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Ivan Alexander
Username: Humancafe
Registered: 12-2017
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 27, 2023 - 12:49 pm: | |
ADDENDUM: Post-Postscripts.
It was twenty five years ago on 22 December 1998, winter solstice, we launched HumanCafe People’s Book as a forum of ideas on topics from philosophy, culture, and history to science, physics, and mathematics. Now on 22 December 2023, with a metaphor, “Confessions of a cultured Yogurt”, we have brought the forums to a close. The exception will be at ADDENDUM: Post-Postscripts, to address extraordinary events, such as victory of freedom and democracy over dictatorship and Russian imperialism and Communism; eventual peace in Palestine; or future discovery that Newton’s gravity ‘universal constant’ G in reality being predictably variable, ushering a new world of physics and space travel, as had been explored in these forums. As a tribute to the people of planet Earth we have all been contributors, directly and indirectly, as we are all connected, by metaphor and in real sense. We leave you here. Thank you.
HUMAN CAFE
humancafe@aol.com |
Ivan Alexander
Username: Humancafe
Registered: 12-2017
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 13, 2024 - 07:51 pm: | |
Post-Postmodernism's paradox paradigm.
Our twenty-first century is an age of Postmodernism, where interactions between truth and politics and social paradigms are all relative. Whereas earlier centuries dealt in absolutes, moral and scientific, the previous twentieth century had a paradigm of relativity and paradox. Quantum theory showed us there was no absolute measure of reality, while Einstein's theory of relativity showed even time is relative, observationally lacking absolutes. This paradigm has carried over into our present century, that truth is relative and truth or morality are malleably based on the perspective of the observer. Greater truths were paradoxical, meaning they can be both true and untrue, depending on whose narrative is being believed. There are no absolutes we can rely on, as all are contingent on how viewed.
Belief systems come and go, but truth remains always what it is, regardless of what we may think of it. What we believed in earlier times are subject to change. The Ptolemaic universe with Earth in the center was replaced by the Copernican universe where the Sun is central to our solar system; the static universe of past cosmology was replaced by a Doppler expanding universe that originated with a Big Bang creation, where in the beginning even time did not exist; and that we are not at the center of the observable universe but a dot within the complexity of an infinite universe; a universe with no center and that can double back upon itself in the gravity manifold of General Relativity. We now believe that narrative, that it is all relative and truth is whatever we define it to be, until it changes.
We are now with our evolved intelligence masters of the universe, where our reason is the impetus of our understanding what is reality, though paradoxically we cannot know what that is. In a Cartesian universe, we are creators of reason and understanding, while reality is something separate from us, and the human condition is one dependent on our understanding rather than existing in its own right. We define reality with our minds, not the other way around. So it is for us to mold reality in our image, much like the Pioneers' imperative to tame the wilderness, to conquer nature and prevail.
But is this true? Are we separate from reality, with only our intelligence bringing order into a chaotic existence? Is the violence humanity experienced through history but a manifestation of that chaotic state of existence, where only human reason can tame its violent nature? Are we masters of our universal existence? In some ways, yes, we are at the center of that existence, and from that existence we can glean a reality we wish to be true, even if paradoxical. The greatest paradoxes were 'truths' we had come to believe, as in religious belief that you have to 'die to have eternal life', or the belief the known universe is 'unknowable' to us. This led to the inescapable consequence that narrative is more important than philosophical 'truths', and that a wild human nature must be forced to accept order, coerced into accepting the social order of a defined reality imposed on us by stronger wisdom than we individually possess; nature is to be conquered. Was this not the paradigm of some religions, to conquer into submission, or social contract of Fascism? Hitler and Mussolini, or Lenin, Stalin and Mao, believed they were to impose an order on society, to straighten out the chaos of the masses in democracy, or tame free wheeling capitalism? Control by force was the paradigm of our past century, to save humanity from its inherent chaos for the greater good. But the opposite happened, wars on a world scale, and death of millions at a staggering cost. What went wrong?
