Feb 23, 2023·edited Feb 23, 2023Liked by Birrion Sondahl
The root problem IMO is there are people and cultures that feel superior to others. This, I feel, is due to most of our global “developed” countries being predicated on “competitive self-determination” vs the more rational “cooperative self-determination”. Prominent and current examples of competitors that feel superior to others is the US and Israel. Hitler and Nero are a couple historical examples. There are others but these two show the most damage from the competitive ethic: vanity, secrecy, coercion, corruption, anxiety, despair and chance. The negative artifacts of competing are endemic to any competition and encourages people to utilize these negative traits to “win”. Our court system is actually a well laid out and logical system but guess what is holding it back from working like it should? Competitive self-determination. One must ask, what other things deemed as good are also adversely affected by this competitive ethic? Science and democracy. Science is hobbled by the competition and just doesn’t work right while democracy is too because when did a competition ever use science or democracy as a necessary component? Not happening. If you follow this logic, you will gain new insight into the bigger picture and also be able to deconstruct with utmost accuracy any news story or ideological-political discussion. Game over. If you want an airtight formula that doesn’t need any “ism” to be effective or a solid path to intellectual self-defense, this may be the ticket.
It is the economic conditions that are responsible for creating this mindset. Capitalism requires hierarchy and competition whereas communism is based on cooperation and mutual benefit of all parties involved. The root of our problems are the capitalist system which is why we need a socialist revolution.
Agreed. Self-determination = participation. This participation can be competitive or cooperative. In a competition, namely the economic kind, participation is in truth coerced where one party chooses not to compete. However, this is impossible in our current competitive system because of the lack of alternatives and the fear people have from historical examples of groups or individuals getting shaken down or murdered by the authorities (i.e. mafia). In board games and sports, people are given the choice to compete or not but in our economic system this is not allowed. So, our economy is essentially a "game" that we are not allowed to choose whether to play or not. This is untenable, unethical and absurd.
In my post, I describe a way to understand capitalism and socialism without the usual baggage and stigmas that people have in either direction. Hence, my thoughts were to break down the psychology of these two without resorting to ideologies. So, capitalism = competitive self-determination or competitive participation and socialism = cooperative self-determination or cooperative participation. The one caveat I have for cooperative participation is that it must have "open knowledge" as a precondition. In my thesis, the only way to have true democracy is for knowledge to be open so all are able to make informed decisions without any hidden knowledge, secrecy, lying and spying. Moreover, I break down voting into 2 weighted categories, votes derived from conscience and votes derived from technical expertise. Then issues are broke down into components reflecting those two categories. For example, how much chlorine to put into the public water system is more of a technical problem yet still retains the ethical component of not having bacteria kill us off. So, everyone votes their conscience on this issue but the "how much chlorine" is a vote strictly for the trained expert who has a degree or similar in this area. If this expert screws up, he gets voted out and someone else voted in. Then we have the issue of whether to bomb, for example, the Yeminis into the stone age. This is one where the moral component weighs heavy and the technical component is absurd (as if it was possible to show how bombing them has some technical advantage scientifically - not likely at all). IMO, democracy is just another way of finding out what people know and don't know and actually is a temporary state until "new information" is discovered (usually a review process) and hence a new voting round is conducted. People either know what is right or wrong or don't know what is right or wrong. This pertains to both moral truth and technical truth as outlined. This gives more nuance to what is really going on in any particular issue and makes voting and legislating more efficient and efficacious. Lastly, because government and school serve the same function, the two have been separated due to the need for the ruling class to hide and protect their methods which in any typical school would be proven to be BS. With this said, people in a cooperative society do not pay for schooling ever and are encouraged to go to school and learn whatever they feel is good or that lends itself to becoming an expert so as to give them a seat and vote in technical matters. Right now, people in America vote on issues that are construed as socialist yet very few people even know what socialism means. Thus, droves of people vote against measures that are labeled "socialist" yet they have no idea or proof they even know what that means. This is because stigma and propaganda makes the decision for them which makes voting a total BS scenario in getting anything done. My proposition is to subtract the ism and drill down to terms that NO ONE can misconstrue or stigmatize. If it gets explained this way, the hope of winning a debate increases exponentially because any opponent would in no way be able to counter such absolute terms. "Capitalism" and "Socialism" are flimsy terms and have multitudes of definitions where "competitive self-determination" and "cooperative self-determination" are air tight terms with no alternative definitions. This is why I chose to do this, so we can cut to the chase in our debates with capitalists and not worry about wishy washy definitions.
Birrion, once again, my applause and thanks for another well-done article. It's so helpful to have this important background information to point others to... something I'll try to do more often.
We're up against such a massive propaganda-and-censorship campaign, one with massive, seemingly unlimited resources; so every bit of information we can supply, no matter how limited its reach seems to be, is important. I appreciate you.
What made them more famous, I suspect, were they were a Kolomoisky creation and the ones armed to go into Donbas and dominate that military operation to cleanse all ethnic Russians from "Ukriane."
