it be going?


Perhaps this post will disappear into the immediate Internet past to the sounds of the studiously silent.

Perhaps not.

###

Conscience

08 Tuesday Dec 2020

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Philosophy, Political Psychology

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Conscience and Politics

I’ve thought here to mash up a post about conscience, which is to me a mysterious part of our universal human evolution: whether or not we like it, we’re more generally good — good hearted, good natured, helpful, kind by way of empathy and sympathy, lawful and respectful with a basis for both in simple transactional psychology.

Down the left side of this blog are epigrammatic statements that have most to do with the grooming of strongly good global cultural psychology. Authoritarianism, despotism, excessive egoism, and tyranny are on the outs while consideration, cooperation, and thoughtfulness are greatly — and universally — desired. Here are two quotations of quotations from the BackChannels sidebar —

Talmud 7:16 as Quoted by Rishon Rishon in 2004
Qohelet Raba, 7:16

אכזרי סוף שנעשה אכזרי במקום רחמן

Kol mi shena`asa rahaman bimqom akhzari Sof shena`asa akhzari bimqom rahaman

All who are made to be compassionate in the place of the cruel In the end are made to be cruel in the place of the compassionate.

More colloquially translated: “Those who are kind to the cruel, in the end will be cruel to the kind.”

Online Source: http://www.rishon-rishon.com/archives/044412.php


Hillel the Elder

“That which is distasteful to thee do not do to another. That is the whole of Torah. The rest is commentary. Now go and study.”

“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? If not now, when?”

“Whosoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whosoever that saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.”


If you’re on this post, there’s a reason for it. Consider taking a moment to read what I’ve selected from Oriana Fallaci, Abraham Isaac Kook, Heinrich Heine, Simon Wiesenthal, Douglas Adams, Thucydides, Milan Kundera, Malala Yousafzai, and a briefly met online friend, Tanit Nima Tinat.


Published by W. W. Norton & Company, 2019.

Here is the lead from a review in Vox (July 8, 2019) by Sigal Samuel —

Patricia Churchland is a neurophilosopher. That’s a fancy way of saying she studies new brain science, old philosophical questions, and how they shed light on each other.

For years, she’s been bothered by one question in particular: How did humans come to feel empathy and other moral intuitions? What’s the origin of that nagging little voice that we call our conscience?

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/7/8/20681558/conscience-patricia-churchland-neuroscience-morality-empathy-philosophy

Patricia Churchland’s online presence lives here: https://patriciachurchland.com/ .

When we’re not so good — from naughty to sinful to heinous to unspeakable — we know why as greed, lust, and vanity account both for our indulgences and peccadilloes as well as many conflicts and crimes with the exception of earnest and necessary struggles against the despot and the totalitarian.

Why be good (for goodness sake)?

Conscience.

Why conscience?

I shall have to read Churchland’s book (which will be on my Kindle a minute after publishing this piece).


As small ideas and pieces come to me, I may add them to this post that drives to the core of differences between the worlds of medieval political absolutism and the far preferred modern experiences of human dignity and freedom — beyond those two may reside the Orwellian horrors of the bureaucratically and technologically capable totalitarian state headed up by thugs. For that, have a start-here look at China.

###

Book: Quick Quote: _The Twilight of Democracy_ by Anne Applebaum

19 Thursday Nov 2020

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Books, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, North America, Philosophy, Political Psychology, United States of America

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Anne Applebaum, Book Highlight

In the United States and the United Kingdom, the new right has broken with the old fashioned Burkean small-c conservatism that is suspicious of rapid change in all its forms. Although they hate the phrase, the new right is more Bolshevik than Burkean: these are men and women who want to overthrow, bypass, or undermine existing institutions, to destroy what exists.

Applebaum, Anne. The Twilight of Democracy. New York: Doubleday, 2020.

If you’re feeling at sea with America’s now dramatically confused, polarized, and shifting political landscape, this book may offer a steady deck and a good look around at how we humans have organized ourselves and where forces may be taking us faster than we know.

Related Online

Anne Applebaum.

Applebaum, Anne. “The World is Never Going Back to Normal.” The Atlantic, November 18, 2020.

