Great food for thought. I just wish we lived in less than corrupt and narcissistic times. I do not blame the breakdown of America on our forefathers who through grit, survival and optimism created a government and society that worked well helping us advance through the Civil War and two World Wars. I blame the corruption and lack of cohesion on Global Marxism and narcissistic psychopathology this ideology needs to flourish. I blame the terroristic style strategies and the breakdown of moral and family using strategies needed to rule and control. We were blessed to live under the influence of men and women who could read, think, moralize and build. Who were willing to sacrifice their lives for a better future for others. The evil and corruption wrought by the thinking of one stupid, lazy and immoral man is mind numbing. The road to serfdom is paved by his ability to invert what he personally ultimately morally was bankrupt in; Innovation, hard work, creativity and building a prosperous future. The road to serfdom is paved by sloth and laziness. This was the only way Marx knew how to live and then justified it by tearing down a society that achieved what he was unable to achieve.
Do you just make shit up as you go along? Good grief. You’re so pedantic and it’s so obvious. That’s okay. Keep working on it and one of these days you’ll actually start making sense. I hope soon.
Such non sensical mumbo jumbo. The guy was a bum, lived and died a bum. He didn’t take responsibility for anything and inverted everything good, truthful and beautiful. He used his life to resurrect Lucifer and his philosophy has been a scourge on humanity. This is not projection, this is fact.
Look Elon Musk calls reporters NPC's. That is a critique of Marx if you will in so far as he was also a reporter. So there is something about being a reporter that is NPC or passive. In the same way the judge(or the professional version of the impartial spectator) is even more removed from the arena than the lawyer, and the clients are the active fighters. Marx has a philosophical method for judging and a somewhat activist legal side. But technically the achievements of the demands of the communist manifesto were probably Christian or a product of a sort of democratic movement pace deToqueville or Lincoln. Also Tocqueville says and I think Marx agreed that outside of Aristocracy or in Democracy it is hard to "pin" down a great man as the cause of sociological change. Arguably if Marx "resurrected lucifer" you are speaking liberation theology or writing your own fictional account.
One would only project that on Marx if one was a child and he was emblematic of being an "existential adult". At least some of the "existential adults" would question your theory of proximate cause with respect to Marx. "narcissistic psychopathology" is just a modern buzz word for childish selfishness or a really strong ego. Natural Law will still take care of this, unless the person is extremely wealthy. If the person is wealthy, relatively intelligent has a few virtues and still has narcissistic psychopathology they will actually get mugged by lawyers constantly. If they manage to get all of their lawyers disbarred or otherwise corrupt them then they can become president of the United States. Is it Global Marxism/Socialism(Karl Marx conjured on a Ouija board by a solitary ageing Senator from Vermont), or "Casino Capitalism" (A surveillance state+ rigged/house edge games of chance). Interestingly both the Ouija board and Boardwalk(Monopoly) are teenage games sold by Hasbro. If your ego or selfishness not correctly understood is strong enough you will find plenty of children to elect you and also plenty of system and even "existential adults" to pitch you a mash of policy.
Gordon Wood and others might wonder at your (or Tocqueville') characterization of the American Republic as a tabula rasa. There was, they might point out, this very deep and very long history as a British colony steeped in British culture and customs. Did the Revolution sweep all of it away, they would probably ask?
This is an exceptionally good article. Presented in this fashion the defense of Tocqueville, or perhaps the accusation against him, is that he takes what is somewhat by nature and "clothes it". That is the strength of Tocqueville could simply be a sort of "childhood" into a sort of "adulthood". Some worry that the America we have today politically at least is essentially a peak "high school" vs. a peak "college".
"By suggesting that self-interest is only “well understood” and good when it serves the interests of others, Tocqueville implicitly accepts the traditional moral premise that service to others is the highest moral good and the standard of moral evaluation."
Maybe but an equally cheeky take would be: The customer is always right. Thus moral evaluation is reduced to what someone might pay for it. Equality holds that the subjectivity of self and the subjectivity of others can be "well understood" simultaneously. That is in early American democracy or Capitalism, man is both a producer and a consumer.
"In Tocqueville’s view, the individual’s interest is validated only insofar as it aligns with the interest of the group. In other words, Tocqueville has constructed a moral half-way house between selfishness and selflessness. To change the metaphor, the Frenchman is attempting to smuggle the moral philosophy of self-sacrifice through the back door of self-interest."
