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Ed Stapleton Jr started a conversation 1 year ago
Which is a touchier subject: religion or politics?
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    Can they even be separated in practical contemporary dialogue? I think a huge swath of the world's population conflates them.
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    This post a whole has a "Do Not Touch" sticker on it.
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    Politics. There's no real debate about what God you believe in, but people argue and question each other's values over things like abortion and racism and taxes and war.
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    @Will Newman I tend to agree. Political arguments at the core question everything wrong about people.
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    Politics. Doesnt matter what religion you believe in. But who leads you, definitely effects.
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    @Will Newman On one hand I agree with you, it's impossible to "debate" another person's beliefs... but wouldn't that hold true to their political beliefs as well? Someone telling me whether abortion is right or wrong is about as right as telling me there is no Santa Claus. (There really is, isn't there?)
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    I personally think that religion is touchier because there is no checks and balances system in place. People vote for the politics they believe in whereas people kill for the religions they believe in. Political systems evolve and are rooted in law. Religion is far slower to move and far faster to judge.
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    @Vaughan Lazar There is debate to be had about why you believe your political beliefs, and the underlying beliefs behind political beliefs are often explosive: in abortion, pro-life people think pro-choice people are murderers, pro-choice people think pro-life people are misogynists, etc. Religions aren't that mutually exclusive or opposite each other. It's not as if being a Christian means you are Anti-Islam, nor are people compelled to join a religion because of negative feelings toward other religions.
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    @Will Newman A little debate brewing?
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    both politics and religion are intended to divide. and in america its getting harder to tell the difference between the two
    mark round  •  Punt  •  Delete Comment  •  Mention mark  •  +1
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    @mark round took the words right out of my mouth.
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    Reading what has been said up til now I would like to frame this in terms of what Nietzsche saw as his greatest discovery, which is the Value of Value. For him this opened up a whole new way to look at everything. For instance he looked at the evolutionary value of truth and discovered that lies can be valuable for survival too. In both religion and politics there are values at stake. Religion is more intense than politics, but for some people both are lightening rods. And lets bring into this Plato's divided line that contrasts Ratio with Doxa. Doxa is divided into grounded and ungrounded opinion (appearance). Religion is about invisibles that are transcendental which seem to control our lives, and Politics are about social invisibles that are about Power as Foucault would say. Power is a social commodity but it is etherial within societies institutions. So in both religion and politics we are talking about ungrounded opinion concerning invisibles that relate to our values. But Nietzsche asks what is the value of those values? One response to that is existentialism, i.e. the value is questioned because it is about invisibles and how you feel about those invisibles from your psychological stand point, when you realize that they are your own projections and are in fact really meaningless, except for the social ramifications if your views are unpopular, and there are repercussions for that you have to deal with. So really the question comes down to two intensities of doxa.
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    I would say religion
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    Now notice that the most intense arguments are where the invisibles are transcendental instead of social and where there is no grounding in experience for the beliefs. We can step down from this by making the point of argumentation about invisibles about social invisibles like power, or by appealing to some grounds, like archeology in the holy land. But transcendental invisibles are much harder to deal with because there is no grounds that you can really appeal to, and so those ideas really have little to do with experience, but Nietzsche asks what the role of these extreme ideas in relation to life, and he sees them as supporting life by giving us lies to hang on to when we are uncertain about everything, and thus cannot act. Believing these lies for him was part of a fitness function because these extreme beliefs in ungrounded doxa concerning invisibles gave us a basis for action, and that was supportive of life itself. He also tries to reverse the idea of Hegel that only slaves can be self-conscious, by developing a possible grounds for the action of the Nobility, in his idea of the blond beast.

    Now as we back away from the extreme of transcendental invisibles into social invisibles and into grounding then the arguments become less heated because they are no longer about ultimates and there is some attempt to justify what is said on the basis of some evidence. But the next step back is into ratio, i.e. representable intangibles that we reason about (party platforms, etc.)
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    But ratio also has its extreme which is when we appeal to non-representable intelligibles, like the good (human happiness, for instance), or Freedom (for whom, and who is enslaved by that freedom we claim?), or Law and Order (constitution), etc. These intangibles are almost as hard to define and deal with as the transcendental invisibles. In the realm of representable intelligibles we have the arguments in science, which can still be vehement, but in terms of non-representable values we have things which we appeal to as criteria for judging other things, like Right (Rta, Arte) one of the core values of the Indo-european worldview. It originally meant something like Cosmic Harmony in the Vedas in Sanscrit. But now its lowest common denominator means something like correctness. But we have right and left conflated with right and wrong, i.e. Right Wing and the L word (liberal). Liberals are on the sinister side in terms of the conflated distinctions related to rightness. Right wing political campaigns play on this deep seated prejudice all the time. But they are on the sinister side because the liberals were against the sovereign and they eventually displaced the sovereign and formed a republic, and we have them to thank for the fact that we have democracy today, because they resisted and overthrew the sovereign. There are just a few original democracies and ours is one of them, along with the republic in Rome and natural democracy in Athens. In this sense we are all liberals.