Wikipedia. “Anne Applebaum”.

–33–

FTAC–More Political Philosophy: A Note on Self-Determination and Freedom

12 Thursday Nov 2020

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Philosophy, Political Psychology

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Futurism and Political Philosophy, Self-Determination and Freedom

All kinds of people are unhappy with Trump’s loss of the American election — valid substantial and outcome-changing complaint has yet to surface in the courts — but none more so than in the camp that has brushed away “Trump-Russia” and now embraced “Biden-China”.

Well, for Trump’s Mob at least, welcome to Orwell’s world.

For everyone else, there may be some questions worth asking for the long-term (because the short-term may be shaping up ugly).

Excerpt From the Awesome Conversation


So to fix everything that has gone wrong since, oh, the 15th Century, you would like to take away self-determination — self-concept; pursuits of autonomy and competence along one’s own selected career and leisure paths; multicultural, multiracial, multi-religious tolerance — and replace that freedom for the person (“pro-choice”) with bureaucratic organization and force. ?

Re. Renmembi (or Ruble): I think the dollar will be fine if or when what’s bothering America finds its way back to integrity.

So-called “secular progressive atheists” comprise but one segment of the nation, but one might suggest that many like the late Christopher Hitchens (“Do you need God to be good?”) may well be forward of our national culture, and no less so than Thomas Paine was forward of his surrounding political culture in his day.

Re. Roe v Wade. I try to stay out of the trap, it has so many thorny questions, but much in its day had to do with coat-hanger abortions, health of the mother, justice in the shadow of rape, and all that. Why do we believe that “back there” is always and somehow (mysteriously) better than forward of the present?

“Capitalism” and “Communism” (and “Socialism”) have become dogma and successful political policy is (or perhaps should have been [the world’s been looking different to me lately]) is a thing well argued and hammered out into cooperation and greater integration across any given unit of geopolitical space.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination_theory

What is the difference between a Free Man and a Slave?

Or a Citizen and a Loyal Subject?


Do most of the world’s political leaders believe that the most awful of medieval horrors (slogan-driven mobs; vast public ignorance; a nobility clouded in the contents of pressed sachets; pestilence for all on the streets; that sort of Monty Pythonesque thing) should be out ahead in our global future, or might some prefer to disagree?

There should be a chat somewhere online about the look of a good global tomorrow.

–33–

America for Sale?

10 Monday Aug 2020

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Philosophy

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COVID-19, Global Debt, Global Economics, Sino-American Relations

How does one go about purchasing the United States of America?

First ruin it.

Give it a bad cold.

Shut it down.

Throw the lesser capitalists out of their own small businesses; throw their employees out of their jobs.

Next: take their your own profits in trade and purchase what the little people couldn’t hold.

It’s a free world, financially speaking, after all.

And funny thing — more and more (of everything – businesses in bankruptcy, related debt, foreclosures, even people) will may be coming up for sale as debt rises and capacity to return both interest and principle diminishes.


Related on BackChannels: “FTAC: COVID-19: The West’s Big Blunder”, May 10, 2020.

Related Online: “China: A loan shark or the good Samaritan?” DW, May 9, 2019; “How much U.S. Debt Does China Own?” Investopedia, Updated January 15, 2020; “The U.S. is About to Vastly Increase Its Debt. That’s a Good Thing” by Neil Irwin for The New York Times, March 27, 2020 —

“One of the primary reasons to be fiscally responsible during periods of economic expansion is to have the capacity to fight downturns or emergencies,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. “This is precisely the kind of moment, where borrowing is warranted and necessary, that we should have been preparing for over the past years.”


Even if the Big Picture looks good, the financial suffering attending the country’s COVID-19 response and related response to that on the street may nonetheless continue degrading productivity and the sustaining of wealth in short order. One may wonder with what might be coming whether the complacent “we shall see” really hacks it for the public.

–33–

FTAC: The Briefest Comment on Epistemology and the Perception of Public Events and Issues

15 Monday Jun 2020

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, A Little Wisdom, Epistemology, Philosophy, Political Psychology

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Empiricism & Policy


“We are going to destroy each other and this country based on raw emotion, public opinion, media distortion, fake news, false narratives and unverified video and allegations.”

