Thank you, I only get to go to Harvard or Yale indirectly for the path is wide that leadeth to damnation, and the gate is narrow and the path small and few find it. (citation to admissions rates)
It also seems cheap to ask if there could be affirmative action for the Amish, but the visible from my house Amish practice is "That which the most in their Churches maintain as truth in profession only, we must bring into familiar and constant practise.” As to what Marx might say of any of this it is irrelevant to the Amish. The Amish understand it as "For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you." (Matthew 17:20-21). Marx's tombstone reads: ""Philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it". The "copyright" differs but the question of the struggle between having enough information to act and being quasi paralyzed by "data" remains. That is "philosophy" will always spiral to the point of simply interpreting the world, while faith acts upon it.
That is only some splinter groups hold to the old faith, and it is largely because they didn't Intellectualize it, They Rednecked it. They may have only needed a single word: "Love" (For I have hidden thy word in my heart that I might not sin against God) That is the Puritans go west in an "anti-technological" way whereas Boston has more theology, philosophy and science than the mind could ever bear to grasp. Some puritans heard Jonathan Edwards and gradually stumbled into Appalachia and decided to prove "faith" by snake handling, and drinking poison(moonshine).
Jefferson had the guilt of not serving others since his leisure or contemplation was based off slavery, and arguably invented trickle-down economics as a result or the idea that his copyright as stored in his University would trickle down and advance the progress of the sciences and the useful arts. As did Madison with respect to the Constitution. Both were correct to an extent.
The Puritan experiment grounded in "books" never failed, the founding libraries at Yale and Harvard grew and grew with commerce. As the book collection expanded new derivatives of Puritanism were born. Tracking the derivatives of Puritanism is an impossible task.
"The problem, of course, is that Christian love asks of man that which is impossible. History and the human condition demonstrate, including the history of the American Puritans, that Jesus’s core ethical teaching is not sustainable psychologically, morally, politically, or economically because it runs counter to human nature and thus to the morality necessary to sustain both human life and human morality."
The belief in History requires faith, reaching adulthood requires the love of parents, getting into this discussion may require access to books. Christian Love however doesn't ask of man to track the derivatives of Puritanism thru Harvard or Yale, that particular quest in some sense is about Control. How would I know that Christian love asks of man that which is impossible without first acting on faith that a particular view is Christian or love based in the first place?
That is the least "faith based" belief about the Puritans is that they correspond/rhyme with the Amish, who are known for building barns, furniture and making cheese. These might not correspond to your framing of the Puritans, but they are close enough in this world. You could claim that they don't have the morality necessary to sustain human life and human morality because they are pacifists but killing them would be extremely dishonorable (much, much, more so than plagerism which may or may not be the highest form of Honor for the Techno-puritans). Also I suspect they would fight back "collectively", regardless of what "theology" says.
I hold it as a somewhat self-evident truth that Rednecks are probably better off defending the low-tech puritans they can understand than they are the high-tech puritans they can't. In general when someone from Harvard or Yale gets a great idea for a "war" cultural or otherwise involving Rednecks, it usually goes bad for the Rednecks(examples available upon request).
This essay is spot on. Your point, that the Puritan ethics leads to and requires thorough coercion of every member of society, is borne out over and over. Robert Owen, one of the founders of socialism (called “Utopian socialism”, but that is merely redundant), began his “ideal” socialist community on the premise of voluntary co-operation. But that failed, for the reasons you cite. Those failures were duplicated with Owens’ nineteenth century communes. When voluntary commitment by the participants failed to achieve his goals, he moved – progressively – to a thoroughly coercive approach. As the scholar Gregory Claes says,
"This had other consequences of greater theoretical interest as well, for in effect it drastically increased the necessary scope and responsibilities of the state. The more Owen failed, the more he asked from government…Placing the whole of the solution in the hands of the state in this sense merely represented the working out of a logic which had been put forward much earlier. Certainly from at least 1817 onward Owen believed that governments had, and ought to have, full responsibility for all of the "circumstances" within their sphere of influence, and having ascertained the best use of these circumstances, had the duty, as he later put it, "to form the whole social arrangements in such a manner as to induce, or morally compel, all men to act in conformity with this knowledge”.