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    Religion is the touchier subject because it has no constraints on it being about invisible transcendentals that cannot really be grounded because they are completely invisible. If we go back to skepticism of Sextus Empiricus then he says that everyone agrees upon what is visible so all philosophical argumentation is about what is invisible. But he says that there are two main approaches to that invisibility which he calls Dogma or Doctrine, and the Academics that just deny everything. Skepticism of Sextus Empiricus has the goal of keeping the conversation going and avoiding these two nihilistic extremes that kill conversation. But for the skeptic it is OK to take any position that it takes to keep the conversation going, and so that is recognized as also nihilistic by the dogmatists and the so called "academics" but really he means sophists like Gorgias of Leontini. Skeptics sought a kind of calm or repose within the dialectic of the argument between themselves and dogmatists and academics like Nagarjuna or Gorgias who denied every transcendental on principle. Notice that this is precisely Hegel's starting point in the Logic where he contrasts the Being of Parmenides and the Nothing of the Buddhists (Nagarjuna) and the synthesis of these is seen to be the becoming of Heraclitus. Out of that becoming comes determinate being, i.e. dasein as existent which Heidegger picks up and makes the core of his attempt to go beyond Subject and Object duality in Being and Time.
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    But Nietzsche wants us to look at why both Religion and Politics are "touchy" subjects. And that is because they are both transcendentals of different degrees, and because you can have opinions about them which are completely ungrounded in any kind of empirical evidence, not to mention the lack of reasoning associated with these subjects in most cases. They are "touchy" subjects because they are extremely valuable, these transcendentals, because they drive life in absence of any other drivers. Anyway that is what Nietzsche thought. Hopefully this will provide some interesting background for further discussion.
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    @Kent Palmer Do we love these subjects as debate vehicles because they are not grounded in empirical truths? Is that the point?
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    That is part of the point. They are different intensities of transcendental invisibles, i.e. God and Power within Society, cf Foucault (who Dreyfus says just substitutes Power for Heidegger's Being but has exactly the same theoretical structure). But the other point that Nietzsche makes is that there must be a reason we are driven by these transcendentals and so he looks to evolution and the affirmation of life as the source of ultimate value, rather than looking to the transcendentals themselves as most people do.
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    @Kent Palmer I am intrigued by Nietzche's theses of lies as survival mechanisms. Tell me more please.
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    @Kent Palmer I've met a ton of philosophy experts in my day but your knowledge takes the medal. Incredible. I wish you'd start a philosophy conversation everyday. We all would love to learn more about this discipline.
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    Basically he takes the contradiction that many of the things we hold as true, are in fact false, based on some criteria, like the good for instance. These beliefs are seen as inherently true, and thus unquestionable (hence dogmatism) and so Nietzsche asked how come we do that. For instance we engage in horrendous wars in the name of Manifest Destiny. As a doctrine Manifest Destiny is a tautology that says that who ever is the most advanced and has the most power was meant to win and exploit others (called civilizing them). It is manifestly false and not good, but we use it to justify colonialism. Only after all the damage is done around the world do we admit that this was a mistaken idea.
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    @Kent Palmer I've always contended dogmatism and to an extent discipline implies a lack of flexibility and open thought and are therefore is contradictory toward leading an interesting life. Thoughts?
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    @Brian Norgard I have been trying to answer either a Quora question, or some question here at Namesake every few days. I plan to add G+ to that list, because answering questions there might actually get me a job (which I need). But I am happy to spend as much time answering questions, or creating conversations as I have time to do, because this kind of interaction is part of my "prime directive". I believe that a lot of people mis-understand philosophy, and so I thought I would try my hand at turning that around if I can for some. Philosophy, gives you a view point on things that most people do not attain, and it allows you to see the world in different ways than are normal, and thus it allows us to escape the ritual debates and go somewhat deeper, for instance when we frame your question in relation to Nietzsche and the Skeptics like Sextus Empiricus. The tradition is valuable in this way, as it gives us some perspective. I wish I knew more of the tradition, but the little bit I know I am wiling to share. If we could get people who really know parts of the Western Philosophical Tradition well then you would see that my take on things somewhat primitive in many cases. I am searching for a global view that helps to make sense of the world as we find it today.
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    @Kent Palmer I am interested you see G+ as a place to find a job. Do they have a vibrant community?
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    They are both about beliefs. With this being said, which is a touchier subject would be the one with the popular vote amongst the crowd you are conversing. When we are young and formidable our peers do a solid job directing us in the path they have chosen. It seems more about religion when one is young vs politics. As we get older I believe politics lead to more fights and arguments than do religion. Take the media for example. Politics are the center piece, how often is religion?
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    This drew me back in from feverish packing 'cause they're my two favorite topics. Yes, I'm THAT girl, fwiw.

    @Will Newman To your comment about questioning people's values over issues such as abortion and racism and war, how much of those beliefs can be reduced to religious tenets? [Taxes don't fit *as* nicely here, but they aren't wholly excluded, either.]

    @sharad harjai I think many very religious people *do* care which religion you follow, but I think you touch on an interesting point here. I'm pretty certain that Namesake's current crowd is a skewed sample, so to us--agreed, most of us don't judge religious beliefs. To an extent, I would argue that many people don't *choose* religion; they endorse what they were born into and raised believing. In that regard, I almost feel like religion isn't something that can be wholly attributed to a person (or, less elegantly, "blamed on" him or her). Of course, that's a gross oversimplification of an issue that has far more nuance, but I wonder how much that line of reasoning underlies our (the self-selected/invited early Namesakers) general consensus that religion isn't as reflective of a person's value choices.
