Archive for October, 2018

What might happen to the poor in libertarian society?

October 28, 2018

Let’s be clear we don’t know exactly what would happen, but we can predict based on what happens in plutocracies generally. What we do know is that Libertarians tend to equate wealth with virtue and poverty with laziness and vice. They also refuse to admit that wealth is a source of power, and that people should be allowed to constrain that power. Consequently we can assume that the general trend would not be good.

Poor people could get employment that was radically unsafe and harmed them because nobody could make employers think this was a bad idea, and there are always more poor workers to use up. This is what happens in unregulated industries.

Workers would have to obey bosses totally or starve, because bosses like power with their wealth – and bosses club together while making unions illegal.

They could buy food that poisoned them because there would be no restrictions on selling it, and no requirements to list ingredients, and food business would love this, and agitate for it all the time.

Farm subsidies would be eliminated putting small farmers out of work, and allowing their farms to be taken over by ‘big agriculture’ and possibly increasing the price of food. One of the main drives of capitalism has been to displace people from self-sufficiency and offer them the choice of wage labour or poverty – or both – as this increases the power of wealth.

Poor areas would get even more pollution than they do now, because wealthy people could dump it all on them, and there would be no recourse.

Poorer people would be continually hassled by privatised police forces that worked solely to impose the whims of those who could afford them – and there is no recourse again.

Police could kill poor suspects with even more ease as there would be no regulations to stop them, and relatives probably would not have enough money to hire a rival police to fight it out.

Probably everyone who could afford police and law could kill anyone who was poor. It might even become a sport.

Random people would probably be sent to prison as private prisons would make money from them without restriction, and they could pay the private police forces to collect workers for them.

Education would not be free or cheap as restrictions on education helps maintain class lines. If you are poor give up all hope of education for your kids. Or you could be taught at charity schools about being respectful to business and knowing your place when a rich person passes by.

Science counts for nothing, unless it increases wealth, so there may be free range on ‘consensual’ human experimentation – on paid victims with commercial in confidence clauses and penalization for speaking out.

Only knowledge that supports the ruling elite, or which sells advertising, would be widely available to poor people, so the poor would have little understanding of what was causing their problems. Informing them about reality would make you a class traitor, and you might disappear.

There would be nothing like the GI bill, so no reward when you go to war to protect markets and cheap labor.

People would say the poor are always with us, and that attempts to do anything to improve people’s opportunities would corrupt them.

Charity would be about forcing people to give respect to donors, because its not like you deserve support – your inferiority is shown by you needing it, and you have to encourage donors by boosting them.

Poor people in ill health, or orphans, might be locked up in institutions to force them to work, for someone’s profit – this how charity used to work.

As class/wealth lines would intensify, there would be less mass production, because there is no point in trying to sell stuff to people who can’t afford it. Money would be better made selling one-off vanity products to the rich.

Libertarianism is not anarchism, never forget that.

*************

Adendum

In late 2021, in response to this post, someone asked me why I would assume there would be no rules about what can be sold, and protecting people against harmful or bad work environments in libertarian society, They also pointed out that forms of what I was pointing to already exist, and that other societies, such as communist societies are very bad.

My response is:

In my experience, libertarianism is most often presented as an anarchist, or small State theory. However, it does not seem to function that way in practice – which is why I say it is not anarchist.

Let us be clear, if by anarchist, you mean a ‘stateless society’ then that is how humans have lived for most of human existence, so anarchism is quite possible. However, capitalism has never existed without a State or without making a State – so anarchist capitalism does not seem possible

Libertarianism, like neoliberalism, seems to favour quite a strong state which supports the wealth elites and puts them first, because, the nature of capitalism is that who can pay the most usually wins. This could be considered the secret doctrine of capitalism. Certainly there is no level playing field, as some people have massively more wealth than most of us put together.

There are all kinds of rules in the current free market state, but being made by the wealth elites, or their bought representatives (as these are the only people with access to the State or the law), these rules are unlikely to favour (or protect) ordinary people and much more likely to favour retaining the power of wealth. They are also likely to try and structure the market to benefit the existing victors. You can see a little of this in the way ‘big tech’ companies receive criticisms which could apply equally to established companies, but are not applied.