Postmodernism believes, not unlike Fascism, that 'the narrative of ideology controls political power'. So when Putin rewrites Ukrainian history to suit his narrative, that Ukraine has no right to exist and is a part of Russia, he is acting in the 'relative truth' postmodern paradigm to suit his political ambitions, and thus feels completely in his right to invade a sovereign nation. Is Putin a postmodernism dictator? Or when Pope Francis says Ukraine should not be ashamed to raise the white flag against Russia's aggression, he is invoking a paradoxical belief that 'surrender is peace', which every tyrant in history would heartily applaud. Is Pope Francis a postmodernist pope? But Ukrainian freedom is not up for barter for postmodernist beliefs, that narrative is reality, nor is it for political power to define human freedoms, if that freedom is not a relative value, but instead is absolute. In a non-Cartesian universe, where individuals have an integral connection to their reality, the right of that individual to be free of coercions is defined by the sanctity of his or her being, that freedom is an unalienable right to exist. There is no relativity paradox to that right, if the universe is self defined as an integral part of our existence, because that is our inherent absolute reality.
In a universal post-Postmodernist cosmology, the universe is not some abstract existence outside our being; it is the absolute essence of that being. If we are the product of a cosmic matrix of interrelationships that connect us, each and every one of us, to how the universe is self defined as an infinite web hugging us down to quarks and atoms of our being, we can be no other possible way in existence other than how that infinite pressure of existence had molded us to be; we are defined in the Self of our being by infinity. That is the true reality within which we exist. For each one of us our reality is different, so experience life differently, each one connected to that infinity that defines us. It is what ultimately defines what we come to believe, what we cherish and will fight for if needed. But if done with respect for our identity, reciprocally, we can put away our differences to respect our individuality, to find agreement and peace with one another. The rest flows in our lives from this, that we put away our defenses and live in peace. In the end, whether or not we understand it, we are all connected.
Postmodernism is an interesting diversion, a fine fiction, but it is not reality. The paradoxical paradigm that our truths can be un-true is not a star we can hitch to, or the consequences can be horrific, as our world wars have shown, and as Putin's postmodern rewrite of history is showing now. That leads to authoritarian power, social oppression, destruction and war. The sublimely humble claim of Habeas Mentem is that, having a mind, we have the natural, universal right to be Who we are, free of coercions and free to form our agreements in this existence. There is no paradox to this, for it is not self contradictory, it does not confuse truth with un-truth, and the 'given word' has the power of an infinity behind it. There is a reality, and we are at its center, each and everyone of us, connected to an infinite universe that defines our mind and being. From our awareness exists the complete reality of our being, and from that reality radiates back into the total existence of our Who; this is how we are in this life. Be respectful of that Who and our right to happiness and peace are sacrosanct.
IDA |
Ivan Alexander
Username: Humancafe
Registered: 12-2017
| | Posted on Sunday, May 26, 2024 - 09:11 pm: | |
Post-Pasteurization in our food and health.
In his book "Cooked" by Michael Pollan, which covers our evolution in how we 'cook' our food, really our co-evolution as a human species and the food we eat, until we have so altered our food that our intestinal flora no longer recognizes it, especially in the last century of processed foods. As Pollan writes:
quote:"The big problem with the Western diet," Stephen O'Keefe, a gastroenterologist at the University of Pittsburgh, told me, "is that it doesn't feed the gut, only the upper GI [gastrointestinal tract). All the food has been processed to be readily absorbed, leaving nothing for the lower GI. But it turns out that one of the keys to health is fermentation in the large intestine." A diet as rich in fats and refined carbohydrates as ours may supply our bodies with plenty of energy, but the lack of fiber in the diet is, in effect, starving our gut and its microbial residents. O'Keefe and many others are convinced that the myriad intestinal disorders that have become common among people eating a Western diet can be traced to this imbalance. We have changed the human diet in such a way that it no longer feeds the whole superor-ganism, as it were, only our human selves. We're eating for one, when we need to be eating for, oh, a few trillion.
