Obviously "love" is not the answer. (Maybe it is the question?) Rather, self-love may well be the love answer we have been looking for.
I tend to distrust "belief" and rather think through positions based on information. Thus, newly discovered information can lead to new thought.
in the 21st century we don't have to pay a thing but attention to get a first-class education.
Ayn Rand was not a Libertarian. She developed her own, quite narcissistically induced, philosophy which for some unfathomable reason gets conflated with a philosophy of maximum freedom.
Does competition drive us to improve and to strive to reach our potential, prevent us from becoming complacent? Perhaps some kinds of competition drive some kinds of people. Maybe co-operation drives others, or the kinds of co-operation that involve excitement of innovation within the security of an interactive group. Then, competition does not have to be about survival of the fittest, but can just be diversity.
I am troubled by the paradigm of ownership in regard to the resources of a society. Ownership, even massive co-ownership, is a divisive concept. We are divided from that which we own, given some sense of entitlement rather than a sense of participation. I think a better paradigm would be a participatory society, in which we are all on the hook for doing well. Freud and others have said, and I tend to agree, that our primary motivators, that which is most associated with psychological happiness, are work and love -- vocation and companionship brought to a level of passion. This passion, and the happiness it can bring, comes with active participation, not a classification of ownership.
Money is a social construct, and yet we foolishly let it take over.
Wasn't Reagan the one who looked into our eyes and hypnotized our better sense into accepting his "debt is good" command?
Even more regressive than the taxes is the whole government-corporate complex of special subsidies, regulations and loopholes designed by corporate lobbyists and granted by their legislative lackeys.
The problem of the government for free market business is not the taxes or the regulations, but the subsidies and advantages to the influentially rich.
Opposition to government intervention through criminal sanctions does not mean approval of an activity, but rather a valuation of liberty above enforcing morality.
Our government is too big because our country is so big, vast, made up of regions with their own interests. So, look at the complexity and wordiness of legislation to attempt to cover an imaginable range of possible scenarios. The thing is, it would be more useful to keep the rules incredibly simple, to cover what we can agree is needed for reasonably sane and safe interaction. Get back to basics, within a future-oriented changing environment. This can be brought from the bottom up, from the smallest groups, within any consciously aware community, becoming more widespread as it becomes an obviously practical meme. Government is but an institutionalization of people's models of living together as a society. It is not a thing, but a system of interrelationships.
The pro-Israel lobby is not so much about promoting Israeli interests as influencing a hastening of Armageddon for those Christian martyrs who want an end to this world combined with neocon desires to control the Arab oil countries' resources.
The Arab-Israeli hostilities are not so much about the nation of Israel as Western colonial mentality and its aftermath.
The world is changing. Every institution will be re-evaluated within that change.
Why does everyone seem to think that these things are a matter of either/or when both/and works much better?
I think we need a moratorium on the word "socialism" until a majority of us understands what it means.
I keep hearing this meme that people ought not be taxed, to be allowed to keep and spend their own money (which is another debate, as to what money is and who it belongs to) better than government. What is this based upon? What is better? Certainly individuals want to spend in ways that promote their own interests -- but often they do not; and often their interests are not the interests of the society generally.
I don't think anyone is arguing against artists being paid for their work. There has always been pirating since there have been items of value to pirate. Mostly we do not respond to such activity by making it harder to do legitimate business or to egregiously burden those who might be operating out of a desire to spread information rather than thievery. As an artist who works with other artists, I am aware of these issues. But artists are creative people. Certainly we can figure out how to promote our work without having it made profitless by pirates.
I had just been thinking about how so many children are somehow expected to behave in ways they have no way to understand. No wonder so many of us have so much anxiety about who we are supposed to be, how we are supposed to perform to be ok.
The drug laws have nothing to do with safety or public health and everything to do with having control over people willing to flout authority.
Part of the silliness in all of this is that we are brainwashed by advertising to take all kinds of dangerous drugs without even considering the dangers, for all kinds of purposes. Then, these few substances that have had some historical hysteria attached are treated like nuclear weapons. If all the expense of maintaining this war mentality against the least able to defend themselves were instead used to treat those who have used substances ill-advisedly, we wouldn't have a substance abuse problem. We would have a substance abuse solution.
Perhaps if one is stuck in a mire of continued unsuccessful outcomes, rather than continue to self-berate one could step back, have a refreshment, take a nap, daydream about the scene outside the window, leave the problem to find anew with new energy, ideas and perspective.
One of those falls over destiny's cliffs will be your last.
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