The more wealth is allowed to gain control, then the worse this situation is likely to get. Hence my stretching of what is happening now.

I agree that other systems can also be bad, there is no reason not to agree.

I also agree that everything I talk about is already a problem, but we have had 40 years of endless free market talk, and so this is likely to be a problem of capitalism, and a problem of government to the extent that capitalists own and control the government in this reality as much as they would, perhaps less than they would, in the Libertarian reality. They make the huge governments that are the problem, but they also like smaller governments which cannot stand up to their superior wealth and power.

Small farms are dying precisely because of the capitalist state and the power of the capitalist market. Owners of small farms are not leaving for fun, but because they have to.

Neither of us would accept it if a communist told us that according to Marxist theory the State would wither away so we just had to have faith while it got stronger and more authoritarian. So I equally refuse to accept that free market theories produce small states and community self-governance, when they certainly do not appear to.

Capitalism appears to almost always produce plutocracy, and capitalism does not seem to favour anarchy or community as anything other than misdirections or misplaced nostalgia for what it has destroyed, but pretends it can bring back.

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Identity Politics IV

October 27, 2018

More people seem to be independently coming around to acknowledging right wing identity politics or the politics of social categorization.

In The Atlantic Adam Serwer writes:

among those who claim to oppose identity politics, the term is applied exclusively to efforts by historically marginalized constituencies to claim rights others already possess. Trump’s campaign, with its emphasis on state violence against religious and ethnic minorities—Muslim bans, mass deportations, “nationwide stop-and-frisk”—does not count under this definition, but left-wing opposition to discriminatory state violence does.

Right wing identity politics is used to build following for a party who’s main aim is to “to slash the welfare state in order to make room for more high-income tax cuts” and to support plutocracy generally. Free market politics is generally about removing the historical constraints on big business which might benefit less powerful people, and restraining ordinary people from having any political impact on business, no matter what is being done to them.

Let’s face it. Big Business is dominant. In Australia, where the rightwing government has a similar drive, we have a situation in which almost daily we are hearing about crimes from powerful financial institutions which are rewarded by the system at the expense of ordinary people. We also hear of employers fraudulently underpaying their workers. The government, in its wisdom, is attacking unions as a threat to democracy and the process of the free market. It is talking about boosting Christian liberty to deny the rights of others, and engages in discussions about “fair dinkum power” ie poisonous coal.

In the US we have a government, whose main achievements, apart from the taxcuts for the wealthy, seem to have been to wreck healthcare for most people, and to allow corporations to pollute with joy.

People, while willing to sacrifice for the greater good are probably not that willing, if they realise it, to sacrifice for the benefit of those who are already benefitting, and its good for the plutocrats to be able shift the blame onto migrants – especially non white migrants.

Serwer again:

Republicans have taken to misleading voters by insisting that they oppose cuts or changes to popular social insurance programs, while stoking fears about Latino immigrants, Muslim terrorists, and black criminality. In truth, without that deception, identity politics is all the Trump-era Republican Party has.

If people get indignant about this identity politics, without explaining what is happening, then it gives those identity politics more publicity and more of a boost.

To make the point again: the reason this is conservative identity politics, is that it supports the dominance of a group that identifies as predominantly white male and straight, who see themselves as being under threat (which they are from plutocracy). However, even if these people are kicked by their own party and the rich, they can still manage to be “better” than other groups of people, and help suppress them.

it looks back to an imagined past when they were doing well

Underlying the American discourse on identity politics has always been the unstated assumption that, as a white man’s country, white identity politics—such as that practiced by Trump and the Republican Party—is legitimate, while opposition to such politics is not.

The way things have been is under challenge, and the old way must be reinforced. Hence this form of identity politics is almost invisible.

few of the pundits convinced that identity politics poses a threat to democracy have displayed alarm as the president and his party have built a second nationwide campaign around it.

see:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/gop-mid-term-campaign-all-identity-politics/573991

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Issues of early anthropology

October 23, 2018

It is relatively often argued that anthropology was the handmaiden of colonialism, and ultimately oppressive of the peoples it studied.