Amen.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/

Disciplined observation with integrity accompanied by empathy, logic, and reason may be more difficult than casually imagined, but those are the best tools we have for defining issues and answering with appropriate and progressive policy.

The Stanford philosophizing referenced above may not lead to the most cogent or helpful of references for approaching legal or policy issues, but for those two regions, any may start with the idea that mere perception is not reality, and it is generally good to investigate how things really work when on the way to making decisions or plans pertaining to them.


Peel the onion; turn over the rock; have another look; put it to a test — language has many cliches and tropes related to investigation and the methods of arriving at conclusions — “truths” one might call them — in which one might have confidence on the basis of other than ambitions, agendas, pleasant delusions, and personal interests.

–33–

FTAC: One More Thing Regarding Our Expectations About Politicians

28 Thursday May 2020

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Philosophy, Political Psychology

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We wouldn’t be here sick — and sick about being sick — as well as dependent on our government for bailouts and tide-me-overs and driven apart, largely by drivel, were it not for the mediocrity of some of our most powerful politicians.

On Facebook, I just ran a series of Trump Authoritarian pieces from the Mainstream Media that also informs us about Trump’s popular — or not so popular — image. These were the URLs (in order of posting):


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/05/28/trump-has-told-16000-lies-now-hes-trying-silence-those-who-correct-him/ – 5/28/2020

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/05/28/trump-social-media-executive-order/ – 5/28/2020

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/libel-trump-new-york-times/ – 2/27/2020

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/donald-trump-vs-the-first-amendment/ – 1/18/2017

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/05/trump-infuriated-by-twitter-fact-check-goes-full-authoritarian-executive-order – 5/28/2020

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/26/trump-is-an-authoritarian-weakman-149573 – 3/26/2020


Like no other President in history, Trump has so inspired quintessential American passion in his own opposition that even when he strives to do the right thing and speak honestly (as I believe he has with COVID-19), he’s neither believed nor trusted. 😦

HE (Caps intentional) has brought this on himself, and we — all of us who are part of the American constituency and who have lived beneath the umbrella of our extraordinary humanist and secular Constitution all of our lives — deserve much, much better.

From the Awesome Conversation

BC’s Note:

Of course I scan and cherry pick these pieces for whoever may be around to glimpse history as it passes from the present.

IMHO, Americans — all of US — need a new class of earnest, high-integrity, honest local and state leaders and statesmen. This bouncing between peacocks – some criminal and shady; some living between The People and the upper stratosphere of power and wealth – where does that leave us?

Today we have a Far Out Left apparently incapable of digesting and independently analyzing CDC data, and as consequence we have the hijab of health fascism with few to zero lives saved in a pandemic that largely mirrors our own popular contempt for our common fate — death is immutable — and to some extent our own health (as we drink and eat too much and stay up too late). 🙂 COVID-19 takes advantage of our vulnerabilities and, perhaps, our passivity. (Do you want to fight back for real: pay attention to diet and go jogging, and, toward the end, accept ageing and increasing frailty as part of your humanity).

Regarding too many politicians, their narcissism and related nepotism and complete loss of personal and public ethics and principles: shame on them — and shame on us for letting them get away with what they do!


The arch note has come to mind: “Democracies elect the governments they deserve.”

Is all of this — from the “Helsinki Moment” to so riven a society it seems unable to remember its own mission in the world, its sense of itself, its better expression of the western civilizational ethos — what we — all of us — have come to deserve?

Related on BackChannels

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/02/02/united-states-of-america-basic-training/ (Timeless)

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2020/05/19/covid-19-enslavement-through-peonage/ – 5/19/2020

Is it too much to ask to want to walk the streets in freedom, generally good security, and some pizza money for family or self?

Thank back on feudalism and the unquestionable character of the powerful and powerfully greedy and thoughtless.

I don’t want to live “back there”.

I hope you don’t either.

