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| | DARWIN, AYN RAND, RAND PAUL, & DUMBED-DOWN DONKEYS | |
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Bamberpanda Potential Contributor
Number of posts : 24 Registration date : 2013-02-26
| Subject: DARWIN, AYN RAND, RAND PAUL, & DUMBED-DOWN DONKEYS Thu Mar 14, 2013 11:49 am | |
| Very crudely, anarchists don’t believe in any form of government. They have joined in recent years with enthusiasts for unregulated, free-market capitalism. The idiot offspring is anarcho-capitalism (AC). Idiot, becoz it attempts to reconcile the irreconcilable; the conflicting demands of total social/political freedom (very left-wing), with the demands for naked capitalism, red in tooth & claw (very right-wing). The brain-damaged hybrid is sometimes called ‘libertarianism’, but granted, it allows the adherent the luxury of conservatism, with the cachet of radicalism.
The major influence in promoting AC idiocy was author Ayn Rand. She had no formal training in economics or political theory, but she studied history & philosophy. She wrote fiction. Behind her were decades of social-Darwinism. Darwin’s theory specified that evolution worked thru the struggles of individuals. Ergo, the best, most adapted human beings got rich & had many offspring. They were superior. This was music to the ears of capitalists & bankers. They took this as ‘scientific’ proof that the poor & exploited were so becoz they were ‘naturally’ inferior. Rand believed devoutly in the existence of a strain of Nietschean supermen, tho died frustrated in never actually finding one.
Neverthelss, a much-harped theme of Randism was the struggle of gifted individuals against the mediocre, talentless herd. She became much-hyped & popular in the 1950s, when America was gripped by McCarthyism. Americans were petrified by the spectre of global communism. Rand supplied the bowels-calming antidote, rugged individualism (or ‘heroic selfishness’) versus insidious ‘collectivism’. The rugged individualist is another idiot fantasy. No individual is self-sufficient, or as the Bible said, he would be eating his own dung, & drinking his own piss.
If Rand had been a better philosopher, she might have pondered that families are collectives, as are orchestras, or corporations. If she had been born in later years, she might have become aware that Darwin’s theory is a nonsense. Much as Darwinian biologists hate to admit it, the Sainted Charles is an outdated anachronism. They know today that human beings are social animals. Indeed, in much of the living world, complex cooperation & symbiosis are more effective survival tactics than selfishness & competition. And if modern anarcho-capitalists had read pioneer anarchist, Prince Kropotkin, they would see how he easily rejected Darwin, long ago.
But Rand was not one to let mere ignorance rein in her ideological hobby-horse. In ‘Atlas Shrugged’, she imagined a world where the top capitalists withdrew their labor, leaving society in chaos. The silly moo never stopped to consider that to do this, they had to form themselves into a collective. No, her collectivist target was trade unions. She hated the idea of the poor & downtrodden masses having any power thru collective organization. She was a very right-wing conservative, if not a fascist. A fascist, becoz like the Nazis, she saw kindness, compassion & generosity as fatal weaknesses. If she had not been Jewish, she would have made an excellent concentration-camp guard.
ACs are anti-state. They want to strip away government from all social functions, leaving only the free market-place, where producers & consumers meet. These poor dumbos will not know that they have re-specified Karl Marx’s essence of capitalism – the cash nexus - where the only relation amongst individuals is money. Nor will AC donkeys know that no such state of affairs has ever existed in all history, or could. The modern, complex state is a response to the demands of advanced, complex capitalist production & consumption systems. Eg., w/out the protection of the state’s police & army, Wall Street & The City of London would be festooned with the swinging bodies of lynched banker-swine, & they know it.
The wonder is, this fascist bat Rand is still widely influential, particularly amongst the dumbed-down victims of modern mis-education. ‘Rand’ Paul & his pa think extreme conservatism is an effective tool of radical reform, as does Alex Jones, & a host of other pundits. To which AC donks respond, “Yeeehaw!”