Unclear about the metaphor: the word "smuggle" only has a negative connotation if one accepts the goodness of a nation state or a large collective body that might have a Coast Guard or a lot of ICE agents. Arguably "smuggling" something is in fact pure free-trade. What sort of tariff or stamp act do you want to charge the Frenchman for such "smuggling"? Odd change of metaphor.
"From this banal state of existence would arise, Tocqueville feared, “an immense tutelary power” that would seek to take “charge of assuring” men of “their enjoyments and watching over their fate.” This soft, enervating despotism would resemble a form of “paternal power” that does not prepare “men for manhood,” but instead seeks to keep them in a state of perpetual “childhood.” This new form of despotism would willingly work “for their happiness; but it wants to be the unique agent and sole arbiter of that; it provides for their security, foresees and secures their needs, facilitates their pleasures, conducts their principal affairs, directs their industry, regulates their estates, [and] divides their inheritances.” Ironically, democratic individualism, once birthed in freedom, now slowly turned over its freedom to think, choose, and act to the faceless and always-scolding bureaucratic Nanny State."
Alternative explanations exist, also wouldn't this be "maternal power"? Aristotle says man acquires and woman preserves. So the metaphors of child and adult or man/woman, come about from an Administrative State that preserves. That is secular(in a 100 year or long term horizon sense). That is self-interest that is far-seeing is itself enough to create a bureaucracy(or corporation), and it would create such a bureaucracy for men/children who are born tabula rasa. Dividing inheritances=trusts. The Nanny State is a sort of trustee. For the most part we wander around in the rose colored glasses of being habituated as children, only touching upon a sort of existential adulthood as a tangent if at all. The Administrative State or the idea of the Judge/impartial spectator in Adam Smith is not really the "active" or child energy part. The acquisitive man/child (Ego) of selfishness with its childlike pretensions to knowledge power and personal importance vs. the existentially adult(which may not even be a life in being, or only allegorically one.) Note that we all sort of know that almost no member of congress that we can elect(talking democracy again?) is much more than a "child" or "teenager" with respect to the vastness of a single administrative agency, and we can't even elect the cabinet members who by comparison are also often childlike.
Great food for thought. I just wish we lived in less than corrupt and narcissistic times. I do not blame the breakdown of America on our forefathers who through grit, survival and optimism created a government and society that worked well helping us advance through the Civil War and two World Wars. I blame the corruption and lack of cohesion on Global Marxism and narcissistic psychopathology this ideology needs to flourish. I blame the terroristic style strategies and the breakdown of moral and family using strategies needed to rule and control. We were blessed to live under the influence of men and women who could read, think, moralize and build. Who were willing to sacrifice their lives for a better future for others. The evil and corruption wrought by the thinking of one stupid, lazy and immoral man is mind numbing. The road to serfdom is paved by his ability to invert what he personally ultimately morally was bankrupt in; Innovation, hard work, creativity and building a prosperous future. The road to serfdom is paved by sloth and laziness. This was the only way Marx knew how to live and then justified it by tearing down a society that achieved what he was unable to achieve.
Do you just make shit up as you go along? Good grief. You’re so pedantic and it’s so obvious. That’s okay. Keep working on it and one of these days you’ll actually start making sense. I hope soon.
Such non sensical mumbo jumbo. The guy was a bum, lived and died a bum. He didn’t take responsibility for anything and inverted everything good, truthful and beautiful. He used his life to resurrect Lucifer and his philosophy has been a scourge on humanity. This is not projection, this is fact.
Look Elon Musk calls reporters NPC's. That is a critique of Marx if you will in so far as he was also a reporter. So there is something about being a reporter that is NPC or passive. In the same way the judge(or the professional version of the impartial spectator) is even more removed from the arena than the lawyer, and the clients are the active fighters. Marx has a philosophical method for judging and a somewhat activist legal side. But technically the achievements of the demands of the communist manifesto were probably Christian or a product of a sort of democratic movement pace deToqueville or Lincoln. Also Tocqueville says and I think Marx agreed that outside of Aristocracy or in Democracy it is hard to "pin" down a great man as the cause of sociological change. Arguably if Marx "resurrected lucifer" you are speaking liberation theology or writing your own fictional account.