–33–

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  • FTAC: A Quick Comment on the Social Networks and Information Traps
  • Trump and the Question of Insurrection
  • FTAC: Reflection on the Political Power of the World Wide Web in America 14 Years After the General Uptake of ‘Broadband Internet’
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Epigram

Hillel the Elder

"That which is distasteful to thee do not do to another. That is the whole of Torah. The rest is commentary. Now go and study."

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? If not now, when?"

"Whosoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whosoever that saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world."

Oriana Fallaci
"Whether it comes from a despotic sovereign or an elected president, from a murderous general or a beloved leader, I see power as an inhuman and hateful phenomenon...I have always looked on disobedience toward the oppressive as the only way to use the miracle of having been born."

Talmud 7:16 as Quoted by Rishon Rishon in 2004
Qohelet Raba, 7:16

אכזרי סוף שנעשה אכזרי במקום רחמן

Kol mi shena`asa rahaman bimqom akhzari Sof shena`asa akhzari bimqom rahaman

All who are made to be compassionate in the place of the cruel In the end are made to be cruel in the place of the compassionate.

More colloquially translated: "Those who are kind to the cruel, in the end will be cruel to the kind."

Online Source: http://www.rishon-rishon.com/archives/044412.php

Abraham Isaac Kook

"The purely righteous do not complain about evil, rather they add justice.They do not complain about heresy, rather they add faith.They do not complain about ignorance, rather they add wisdom." From the pages of Arpilei Tohar.

Heinrich Heine
"Where books are burned, in the end people will be burned." -- From Almansor: A Tragedy (1823).

Simon Wiesenthal
Remark Made in the Ballroom of the Imperial Hotel, Vienna, Austria on the occasion of His 90th Birthday: "The Nazis are no more, but we are still here, singing and dancing."

Maimonides
"Truth does not become more true if the whole world were to accept it; nor does it become less true if the whole world were to reject it."

"The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision."

Douglas Adams
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" Epigram appearing in the dedication of Richard Dawkins' The GOD Delusion.

Thucydides
"The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools."

Milan Kundera
"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

Malala Yousafzai
“The terrorists thought that they would change our aims and stop our ambitions but nothing changed in my life except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born.”

Tanit Nima Tinat
"Who could die of love?"

What I Have Said About the Jews

My people, not that I speak for them, I nonetheless describe as a "global ethnic commune with its heart in Jerusalem and soul in the Land of Israel."

We have never given up on God, nor have we ever given up on one another.

Many things we have given up, but no one misses, say, animal sacrifice, and as many things we have kept, so we have still to welcome our Sabbath on Friday at sunset and to rest all of Saturday until three stars appear in the sky.

Most of all, through 5,773 years, wherever life has taken us, through the greatest triumphs and the most awful tragedies, we have preserved our tribal identity and soul, and so shall we continue eternally.

Anti-Semitism / Anti-Zionism = Signal of Fascism

I may suggest that anti-Zionism / anti-Semitism are signal (a little bit) of fascist urges, and the Left -- I'm an old liberal: I know my heart -- has been vulnerable to manipulation by what appears to me as a "Red Brown Green Alliance" driven by a handful of powerful autocrats intent on sustaining a medieval worldview in service to their own glorification. (And there I will stop).
One hopes for knowledge to allay fear; one hopes for love to overmatch hate.

Too often, the security found in the parroting of a loyal lie outweighs the integrity to be earned in confronting and voicing an uncomfortable truth.

Those who make their followers believe absurdities may also make them commit atrocities.

Positively Orwellian: Comment Responding to Claim that the Arab Assault on Israel in 1948 Had Not Intended Annihilation

“Revisionism” is the most contemptible path that power takes to abet theft and hide shame by attempting to alter public perception of past events.

On Press Freedom, Commentary, and Journalism

In the free world, talent -- editors, graphic artists, researchers, writers -- gravitate toward the organizations that suit their interests and values. The result: high integrity and highly reliable reportage and both responsible and thoughtful reasoning.

This is not to suggest that partisan presses don't exist or that propaganda doesn't exist in the west, but any reader possessed of critical thinking ability and genuine independence -- not bought, not programmed -- is certainly free to evaluate the works of earnest reporters and scholars.

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