Broadly, I think we can visualise human organisations on two poles of a spectrum. Predatory and eudaimonic•. Eudaimonic societies enable people to live genuinely good lives. Genuinely good lives are made of essentials: health, relationships, security both financial and physical, safety, intelligence, basic morality, and so on.
Predatory societies, in stark contrast, simply take human potential from some, to give it to others. No real gains are created. What is the most likely configuration of such an antisocial contract? To take from the vulnerable and give to the powerful of course. That much you probably already see. Here’s what you don’t.
Bad Words
The Predatory Society–Rationing Eudaimonia
Umair Haque
* The prefix eu means "good" in Greek. Daimon has no direct correlate in English but the general idea is "spirit" as in being "in good spirits." For Aristotle eudaimonia signified happiness as fulfillment of both human and individual potential, with human potential being understood as the "spiritual" aspect that characterizes humans. Thus material satisfaction and physical pleasure are insufficient to yield abiding fulfillment, which comes from living a full life, that is, living a good life in a good society. Then the questions arise, what is the good life and what is a good society.
9 comments:
"Genuinely good lives are made of essentials: health, relationships, security both financial and physical, safety, intelligence, basic morality, and so on."
Spoken just like a non-material systems competent/qualified person...
Then hypocritically they will bitch that they dont have enough materials...
This is the logic:
"material is not important!"
"hey! I dont have enough material!"
How do these people's brains work?????
They say "material is not important!" because they are incompetent/unqualified in material systems...
Thought provoking essay.
Capitalism is competitive. It pits people against each other. A little bit of competition can be a good thing, to the extent that it stimulates innovation and improvement. I enjoy competing in some things (generally things that I am good at). Yet a system that pits people against each other is morally questionable and may be doomed to fail, as the author suggests.
You have very poor reading skills, Matt. You read the following paragraph:
"Genuinely good lives are made of essentials: health (material), relationships, security both financial and physical (material), safety (material), intelligence, basic morality, and so on."
And somehow come to this conclusion:
Spoken just like a non-material systems competent/qualified person...
Where did you go to school?
" Predatory societies, in stark contrast, simply take human potential from some, to give it to others."
that could be straight from some Ayn Rand psycho...
Six the author couples those non-material concepts as equivalent to the material related concepts you highlight...
We have plenty of relationships, intelligence, morality so on... we have those things whether we have material competence or not...
What kind of relationships are we going to have in the households with un/under employment? The data indicates non-ideal relationships...
Old family saying:
"When the money is gone, love flies out the window..."
According to you guys, it works the other way, iow you guys are saying
"if there is love, there will be plenty of money..."
This is absurd... get a grip...
then when it doesnt work this way, you guys go straight to conspiracy theories "neo liberal conspiracy!" as some sort of a coping mechanism...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coping_(psychology)
When it comes to humans, material/non-material are always linked, Matt. It's part of what makes us human. If you drift too far into materialism, you'll lose part of your humanity. If you drift too far away from materialism, you might starve or freeze or run out of things to wipe your ass on.
Post a Comment