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| | | imp-pulse Animated Voice
Number of posts : 336 Registration date : 2013-03-10
| Subject: Re: DARWIN, AYN RAND, RAND PAUL, & DUMBED-DOWN DONKEYS Sat Mar 16, 2013 5:31 am | |
| was ayn rand a sociopath?
and if so, how long would it naturally have to take until someone would come up with precisely this question?
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| | | Bamberpanda Potential Contributor
Number of posts : 24 Registration date : 2013-02-26
| Subject: Re: DARWIN, AYN RAND, RAND PAUL, & DUMBED-DOWN DONKEYS Sat Mar 16, 2013 7:57 am | |
| Imp-pulse,
'was ayn rand a sociopath?'
AFAIK, she might have been, but nobody knew much about psychopathy in her day. Luckily, even now we can't force psychological profiling on people who write bad books! Tho pres Bojangles reserves the right to imprison 'suspect terrorists' w/out trial.
I was reading that more Americans were killed by peanut allergy than terrorism. Still, billions are splurged on 'security'. In Ayn Rand's days the threat was 'global communism'. When the USSR collapsed, terrorism was the replacement bogey-man. All minorities need an external threat to keep the masses frightened, docile & under control. In Russia the threat was invasion by the West. When East-West relations improved, the Cold War thawed. Ordinary Russians decided the West was no threat, so the Kremlin lost its grip on the downtrodden serfs.
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| | | imp-pulse Animated Voice
Number of posts : 336 Registration date : 2013-03-10
| Subject: Re: DARWIN, AYN RAND, RAND PAUL, & DUMBED-DOWN DONKEYS Sat Mar 16, 2013 9:25 am | |
| .... peanut allergy had there been a better philo climate altogether (considering their time, then), the atlas parable could have been further enhanced by a pure idealist thought spectrum ..... and to this day we all are entagled in a web of inadequacies. what is pure in the idealist's sense? contributors' potence or overrated high potentials, globally speaking? greetings, molto potente ... \!! - Quote :
- But Rand was not one to let mere ignorance rein in her ideological hobby-horse. In ‘Atlas Shrugged’, she imagined a world where the top capitalists withdrew their labor, leaving society in chaos. The silly moo never stopped to consider that to do this, they had to form themselves into a collective. No, her collectivist target was trade unions. She hated the idea of the poor & downtrodden masses having any power thru collective organization. She was a very right-wing conservative, if not a fascist. A fascist, becoz like the Nazis, she saw kindness, compassion & generosity as fatal weaknesses. If she had not been Jewish, she would have made an excellent concentration-camp guard.
ACs are anti-state. They want to strip away government from all social functions, leaving only the free market-place, where producers & consumers meet. consider, for our time, not a withdrawal of labor, but the total war for attention and allotment of capital. alternative thought begins in a realm of nature that's not yet rotting away under materialist concepts, imho. | |
| | | Bamberpanda Potential Contributor
Number of posts : 24 Registration date : 2013-02-26
| Subject: Re: DARWIN, AYN RAND, RAND PAUL, & DUMBED-DOWN DONKEYS Sat Mar 16, 2013 10:35 am | |
| Imp-pulse,
agreed; materialists are necessarily bound to 'reality', usually meaning the realised, materiality of the present; as with Darwinians. The 'fittest' are the most successful members of society, which means in material terms - money & power over others. That's why materialists tend to be conservative (s/times malgre lui). They lack a clear perspective of a route to the (better?) future, since they relate only to the present - 'The best of all possible worlds', as Voltaire's Dr Pangloss put it.
Materialism & determinism go together, the one often substituting for the other. That is why Karl Marx screwed up so catastrophically. His historical-materialism-determinism left little or no room for individual or democratic self-determination. This theoretical flaw became bloodily clear whenever anyone tried to apply it to 'reality'.
