An economics, investment, trading and policy blog with a focus on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). We seek the truth, avoid the mainstream and are virulently anti-neoliberalism.
When the internet was young, BearShare forums were a hub for political and philosophical discussions. Relatively few electrons were spilled over the intricacies of peer-to-peer sharing.
Ask Tom how many mainstream websites he's been banned from.
What is the connection between your postings and the heading of this Blog?
I already told you. Economics is an integral component of the world system and if one doesn't attempt to comprehend the world system, one cannot hope to understand economic realities in any practical sense. If one doesn't understand how the system works, "economics" is off in the blue some where, with little relevance for reality. Then, economic is pure theory with little connection to facts and events.
Joke of the day if you are referring to the comments. Serious people, many of whom used to participate in the discussions here, ask me why I still contribute here when the discussion has descended so low. In fact, I have lost Internet friends over it. I often ask myself the same question.
Anyone that has not served in the military during wartime cannot fathom how the world works
If you haven't been banned on a mainstream site, you're not making an effort.
You would be right about that.
I regard social media as a waste of time. I have only so much time to spend on this sideline and MNE takes pretty much all of it. I rarely comment on other blogs even about MMT these days although I was more active about MMT previously when there were few advocates. Now there are many promoting MMT.
My Internet activity is directed here at MNE and even here I have cut back on posting other than links and some brief comments. Blogging is being replaced by social media and I am not going there.
I should add to "Anyone that has not served in the military during wartime cannot fathom how the world works" these qualifications: Better to have served as an officer. Better than that to have served in operations, which requires study of strategy and tactics. Better to have have had a high level security clearance and access to communications and intelligence. Better than that even would be to have graduated from a military academy with a degree in military science
The last competent president the US had was Ike. As a former CIA chief, Poppy Bush at least know how things actually work. (The CIA is both an intel agency and a paramilitary force. The latter is called "operations" to distinguish it from analysis) But he did not come up through the ranks either so his knowledge in this field was limited.
As Andrei Martyanov says, the way the world works is in terms of economic power based on the real productive economy and also on military power, which is the first derivative of economic power, i.e., producing military goods and developing military technology.
Anyone that has not served in the military during wartime cannot fathom how the world works
To voluntarily serve in the military places you in the ranks of the clueless. Were the comments by Smedley Butler unheard of way back then?
What do officers do with soldiers who disobey orders during combat?
My Internet activity is directed here at MNE and even here I have cut back on posting other than links and some brief comments. Blogging is being replaced by social media and I am not going there.
I had in mind sites like the Daily Kos which have blogs and forums. Waste of time but the audience is orders of magnitude larger.
Do you post out of principle of speaking out? Surely you aren't under the notion that posting links will change anything.
As Andrei Martyanov says, the way the world works is in terms of economic power based on the real productive economy and also on military power, which is the first derivative of economic power, i.e., producing military goods and developing military technology.
That is how the sausage is made. Dividing the world into competing nation states, creates incentives that lead to pathological outcomes. The desire to create world economies, world government, and uniform international policies is a continuation down the wrong path. Good luck dissuading academics, technocrats and stakeholders from their plans.
To voluntarily serve in the military places you in the ranks of the clueless.
Having served as an officer, I obviously volunteered. The choice was either to volunteer or risk being drafted as cannon fodder. I chose to volunteer. Actually, I tried to join the Air National Guard as an enlisted man, but after I took the tests, the CO called me in and told me I was overqualified to be an enlisted person and should apply for OCS, which I did.
Were the comments by Smedley Butler unheard of way back then?
As a matter of fact, yes. Never heard of him until much later in my life. In fact, when I went in I was gung ho and supported the war. It was not until later in my
service that I figured out what was really up.
What do officers do with soldiers who disobey orders during combat?
They are supposed to be courtmartialed. But that is not always the way the world works.
I had in mind sites like the Daily Kos which have blogs and forums. Waste of time but the audience is orders of magnitude larger.
Used to do that regularly regarding MMT in the early days. But after a while, there was an army of people posting on MMT so I decided to cut back. Eventually I quit commenting when I gave up on the left and was not ready to join the right.
Do you post out of principle of speaking out? Surely you aren't under the notion that posting links will change anything.
I am interested in these matters and follow a lot of feeds. I pick out a few things that have a bearing on how the world is working, which openminded folks might be interested in. I try to say up on MMT links, but there are few of those today as the venue has shifted from blogging to Twitter. So the there is not much MMT material available these days.
That is how the sausage is made. Dividing the world into competing nation states, creates incentives that lead to pathological outcomes. The desire to create world economies, world government, and uniform international policies is a continuation down the wrong path. Good luck dissuading academics, technocrats and stakeholders from their plans.
History if largely about war as a contest for territory and resources, on one hand, and the proliferation of knowledge and technology on the other. History is messy.
The present reality is that the world is in transition from the European nation state that emerged from Westphalia toward a globalized world. The Western powers imposed the Westphalian model on the rest of the world as its colonies and vassals. Now the West is pushing globalization. I previously said on a number of occasions that this dialectic between nationalism and globalism will take "500 years" figuratively speaking, that is, a very long time, with lots of ups and downs.