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    @Vaughan Lazar One notable distinction is that political systems are designed to shape the behavior of people, and their actual behavior (as a result of the influence of those systems) can be measured, the learnings applied, and systems adjusted. Doesn't really play out that way, but in theory, it could/should. Not so with religion. We can judge the validity of political beliefs by measuring the human effects of systems and policies; we can neither prove nor disprove religious beliefs, much to the dismay of both sides of the debate.
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    @Brian Norgard I think the roots of your idea of an open life may be akin to the Skeptic's contentment within the debate. But if you tell me more perhaps we will find differences. Skepticism has a bad name because it has always been seen as the representative of nihilism within our tradition, an is used as a straw-dog to beat at the beginning of older philosophical treatises. However, Hume was a skeptic who opened up the problematic that allowed Kant to conceive of Critical Philosophy that goes beyond Dogmatic and "Academic" philosophy. Once we understand Skepticism and realize how it is really a lot like intellectual buddhism and that it was taken up by Hegel, and made the cornerstone of his philosophy, so that the whole tradition had to deal with this point of view, then we see that lots of our ideas like openness and flexibility comes from Hegels realization that thoughts must be dynamic, and both Dogmatism and "Academic negation of everything" are both closed and inflexible. I call this the difference between dynamic and static clinging in our worldview. Our ideal is always dynamic over static clinging. In other words it is better to let your kids go away so they come back eventually, than trying to hang on to them so they rebel and never come back.
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    @Brian Norgard What I noticed is that the questions are excellent. And so that might call for better answers. And that might get me noticed by the financial types who might find my Meta-systems theory of markets intriguing. See http://bubblenomics.biz
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    @Steve Elerick Good point. Peer pressure is important in shaping what transcendentals we accept and which we reject.
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    @Kent Palmer What are your areas of expertise?
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    @Will Newman and @Vaughan Lazar , I think you're both dancing around the idea that many hot-button political and social ideologies reduce to religious beliefs.

    @Julian Miller : I was about to agree with you, but then I thought of all the political assassinations and the genocides that have taken place over the years, so I think--while polarized religious groups are more widely villified--I think that's more a function of contemporary media than it is of the real underlying nature of the behavior.
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    @Heather Gilchrist do you believe discipline equates to a lack of flexibility?
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    @Kent Palmer This is a classic example of our current elected officials, wouldn't you agree? They get enough pressure and they will sway the other way.
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    @Brian Norgard I would lean toward yes, but that's probably at least *partly* because I am entirely undisciplined :)
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    @Brian Norgard Systems Engineering and Realtime Software Architectural and Development of Embedded Systems, i.e. I have been working in aerospace on large projects most of my career. See http://kentpalmer.name, but right now I am trying to repurpose my expertise toward Ontology Engineering and Semantic Web in relation to social networks (I have a Ph.D. in Sociology too) and especially twitter and the ecosystem that has grown up around it when I wasn't looking.
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    @Steve Elerick Totally, although I tend to think that, in a perfect democracy, they should. I'm not convinced that a pure democracy is either 1) practically feasible or 2) ideal, although I think it does have the *potential* to be ideal in a system where people have equal access to ideas.
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    @Kent Palmer That's such a crazy/cool/brilliant and at the same time completely logical line of reasoning: approaching semantic web efforts through sociology. I don't know much about semantic search, but is that common or was this something you came to on your own path?
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    @HeatherGilchrist The only chance of it ever having the potential of being (pure) or as stated ideal, is when the bribes are removed and it's only the peoples choice and voted in such a manner!
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    @Heather Gilchrist One of my points was that religion and politics both concern transcendentals, one ultimate and the other social (notice that in polytheism these ultimates where themselves social in ancient Greece and throughout the world prior to the advent of the idea of monotheism as something exclusive) merely of different intensities, i.e. one infinitely intense of we are to believe Kierkegaard, and the other finitely intense due to its dependence on social structures, institutions, and social and cultural conventions that exist when the exercise of power occurs.
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    @Brian Norgard On second thought, I think the better way to phrase the idea you're referring to is that routine of any type kills creativity. There's plenty of evidence in neuroscience regarding pathway dominance vs. decay to support that, and if you think of flexibility as only being *truly* possible when someone can imagine another way of doing the thing in question---then I think absolutely yes, a person could almost be incapable of flexibility (due to a lack of creativity) given excessive routine (read: discipline).
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    @Steve Elerick The classic example of nihilism is that we get caught up in the rivalry between democrats and republicans when the rulers are the Incumbants of either party who get the corporate sponsorship and who pass laws that do not apply to themselves. This is the real sign of soverignty.
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    That's not nihilism. It's stupidity.
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    @Kent Palmer Yes, a very articulate way of saying corruption amongst politicians. I would like to say this is a great conversation that @EdStapeltonJr started.
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    @Steve Elerick 100% agreed. How to climb out of this nasty rabbit hole we've collectively dug ourselves into is the tough question, 'cause it seems that one bad actor has a multiplier effect, and the most justifiable (in my opinion) ethical systems only go so far as to claim efficacy when the *majority* of people behave according to _x_ rule.
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    @Carlos Alvarez-Aranyos That's just the most awesome comment all night, I think!
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    @HeatherGilchrist Sadly this goes back to our learned behavior and the direction this world has turned. Or has it always existed and is just more apparent as our social media sphere expands?
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    I don't think Americans dismiss the value of life or of political institutions. I think we've just grown too lazy to care as much as our system demands.