This does not mean idealism is a sure-fire remedy for all ills. Religions are idealist, but they can produce exactly the same slaughter as materialist ideologies, becoz they are deterministic - their (fanatical?) absolutist tenets & enthusiasts have too often drowned human free will in blood. Vox populi, vox dei. | |
| | | imp-pulse Animated Voice
Number of posts : 336 Registration date : 2013-03-10
| Subject: Re: DARWIN, AYN RAND, RAND PAUL, & DUMBED-DOWN DONKEYS Sun Mar 17, 2013 5:21 am | |
| ahh, my background knowledge seems dim. but then, to a complete "outsider" all of this comes across like a strange rivivalist cult. the underlying ideas haven't changed much, only there are faster and more intensified energies at work in the attitudes spectrum, imho. all of a sudden, i might find tea parties all the rave, while india's domestic violence and china's executions on demand appear as minor problems on the backburner of world politics. should atlas shrugging be treated the same way as henry quirk shrugging? \!! happy st. patricks day .... | |
| | | Bamberpanda Potential Contributor
Number of posts : 24 Registration date : 2013-02-26
| Subject: Re: DARWIN, AYN RAND, RAND PAUL, & DUMBED-DOWN DONKEYS Sun Mar 17, 2013 8:59 am | |
| imp-pulse,
St Patrick's day here, wid a new Pope, & the jungle alive with singing & dancing leperechauns. And all our yesterdays but flickering candles that lit the way of fools to dusty death. | |
| | | imp-pulse Animated Voice
Number of posts : 336 Registration date : 2013-03-10
| Subject: Re: DARWIN, AYN RAND, RAND PAUL, & DUMBED-DOWN DONKEYS Sun Mar 17, 2013 10:17 am | |
| those excluded from the event will seek equal (value!) merriment from a seminar on compromises and blunders, fair enough .... p.s. are our lives really "self-determined"? | |
| | | Bamberpanda Potential Contributor
Number of posts : 24 Registration date : 2013-02-26
| Subject: Re: DARWIN, AYN RAND, RAND PAUL, & DUMBED-DOWN DONKEYS Sun Mar 17, 2013 10:13 pm | |
| imp-pulse,
'are our lives really "self-determined" ' ?
Not much, at present; mass democracies based on capitalism allow a high degree of personal freedom - bit like the freedom of a chicken to peck where it likes, but only inside the chicken-wire. That's s/thing, but macro socio-economic limitations prevent wanderings too far from the norm.
Problem is, few 'thinkers' have addressed the basic issue - the relationship of the individual to the collective. With human beings, that is crucial, since we are both radically individualistic & social creatures. Hegel did try to sort it out, & actually, his notion of the dialectical relationship was revolutionary. The relationship is dynamic, so unstable - the 'unity & contradiction of opposites.'
The debate has not progressed much since then. It has degenerated mostly into a knockabout slanging match b/ween political right & left, both using the obsolete idea-materials of a bygone era, most prominently the bogus 'science' of Darwinism.
Marx & Darwin (et al) are about 150 year-old Victorians. The structure of our present society is still Victorian, industrial capitalism. It's plainly dead on its feet, from geriatric entropy. With no clear intellectual inspiration as to a replacement, we are apparently bound to decay as individuals, chained to the rotting collective corpse.
We are being 'groomed' for WWIII & mass extermination. | |
| | | imp-pulse Animated Voice
Number of posts : 336 Registration date : 2013-03-10
| Subject: Re: DARWIN, AYN RAND, RAND PAUL, & DUMBED-DOWN DONKEYS Mon Mar 18, 2013 8:41 am | |
| hello ..... wow .... - Quote :
- Problem is, few 'thinkers' have addressed the basic issue - the relationship of the individual to the collective. With human beings, that is crucial, since we are both radically individualistic & social creatures. Hegel did try to sort it out, & actually, his notion of the dialectical relationship was revolutionary. The relationship is dynamic, so unstable - the 'unity & contradiction of opposites.'
