Life, freedom and wealth are individual. They constitute the good life. To pursue these goals people cooperate in the fields of business, politics and ideas.
Business is best governed by the market but that being based on human judgement is not perfect. Its utility is in the fact that he market aggregates value judgements from a large number of people thus reducing but not eliminating the possibility of error. The danger of error exists because market choices might be made on the basis of insufficient or erroneous information. Therefore the market needs regulation by the government. The advantage is that political value judgement is formed in a manner different from that of the market thus minimising the danger of aggravating the same error. The way politics define value does not have the numerical measure that the market has and its less straightforward and well defined. That is why politics need a political theory which is based on philosophy and especially ethics and resulting theory of law and economics where it negotiates the legitimacy of its interaction with business.
Freedom is what makes us human. Bees and ants have better organised and consequently more effective and efficient societies but lack freedom and the concept of the primacy of individual interest. In contrast monkeys are on a constant vacation with few if any constraints (especially for the stronger individuals) and where food and shelter are basically free. Yet if compared to humanity their abilities to enjoy life are limited.
People unite to pursue their goals. This political activity has the potential for undesirable side effects. The first are grouped around the necessity to establish rules. That can be mitigated by negotiating the rules. The others are grouped around the potential of united people to exploit and oppress other people leading naturally to the danger of humanity obliterating itself. This threat is overcome by the elaborate security arrangements that define human history.
Faith and art define humanity and might have played a decisive role in its survival. Art and faith have an legitimate but uneasy relationship to philosophy through aesthetics and theology and to politics and business through their influence on public opinion and distribution channels and religion. Nevertheless governing faith and art using political or business tools have proved to be disastrous.
The modern democratic state based on a prosperous middle class thriving in a well regulated by an unobtrusive government market economy is the pinnacle of contemporary governance achieved through centuries of experimentation with theocracies, hereditary monarchies, primitive democracies like the ancient Greek and Roman and merchant republics like Venice and Florence. Apart from it there are states that are state only in form but not in substance which I will label collectively kleptocracies. These are states where the governing elites are concerned with providing exclusive privileges for themselves at the expense of the people they are supposed to serve.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Wednesday, July 07, 2010
Love Yourself!
The ability to love yourself ultimately determines the extent of your ability to love somebody. To claim that you can love someone more than yourself is hypocritical and sounds as a claim that your glass is five quarters full J You can only love someone you know and the person you know best is yourself. You can only know others because you know yourself. It is impossible to learn truly and honestly about other people from any other perspective except your own. Anything else is hypocrisy and ignorance and is dangerous for you and those around you. When Jesus asked us to love our neighbour as we love ourselves he did not mean love your neighbour a little! I believe he meant a lot, and like yourself was the ultimate measure he could use. He did not mean a somewhat insignificant love bu the greatest possible love. I know you are not perfect. Sadly I am not either. But I believe I was created in God’s image and if that is so what is there not to love about myself.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Ethics, Rights, Identities and Interests
Ethics, Rights, Identities and Interests
Ethical considerations have no meaning if they do not lead to better life for the participants in a social interaction. The road to hell is paved with good intentions (Dante). Due the complexity of modern life, though, it is often difficult to foresee the consequences of a certain action. That calls for the creation of rules of behaviour based on a concept of universal rights. It could be that in a disconnected world people can attempt to create a particular concept of rights applicable only to their group (that is what sects do) but that is impractical if impossible in an interconnected world. Rights are there to protect interests which on their part are how people perceive their need and that perception can be right or wrong. As this process itself is complicated and human beings are inherently lazy and bound to look for an easier way out we look for group identities in addition to our individual one to help us comprehend the world around us and the pursuit of our goals in it. (Additionally choosing a group identity can help us discover our true individual identity or further obscure it and destroy our personality.)
These ideas of ethics, rights, identities, and interests are constantly constructed , remodeled and abandoned in society and the more they correspond to material reality the more successful the societies and individuals employing them are. Also the fact that ideas are socially constructed does not mean that they are not real or arbitrary. The fact that they people use them to guide their actions makes ideas a powerful material force worth studying even as for most people social relations are much more important for the quality of their lives than interaction with nature. And the dependence of success and failure of any human endeavor on the relevance of ideas to reality consisting of nature and other ideas makes arbitrary choice of ideas a dangerous path to follow and therefore it is not so common.
People and communities chose ideas of ethical behavior, rights and identities based on their understanding of their interests. Therefore the study of interests seems like a good starting point for any inquiry into society and politics.