Missing from much of our modern Western diet is fiber, what feeds the myriad beneficial microbes in our lower gastrointestinal tract, what produces essential vitamins (K and B) for our health. Pasteurization had eliminated obvious pathogens in our diet, what had caused diseases such as salmonella, E. coli, and botulism; but at the same time killed off the beneficial ones. These beneficial microbes had co-evolved with us into the super-organism we are now made of our body's cells, and the microbes (tenfold our cells!) that exist with us symbiotically inside and outside of us. Again Pollan:
quote:Right now, of course, and for the last several decades at least, we have been assiduously doing exactly the opposite: disordering the community of microbes in our bodies without even realizing it, much less with any sense of what might be at stake. Under the pressures of broad-spectrum antibiotics, a Pasteurian regime of "good sanitation," and a modern diet notably hostile to bacteria, the human microbiota has probably changed more in the last hundred years than in the previous ten thousand, when the shift to agriculture altered our diet and lifestyle. We are only just beginning to recognize the implications of these changes for our health.
The point Pollan is making is that our successful Pasteurian sanitizing war on all bacteria, both good and bad, has robbed us of a healthy gut environment, so rather than making us healthier it is making us sicker, evident in our rise in chronic conditions of Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, population obesity, cancer, endemic allergies, even autism and psychological disorders. By sanitizing our foods to the point of killing them, processed foods are dead foods, we have increasingly been killing ourselves. If we ate today the way our Pioneers ate over a century ago, now with our altered intestinal flora, we would probably not have conquered the West; while they were able to survive a harsh world, we would have succumbed. How do we get back on track to good health? Michael Pollan's suggestion, after extensive scientific research and interviews with fermentos, is that we return to eating fermented vegetables and meats, especially sauerkraut, dill pickles and kimchi, raw foods, even raw milk and cheeses, both with probiotics (like yogurt) to feed our microcosmos and prebiotics to feed our microorganisms, etc. We know smoking tobacco is bad for us, but how about dead foods? Even wine is a fermented food if produced naturally, in moderate consumption, has health benefits. To regain our health from our 'war on microbes' we need to reassess our eating habits and the quality of what we eat. We know fast foods lacking fiber is bad for us, but how about over pasteurized meats and dairies? Mother's breast milk is better than baby formulas, for example. How do we balance health with hygiene? Will the FDA adjust its health policies? These are still works for the future, to better understand how our microbiome functions to return our intestines to their natural health. Kombucha may not cure our autoimmune diseases, but it may be better for us than sugary soft drinks. Pollan says we have to trust the natural process with which we co-evolved. He says:
quote:As a more or less stable ecological community, the microbes in the gut share our interest in resisting invasion and colonizations by microbial interlopers. Some of them produce antibiotic compounds for this purpose, whereas others help manage and train our body's immune system, by dispatching chemical signals that activate or calm various defenses. Though to speak of "our" immune system or self-interest no longer makes much sense. Taken as a whole, the microbi-ota constitutes the largest and one of the human body's most important organs of defense.
This is where we need to go to undo a century of sanitizing Pasteurization to regain our health. Cheese!
IDA
Also see:
MICHAEL POLLAN ON SOURDOUGH
quote:Pollan is talking about studies in Italy that have proven that if you use a good sourdough starter with a good colony of bacteria, digesting the gluten is not a problem.
You are what you eat
Overdiagnosis and overtreatment; how to deal with too much medicine - National Library of Medicine (August 2020) |
Ivan Alexander
Username: Humancafe
Registered: 12-2017
| | Posted on Wednesday, June 19, 2024 - 11:35 am: | |
Post-Liberalism.
What do we mean by Liberalism? According to Wikipedia, Liberalism is:
quote:Liberalism is a politicaland moral philosophybased on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, right to private property and equality before the law.[1][2] Liberals espouse various and often mutually warring views depending on their understanding of these principles but generally support private property, market economies, individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), liberal democracy, secularism, rule of law, economicand political freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion,[2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9] constitutional government and privacy rights.[10] Liberalism is frequently cited as the dominant ideology of modern history.