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    @Heather Gilchrist I have been studying Ontology since I got my first Ph.D. in Sociology at the London School of Economics because my dissertation in Philosophy of Science ended up being about Continental Ontology and what it tells us about Emergent Events. That dissertation was called The Structure of Theoretical Systems in relation to Emergence. Anyway, less than ten years ago they had a conference on the subject of my dissertation which was called Dynamic Ontology. So I went to it and made a presentation in Italy. Right now the cutting edge is dynamic ontologies, because ontology needs to cope with change. Ontological Engineering is now starting to make the transition from Kant (Parmenides) to Hegel (Heraclitus). My dissertation talks about all the emergent levels that come after that which I discovered working on my first dissertation. The really interesting one is what comes next after dynamism (non-monotonic reasoning) which is Hyper Being or what Derrida called DifferAnce.
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    @Carlos Alvarez-Aranyos I sort of agree with you, too, but I won't go so far as to say it's purely laziness. I think most national/regional/other political societies have grown so complex that citizens become overwhelmed, like a Whack-A-Mole game on meth (the game, not the player). They don't know where to hit first, and education is falling short of equipping people with the right tools to make critical decisions like that.
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    As to the original question: I don't think it matters. We tend to deal with both with the right side of our brains -- and we lack emotional intelligence.
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    @Heather Gilchrist I agree. The slope of the line of complexity has grown steeper while the slope of ability has remained stagnant or declined.
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    I think a lot of the touchiness depends on how you approach the subjects. Religion should be about faith, which intrinsicly is about that which is not empirical. I think if you keep it there and recognize that what others believe really doesn't have to impact your beliefs in any way, you actually avoid most "touchiness". What gets you in to trouble is when you start tying it in to observable reality. Politics on the other hand, really should only be about things which are empirical (whether you choose to approach them empirically is another matter ;-). Because it is all about the observable reality, unless you *really* focus on the "faith" angle of politics (i.e. things you believe, rather than any kind of reality) you really hit on touchiness right from the get go.
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    @Carlos Alvarez-Aranyos Sovereignty is stll with us us, fortunately the constitution curtailed its powers. Each branch of government has its own portion of sovereignty. But the founding Fathers did not foresee that Imaginary people would arise who lived indefinitly long who would be granted rights within our democracy creating soverign bubbles called Corporations in our midst.
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    @CarlosAlvarez-Aranyos What we have grown scared of is loosing our jobs and not having all the wonderful material items that everyone seems to think they are in need of. Rather than take a stand they will bury their head in the sand and hope it will all be better in the morning. Therefore, the10 percent control the other 90 percent as they are to scared to take a stand.
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    @Carlos Alvarez-Aranyos A good political discussion ought to involve both sides of the brain. Unfortunately, that "good" qualifier eliminates a lot of political discussions. ;-)
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    @Steve Elerick If your worse concerns are about how politics is screwing up your access to jobs and wonderful material items... it really isn't so bad. ;-)
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    @Kent Palmer That's plain awesome. At one point in time, I was intensely interested in political philosophy (as a career), but I ended up dropping that baton because I felt like philosophy--as practiced by many "philosophers" (professors)--had become too ethereal, basically mental masturbation (pardon the crass reference, but it so perfectly summarizes how I left about it then).
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    I'm not sure where this conversation is going, and I'm not sure I can hang out until I figure it out. In the meantime, I think that anyone who treats politics the way they treat their religious beliefs is an idiot.
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    @ChristopherSmith My personal concerns run much deeper than surface materials or a job that is replaceable. I was responding to the we've just grown lazy.
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    @Steve Elerick Sorry, "your" should have been "one's". I was intending to be third person. Your statement was very clear that that was not what *you* were wondering about.
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    @Christopher Smith , I agree with your rationale, but in practice, I don't think it plays out that way because of the way religion is taught or perhaps because many religions have, over the years, come to hold that *not* believing _x_ is right makes the disbeliever "evil." I am inclined to think that such tenets are protectionist in origin and are probably a function of religious wars over the centuries/millenia rather than genuine spiritual ideology, but that's just a hunch.
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    @Carlos Alvarez-Aranyos I think there is some overlap: in many instances with politics you do have to make decisions based on faith, simply because you can't get even close to enough evidence.
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    @Carlos Alvarez-Aranyos True. How do we fix this? How do we better align the slopes? Where do we start?
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    @ChristopherSmith No problem and no need to be sorry. I appreciate your kind words. You have some excellent views.
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    @Heather Gilchrist That tends to be a principle of Western religions more than Eastern religions. Even amongst Western religions, there is a pretty substancial subset that see the non-believers as "poor fools" more than "evil".
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    @Christopher Smith That's just not true. If you can't "find" evidence, it's usually because it disagrees with you and you choose to ignore it.
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    @Heather Gilchrist In order to get out of the situation we have gotten ourselves into, where congress is running amok spending money that is being printed, well electronically generated anyway, in the trillions to prop up the Financial system that does not want to accept regulation, and is in denial that there is any problem, because it has become too big to fail, and thus holds the government hostage, who gives Tarp money, so that we can have our current start up bubble, that gives us hope that the economy will recover, before the student loan bubble collapses, when there are no jobs for our youth so they can pay back their loans, who then become disgruntled because they are also supporting the baby boomers, who deserve social security and healthcare in their old age because they payed for their parents to have it, but they cannot have it because the system has gone bankrupt, and especially when China has sold all our bonds, so we cannot afford to shop at even Walmart any more . . . You name the list of other crises to add to this list . . .