which opposites precisely? in a private or 'the' public sector? can tons of text establish and stabilize the relationship between individuals and collective, and can the outcome of such a process be called a society, still? - Quote :
- The debate has not progressed much since then. It has degenerated mostly into a knockabout slanging match b/ween political right & left, both using the obsolete idea-materials of a bygone era, most prominently the bogus 'science' of Darwinism.
obsolete idea-materials of a bygone era: food for thought; virtually unwholesome and unbecoming, .... could that have been the real subject? - Quote :
We are being 'groomed' for WWIII & mass extermination. and in the passive mode. \!! | |
| | | imp-pulse Animated Voice
Number of posts : 336 Registration date : 2013-03-10
| Subject: Re: DARWIN, AYN RAND, RAND PAUL, & DUMBED-DOWN DONKEYS Mon Mar 18, 2013 3:44 pm | |
| lots of hangovers today, eh? philos question of the day, the day after ...: how would the op's panoticum figure if secretly merged with, say, shades of grey? maybe this was done, only i didn't notice ... if it weren't for shitstorms and the terror of righteousness as part of a new age infotainment. atlas shrugging today; when last did that really "concern" us? | |
| | | Bamberpanda Potential Contributor
Number of posts : 24 Registration date : 2013-02-26
| Subject: Re: DARWIN, AYN RAND, RAND PAUL, & DUMBED-DOWN DONKEYS Tue Mar 19, 2013 4:22 am | |
| imp-pulse,
'which opposites precisely? in a private or 'the' public sector?'
Whichever; we are all part of informal & formal networks of relationships.
'can tons of text establish and stabilize the relationship between individuals and collective, and can the outcome of such a process be called a society, still?'
Humans are very much communications-based animals. Natter-natter, t/phone, texts, TV, or i/net. A human is an individual node in comms networks. Isolated in total silence, we fall apart. We 'stabilize' after death.
'how would the op's panoticum figure if secretly merged with, say, shades of grey?'
Panopticon - pretty good, like B & W TVs. I dream in B & W. Seems to work OK.
Atlas just shrugged - robbed Cyprus bank customers of 10% of their geld. Seems they put the banks into an embarrassing situation by depositing too much money. Atlas is aka the Wizard of Oz - a mischievous sense of humor.
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| | | imp-pulse Animated Voice
Number of posts : 336 Registration date : 2013-03-10
| Subject: Re: DARWIN, AYN RAND, RAND PAUL, & DUMBED-DOWN DONKEYS Wed Mar 20, 2013 7:03 am | |
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| | | Bamberpanda Potential Contributor
Number of posts : 24 Registration date : 2013-02-26
| Subject: Re: DARWIN, AYN RAND, RAND PAUL, & DUMBED-DOWN DONKEYS Wed Mar 20, 2013 8:34 am | |
| imp-pulse,
the speech dates from 1974, when the USA had already been fighting in Vietnam for about 10 years. She senses no contradiction in claiming no US involvement in o/seas wars of conquest, nor in denying the existence of the industrial-military complex. But the whole & primary purpose of the Vietnam War was to enrich the IMC.
Rand claims principled adherence to reason, yet singles out Kant for special attack. Kant was a prime rationalist, a mover of The Age of Reason. And she does not specify what exactly was pernicious about his thinking, his original crime; strange.
Aristotle gets a pat on the head, but why? He tried & failed to escape Plato's idealism. I'd guess idealism was what was bugging Rand; but then like so many, she would have rebounded back from materialism, which allows for no metaphysics, only empiricism.
Perhaps strangest of all, she scorns 'collectivism', but admires the US army! An army strenuously suppresses individuality to build maximun collective strength. As I said, collectivism is only bad for her when it is the united strength of poor people in unions. When it is the power of the state protecting the 1% of wealth & power freaks, it's a fine thing.
Rand packaged & marketed fascism for American, conservative consumers. It is unsurprising that the revolting task made her deeply weird.
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