i think a great weakness in our thoughts for a better world are a dependence on and faith in mere SENTIMENT, ie, the sentiment of being nice, sharing, not being greedy, etc
a stronger basis is i think the RATIONALITY of not being greedy, of sharing, etc
i think humanity is not aware that sharing, not being greedy, can be rationally justified to everyone - ie, i believe it is true that sharing fairly is actually better for everyone
i think most people are not at all clear that this is so - it would help the movement towards sharing fairly and crating peace if we can give good REASONS for doing so
obviously, if everyone SEES it is in their own interests, is to their own benefit, to be fair, and take no more than their rightful earned share, ie that they will PROFIT from fairness, then there will be a firm universal will towards justice
and until there is such a universal or general human will to justice, no attempt to drag people to justice will succeed
we have to show people that it is in fact in their interests to be fair, to take out of society no more than they put in by their work
it is a conflict between the atavism that says: grab the whole cake, the whole cake is better than part of the cake, grab as much as you can, you can never have too much
and the rationality that can show that there is a far far larger downside to unlimited grabbing than upside
to rely on mere sentiment unfounded on rationality is to waste a great weapon in the arsenal of the peacemakers
also, if justice was not in the interests of anyone, it would be immoral to force anyone to be just - and if we cannot demonstrate rationally that justice is in the interests of everyone, we are not on rational ground, ie we are merely insane, irrational - we have to have a rational basis for our actions, or we are irrational
we have to know that it is in everyone's interests to have justice, in order to be moral in promoting justice
therefore i think the ROOT OF THE MATTER is in proving, first to ourselves, and then to others, that justice is actually good - everyone pays lipservice to the idea that justice is good, but clearly most people do not KNOW it - they have merely heard it said, seen it written - they have not SEEN it is so
judging from the ratio of cortex to the rest of the brain, humans are only about 1% rational, and are 99% atavistic, instinctive, impulsive
but again i say that good reasoning is a stronger and more moral foundation than ignorant sentiment
it is only reason that makes a thing moral - there can be nothing moral that is irrational - we need rationality to justify ourselves, clarify ourselves
if we cannot convince others that justice is good for them, then we are immoral in forcing it on them
human history has been a story of people becoming convinced of something and then forcing it on others - but the amount of force needed to control people is more than any state or empire can afford, and all empires based on force have exhausted their treasuries before they have exhausted the resistance of the people to something they dont agree with
without rationality, there is no dignity for humanity - to do things without a foundation of reason, of good sense, is just madness in action
of course justice has been a virtue for a long time - but where are the reasonings that explain why justice is good? - i have not seen any except my own reasonings -
either justice is good or it isnt - if it isnt good, then of course there is no reason to pursue it - if it is good, then it can be seen to be good by good sense
instead of those few who believe justice is good going out and, without reasoning, try to get those many who dont believe justice is good [judged by their actions] to adopt justice, doesnt it make infinitely more practical sense to clarify people's understanding, so they can see that justice is beneficial to them? - then it will not be necessary to force them, coerce them forever, with the frail web of the laws and the threat of punishment, but they will walk with you willingly, under their own steam, and even ahead of you
and, as i say, if one cant convince them that justice is good, how can one morally claim to know that justice is good? - others are more or less equal to you - what you can understand, they can understand - if it is true, they can be convinced - if they cant be convinced, then we cannot claim enough certainty to morally justify force -
so force is a confession of disbelief in your faith - the fact that the communists prevented people from leaving russia, etc, showed that the communist leaders did not believe communism was good for everyone - or they would have let people leave, confident that they would experience worse without communism, and desire to return - the use of force showed that the communist leaders were just bandits, thieves - the use of force showed that the communist leaders believed people would not willingly return, ie, that communism was essentially robbery, and against the people, not for the people, as claimed
we need a science of justice - we need to assemble the truth about justice - we need to quantify justice, as far as practical - we need to discover what people feel is most just, and with which they will therefore be most content and at peace
i have attempted to outline my thoughts on the nature and quantification of justice in pay in other answers to similar questions i have given here at yahoo
why is justice good? - because injustice [theft] comes with an angry person attached, who never gives up trying to get justice, and therefore is an endless threat and expense in time, money and quality of life - it seems to human simplistic thinking and atavism, that if so much money is so good, twice as much money is twice as good - but the vital missing distinction is between selfearned and otherearned money - when money gets into being otherearned money, it is theft, and comes with an angry person attached, who destroys all benefit the extra money would have, and more
so the heart of the matter is clarifying where selfearned money ends and otherearned money begins - quantifying justice in money