    To get out of this situation in my book (and I really have books to point to) what we need to understand how all these problems are manifestations of Nihilism as Nietzsche and Heidegger warned us, and by understanding how nihilism works (as the dual of emergence) then we can better understand how to make non-nihilistic (that is to say nondual) distinctions in our lives.
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    Some of it appears to be whom or which side can do the better job of brainwashing their point better than the others.
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    @Heather Gilchrist We once had Chase, Lincoln, Seward, Stanton and Webster in government at the same time. It would help to go back to electing the best among us.
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    @Carlos Alvarez-Aranyos Then we must recruit the finest.
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    @Steve Elerick I have already lost my job. So I have gone thorough that fear and am on to the next fear, which is what would have happened if I had not lost my job, i.e. nothing very interesting.
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    @Brian Norgard Yeah. Notice how the system was originally designed: Voters only got to pick two federal officials -- a congressman and an elector. The founders were counting on the fact that everyone would know the two smartest people in each community.
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    We've amplified the role of the voter without requiring additional preparation. That has produced adverse results.
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    @Steve Elerick The brainwashing play only works for so well, for so long, because we're increasingly living in different contexts with distinct paradigms, mythologies, and even facts. If you look through history, the more unified paradigm is a relatively transient phenomena that has only existed for a fairly short "golden age"... and then passed.
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    @Carlos Alvarez-Aranyos Didn't they also pick Senators, Govenors, state legislators, Mayors, etc.
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    @Kent Palmer I think we need to step back a bit further. Perhaps this begs the question (because it is dualistic in nature), but the two obvious approaches to me in looking at the complex society/underequipped citizenry problem is to either simplify society [Are we already doing this on a subconscious societal level? Is that the underlying impetus to wars, etc.?] or to "complicate" people (better equip ourselves to deal with society).

    @Carlos Alvarez-Aranyos So true. But alas, I again underscore the complex society --> underequipped citizenry --> media problem. [Did I honestly just use the word "alas" like it was no big deal?]
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    @Carlos Alvarez-Aranyos We do require additional preparation: back in the day we didn't require education. ;-)
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    Not senators.
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    @Heather Gilchrist I think you are talking about Analytical Philosophy. Continental Philosophy even if still nihilistic in many respects is at least very interesting, because they are interested in literature, psychoanalysis, social progress or even revolution, culture, etc. for instance now Zizek who feels he has a basis to comment on everything, including what ever are the latest movies as he continually proves his points about Lacan and how he is the dual of Derrida, and how everything goes back to Hegel.
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    And the founders depended on the collective wisdom of the state legislatures.
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    It was a check against the public.
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    @Carlos Alvarez-Aranyos Totally forgot about the Senators being selected by the State Legislature. I blame my Canadian heritage. ;-)
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    We've eliminated the checks and brought inbalance.
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    @Kent Palmer I hate to hear that for anybody. If I can help in anyway let me know. The only way it would change is if the masses in the USA are to stick together and agree to stand up for reform and not back down until it happens. We keep referring to the Constitution, but our government bends and twist it they way they like.
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    @Heather Gilchrist That's why I have a job. :-)
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    @Carlos Alvarez-Aranyos I have a really hard time reconciling my general faith in the wisdom of the masses with my general belief that the societal outcome is downgraded when all opinions are considered without respect to actual value.
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    @Heather Gilchrist We do give too much air time to stupid in the name of "equal time."
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    @Heather Gilchrist There are circumstances where the "masses" can do a better job of discerning which opinions/decisions have the most actual value.
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    As Bill Maher said, "Mainstream media, could you please stop pitting the ignorant versus the educated and framing it as a debate?"
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    I don't like him much, but he's right on.
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    @Carlos Alvarez-Aranyos If you think about it, very little of it is done for purposes of "equal time". Mostly it is done to create entertainment through conflict/drama.
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    Man, I love these kinds of chats. Even more when there's wine to drink and no airport check-in required in <2 hrs. I'd better get back to packing, but thanks for an awesome chat--hope to do it again soon!
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    I was being sarcastic.
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    Should have gone with "fair and balanced."
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    @HeatherGilchrist Nice chatting with you and have a wonderful evening!
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    @Carlos Alvarez-Aranyos I think Bill was a little off in his take on the situation. It isn't about the ignorant vs. the educated. It's about two people in such radically diverse contexts that there is no risk of them finding common ground and therefore depriving us of "entertainment". You can actually achieve this quite effectively with two carefully selected highly educated people.
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    P.S.-- @Brian Norgard , is this the most epic discussion to date on here or does some other conversation have this beat? If so, I definitely wanna catch up on that reading soon...
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    s/diverse/divergent/
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    @Carlos Alvarez-Aranyos Not sure what you mean by "treats" so I don't know if what I say falls into the idiot category yet, but the case I am making is that they are very different being either finite or infinite transcendentals. So they must be treated differently. But on the other hand we have both religions and political freedom here in the USA and in that sense they are treated the same by giving us the Freedom to be what ever political or religious persuasion we want and then to express that freely, here for instance. However, if by treating them the same you mean making a category error in distinguishing them then I would agree with you, and that is why Chris Hedges, who spoke eloquently about that at the LA Times Book Fair a week or so ago things that the religious right is heading straight for fascism. I don't know whether that is true but it is certainly an interesting question to contemplate. Will the same thing happen here as did in Germany when fascists took over the government through democratic means if our economy really does finally completely collapse despite all the efforts to prop it up globally by various state governments who have been printing money like mad recently. That is always a bad sign. Remember Argentina.