I am not so sure about this.

By far the majority of turn of last Century field anthropologists seem not to have been explicitly racist in intention. It seems to me that much of their work is based on the idea that colonists/invaders should leave indigenous people alone, as they had working societies, and that Western intrusion messed things up.

However, their work can be implicitly racist. They lived in racist colonialist societies – this was unavoidable. The chance of anyone completely escaping that complex was remote. Their cultural background, while it enabled them to see things that locals ignored, also blinded them to things that locals would consider vital. So they were unable to perceive some events, and this distorted what they did. The anthropologists’ values (ideas of good etc) may also not be compatible with the ruling local ideas of what was good. Thus they may have criticized local powers, or seen things local powers would prefer to ignore, and those local powers then tried to defend themselves and argue that the anthropologist was racist because they did not understand the necessary virtues of the ruling class. I’m not saying either side was right here.

The anthropologist was also generally able to study because of the colonial power and commercial mechanisms which attempted to dominate the field site and this must have affected the response they got from locals. Too many anthropologists ignored this fact (partly again I think to try and reconstruct pre-colonial life as a working whole that did not need imperialism to perfect). It is certainly possible that some anthropologists acted as spies, and hoped to gain permanent work and status with the colonial authorities, but I don’t know of any evidence suggesting this was a common career path, or produced specially distorted accounts of heathen savagery – they were not missionaries. However, I’ve known too many people not get back from the field completely intact, to think that colonialism always provided protection after the 1970s….

Anthropologists also had to report their ‘findings’ in ways which were approved by other anthropologists, colonial officials or what have you. It would be unlikely that anyone could get a book published saying “I did not understand anything here”, although some of the early US bureau of ethnography laundry list reports are pretty close to being random collections of stuff with little attempt to make sense of it, beyond translation. The requirement for sense making would also have made a huge impact on what was reported, and what was understood and what was noticeable elsewhere.

It is impossible to do research outside of one’s cultural and political milieu, we can only do the best that is possible at the time, and dialogue between the ‘studier’ and those being ‘studied’ is vital to comprehension of any kind, so the Indian responses, (to take an example) are important. At least, in general, the anthropologist was put in a position where they had to learn from some of those they studied, as they probably did not come into the field with a local language or local customs. They had to talk with locals and could not live without some learning from them. Statistical sociologists could completely avoid that.

So while things were not exactly perfect, on the whole, I think most anthropologists did the best they could for the people involved, within the usual patterns of knowledge distortion and failure.

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Righteous Reformism?

October 18, 2018

People on the right frequently make remarks like:

Libs think that by the government doing certain things they can solve the problems in society, whereas Conservatives are a little more grounded and realize that we have a thing called human nature. So when someone goes and shoots up a school Libs want to go and on about what a bad time this person had in life and then want to save his soul. Whereas Conservatives say “just lock him up for life and be done with it”. Libs also want to take my guns and prevent me from protecting myself from people like that. Libs want to say that women should go into pubs alone and never be attacked, when women should just look after themselves and not get drunk in public. You don’t look after yourself you deserve what you get, and no about of regulation or Governmental interference will stop this.

Any reader will undoubtedly have head, or made, similar screes.

However there are several problems with this position.

1) We rarely hear from the Righteous that if their property gets stolen it was their fault, and they should have protected it themselves. They rarely say that the police have no business to be concerned about it, and government should stay out of it, unless they are libertarians and happy for you to only get the kind of law you can afford. Usually the response is to call for more law and order and more toughness on criminals. Strangely rapists seem ok, that’s the woman’s fault for not being cautious enough… unless the hurt happens to a family member.

2) It seems to me that the Righteous continually think they can fix the problems in society by giving more power to corporations, letting more people have more guns, or suppressing gays, blacks, women, refugees and so on. They tend to insist on personal responsibility for, and government regulation of, workers, with no corresponding responsibilities for employers and business.

