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GrouchoMarxthespot
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| No. It's just you. You and your priggish ilk |
I seem to be doing quite well then?
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GrouchoMarxthespot
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Imagine, and I am sure you can, a world in whch a global invasion has taken place.
Alien races stroll along the High Street - 'your' high street.
Now give me a proper account of differences between 'them 'and 'us'.
I think this will be remarkably similar to your own racist, (supported by dodgy science), narratives.
Keep going!
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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So, as a good liberal, you'd put the welcome mat out would you, Grouchy? Blimey, I think you've made up my mind.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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"Dodgy science" = Science that makes me feel bad.
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GrouchoMarxthespot
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| This is the twisted self-serving image your tribe has of itself, reinforced by its constant repetition by every avowed member. But your boorish claims to "scepticism, and logic and a commitment to science" are no more than a tribal rallying cry. You're no more committed to these things than is any other group of people on the planet. Your actual beliefs are just the mish-mash of self-serving and ego-enhancing bullshit that happens to be appropriate to your social class. But you jackasses keep braying on only to remind each other how much better you are than us mere sheep. |
Ah, more fine reasoning from the Malice in Blunderland school of thinking.
The antics of those who attempt to cloak prejudice in the language of objectivity and radicalism are endlessly fascinating, (as in watching a car crash sense of fascinating).
It is transparant tactic, what lies underneath is far from pretty and it is dishonest - unless, to be fair, you really believe it, in which case it is evidence of delusional thinking.
If you were not one chip on the shoulder short of a complete conspiracy theory you might try thinking clearly for once.
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GrouchoMarxthespot
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| So, as a good liberal, you'd put the welcome mat out would you |
I am interested in the concept of belonging, and have already posted comments on this, that's all.
I suspect it is a Venn diagram type of thing, with individuals adding/discarding overlapping circles. The circles might be geographical, social, intellectual, and emotional in nature.
Re-reading a 19th century history recently, (Corn Laws, emergence of the Manchester Free Trade movement, utilitarianism etc.), I was struck again by Disraeli's disquiet about these developments and his attachment to a necessarily sentimental concept of national identity.
Of course the free trade issue is still with us, (aka globalisation), but I wonder where you would go to hear a neo-Disraeli position today?
The far right don't do this, One Nation Conservatism was badly damaged by Thatcher, the left have given up articulating any kind of utopia at all, (whether national of international) and the centre parties conceive of national identity wholly in terms of an 'economic man', (plus a bit of dystopia lite thrown in).
The Scots and the Welsh don't seem to have any difficulty with a sense of 'national belonging/identity', but I wonder, for the English whether it has become a wholly redundant idea -- if indeed it ever existed at all, and 'belonging' is now construed at a local and regional level?
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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So, Grouch, how did you react to finding out that the Lefties of the 1820's were Free Market Fanaticks? Did it give you pause-for-thought for even five minutes?
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GrouchoMarxthespot
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| Lefties of the 1820's were Free Market Fanaticks |
The Communist Manifesto contains a paeon of praise to the innovative and revolutionary powers of the bourgeoisie.
Only ideologues feel the need to force historical facts into the framework of existing values: You aren't one of those I hope?
To adapt your Chou en Lai comment elsewhere, by the 1820s lots of people had lots of ideas about what was clearly a new social arrangement and where it might be going.
To bring things up to the present why would anyone object to a free market system; a decentralised, self organising system for achieving a sensitive automatic allocation of resources: As A Smith might have put it, whats not to like?
It is a good servant. It is only when elevated to the status of an ideology that it becomes a poor master.
| Did it give you pause-for-thought for even five minutes? |
I'm a bit worried that your unit of attention span seems to be only five minutes.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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| GrouchoMarxthespot wrote: |
The Communist Manifesto contains a paeon of praise...? |
| GrouchoMarxthespot wrote: |
To adapt your Chou en Lai comment ....? |
| GrouchoMarxthespot wrote: |
As A Smith might have put it, whats not to like?? |
There is currently alot of posing on the nursery slopes..... Can you a try a little off-piste?
You obviously have stacks of ability.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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No amount of ability will suffice where essentially rote arguments are being made. This is the worst thing about orthodox people -- whether in religion, in politics or in academia -- they can only deploy their talents in the relatively lightweight arena of buttressing other people's statements. I don't mind doffing my hat to Marx but Marxists are just (to mis-quote Lenin) ingenious idiots.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| GrouchoMarxthespot wrote: | | The Communist Manifesto contains a paeon of praise to the innovative and revolutionary powers of the bourgeoisie. |
Then the communists shoot us.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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As you all know, an important principle of Applied Epistemology is dividing things into what is knowable and what isn't. The latter category becomes important when it seems imperative nonetheless to know it.
The future is inherently unknowable but human beings can't stand this so they go to great lengths to pretend that they can. They erect vast priesthoods to a) tell them what the future is and b) make everything sufficiently sophisticated as to ensure nobody else can see how bogus the procedure is.* One such is economic forecasters.
So I am going to make a forecast of my own: during the next year
Britain will embark on a boom of astonishing scale and length. Make a note of the date of this prediction (12th December 2011) because obviously I may well be deleting this in twelve months time.
And while we're on the subject I predict that, thanks to Cameron's EU veto, Britain will become astoundingly influential in the policy-halls of the EU, as opposed to being rendered completely marginal as every, EVERY, commentator has confidently forecast. The truth is that being a) significant but b) in a minority of one can be a strong rather than a weak position in a multivariate system.
* This is not necessarily a bad thing. Human beings operate much better in the present if they believe they know the future. However, as AE-ists we prefer to know that we can't know. To stand on the shoulders of pygmies.
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Grant
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What's also interesting is those politicians who tell us that we have lost all "influence" in Europe. But what influence can you have at a table of 26 when you have one vote, which would have been grudgingly made, and everyone disagrees with you?
When politicians talk about influence they mean jobs for themselves in the European gravy train.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Grant, you started off well but then spoilt everything by a Daily Mailism at the end. AE-ists do not have a priori views on "politicians". They're just folks the same as everybody else.
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Grant
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They are the same as you and me if we were totally obsessed with power and the getting of it. The professionalisation of politics has been a disaster for democracy, leaving us to be run by strange people like Blair, Clegg and Cameron who from their teenage years have been obsessed with politics.
Clegg had already been planning his next political move, almost certainly into a highly-paid sinecure in Europe. He fears that Cameron has screwed it up for him.
The sort of people who obsess over politics from an early age in well-ordered and prosperous societies are, by definition, not the same as the rest of us. Normal people have more interesting things to do.
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