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    @Brian Norgard If I can't do in place edits of comments, can we at least have embedded "sed"? ;-)
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    @Christopher Smith If two people are "highly educated" it means that they won't argue facts and cite opinions. They make terrible TV.
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    P.P.S.--It would be badass to make a Zaarly payment to someone in exchange for tagging all the varied topics that got weaved in here. @Ed Stapleton Jr : Kickass question, my friend. kick. ass.
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    @Carlos Alvarez-Aranyos This assumes their educations conform enough to establish common facts. Outside of the so called "hard sciences" (and even then...), it is entirely possible to find educated individuals who have distinct realities.
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    @Kent Palmer I think you're trying to philosophically assess a situation that lacks systemization. There is no backbone here that produces philosophical texture. Our people are ill-equipped to meet the challenges of our time.
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    @Christopher Smith Excellent point about living in different contexts with distinct paradigms etc. My first dissertation was on the phenomena of Emergence, the dual of Nihilism, which appear as discontinuities within the tradition as fact, theory, paradigm, episteme, ontos, existence, absolute changes within the tradition under consideration. Why do these discontinuous changes happen in our tradition. That was the question I was pursuing.
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    @Christopher Smith Not in public policy. In public policy, those people are called partisans -- and they know better. But they betray their better angels and the nation's wellbeing to meet political objectives. In Washington, everyone knows the facts. Not everyone admits it.
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    See: Republicans, tax cuts increase revenues.
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    @Kent Palmer That's a pretty hard question, but I can give you an evolutionary answer: it improves the "fitness" o fhte species to have distinct perceptions of reality competing with each other.
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    @Heather Gilchrist Simplify Society or Complicate Individuals. Never quite heard it put that way before. Interesting.
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    @Carlos Alvarez-Aranyos I disagree. ;-) Consider for the moment a fairly narrow slice of the larger scene in Washington: Economics. There are tons of schools of economic thought, each of which interprets its own realities, facts, mythologies and conclusions.
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    @Carlos Alvarez-Aranyos There are some facts that make "tax cuts increase revenues" less crazy than it seems. That whole discussion is the side show that distracts from the far more important "what is getting taxed, by how much, and why"?
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    @Heather Gilchrist I really liked what you had to say about the hard time you have reconciling faith in the masses with the question of all opinions being considered equal. Have you read E. Cannetti Crowds and Power. Very interesting book in that regard.
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    @Christopher Smith Smith: Sit between Stiglitz and Bhagwati and you'll see the way smart people engage those subjects. That is not the way it's done in our public discourse. Again -- I'm not saying that it doesn't happen generally, but in public policy, we have enough empirical data to "know" certain key things, and to make good decisions. The problem is always politics.
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    @Carlos Alvarez-Aranyos Now you are talking about "way smart people". That's not at all the same as "highly educated". ;-)
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    I don't make that distinction.
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    When I say smart, I mean smart. I'm not trying to make the posers feel better.
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    @Carlos Alvarez-Aranyos That might be what you are talking about, but that wasn't what Bill was talking about, nor what I was talking about. Education, particularly if independent of intelligence, is to a large degree about indoctrination. In general, a cruel reality of society is that a primary function of the intelligencia (as opposed to the intelligent) is to further reinforce their doctrine.
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    @Christopher Smith When you talk about the masses discerning value, you might like to look at Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reason, his masterpiece that no one reads where he talks exactly about how the masses can at certain times guide itself without institutions, he calls that the fused group. And that is long before we had Bose Einstein Condensates, just like he spoke about Nothingness long before Black Holes became a popular conception in science, not to mention before the public heard about it. In Critique of Dialectical Reason he treats dialectics dialectically, rather than mechanistically as Marxists, Leninists, and Stalinists had. This is a big advance and akin to Nietzsche's treating the value of value, in other words they are both going up to the next meta-level for these concepts.
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    I have to go, but my thesis remains: Our problems demand the best of us. The current crop of politicians largely fails to meet that standard. Unless we elect better people, we're unlikely to seize every opportunity and overcome every challenge.
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    @Kent Palmer Pretty sure I haven't read that. Sounds like I ought to soon! Thanks.
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    @Christopher Smith Smart is not about education. Smart is the guy that knows what the book says by reading the thesis -- the guy that can draw out every thread on his own and go beyond what others have done. Everyone else is just a reader. Smart (in politics) is Lincoln. It's Webster. We don't have too much of it right now.
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    @Carlos Alvarez-Aranyos I'm not sure how much of that perception/outcome is really about the electorate and how much of it is about how the process has evolved. Sure, you can't pull the two apart, but sometimes the electorate is a slave to larger forces.
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    @Carlos Alvarez-Aranyos Totally agree with you about Smart vs. Education. This is why I consider it noteworthy that what Bill speaks of is not about dumb vs. smart, but ignorant vs. educated.
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    I'm not much concerned with whose fault it is. I just call them like I see them.
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    We can blame "larger forces" or we can take personal responsibility over our collective wellbeing.
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    @Carlos Alvarez-Aranyos We have tons of smart in politics. The problem is that it is focused on goals fairly different from the set originally intended.
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    It's passive vs. kinetic.
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    @Christopher Smith Please introduce me to them. I haven't met them yet.