The root problem IMO is there are people and cultures that feel superior to others. This, I feel, is due to most of our global “developed” countries being predicated on “competitive self-determination” vs the more rational “cooperative self-determination”. Prominent and current examples of competitors that feel superior to others is the US and Israel. Hitler and Nero are a couple historical examples. There are others but these two show the most damage from the competitive ethic: vanity, secrecy, coercion, corruption, anxiety, despair and chance. The negative artifacts of competing are endemic to any competition and encourages people to utilize these negative traits to “win”. Our court system is actually a well laid out and logical system but guess what is holding it back from working like it should? Competitive self-determination. One must ask, what other things deemed as good are also adversely affected by this competitive ethic? Science and democracy. Science is hobbled by the competition and just doesn’t work right while democracy is too because when did a competition ever use science or democracy as a necessary component? Not happening. If you follow this logic, you will gain new insight into the bigger picture and also be able to deconstruct with utmost accuracy any news story or ideological-political discussion. Game over. If you want an airtight formula that doesn’t need any “ism” to be effective or a solid path to intellectual self-defense, this may be the ticket.
It is the economic conditions that are responsible for creating this mindset. Capitalism requires hierarchy and competition whereas communism is based on cooperation and mutual benefit of all parties involved. The root of our problems are the capitalist system which is why we need a socialist revolution.
Agreed. Self-determination = participation. This participation can be competitive or cooperative. In a competition, namely the economic kind, participation is in truth coerced where one party chooses not to compete. However, this is impossible in our current competitive system because of the lack of alternatives and the fear people have from historical examples of groups or individuals getting shaken down or murdered by the authorities (i.e. mafia). In board games and sports, people are given the choice to compete or not but in our economic system this is not allowed. So, our economy is essentially a "game" that we are not allowed to choose whether to play or not. This is untenable, unethical and absurd.
In my post, I describe a way to understand capitalism and socialism without the usual baggage and stigmas that people have in either direction. Hence, my thoughts were to break down the psychology of these two without resorting to ideologies. So, capitalism = competitive self-determination or competitive participation and socialism = cooperative self-determination or cooperative participation. The one caveat I have for cooperative participation is that it must have "open knowledge" as a precondition. In my thesis, the only way to have true democracy is for knowledge to be open so all are able to make informed decisions without any hidden knowledge, secrecy, lying and spying. Moreover, I break down voting into 2 weighted categories, votes derived from conscience and votes derived from technical expertise. Then issues are broke down into components reflecting those two categories. For example, how much chlorine to put into the public water system is more of a technical problem yet still retains the ethical component of not having bacteria kill us off. So, everyone votes their conscience on this issue but the "how much chlorine" is a vote strictly for the trained expert who has a degree or similar in this area. If this expert screws up, he gets voted out and someone else voted in. Then we have the issue of whether to bomb, for example, the Yeminis into the stone age. This is one where the moral component weighs heavy and the technical component is absurd (as if it was possible to show how bombing them has some technical advantage scientifically - not likely at all). IMO, democracy is just another way of finding out what people know and don't know and actually is a temporary state until "new information" is discovered (usually a review process) and hence a new voting round is conducted. People either know what is right or wrong or don't know what is right or wrong. This pertains to both moral truth and technical truth as outlined. This gives more nuance to what is really going on in any particular issue and makes voting and legislating more efficient and efficacious. Lastly, because government and school serve the same function, the two have been separated due to the need for the ruling class to hide and protect their methods which in any typical school would be proven to be BS. With this said, people in a cooperative society do not pay for schooling ever and are encouraged to go to school and learn whatever they feel is good or that lends itself to becoming an expert so as to give them a seat and vote in technical matters. Right now, people in America vote on issues that are construed as socialist yet very few people even know what socialism means. Thus, droves of people vote against measures that are labeled "socialist" yet they have no idea or proof they even know what that means. This is because stigma and propaganda makes the decision for them which makes voting a total BS scenario in getting anything done. My proposition is to subtract the ism and drill down to terms that NO ONE can misconstrue or stigmatize. If it gets explained this way, the hope of winning a debate increases exponentially because any opponent would in no way be able to counter such absolute terms. "Capitalism" and "Socialism" are flimsy terms and have multitudes of definitions where "competitive self-determination" and "cooperative self-determination" are air tight terms with no alternative definitions. This is why I chose to do this, so we can cut to the chase in our debates with capitalists and not worry about wishy washy definitions.
Birrion, once again, my applause and thanks for another well-done article. It's so helpful to have this important background information to point others to... something I'll try to do more often.
We're up against such a massive propaganda-and-censorship campaign, one with massive, seemingly unlimited resources; so every bit of information we can supply, no matter how limited its reach seems to be, is important. I appreciate you.
What made them more famous, I suspect, were they were a Kolomoisky creation and the ones armed to go into Donbas and dominate that military operation to cleanse all ethnic Russians from "Ukriane."