Ethical considerations have no meaning if they do not lead to better life for the participants in a social interaction. The road to hell is paved with good intentions (Dante). Due the complexity of modern life, though, it is often difficult to foresee the consequences of a certain action. That calls for the creation of rules of behaviour based on a concept of universal rights. It could be that in a disconnected world people can attempt to create a particular concept of rights applicable only to their group (that is what sects do) but that is impractical if impossible in an interconnected world. Rights are there to protect interests which on their part are how people perceive their need and that perception can be right or wrong. As this process itself is complicated and human beings are inherently lazy and bound to look for an easier way out we look for group identities in addition to our individual one to help us comprehend the world around us and the pursuit of our goals in it. (Additionally choosing a group identity can help us discover our true individual identity or further obscure it and destroy our personality.)
These ideas of ethics, rights, identities, and interests are constantly constructed , remodeled and abandoned in society and the more they correspond to material reality the more successful the societies and individuals employing them are. Also the fact that ideas are socially constructed does not mean that they are not real or arbitrary. The fact that they people use them to guide their actions makes ideas a powerful material force worth studying even as for most people social relations are much more important for the quality of their lives than interaction with nature. And the dependence of success and failure of any human endeavor on the relevance of ideas to reality consisting of nature and other ideas makes arbitrary choice of ideas a dangerous path to follow and therefore it is not so common.
People and communities chose ideas of ethical behavior, rights and identities based on their understanding of their interests. Therefore the study of interests seems like a good starting point for any inquiry into society and politics.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Who Needs the Pen to Be Mightier than the Sword
Its in the common interest to create a society where "the pen is mightier that the sword" if only because the pen is less dangerous that the sword and mistakes with a pen are easier to fix than those committed with a sword. The first attempt at political organization probably stemmed from two lines of historical experience that have proven beneficial if not crucial for the survival of humanity: family and tribal loyalty on one hand, and the importance of preserving preferred hereditary traits leading to more productive crops and domesticated animals. The logic consequences of these line of thinking was the absolutist hereditary monarchy which failed in the long term after numerous obstinate attempts to make it work. The first attempts at democracy the most well-known in Ancient Greece were not very impressive too: they managed to kill Socrates and loose their freedom to a dictator - Alexander and later to Imperial Rome.
Only the unique combination of Enlightenment in Western Europe (brought in part by Arabic and Muslim cultural influences both original and through their acting as an intermediary for the penetration in Europe of Ancient Indian and Chinese culture and their role for the preservation of Ancient Greek and Roman sources), combined with the advances in trade and industry brought to the initially fledgeling democracies of Switzerland and the North of Europe to culminate with the creation of the U.S.A.
The problems is that even after the end of the cold war and a seeming worldwide consensus on the fact that their is no alternative to liberal democracy and market economy as the only political and economic guarantees for aligning the interests of the individuals to create viable political and economic entities, too many of the countries whose governments proclaim adherence to the above principles (often under some international pressure) in reality develop corrupt states, harboring organized crime and terrorists and stiffing economic development while covertly or overtly abusing the human rights of their hapless citizens.
It cannot be that the citizens of these failed or failing states want this. It is against their interests. I cannot be that the people of the developed countries want them to suffer too if not so much for reasons of sympathy and compassion but more realistically because of the danger that oppression and crime in one country can easily spill over the world through mafia activities, terrorism and the actions of the corrupt state causing suffering and death regardless of borders, cultural preferences and political allegiance.
From a political point of view the easiest way to deal with one's interests may be to take care of everything on your own. Retire in the mountains, fish and hunt for dinner and forget about the rest of the world. That may be a boring but feasible and with some luck sustainable existence. The security, freedom and opportunities of civilization come with complications and danger of becoming a slave of nonessential desires and activities. But it's the only prudent way.
Proper institutions may help but ultimately its everyone's responsibility to take pursue personal goals. The care of others though gives the power and ability to pursue these goals more efficiently and effectively while mainlining a level of security and freedom impossible individually. Freedom as understood by Roosevelt in his four freedoms: "freedom from want, freedom from fear, freedom of faith and freedom of expression".
Only the unique combination of Enlightenment in Western Europe (brought in part by Arabic and Muslim cultural influences both original and through their acting as an intermediary for the penetration in Europe of Ancient Indian and Chinese culture and their role for the preservation of Ancient Greek and Roman sources), combined with the advances in trade and industry brought to the initially fledgeling democracies of Switzerland and the North of Europe to culminate with the creation of the U.S.A.
The problems is that even after the end of the cold war and a seeming worldwide consensus on the fact that their is no alternative to liberal democracy and market economy as the only political and economic guarantees for aligning the interests of the individuals to create viable political and economic entities, too many of the countries whose governments proclaim adherence to the above principles (often under some international pressure) in reality develop corrupt states, harboring organized crime and terrorists and stiffing economic development while covertly or overtly abusing the human rights of their hapless citizens.