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    @Carlos Alvarez-Aranyos It's not about assigning blame, it's about understanding the problem in order to solve the problem. If one recognizes the larger forces, one realizes that the flaw isn't in the democratic principle of everyone having an equal voice. That works pretty well in a LOT of circumstances, and in many contexts produces superior outcomes to any known alternative.
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    We don't need ideas. We have plenty of ideas. We need solutions.
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    @Carlos Alvarez-Aranyos Funny you should mention systematization. My more recent dissertation is in Advanced Systems Theory as a basis for Systems Engineering Design, called Emergent Design. In that I distinguish between Systems and Meta-systems (also called OpenScapes) and these two schemas have the kind of duality you suggest, i.e. the meta-system is about the situation, context, environment, ecosystem, media that surrounds the System, and it appears to be disorganized only because we are comparing it to the system and not recognizing its inherent organization as a different schema. I make the point that our culture has a blind spot when it comes to the Meta-system schema and that is why we don't have one word for it as we do for other schemas. I am considering the relation of the situation to the system in the context of that duality between the meta-system (where "meta" means beyond) and the system. Anyway if you are interested see http://about.me/...ntdesign
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    Everyone knows (and largely agrees) on what it will take to fix our problems. Nobody will act to get it done.
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    @Carlos Alvarez-Aranyos I think it is fair to say that both of the past two white house regimes (I'm ignoring Congress because we don't pay nearly as much attention to that) had some pretty brilliant thinkers in the area of politics. Unfortunately, they were focused on partisan agendas (which they executed on brilliantly).
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    I disagree. I've failed to see the brilliance, with rare exception.
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    Anyway, I have to go. We're really not getting anywhere. It's been fun talking to you guys.
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    @Christopher Smith I agree with the fitness explanation and so does Nietzsche with regard to the value of values. And Sarte would probably agree in terms of understanding the dialectical development of dialectics itself. But that does not explain the dicontinuous change between these paradigms (Kuhn) or epistemes (Foucault) or ontos (Heidegger).
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    @Carlos Alvarez-Aranyos Brilliant minds can be small minded. ;-)
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    @Kent Palmer Isn't that discontinuous change an expected phenomena in cases where you are transitioning between unstable equilibria?
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    @Ed Stapleton Jr My first instinct was religion. Then on second thought, politics because it seems to be more based on our ego than our soul. Interesting dialogue going on here. I have appreciated reading everyone's input!
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    @Carlos Alvarez-Aranyos I think we're arguing semantics here, but it is always the challenge for those who are most capable (what I'm describing as brilliant) to realize their potential (which I'm describing as not being small minded). It is particularly challenging when the system is structured so that there is far more friction and far less reward for doing so.
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    @Kent Palmer Looking at the abstract of your dissertation. Would I be horribly off if I suggested that in a lot of ways what you are talking about is approaching systems design from a strategic vs. tactical perspective?
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    @Joannie Pan Yeah, it really seems like our souls can be more accomidating than our egos eh?
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    @Christopher Smith yes, or so I would like to believe.
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    @Carlos Alvarez-Aranyos A quote I've heard attributed to Napolean which summarizes what I'm saying so much better than I can: ""to get power you need to display absolute pettiness; to exercise power, you need to show true greatness."
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    @Carlos Alvarez-Aranyos Plato made essentially the same point about the best ruling in the Republic, so you have his vote for your position
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    @Carlos Alvarez-Aranyos We don't need ideas? We need solutions! I disagree, but this is the question of Pure vs Practical Reason. Kant wrote two critiques that dealt with them separately, and in our tradition never the twain shall meet, Why? Bourdieu wrote the Logic of Practice, de Certeau wrote the Practice of Everyday life. I deal with them both in the last chapter of my dissertation. It is a fascinating dualism in our tradition, and in America we like to think of ourselves as pragmatists following C.S. Peirce and Wm. James, but actually no one reads them. Their work is actually very interesting and completely different from what most self-proclaimed pragmatists believe. But anyway, I would argue is precisely what we are missing is ideas, but more precisely the ability to make non-nihilistic distinctions between ideas, and emotions, and other "MEMES" so called that have gone viral in our culture.
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    @Christopher Smith Yes. Are you familiar with Rene Thom's catastropphe theory? These discointinous changes are catastrophies in his sense of the word, in other words there is order in the discontinuous transition.
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    By the way, I am only mentioning these resources to show that there is interesting things out there that can support discussions such as this and inform them, and I see my role as trying to bring up those resources, just because I know about them, not because of any other reason, i.e. not to show I am smart for instance. I just wanted to clarify my motives. I believe that what we are lacking is in depth resources, grounding, to support our opinions as said above, yet the tradition offers plenty of resources but due to specialization in our tradition, most people don't ever discover the resources that they need to make sure that their opinions are grounded in their own opinion and to the extent they desire that grounding. Notice that we are here talking about opinions about opinions, in other words we have risen to the level of the analysis of pundits concerning poll results. So that makes it pretty clear we are going in the wrong direction. But be that as it may, education if it means specialization, is not always as usefull as it could be in making us citizens who are prepared to think about hard problems.
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    @Joannie Pan Do you define soul as Jung does or as Aristotle does? or with some other definition?
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    @Christopher Smith That is right, I am looking for the foundations of design in Systems Engineering which challenges traditional Systems Theory and makes us expand its scope to Schemas Theory. Seemingly no one asked what was the next higher level of abstraction above the System before that included Monad, Pattern, Form (Aristotle's definition of the Soul, by the way) System, Meta-system, Domain, World, etc.