3) They continually moan that people on their side, like Trump, Kavanaugh, Limbaugh, Fox, Morrison, Abbott etc are being attacked unjustly by ‘libtards’… They cry that their darlings should be free to do whatever they want, irrespective of its truth, its plausibility or whatever. They want protection for them. Whinging is not a one sided activity.

All that most libtards that I know want, is for society to be a bit fairer, a bit more supportive of ordinary people, to stop destroying our environment for profit, and to stop stomping on people because they look like they are a relatively powerless minority. They would also like more people to be able to participate in Government, rather than to reserve that participation to a wealthy elite. But this apparently is too much.

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Conservatism as a philosophy

October 17, 2018

Conservatism is a coherent philosophy that essentially argues we should be beware of perfectionism and radical change, and we should regard tradition favourably as it has ‘evolved’ to deal with social and political problems. Tradition provides checks and balances that we may find we desperately need even if the traditions may look silly. Rituals can provide stability and, sometimes, tacit understandings of life. Conservatism instinctively knows about social complexity, and that deliberate change can be disorderly. In Conservatism people aim to produce islands of order amidst the flux of life.

Conservatism argues that people are not equal in everything. Different people are better at different things than others, consequently we should always listen to the advice of experts or experienced people, while being aware they may be corrupted by self-interest. We should be beware of abstract theoretical knowledge which may miss important ‘irrationalities’, and prefer the knowledge of the craftsperson with experience, whose work we can judge by its excellence. We should particularly be beware of demagogues; that is people who say anything, lie continually, and constantly shift position so as to persuade people to follow them. Demagoguery leads to tyranny, as it suffers no interior compunction to do what is right.

This presents a mild problem because it is impossible to govern ‘practically’ without some deception as you are trying to persuade conflictual groups to work together. However, people (and leaders in particular) should in general cultivate truth as truth is the ultimate basis of understanding, morality and good governance. As humans are prone to self-deception the commitment to truth is a commitment to honour. People can have no lasting agreements without honour.

Honour means keeping your word, and being trustworthy, especially when it is difficult. Trust is the basis of society. Without trust and the honour necessary to keep trust, everything falls apart. Virtue is often difficult and people who say we should not do the right thing, because it is difficult, should be shunned. Honour is also involved in being polite. Politeness is a ritual which indicates respect for others and oneself, and helps cement social solidarity and free discussion. One should be polite to one’s inferiors, as ‘there but for the grace of God go I’. Calling people you disagree with ‘libtards,’ screaming extermination threats at them, or lying about their policies, is neither polite nor conservative – it is demagoguery and to be shunned.

Conservatives believe cultural heritage is important – people should be aware of the best that has been thought, written, painted and composed. Appreciation of good art and philosophy is vital to cultivation of the soul and the development of character, as are tests and challenges. Those people who are particularly good at these kind of things should be encouraged to act as exemplars for us all, as humans tend to learn by imitation. If society values the best, then people will live up to the best.

Religion should be treated with respect, but we should be aware of the potential for religions to become extreme. Moderation is important, as it is to all virtues. The idea of God is necessary for human morality, human modesty, and the cultivation of tradition. Attending religious events also builds social solidarity, as all layers of society mix harmoniously and observe each other. If the rulers show no respect for God and tradition then ordinary people will loose it as well. It used to be said ironically that the Church of England was the Tory Party at prayer, but this should held to be entirely correct without irony.

While power should be centered in the Government and a governmental elite (ie people with experience and knowledge), the government should not have total power, and there should be a large number of other sources of power, so that one source of power does not dominate over all the others, and the self-interest of the governmental elite is checked.

This is the basis of Civil society, and organisations of business people, soldiers, workers, churches, ‘media’, arts and so on are vital to maintain this balance. Wealth is good, not because it enables show or power (that is to be disapproved of), but because it enables people to engage in actions, like supporting charity, the arts, philosophy, and because it provides the leisure necessary for people to cultivate excellence. However, wealth is not to be allowed to control Government, any more than should the military or the churches.