It cannot be that the citizens of these failed or failing states want this. It is against their interests. I cannot be that the people of the developed countries want them to suffer too if not so much for reasons of sympathy and compassion but more realistically because of the danger that oppression and crime in one country can easily spill over the world through mafia activities, terrorism and the actions of the corrupt state causing suffering and death regardless of borders, cultural preferences and political allegiance.
From a political point of view the easiest way to deal with one's interests may be to take care of everything on your own. Retire in the mountains, fish and hunt for dinner and forget about the rest of the world. That may be a boring but feasible and with some luck sustainable existence. The security, freedom and opportunities of civilization come with complications and danger of becoming a slave of nonessential desires and activities. But it's the only prudent way.
Proper institutions may help but ultimately its everyone's responsibility to take pursue personal goals. The care of others though gives the power and ability to pursue these goals more efficiently and effectively while mainlining a level of security and freedom impossible individually. Freedom as understood by Roosevelt in his four freedoms: "freedom from want, freedom from fear, freedom of faith and freedom of expression".
Monday, April 12, 2010
Interests and Rights
Philosophy
The thesis that individual interests ultimately converge to form municipal, national and international political and business institutions will be the focal point of my research. Initially the priorities of these interests can be discerned as personal above community and if rated by urgency short term as more important than long term. An qualitative prioritization of interests is possible along a modified Maslow's pyramid of needs could follow the the prioritization along the lines of security/survival issues, followed by freedom and last the existence of opportunities for building a better life. In other words: you cannot be free if you fear about your security and you cannot be sure of your safety if your fate is determined by someone else when you are not free, and you cannot be either safe or free if you are denied opportunities to work for your happiness.
Political reality is a social construct. There is no contradiction in the above statement. Political institutions are created by people acting together to pursue their common goals. On the other hand institutions impose, rules of behaviour, utilise resources and change the world in ways that affect not only the people that created them and not only in ways that were initially intended. Consequently, people can change these embodiments of their political ideas in ways they consider better suited to further their (people's) goals. The influence, growth and durability of these institutions depends on how well they work towards furthering the interests of the people involved in them and the resistance they encounter. Individual rights are a rough guide towards this stated compliance of policies with interests. The more universal recognition rights have the more people will work towards defending them consequently these rights will have more weight.
Therefore ultimately the priority of interests will be cyclical with the individual interested in promoting collective interests as this will help achieve individual goals more effectively and efficiently and the same is valid for the interdependence of short term and long term interests. While immediate needs might be more pressing especially if they involve security and survival, but planning ahead can make survival and safety much more easier to achieve. The interdependence of interests grouped by survival/security, freedom and opportunity is discussed in the first paragraph.
Conclusion
The reason why game theory often does not lead to satisfactory results when analysing real life developments. s that people tend to escalate often and fast from security/survival/sustainability concerns to attempts to secure freedom and striving towards opportunity led by the correct understanding that they are inseparably linked. That's why rebellions are possible because innovation is humanities most proven method to deal with adversity and freedom and opportunity are crucial for innovation.
The thesis that individual interests ultimately converge to form municipal, national and international political and business institutions will be the focal point of my research. Initially the priorities of these interests can be discerned as personal above community and if rated by urgency short term as more important than long term. An qualitative prioritization of interests is possible along a modified Maslow's pyramid of needs could follow the the prioritization along the lines of security/survival issues, followed by freedom and last the existence of opportunities for building a better life. In other words: you cannot be free if you fear about your security and you cannot be sure of your safety if your fate is determined by someone else when you are not free, and you cannot be either safe or free if you are denied opportunities to work for your happiness.
Political reality is a social construct. There is no contradiction in the above statement. Political institutions are created by people acting together to pursue their common goals. On the other hand institutions impose, rules of behaviour, utilise resources and change the world in ways that affect not only the people that created them and not only in ways that were initially intended. Consequently, people can change these embodiments of their political ideas in ways they consider better suited to further their (people's) goals. The influence, growth and durability of these institutions depends on how well they work towards furthering the interests of the people involved in them and the resistance they encounter. Individual rights are a rough guide towards this stated compliance of policies with interests. The more universal recognition rights have the more people will work towards defending them consequently these rights will have more weight.
Therefore ultimately the priority of interests will be cyclical with the individual interested in promoting collective interests as this will help achieve individual goals more effectively and efficiently and the same is valid for the interdependence of short term and long term interests. While immediate needs might be more pressing especially if they involve security and survival, but planning ahead can make survival and safety much more easier to achieve. The interdependence of interests grouped by survival/security, freedom and opportunity is discussed in the first paragraph.
Conclusion
The reason why game theory often does not lead to satisfactory results when analysing real life developments. s that people tend to escalate often and fast from security/survival/sustainability concerns to attempts to secure freedom and striving towards opportunity led by the correct understanding that they are inseparably linked. That's why rebellions are possible because innovation is humanities most proven method to deal with adversity and freedom and opportunity are crucial for innovation.
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