This is as compared to Conservatism, which says (Wiki):
quote:Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy and ideology, which seeks to promote and preserve traditional institutions, customs, and values.[1][2][3] The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization in which it appears.[4] In Western culture, depending on the particular nation, conservatives seek to promote and preserve a range of institutions, such as the nuclear family, organised religion, the military, the nation-state, property rights, rule of law, aristocracy, and monarchy.[5]Conservatives tend to favour institutions and practices that enhance social order and historical continuity.
These two may not be mutually exclusive, though they appear to be at times at odds with one another. But the disagreement seems to be not on basic premises but on how to achieve the social structure to best reflect the values they believe. The general consensus of modern Liberals is that we need to form better government to implement desired social goals, such as racial and gender equality, equitable distribution of income, equal voting rights, progressive taxation (where the rich pay for social wellbeing of the poor), protection of minorities, help for those who cannot fend for themselves such as the handicapped and disadvantaged, greater governmental management of economic activity; and free social services like education, healthcare, subsidized housing (homelessness), feeding those who cannot feed themselves (welfare), etc... Though 'over permissiveness' has its fallout, as the streets of San Francisco can testify, if at times naive. What Conservatives tend to promote is greater self reliance, rule of law and constitutional government, patriotism, strong ethics and family values, less (Liberal) government bureaucracy, a strong military, and a free economy. Which is right? Which works?
It all depends on the social agreements formed. In a democracy this is by common consent, what becomes their social contract; whereas in dictatorships it is what people accept by default, though they have no voice in how they are governed. But implicit in this social contract is that government exists for the people, even if they are oppressed by it. If governing forces exist only for preserving their own power, then they fail as a social contract, and rather behave as warlords or tribal chiefs ruling their members with fear and brutality. There is a fine line when the governed peoples are served versus being oppressed. In a democratic constitutional government there are constraints on such oppression, laws that protect the rights of individuals from institutional oppression, though not always effective. But in dictatorships, where freedom of expression, or freedom of belief and conscience, or questioning of government are all forbidden, then there are no outlets to socially redress their grievances, which if great enough will lead to political revolutions. Under both Liberalism and Conservatism, these basic principles of protecting our individual rights are respected, even sacrosanct; whereas under dictatorships they are absent. Nevertheless there are border areas where our rights are cast into shadows that obscure the benefits of our social contract, and deliver their failings instead.
It then comes down to politics. What is it we want? In any society we would like to think that we desire the greatest good for the most people. To that end we vote, or petition, the governing bodies into granting that outcome. But what if the politics become coercive, forcing people into accepting policy that is actually more harmful than good? We have the power to protest legally, such as workers' unions and strikes, workers' marches; but if they are disruptive in their protests, systems fail, transport and infrastructure grind to a halt, for example; then who is being served? Conversely, if government policy is so restrictive as to cause economic failure, as happened repeatedly under Communist rule, and the economy regresses into poverty, surviving for a time on its accumulated capital until it is exhausted, then where does it leave progressive values for present and future generations? If market exchange activity is so overburdened with taxes, or top heavy restrictive rules (or forbidden), that they no longer function, are unable to reflect our individual choices in the marketplace, so not reflecting our values, then the whole system fails. Social agreements cannot be so coercive that society fails to function, or as seen in the Soviet experience, it implodes from its own weight, and all suffer. Social agreements, whether by democratic means and constitutional law, or love for king and queen, or popular strong leader, they must be to serve the greatest good for the most people, or they are simply invalid as a social contract.