Conservatism is an art of cultivation. It attempts to bring out the best in people, and conserve and beautify the land they live in. Progress occurs gradually and builds upon experience, not on abstraction.

Unfortunately there are very few Conservatives any more. Most have sold out to the corporate sector who will do anything to make a buck. Corporations have little respect for tradition, art, honour, truthfulness, politeness, religion, moderation, or diversity of power. The more we cultivate corporate power, then the more we tend to destroy those things that conservatives value.

Conservatives are trying to be good people, and that is important. And I think many people on the Right would like to be conservative, but are not served well by their parties, just as people on the Left are not served well by their parties.

See also: Three forms of Contemporary Politics, and

Conservatives, the Left and the Right

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Climate change is an ethical and justice challenge: consequently it will never be solved

October 14, 2018

Climate change and ecological destruction are often framed as ethical challenges, to be solved by a new ethics or a better notion of justice. While I agree that ecological destruction is an ethical challenge, I suggest that this means it will not be solved in the time frame available.

This occurs for four reasons. First there is no basis for ethics which is not already ethical; therefore it is highly improbable we can have an agreed ethics take form across the globe in the needed time frame. Second, we live in complex systems which are unpredictable and not completely knowable, so the results of ethically intended actions are uncertain. Third we influence the meaning of what is good or bad through the context we perceive or bring to the events; given complexity and given cultural variety, the chances of agreeing on a context for these acts and events is small. Four, because context is important and caught in group-dynamics, ethics always gets caught up in the politics between groups, is influenced by those politics and their history, and there is no non-political space in which to discuss ecological destruction.

I prefer to talk about ‘ecological destruction’ rather than ‘climate change’ because, while people can disagree about climate change, there is less chance of disagreement about ecological destruction: it is pretty obvious, almost everywhere, with new highways, new dense housing, destruction of agricultural fields, destruction of forests, accumulation of waste, pollution of seas and over-fishing. We face far more ecological challenges than just climate change. Climate change is a subset of the consequences of ecological destruction and the dumping of products defined as waste, into the air, the ocean or vital water tables. The fact that we live in complex systems also means that deleterious effects in one system, spill out into others, and eventually cannot be kept local; we all interact with each other and the rest of the ecology. Everything is interdependent. Without plants we cannot survive. Without drinkable water we cannot survive. Without breathable air we cannot survive. These are basics for almost everything on earth.

However, given climate change is a moral issue, this decline in human liveability is not necessarily a bad thing. You have to already take the moral position that human survival, or that not harming fellow humans (in some circumstances), is good or the basis of virtue. You could decide that humans should be eliminated for the greater good; that they (or a subset of humans) are destructive parasites who should be exterminated. You might decide that only those humans with some qualification (intelligence, religious purity, dedication to the party, or wealthy, for example) should survive as they are ‘the best’ and the exemplification of what is moral. This is not unusual, most ethical systems do discriminate ethically between different people. Children do not have exactly the same ‘rights and responsibilities’ as adults. People defined as immoral or criminal usually face sanctions, and lessened ethical responsibility from the virtuous – indeed the virtuous may have be said to have the responsibility to harm the immoral.

No moral basis
If human survival is not a fundamental part of morality, then what is? ‘Care?’ why should care be thought of as good? Some moralities argue that care is a corruption, that care encourages bad habits and laziness, or that true care involves violently correcting behaviour defined as ‘bad’. Care is already a moral proposition, not the beginning of a morality. ‘Obedience to God’s rules?’ Assuming that we could agree on what God’s rules were, then why is obedience to God good? Could it be that God is a tyrant and we need to disobey to discover moral reality? Could it be that God expects us to solve problems ourselves, as the rules presumably have a basis other than the mere whim of God – if not why should we assume that whim is good? The idea that we should obey God is already a moral proposition. ‘We should do our best?’ Sounds great, but what is ‘best?’ Is our version of the best, actually the best? what if someone else says it is not the best, or their best contradicts ours? Why does following our inner guide/instincts lead to the best – what if it does not? Should we bring ‘the greatest good to the greatest number?’ leaving aside that this does not resolve what is good, then why is it good to consider the greatest number? Perhaps some minorities need a good that conflicts with the good of the greatest number? Again the proposition assumes the moral position that the more people gain the good, then the better it is – which could be ethically challengeable. Some other people think that taking good and evil as undecidable and therefor not worrying about it is the root of virtue, but who decides this is good? What evidence is there that personal peace is better than personal indecision? Valuing personal peace above all else, is already a moral proposition. Some people may even define what appears as ecological destruction as ecological improvement, partly because it is bringing the natural world under human control. What is destructive or not, is in itself an ethical question which runs into this problem of ethical presuppositions.