we have pay per fortnight's work from $1 to $1 billion - from a 1000th to a million times the world average hourly pay - and human atavism [greed] rationalises this as fair, right and good - but it is certain that there is disagreement on this point, and certainty among those 90% of people who ar on 10th - 1000th of the world average hourly pay that there is injustice or theft involved - the rationalisations are good enough to satisfy the highly paid, but not the lowly paid - we easily believe what we want to believe - the highly paid want to believe their high pay per hour is right and good and fair
99% of people are paid less than the world average hourly pay - if they could get their act together, they could force the 1% to cough up the dough - the US$70 trillion a year the 1% are overpaid
justice would exist, and world peace - and a million problems generated by superoverpay and superunderpay would not exist -
the 99% need to know that survival and happiness depend on justice - as far as possible, 100% need to know that justice is good for them - that surival and happiness depend on justice
we have extreme injustice, and consequent extreme violence, which is escalating war and weaponry to extinction soon - we have now the weapons to destroy all life 60 times over - and violence is continuing to rise, and must therefore sometime reach the level to use those bombs
all the violence [war and crime] is caused by people differing about to whom the money belongs - the conflict goes on forever [escalating] because both sides are convinced they are right - one of them is wrong - what is completely lacking in the general human understanding are the concepts of overpay, underpay, and legal theft - ie, there is no general consciousness that money transfers legally [also illegally, of course] from earners to nonearners - economics, written and thought mainly by friends of the highly paid, has never been at pains to explain that there are legal thefts - that money acquired legally can belong to others - that overpay exists
it ought to be extremely obvious from the fact that pay per hour's work ranges from a 1000th to a million times average, that there is legal theft, but the power of rationalisation is obviously very great
governments, in the hands of the highly paid, have been totally lax in counterbalancing the overpay and underpay - and have reaped the decline and fall of states and empires throughout history - the state built on injustice cannot stand - all our states so far have fallen - and we now face the fall of the planet
to have an idea of justice in pay, let us consider the state of humanity before job specialisation, before society - each person did his own work, traded nothing, and was paid fully and fairly by all the fruits of his labours - let us say that the efficiency factor of job specialisation is x - x would be perhaps somewhere between 2 and 10 - ie, with job specialisation, people produce x times as much goods in the same time as they did before job specialisation - so pay justice in society will mean everyone will get x times what they would get before job specialisation - ie, the proportion of products will remain the same as it was before job specialisation - the range of pay per unit of work before j.sp. will not be very great - therefore in justice this same range should apply after job specialisation - the benefits of j. sp. are a community product, and therefore belong to everyone equally - the efficiency factor of j.sp. will increase the quantity per person, but should not alter the proportions - this gives us a foundation idea of justice - each person should get what they would get doing all their own work, times the efficiency factor of j.sp.
but the pooling of products, necessary for giving each person a mix of goods, despite everyone specialising in work, makes possible the taking out of more than the individual put in - and, with human atavism, makes it inevitable
and then injustice happens and then violence begins escalating till extinction
legal theft is built in to transaction itself - two things exchanged have to be of different values [ie, contain different amounts of work in them] - so their values are x and x+y - so every transaction is a fair-exchange-no-robbery [x for x] plus a transfer of value [work], ie robbery, equal to y - this alone will make overpay and underpay grow to extinction
add sheer plunder, add everyone making y as large as possible, and you have legal theft at the root of any exchange economy - this drop of injustice, of transfer of earnings from earner to nonearner, over trillions of transactions over millenia has made the raging ocean of injustice which drowns 2% of humanity every year, and is soon to drown us all
now, i am confident that this is not difficult to believe and to understand - i am confident that most humans are able to understand this explanation - it is simple, surely -
obviously we cannot live with this - obviously this is extremely destructive of human happiness [which is everyone's everything] - is there one person who will say that a govt taking 90% of earnings off 90% of people and giving it to 1% will not be extremely destructive of human happiness? - that the 1% cannot profit from this, when it creates 90% of people very angry and inclined to revenge the theft on the 1%? - that everyone will suffer enormously? - and we have more extreme injustice than this, and clearly we have the expected extreme level of violence
can anyone cling to the status quo when these things are made clear?
it is clear to everyone that if a govt STOPS taking 90% off 90% and giving it to 1%, all the misery and chaos will be undone - ie, everyone can understand easily that we can be much happier, everyone of us - i imagine that everyone with an IQ over about 70 can understand this - and those with IQs below this are not going to have any aggressive loyalty to the status quo
so we can save ourselves from extinction and be much happier - how much unhappier do you say a nation would become if the govt took 90% off 90%, etc? - that is how much happier we can be
we all want happiness, so do it - print this off, show it to people - the logic is easy, the logic is impeccable - soon everyone will know
if anyone gives you any trouble, just send them round to me to beat them up - just kidding
2006-09-29 04:01:25
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answer #5
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answered by Anonymous
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