Today's Liberalism may fall into unintended, deleterious consequences if it leans too heavily on governmental policy that degrades society for the most people. If bureaucracy becomes too top heavy, or beset by corruption, or too disruptive to people's freedoms, where the government narrative, or propaganda, is more important than the social reality, then we as a society descend into a dysfunctional abyss, and all suffer. The same could be said of Conservatism, where certain joyless dogmas of moral values, whether religious or secular, infringing on our rights as individuals, then the public good is not served. In both, the people become oppressed, political forces start pulling us apart, education fails our young, crime rises, our social contract fails, economies fail, and we are all the poorer for it. If what we cherish as our true liberal values fail us, our civilization falters as we regress into tribalism, back to barbarism and wars. Our civilization ceases to function. (One of the voids I find in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's liberal writings on human society, for example, both in their natural state and civilized states, is his omission of the power of tribalism, in particular clan and family tribalism; had he visited the New World in his time he would have found that the indigenous natives in their 'natural state', were invariably tribal, warlike and brutal towards others, and not the 'noble savages' he imagined.)
Perhaps neither Liberalism nor Conservatism are right for our future, but rather something that transcends them, merging their values together. Of course we could not abandon noble attributes of Liberalism, such as caring for the poor, social safety nets, progressive acceptance of transgender, to care for our humanity; these are what makes us who we are. Conversely we cannot give up noble Conservative values such as respect for our inalienable human freedoms, respect for the individual, and reciprocal acts of tolerance and understanding, to value our rights as human beings above the power of rule. These are already enshrined in our public consciousness, as they are who we are, why they are written into our national Constitution and Bill of Rights, upheld by our rule of law. We cannot go backwards. But we can focus on those fundamental values of our being human that are so universal to us, to be free to seek each other in friendship and love, to cherish our children, public safety, and to be free of abuse both mental and physical; and to have the right to form social agreements pleasing to us, without coercions or deceit. Though each one of us is an individual first, we are also universally all inter-connected. Respect our freedom in our human connections and you are ushering in a new awareness, a new universal consciousness, one that we may someday call Post-Liberalism.
IDA |
Ivan Alexander
Username: Humancafe
Registered: 12-2017
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 28, 2024 - 01:46 pm: | |
A Post-Cartesian world universal philosophy.
For the last near half millennium philosophy had gravitated around the Descartes notion of universal duality: mind and body, empiricism and ontology, physical universe and idea, God and universal reality, etc. The universe existed of its own right "out there", while we existed in our own right "in here." But this led to an unresolvable conundrum, that the duality could not resolve itself, so it remained forever locked in paradox.
If philosophy is a sum total of all human knowledge and ideas, brought down to their common theme as a basic common denominator, then there should be a resolution to the Cartesian duality. But this common denominator remained forever 'over the horizon', almost achievable but never quite reached, so the mind-body conundrum remained forever at bottom of the dilemma: are we physical, or are we spiritual beings? There was no answer.
But in a Post-Cartesian philosophical universe, there can be a common ground that transcends its duality: that is a universe tied together by its inherent structure, self interacting, emergent and evolutionary, and capable of demonstrating not only life but also consciousness. This is the domain of "interrelationship", what is a self defining universe interactive from here to infinity, a universe that self defines itself interactively down to quarks and atoms, and up to galaxies. (Everything is what and where it is as the pressure of everything else allowed it to be over time in relation to its interconnected totality, what is its infinite identity.) That, and only that, resolves the Cartesian paradox of "it and we", so the duality merges into the one ultimate infinite reality, that it is all One, and in our minds are definitions from that One in "Who we are". Each part of infinity is centered as its definition in terms of its totality interrelationship. And there is the answer we had been searching for the past half millennium. As Giordano Bruno had said, 'infinity has no center, yet everywhere is its center.'