There is no way of resolving these dilemmas that I am aware of, and the presence of differing moralities and irresolvable questions, seems to demonstrate this. Moral uniformity, historically seems to depend on violence, and why should we accept that as good?

Complexity
In complexity we have multitudes of interactive systems which interact with each other. Nodes in these systems are constantly being modified by other nodes and events in the systems, or they are modifying their own behaviour and responses to events in the system. Sometimes the modifications are successful, or relatively harmless, and the new shape continues, sometimes they fail and it dies out. This is the basis of evolution, which happens all the time – there is no stability to ecologies.

The multitude of these links between nodes, are usually beyond full comprehension or enumeration by humans. Such systems are constantly in flux, often around recurrent positions, but they are open to sudden, rapid and unexpected change.

Complexity means that we cannot always predict the result of specific actions, especially when other people (and their reactions, and their attempts to ‘game’ the system) are involved, and when the situation is constantly changing and old points of balance are shifting. This change is something we face with ecological destruction. Patterns cannot remains stable. We can predict trends such as the more average global temperature increases, the more unstable the weather, and the more likely that violent weather events will occur. Similarly, the more destruction the more the unstable the ecology will become, and the more pollution the more unstable the ecology will become – unless it reaches the temporary stability of death.

Because so many events occur, are connected and are simultaneous, it may be impossible to tell what the full results of any particular action are. This is often expressed in the metaphor of the butterfly’s wing flaps eventually leading a major storm. Normally we would expect the multitude of butterfly actions to cancel each other out, and they may well do this most of the time, but not always. The reality is that small events can have major consequences, and we probably cannot tell which small events are significant until after the results have occurred. This lack of predictability means that we never have full control over complex system, we always have to adjust our actions given what occurs, should we try and work with the system.

This has particular consequences for ethics, in that the results of ethical actions, and ethical rules will not be predictable. The actions may be well-intentioned, but unexpected consequences are normal. If the consequences of an ethical action cannot be predicted, then how can it be guaranteed to be ethical? You can state that an ethical action is ethical irrespective of its results, but this is already an ethical position, and most people would probably not be completely indifferent to the results of their actions. The flux also means that propositions like the “categorical imperative” do not work, because we cannot assume situations are ‘the same’ or similar even in principle. Complexity means we cannot behave as we would want all others to behave in the same situation, because the situation could be unique. Besides perhaps different classes of people should behave with different intentions and different ethics. Why should ethics be uniform? Uniformity is already a moral decision.

Arguments about the results of actions and the similarity of situations are more or less inevitable.

Context
What this last statement implies is that the context of an event influences our understanding of the event. This is particularly the case given that we do not know all the connections and all the possible responses that parts of the system may make. We cannot list them all. We are always only partially understanding of the world we are living in, and this is influenced by the context we bring to those events. Possible contexts are modified by peoples’ connections to the events, and the cultural repertoire of possible responses and languages they have available. Given the 1000s of different cultures on Earth, and the multitude of different ways people are connected to the events and the people involved, then the possibility of agreement is low.