Are you familiar with Fordism? Or forget Fordism, say the policies that actually govern the business of Charles Koch and not simply the patina or Forward Facing Libertarian brand. It is unfair perhaps to Charles Koch, but you could say the same or worse of Amazon. The primary Libertarian impulse among the poor and the truck drivers say who rebelled against Trudeau. The idea that you can "form the whole social arrangements in such a manner as to induce, or morally compel, all men to act in conformity with this knowledge is what Six Sigma and various Safety based trainings and technologies are." That is in terms of low tech Puritanism or the Amish despite the fact that it is a religious commune, it is actually more mild and libertarian than certain sectors of the economy(except 24/7) If you understand government as a regime, then some businesses especially in sectors regulated in that way actually become that regime. Albeit I do think some measure of gratitude is missing from the bitching about a technocratic regime. The closer you get to perfecting a recipe the more narrow and precise its execution has to be. Trucking companies for example are essentially a truck driver the efficient cause, a truck with a ton of safety equipment as mandated by the DOT the material cause. The DOT (and the company internal safety regulations) as the formal cause, and the final cause getting freight from point A to point B. There are far more corporations with a formal cause entwined with the government than there are "communes" of a religious bent. None of this stuff used to be this regulated. Individualism is still true, you are in some sense your own efficient cause(provided you don't study enough biology to figure out how materially determined you are), Marxism doesn't change that(it is in fact with respect to Das Capital essentially the first attempt to do a restatement of capitalism...now no sane person would ever try to do a restatement of capitalism, but you have multiple restatements that are more precise about the formal cause in every sector. That is an almost infinitely more precise restatement of capitalism exists, and no actual Marxist uses Marx when looking what the law or formal cause of a subject matter is.) When Thompson tells the story of the Puritans since he doesn't have the faith of the puritans it can only be told in a sort of "regime" way or as formal cause(not in any four cause way that actually hits the set and setting and grants immersion...that is perhaps for a TV mini-series), but the formal cause didn't absolutely bind the Puritan individual in my opinion(that was just recorded history) the individual Puritan had his own efficient cause, he was free but he felt under surveillance by the formal cause that was religion and law which operated by directing him towards death or a final cause with a heaven or hell. Marx simply says Religion is the opiate of the masses it numbs the pain of those who cannot direct themselves towards a Final Cause. It is for Marx in a sense impossible to be the founder of individualism, at best you simply sell your individuation as a Final Cause for the nation which Jefferson sort of did.
Great article series. I recently had a deeper discussion about the selfishness and altruism with a catholic acquaintance in which a lot of points you covered in your essay also came up.
Thank God for Thomas Jefferson and all the Founding Fathers for saving us from this nonsense.
Thank you, I only get to go to Harvard or Yale indirectly for the path is wide that leadeth to damnation, and the gate is narrow and the path small and few find it. (citation to admissions rates)
It also seems cheap to ask if there could be affirmative action for the Amish, but the visible from my house Amish practice is "That which the most in their Churches maintain as truth in profession only, we must bring into familiar and constant practise.” As to what Marx might say of any of this it is irrelevant to the Amish. The Amish understand it as "For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you." (Matthew 17:20-21). Marx's tombstone reads: ""Philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it". The "copyright" differs but the question of the struggle between having enough information to act and being quasi paralyzed by "data" remains. That is "philosophy" will always spiral to the point of simply interpreting the world, while faith acts upon it.
That is only some splinter groups hold to the old faith, and it is largely because they didn't Intellectualize it, They Rednecked it. They may have only needed a single word: "Love" (For I have hidden thy word in my heart that I might not sin against God) That is the Puritans go west in an "anti-technological" way whereas Boston has more theology, philosophy and science than the mind could ever bear to grasp. Some puritans heard Jonathan Edwards and gradually stumbled into Appalachia and decided to prove "faith" by snake handling, and drinking poison(moonshine).
Jefferson had the guilt of not serving others since his leisure or contemplation was based off slavery, and arguably invented trickle-down economics as a result or the idea that his copyright as stored in his University would trickle down and advance the progress of the sciences and the useful arts. As did Madison with respect to the Constitution. Both were correct to an extent.
The Puritan experiment grounded in "books" never failed, the founding libraries at Yale and Harvard grew and grew with commerce. As the book collection expanded new derivatives of Puritanism were born. Tracking the derivatives of Puritanism is an impossible task.
"The problem, of course, is that Christian love asks of man that which is impossible. History and the human condition demonstrate, including the history of the American Puritans, that Jesus’s core ethical teaching is not sustainable psychologically, morally, politically, or economically because it runs counter to human nature and thus to the morality necessary to sustain both human life and human morality."
The belief in History requires faith, reaching adulthood requires the love of parents, getting into this discussion may require access to books. Christian Love however doesn't ask of man to track the derivatives of Puritanism thru Harvard or Yale, that particular quest in some sense is about Control. How would I know that Christian love asks of man that which is impossible without first acting on faith that a particular view is Christian or love based in the first place?