If infinity defines, gives identity to, to everyone of its parts, then 'duality' is merely how this universal infinity defines its parts: light or dark, energy and matter, mind or body, subjective or objective; these are all defined at infinity to be as they are, a definition of infinite identities manifest as their particulars here and now. That is how interrelationship looks: it is itself. Duality is what ancient Eastern philosophers called "illusion", and what modern philosophers call "ontological epistemology". So what is "real" is not defined by our 'subjective objective' interactions, what are either in mind or being, but by 'interrelated totalities' of the matrix of interrelationships from an infinity defining that being; that is "real", a universal reality in terms of itself. The rest, mind, body, duality, are merely our constructs in trying to understand it, but reality exists in its own right. (See Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception-1954, where he describes "isness.") The genesis of existence is not in its duality, but in the multiplicity of a universal infinity manifesting each thing within it to be. We are merely interactive observers.
What changes in this self defined form of reality is that exists mind, life consciousness, what we know in ourselves as beings conscious of our Who. Therein lies the universe's sense of emergence, what makes it grow beyond the totality of its parts, into a living universal reality. This is what transcends Descartes' vision of universal philosophy, and what leaves the past centuries to their paradoxical dualities. With the concept of interrelationship as the key to how the universe is a self interactive, living totality, we enter a whole new domain of world philosophical evolution, one that will keep us occupied for the next half millennium. In a Post-Cartesian world philosophy, we are both the actors and authors in this new script, to usher a world reality we had never seen before as we connect with our minds and being into the next level of our human consciousness evolution. And that will be the domain of our becoming aware that "we have the mind," what is Habeas Mentem, as free human beings.
(ADDENDUM: For some a post-Cartesian philosophy may be unsettling, as it totally reverses our usual understanding of how we view reality and life in it, including ours, that the universe is 'out there' and that it is our minds that gives it meaning and intelligence, while in the new interrelationship reality is in fact all already intelligent by its own design, and we are but a part of its interactive reality; we do not add understanding to an inert reality but are merely another part of it; the universe is already an interrelated living cosmic reality.)
IDA
Also see: Postivism vs. Post-Positivism |
Ivan Alexander
Username: Humancafe
Registered: 12-2017
| | Posted on Saturday, October 05, 2024 - 06:01 pm: | |
A Post-Putin World Order.
What would Russia look like in a post-Putin era?
A post-Putin world order would still be at opposites with our Western civilization's world order of free democratic nations ruled by constitutional rule of law, protection of our inherent freedoms, freedom of choice and expression, freedom of belief, and the right to pursue our lives in agreements free of coercions; this as opposed to the East's civilization's world order of strong dictatorial government controlling all aspects of people's lives, in submission to the ruling party and dictatorial leader, where individual human rights are severely limited by the state. This East-West divide is visible in the present postures of China and their allies, Russia, Iran, Cuba, North Korea et al; as opposed to European and American style democracies, including Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, and other Western leaning nations in Africa and Latin America. Shortly before Putin's invasion of Ukraine, the Financial Times had an article describing this East-West divide: Russia and China’s plans for a new world order - FT (22 January 2022- just before Russia invaded Ukraine). This from the FT article:
quote:For Russia and China, the making of a new world order is not simply a matter of raw power. It is also a battle of ideas. While the western liberal tradition promotes the idea of universal human rights, Russian and Chinese thinkers make the argument that different cultural traditions and “civilisations” should be allowed to develop in different ways.
In effect, "to develop in different ways" is how Russia and China have an imperialist vision of the world, occupying foreign countries as suits their interests, why Putin invaded the sovereign nation of Ukraine, and why China is eyeing Taiwan; while the Western nations had abandoned imperialism a century ago, have a federation of independent states and work together more as a commonwealth of nations to achieve their world goals. Our commonwealth of nations is a world order replacing imperialistic government coercions with shared constitutional agreements. Nothing could be in more contrasting in this 21st century than the new East-West divide, nations of coercion versus nations of agreements. But where does this leave Russia in a post-Putin world order?