One would only project that on Marx if one was a child and he was emblematic of being an "existential adult". At least some of the "existential adults" would question your theory of proximate cause with respect to Marx. "narcissistic psychopathology" is just a modern buzz word for childish selfishness or a really strong ego. Natural Law will still take care of this, unless the person is extremely wealthy. If the person is wealthy, relatively intelligent has a few virtues and still has narcissistic psychopathology they will actually get mugged by lawyers constantly. If they manage to get all of their lawyers disbarred or otherwise corrupt them then they can become president of the United States. Is it Global Marxism/Socialism(Karl Marx conjured on a Ouija board by a solitary ageing Senator from Vermont), or "Casino Capitalism" (A surveillance state+ rigged/house edge games of chance). Interestingly both the Ouija board and Boardwalk(Monopoly) are teenage games sold by Hasbro. If your ego or selfishness not correctly understood is strong enough you will find plenty of children to elect you and also plenty of system and even "existential adults" to pitch you a mash of policy.
Gordon Wood and others might wonder at your (or Tocqueville') characterization of the American Republic as a tabula rasa. There was, they might point out, this very deep and very long history as a British colony steeped in British culture and customs. Did the Revolution sweep all of it away, they would probably ask?
This is an exceptionally good article. Presented in this fashion the defense of Tocqueville, or perhaps the accusation against him, is that he takes what is somewhat by nature and "clothes it". That is the strength of Tocqueville could simply be a sort of "childhood" into a sort of "adulthood". Some worry that the America we have today politically at least is essentially a peak "high school" vs. a peak "college".
"By suggesting that self-interest is only “well understood” and good when it serves the interests of others, Tocqueville implicitly accepts the traditional moral premise that service to others is the highest moral good and the standard of moral evaluation."
Maybe but an equally cheeky take would be: The customer is always right. Thus moral evaluation is reduced to what someone might pay for it. Equality holds that the subjectivity of self and the subjectivity of others can be "well understood" simultaneously. That is in early American democracy or Capitalism, man is both a producer and a consumer.
"In Tocqueville’s view, the individual’s interest is validated only insofar as it aligns with the interest of the group. In other words, Tocqueville has constructed a moral half-way house between selfishness and selflessness. To change the metaphor, the Frenchman is attempting to smuggle the moral philosophy of self-sacrifice through the back door of self-interest."
Unclear about the metaphor: the word "smuggle" only has a negative connotation if one accepts the goodness of a nation state or a large collective body that might have a Coast Guard or a lot of ICE agents. Arguably "smuggling" something is in fact pure free-trade. What sort of tariff or stamp act do you want to charge the Frenchman for such "smuggling"? Odd change of metaphor.
"From this banal state of existence would arise, Tocqueville feared, “an immense tutelary power” that would seek to take “charge of assuring” men of “their enjoyments and watching over their fate.” This soft, enervating despotism would resemble a form of “paternal power” that does not prepare “men for manhood,” but instead seeks to keep them in a state of perpetual “childhood.” This new form of despotism would willingly work “for their happiness; but it wants to be the unique agent and sole arbiter of that; it provides for their security, foresees and secures their needs, facilitates their pleasures, conducts their principal affairs, directs their industry, regulates their estates, [and] divides their inheritances.” Ironically, democratic individualism, once birthed in freedom, now slowly turned over its freedom to think, choose, and act to the faceless and always-scolding bureaucratic Nanny State."
Alternative explanations exist, also wouldn't this be "maternal power"? Aristotle says man acquires and woman preserves. So the metaphors of child and adult or man/woman, come about from an Administrative State that preserves. That is secular(in a 100 year or long term horizon sense). That is self-interest that is far-seeing is itself enough to create a bureaucracy(or corporation), and it would create such a bureaucracy for men/children who are born tabula rasa. Dividing inheritances=trusts. The Nanny State is a sort of trustee. For the most part we wander around in the rose colored glasses of being habituated as children, only touching upon a sort of existential adulthood as a tangent if at all. The Administrative State or the idea of the Judge/impartial spectator in Adam Smith is not really the "active" or child energy part. The acquisitive man/child (Ego) of selfishness with its childlike pretensions to knowledge power and personal importance vs. the existentially adult(which may not even be a life in being, or only allegorically one.) Note that we all sort of know that almost no member of congress that we can elect(talking democracy again?) is much more than a "child" or "teenager" with respect to the vastness of a single administrative agency, and we can't even elect the cabinet members who by comparison are also often childlike.