Politics
One important context is political conflict. One way of giving an ethical statement, ethical decision making, or an event, context is to frame it by your relationship to the people involved. If they are people you identify with, or consider an exemplar of what humans should be, then their statements are more persuasive and they are more likely to seem ethically good to you. If they seem outsiders or people you don’t identify with, or seem to be an exemplar of an out-group, then the less persuasive they will appear to be. Consequently ethics in always entangled in group conflict and group politics. This politics pre-exists and the groups involved may have different relationships to ecological destruction, and so have different politics towards that destruction, and towards other groups involved. Thus we frequently see people in favour of fossil fuels argue that developing countries need fossil fuels to develop, and that preventing the ecological destruction which comes with fossil fuels, prevents that development, and retains people in dire poverty and misery. What ethical right do already developed countries have to do that? What makes this poverty good? in this case developed countries may be considered evil for being concerned about ecology. Similarly developed countries may argue that most of the true destructiveness comes during development, and that while they are stabilising or reducing destruction, the level of destruction from developing countries will destroy us all. In this context, developing countries are wrong, or provide an excuse for inaction. The situation is already caught in the struggles for political dominance and safety in the world, as one reason for development is military security and a refusal to be dominated by the developed world again. There is a history of colonial despoliation involved here – although again to others, the despoliation can be defined (ethically) as bringing prosperity and development.

‘Climate Justice’, does not solve these problems because, in practice, justice involves defining some people as evil (which automatically sets up politics), it cannot limit contexts, and the machinery of justice depends on violence or the threat of violence. If a person is defined as a criminal and either punished or forced to make recompense, that occurs because of the potential of the powerful to use violence to enforce the sentence. In the current world system, there is no organisation or collection of organisations, which can impose penalties, or generate a collective agreement on what justice is in all circumstances, for the kinds of reasons we discussed above. Climate Justice is simply likely to encourage more blame allocation and conflict.

Recap and conclusion

Ecological destruction is embedded in ethical interpretations. These ethical interpretations are influenced by, and undermined by:

  • The difficulty of establishing a universally agreed ethical basis for actions. Ethics problems are essentially irresolvable, and yet all action involves ethics.
  • The complexity which means we cannot predict the results of all actions, we cannot control the system and we cannot understand the system completely.
  • Context, or the meaning which influences meanings, mean that different people will bring different contexts to events and understand them differently, and treat them differently ethically.
  • Context includes politics between groups and the different ethical systems belonging to different groups. Ecological destruction is already tied into different interpretations and different developmental (and other) demands and conflicts.

    • Thus it is extremely unlikely that we will spontaneously develop a universal ethical system which will allow us to decide what actions to take to resolve ecological destruction, or stop ecological destruction. Indeed the ethical conflicts will probably further delay our ability to respond.

    Ethics may well be the death of us.

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    Protecting Christian Liberties?

    October 10, 2018

    We are continuing to hear a lot about protecting “Religious liberties” (which seems to mean Christian liberties) but we are still not hearing much evidence that these liberties are under threat.

    So let me go by responses to articles in newspapers and articles I’ve read in favour of new ‘protective’ legislation. These are the liberties people seem to be talking about.

    1) People no longer automatically genuflect to people who claim they are preaching the word of God. Given the massive differences in interpretation of that word over history, then even if the Bible did result from the exact dictation of God to various humans, then we still don’t know that the preaching is correct. Secondly, not everybody nowadays genuflects to the word of Marx, Mises, Morrison, Science or whatever. If you have a case put it forward and expect some people to disagree, or not listen. Don’t expect that if you say some group of people are subhuman or will burn in the eternal flames of hell, you will receive automatic praise. Do expect to be able to speak, but don’t expect protection because you think you are saying something vital.

    2) Christians should be powerful because they have the truth, and everyone should live by their words. Sorry this is not an argument. This is an assertion.

    3) Christians do a great deal of good in society, and should not be discouraged from doing good. Do people really need special privileges to do good? If you really want to help people go and help them. But don’t always expect praise for it. If you want to help people because they should obey you, or your word, then expect to be criticised as anyone else would be. Jesus was not complimentary to those who performed religious duties to gain social status.

    4)Some schools are asking people to opt in to participate in Christian festivities like Christmas or Easter plays. This does not stop those interested in Christian tradition from participating, or setting up their own Church based festivities. What it does stop, is Christians assuming that they have the right to impose their views and ceremonies on others unless those others explicitly opt out. This supposed imposition on liberty, is an imposition on Christian dominance, and again Christians by objecting seem to be seeking the right to dominate others by default.