In the Time magazine article titled Yulia Navalnaya speaks, Alexei Navalny's widow speaks of how 'Putin is her enemy'. It may be that Yulia will succeed Putin's era with a new vision of Russia as a progressive, liberal, democratic country patterned more after European ideals of protecting equal human rights, the rule of law, and social safety nets to help their people weather hard times; it would be an ideal worth reaching for a 21st century Russia. Then she can join the greater Western commonwealth of nations as an equal, and (like a free Ukraine) unleash Russia's immense intellectual and industrial productive potential. Or the other path for Russia, should she continue to pursue neo-czarist imperial ambitions, is that Russia would gradually break apart, first with a European western Russia west of the Urals, still ruled by Moscow, but then seeing central and eastern Russian republics gradually breaking free of Moscow; and the empire would eventually fall to infighting and dissolution. It could go either way in a Post-Putin era, and it is for the courageous Russian people to choose the path they will pursue, same as Ukraine had done, of democracy or corrupt oligarchy. China et al will be watching.
IDA |
Ivan Alexander
Username: Humancafe
Registered: 12-2017
| | Posted on Saturday, October 26, 2024 - 06:48 pm: | |
In a Post-Competitive World.
Competition is conflict by agreement. War is conflict by coercion. There is a difference while competing in a game or discussion, from competing to conquer by coercion. Whether a boxing match or wresting, or football, where the competition can be brutal, the competitors had agreed to engage, obey the rules of the game, and declare victory or loss. However if the competition is coercive, like in a street fight, or battles of war, violence that can lead to the ultimate loss of life, there was no agreement but pure coercion, aggression. The same for taking hostages and enslaved captives to gain competitive advantage, they are pure coercion.
In ancient times it was acceptable to coerce others, whether with discipline or punishments, parent belting a child or whipping disobedient slaves, it was the norm to use violence, even unto modern times. Unless there was agreement by the victim to be punished 'for their own good', which is rarely the case, punishments are inherently coercive to others. Even in Plato's Republic, or holy script of religion, the Bible and Koran as 'the word of God', punishment was acceptable, as was slavery. Child abuse or spousal abuse beating was not uncommon in the popular mind, so tacitly accepted. In more modern times slavery was abolished, a dark stain on our history; spousal and child abuse are now a crime in most modern societies, though coercion remains acceptable as punishment. Unlike competition where the inherent coercions are agreed upon, even if violent, abuse never is. In our more modern mindset the only coercion that is acceptable is to 'stop coercion'; all other forms are simply violence, hence inherently coercive.
Competition is a common thread within the fabric of society, competition in sports, in democratic contests, the corporate boardroom to out produce or out sell the competition, in scholastic exams, court rooms, even in the staid game of chess. These are all a prior accepted as part of how competitions work in life, and thus considered good, with better productivity and superior products, justice, or more able candidates, if played by the rules. One wins, the other loses. And if done ethically, all benefit in the end, so considered healthy. But when competition turns ugly, unethical and coercive, deceitful, or in the extreme violent, then all suffer. Things do not work for the common good, responses become vengeful, and what was competition turns out to be coercion.
This is the state of the world as it is now, where competition is acceptable, provided it is not coercive. In a post-competition world it is more humane to rehabilitate, make better, reconstitute in an agreeable manner where there had been wrong rather than to punish. There will always be fines and restitution, which are inherently' punitive' in the sense they counter grievances, same as imprisonment, but it is more progressive to rehabilitate than to 'punish'. Competition, like law, is defined by agreements that promote fairness acceptable to all parties within reason. Presumed innocence is foundational to a post-competitive world, where laws protect the rights of individuals, so all can compete on an equal footing, and none be handicapped by station of birth or privilege. Slaves have no rights, while our constitutional freedoms gives us the right to find our way in life as it pleases us, provided we are not coercive to others. This is the foundation of our laws of agreement, that we honor those agreements without prejudice and are protected from coercions. 'Competition by agreement' versus 'competition by coercion' are what define our human condition, and how we choose this is what marks us as a progressive society, versus one still regressive. This is a social paradigm that then defines us, where we look for agreements to work with us rather than against. In a post-competitive world, all coercion, like war, is wrong. Teamwork is cooperative. Cooperation is better.
IDA |
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