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    @Kent Palmer You get far enough up the abstraction tree and it is all about namespaces. ;-)
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    @Christopher Smith That is why I am interested in Ontology Engineering flowing from my more basic interest in Ontology as part of Metaphysics. Namespaces are a practical implementation of an Ontology. So today we can see that even Ontology has its uses by Practical reason.
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    By the way the pinnacle of the abstraction tree is Being, and it is the meta-levels of Being that control our thinking about Namespaces, and other elements of our ontologies.
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    In fact we can say, that in a crude way, getting back to the topic at hand, that Religion and Politics are different namespaces one referring to infinite transcendentals and the other referring to finite collective transcendentals. Which reminds me that Durkheim says at the end of his book on religion that Kant's categories are socially constructed. I never understood that point when all I knew was Sociology. It was not until I studied Kant that I realized what a revolutionary idea that was that the a prioris associated with transcendentals are socially constructed, which leads directly to Burger and Luckmann's Social Construction of Reality which of course reaches its pinnacle in Ethnomethodology which then is destroyed because Carlos Castenada's dissertation is in that subject and it was all faked, which became obvious when it became a best seller. Real academics do not produce best sellers except Umberto Eco (Name of the Rose).
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    @Kent Palmer from a buddhist perspective that there is no permanent entity. which philosopher is that most aligned with?
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    @Joannie Pan Please see my answers on Quora that address Buddhism and the relation to Western philosophy. There is no philosopher except perhaps Nargarjuna who is perfectly aligned with Buddhism in our tradition, but I think the Skeptics come the closest, but of course Heraclitus is normally named as believing in aggregates like the Buddhists and also Democritus with atoms. But as Hegel points out, we can really better see Heraclitus as a midway point supporting the idea of Becoming (Process Being) between Parmenides (Pure Being) and the Buddhist nondual notion of emptiness.
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    @Kent Palmer Wait, you are saying Carlos Castenada's stuff isn't real? ;-)
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    @Kent Palmer mahalo, thank you
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    @Christopher Smith Nope. All made up sitting in a library at a University somewhere, probably Berkeley, where ever Garfinkel his advisor was. His books spurred a whole generation of Anthropologists to go out and find real shaman, and they wrote books on them, so you can learn what they are really like, and also there are the brilliant psychological study of Castaneda himself which tries to figure out why he did it. It is better reading than Castenada's fantasies. Remember Tolkein was popular at the same time, and had much better fantasies by the way based on Dunne's idea of multi-dimensional time. Basically, Casteneda gave us a satire based on Heidegger's Being and Time dressed in Orientalist guise. Brilliant stuff. Problem is that it is too brilliant to have anything to do with the actual Shamen that live in South America. It is too much like Western philosophy dressed up in Oriental, in this case South American, garb.
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    @Christopher Smith You're quoting a movie. Please don't.
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    @Kent Palmer I was not making a philosophical argument, so your response baffles me. As does your entire thread of argument: I don't think you can call yourself a philosopher if all you do is quote philosophers. That's what students of philosophy do. I'm interested in original ideas. We've all done the reading.
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    @Kent Palmer Sorry. I was being sarcastic. It appears my ";-)" wasn't clear enough.
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    @Carlos Alvarez-Aranyos Actually, I was quoting Google, which it turns out was quoting a movie, which was quoting Napolean (I guess it is hard to quickly verify that the attribution is correct). If it succinctly says what I was struggling to express, isn't that a good thing, presuming a provide attribution?
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    @Christopher Smith Never mind I have been an email list administrator for years and I know every permutation of misunderstanding that occurs in this medium. It is to be expected. But apology is very civil, even if it is unnecessary. Nice to see some civility here.
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    Bear bating like fox hunting is a sport for some who do not understand themselves very well.
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    @Ed Stapleton Jr depends on who you are talking to. But I'd lean towards religion - because it is personal. Politics is only personal because of the power games they play inside.
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    @Ed Stapleton Jr both are used too much as a crutch. People blame. Politics wouldn't be sensative if it worked logically - it was designed logically - we have just had a bunch (for the most part) of 'idiots' ruining the process for quite some time. We need better people who know how to execute. No one outstanding is ever stepping up to the plate to run for that place. If he or she would, I'd elect them no doubt. Usually voters are left with the scraps as the scraps are all that is running. They 'sound' good. But gosh, anyone can talk that game.
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    @Heather Gilchrist I agree to you when you say,many people don't choose religion. They just follow what they are taught since childhood. And when they grow, religion becomes their belief. Something that we follow right from our heart. But its different for everyone. Every Christian follow his religion his own way, every Hindu follows his religion his own way. But their religion never becomes their action. They will never be a good/bad/smart/intelligent/leader because of a religion. So what i believe, stays inside me and never effects anyone else. But at the same time, if I talk about the effect of politics, its huge. Every decision in politics effect masses. So religion is a bigger belief, but politics affects more :)
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    I would agree with @Jaxi West I think it depends on who you're talking with but I do think politics can be just as personal as religion, because for many they work together for example (abortion & Christianity v.free choice & and freedom of religion) and for some people that are not spiritual their political views may be as passionate for them as religious views.
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    That's a tough one. I think currently it's politics because we're coming off the death of Osama bin Laden and the Obama birth certificate/Trump debacle. Try to trade barbs with the wrong person about religion, though, and you'll never hear the end of it.
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    By far I say religion....
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