    5) Some people are rude to them online. Well that is what online life is like. Try giving a reasoned and heavily documented argument against Trump in a Republican group on Facebook and see how you go. We may not like people being rude, but we cannot stop it for one group of people alone. And besides some Christians are rude to other people, but usually people being rude cannot see their own rudeness. What they are saying seems fair to them.

    6) Some people refuse to agree that Christians should be able to persecute other groups of people, even if that group is other Christians. Little case is made as to why Christians should be able to persecute, except they think it is their right because they are always right. But on similar grounds, others have the right to disagree. And note persecute means more than disagreeing with someone. Its means disagreeing with their right to exist or speak at all. You are not being persecuted if you are told your views are rubbish. In many countries where Christians are persecuted, they would probably relish this kind of rubbish persecution.

    7) Some TV comedy shows occasionally mock Christians. Some TV shows mock politicians, business people, academics, gays, bogans and so on. Why should all Christians have the privilege of being exempt, even if particular Christians appear corrupt?

    8) Religion is good for people and society, therefore religions should not be criticised. The first part of this statement may be true, but if those good effects come about through harming and persecuting others, or scapegoating people who don’t belong to their denominations, then we have a moral dilemma. Can people be religious without condemning and persecuting others, without using violence and exclusion? I would hope so. What happened to the idea that you should set an example to the world, and convince people by your virtues rather than your cruelties?

    From a theological point of view, there is nothing Christian about these arguments for privilege. I am not aware of Jesus being reported as saying “Come to me. I will give you social power, material wealth, respect and obedience from your fellows. No one will ever dare object to whatever you say.”

    Let’s push this further. The thing Christians have gained the most fame for over the last 20 years is child abuse within Christian organisations. Let’s not be imprecise, and decide to avoid the term ‘child abuse’ as that might suggest the odd blow in anger, or verbal abuse, something anyone might commit on a bad day; we are talking about child rape. Clearly not all Christians were involved in this, and many had exactly the same response to it as non-Christians. However their organisations protected people who had raped children while attacking the victims and trying to silence them. Protecting the reputation of their Christian organisation was more important than protecting children. In this campaign of silence and denial they were usually supported by right wing commentators and politicians who dismissed the allegations, or diminished the numbers of allegations, or pretended that it was not happening. We know that when it all came out, one Church underestimated its fortune by billions, to try and avoid compensating its victims. We have just heard (the truth is not confirmed) that some schools have been sending gay students to organisations who strapped electrodes to their genitals to torture them into being straight. Should we preserve their liberty to do this?

    This is corruption.

    Sadly, these actions seems to have been acceptable until recently. Most Christians do not seem to have pressed their organisations to uncover the truth and stop the abuse (certainly there were no reports of such mass movements), even though Jesus seems pretty clear that people harming children are not the best people. Most Christians seem to have ignored the issue, even if it was their own children at peril.

    If religious liberties legislation had been in place and if people were not allowed to dispute truth with Christians or dismiss the platitudes of their organisations, then the Royal Commission could probably not have happened, and the state of institutional child rape would be preserved. Can you imagine Tony Abbott or Scott Morrison instigating such an inquiry and risking the liberties of the Churches? The whole right wing machine would be devoted to persecuting those who said there was a problem, and the law would be there to help them stop any inquiry. People would be unable to publish accusations. It took an atheist Prime Minister to set up the inquiry. Not a Christian one.

    Yes, this is an extreme example, but do we need to protect Christian liberties to attack people, persecute people, not receive disagreement, hide their crimes, and not receive any mockery? What good does it do? What real liberties need preserving? So far there is no case that liberties are curtailed for Christians any more than for other people. There are no examples being given of Christians being stopped from worshipping in their Churches (except by other people in those Churches), reading their Bible, trying to convert other people, or preaching the good news. Christian organisations already get massive privileges in matters of tax, financial reporting, influence on politics and so on.

    What the people who are pushing this idea seem to want is not liberty, but guaranteed privilege and immunity.

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