That is the least "faith based" belief about the Puritans is that they correspond/rhyme with the Amish, who are known for building barns, furniture and making cheese. These might not correspond to your framing of the Puritans, but they are close enough in this world. You could claim that they don't have the morality necessary to sustain human life and human morality because they are pacifists but killing them would be extremely dishonorable (much, much, more so than plagerism which may or may not be the highest form of Honor for the Techno-puritans). Also I suspect they would fight back "collectively", regardless of what "theology" says.
I hold it as a somewhat self-evident truth that Rednecks are probably better off defending the low-tech puritans they can understand than they are the high-tech puritans they can't. In general when someone from Harvard or Yale gets a great idea for a "war" cultural or otherwise involving Rednecks, it usually goes bad for the Rednecks(examples available upon request).
This essay is spot on. Your point, that the Puritan ethics leads to and requires thorough coercion of every member of society, is borne out over and over. Robert Owen, one of the founders of socialism (called “Utopian socialism”, but that is merely redundant), began his “ideal” socialist community on the premise of voluntary co-operation. But that failed, for the reasons you cite. Those failures were duplicated with Owens’ nineteenth century communes. When voluntary commitment by the participants failed to achieve his goals, he moved – progressively – to a thoroughly coercive approach. As the scholar Gregory Claes says,
"This had other consequences of greater theoretical interest as well, for in effect it drastically increased the necessary scope and responsibilities of the state. The more Owen failed, the more he asked from government…Placing the whole of the solution in the hands of the state in this sense merely represented the working out of a logic which had been put forward much earlier. Certainly from at least 1817 onward Owen believed that governments had, and ought to have, full responsibility for all of the "circumstances" within their sphere of influence, and having ascertained the best use of these circumstances, had the duty, as he later put it, "to form the whole social arrangements in such a manner as to induce, or morally compel, all men to act in conformity with this knowledge”.
Are you familiar with Fordism? Or forget Fordism, say the policies that actually govern the business of Charles Koch and not simply the patina or Forward Facing Libertarian brand. It is unfair perhaps to Charles Koch, but you could say the same or worse of Amazon. The primary Libertarian impulse among the poor and the truck drivers say who rebelled against Trudeau. The idea that you can "form the whole social arrangements in such a manner as to induce, or morally compel, all men to act in conformity with this knowledge is what Six Sigma and various Safety based trainings and technologies are." That is in terms of low tech Puritanism or the Amish despite the fact that it is a religious commune, it is actually more mild and libertarian than certain sectors of the economy(except 24/7) If you understand government as a regime, then some businesses especially in sectors regulated in that way actually become that regime. Albeit I do think some measure of gratitude is missing from the bitching about a technocratic regime. The closer you get to perfecting a recipe the more narrow and precise its execution has to be. Trucking companies for example are essentially a truck driver the efficient cause, a truck with a ton of safety equipment as mandated by the DOT the material cause. The DOT (and the company internal safety regulations) as the formal cause, and the final cause getting freight from point A to point B. There are far more corporations with a formal cause entwined with the government than there are "communes" of a religious bent. None of this stuff used to be this regulated. Individualism is still true, you are in some sense your own efficient cause(provided you don't study enough biology to figure out how materially determined you are), Marxism doesn't change that(it is in fact with respect to Das Capital essentially the first attempt to do a restatement of capitalism...now no sane person would ever try to do a restatement of capitalism, but you have multiple restatements that are more precise about the formal cause in every sector. That is an almost infinitely more precise restatement of capitalism exists, and no actual Marxist uses Marx when looking what the law or formal cause of a subject matter is.) When Thompson tells the story of the Puritans since he doesn't have the faith of the puritans it can only be told in a sort of "regime" way or as formal cause(not in any four cause way that actually hits the set and setting and grants immersion...that is perhaps for a TV mini-series), but the formal cause didn't absolutely bind the Puritan individual in my opinion(that was just recorded history) the individual Puritan had his own efficient cause, he was free but he felt under surveillance by the formal cause that was religion and law which operated by directing him towards death or a final cause with a heaven or hell. Marx simply says Religion is the opiate of the masses it numbs the pain of those who cannot direct themselves towards a Final Cause. It is for Marx in a sense impossible to be the founder of individualism, at best you simply sell your individuation as a Final Cause for the nation which Jefferson sort of did.
Great article series. I recently had a deeper discussion about the selfishness and altruism with a catholic acquaintance in which a lot of points you covered in your essay also came up.