Now the West is seeking to change the Westphalian model to one based on neoliberal globalization under international institutions under the control of Western elites, and American in particular. This transition has run into opposition from several quarters — multipolarists opposing unipolarists, tradionalists opposing liberals, whites opposing non-whites and so on. This is why I say that this going to take a long time. The West wants to force it happen quickly and so is encountering fierce opposition.
I am not beating a drum for any solution other than the spiritual one, which I don't speak of much here since it is not really the place for that. I mention it obliquely now and then. Otherwise, I attempt to act as an objective analyst of the historical dialectic unfolding. I also have preferences from outcomes that I think are mutually beneficial for all peoples, based on my "spiritual" views, specifically, nondualism.
Having served as an officer, I obviously volunteered. The choice was either to volunteer or risk being drafted as cannon fodder. I chose to volunteer. Actually, I tried to join the Air National Guard as an enlisted man, but after I took the tests, the CO called me in and told me I was overqualified to be an enlisted person and should apply for OCS, which I did.
There are draftees who were clueless i.e. they didn't want to go because it would be inconvenient.
As a matter of fact, yes. Never heard of him until much later in my life. In fact, when I went in I was gung ho and supported the war. It was not until later in my service that I figured out what was really up.
No one had to explicitly tell me that war is a racket, or explain why it is immoral to participate. I absorbed those lessons implicitly from my parents, and from society at large. Do young people have to be taught that killing is wrong?
Used to do that regularly regarding MMT in the early days. But after a while, there was an army of people posting on MMT so I decided to cut back. Eventually I quit commenting when I gave up on the left and was not ready to join the right.
It's a very small MMT army. There's a huge amount of teaching material for MMT, if anyone cares to study it. But no, the vast majority prefer to take at face value what they read the Daily Kos. I don't hang out at the Daily Kos because I can't stand to read that kind of material.
History is largely about war as a contest for territory and resources, on one hand, and the proliferation of knowledge and technology on the other. History is messy.
Messy, yet inevitable. Once the frontier was explored, conquered and settled, what else could have happened?
We could call Westphalia the 'End of the Frontier' model. War could be renamed as the 'Agricultural Expansion' model, which was an improvement over the 'Local Tribal' model. Now there is information technology, which may offer up the concept of a global or technocratic model.
The transition (i.e. inevitability) is proceeding at a pace that may bring some interesting changes within our lifetimes. Right wing conspiracists have been sounding the alarm for decades; now there is talk about digital currencies and IDs. The agenda is on the table. There are pros and cons to it. It is potentially system changing. Will it turn out as planned?
The irony is nothing at this scale is ever planned. It's all seat-of-the-pants bright-shiny-object grabbing.
I came here for Mike's take on MMT 7 or 8 years ago. (longer?) I've stayed b/c of Tom Hickey. Well, maybe Matt a little, flame thrower that he is. Tom, keep it up, I appreciate it.
eg you have BOTH a thesis and antithesis … perhaps “dual” theses…
There are two aspects of philosophy. The first is substantive, that is, foundational studies. The second is procedural, having to do with method and for Western philosophy that is chiefly rational discourse.
There are three chief substantive positions regarding metaphysics, or the study of reality as such. They are monism (one stuff, e.g., consciousness, matter, or a "neutral" stuff), dualism (two stuffs, e.g., mind and matter) and pluralism (more than two stuffs, e.g, atomism). Nondualism is a type of monism.
There are basically two methods, the categorical and the dialectical. The categorical method, followed by Aristotle, makes categorical assertions/denials based on two-valued logic (true or false).
The dialectical method, made famous by Plato, uses a complementary logic of parts and whole. Assertions are partial and leave out the complement(s). Dialectic discourse brings out the complements to more closely approximate the whole, which cannot be stated in a single set of categorical propositions.
The thesis-antithesis-synethisis model is used to characterize the dialectical method, but many dialectical logician regard that as overly simplistic. Dialectic is more about holism and complementarity. Dialectic rejects bi-value true-false logic in favor of both-and logic, all assertions being false in the sense of limited with respect to the whole in the absence of their complement. Thus an assertion creates the need for its complement. Thus, progress toward expressing the whole proceed iteratively, e.g., through dialogue and debate. Western philosophy can be viewed as an on-going debate over the nature of reality (metaphysics), knowledge (epistemology), morals (ethics), and beauty (aesthetics).
Eastern philosophy is based on experience and understanding, chiefly experience of the whole, which is supra mental and therefore ineffable, but which can approached linguistically by denial of limitation and use of analogy, e.g., the "oceanic" experience.
I prefer the Eastern way both substantively and methodologically, although the Eastern model is also found in the West and can be located in Plato, although this is not how most scholars interpret Plato.
Eastern methodology includes the methods for attain supramental experience. This is found in the Western mystical traditions, e.g., Qabalah, Christian mysticism, gnosticism (with a small "g" to distinguish it from Hellenistic Gnosticism) and Sufism. The Eastern traditions are chiefly the Indian tradition with its many schools, including Buddhism. As well as Chinese, Tibetan and Japanese Buddhism, and Taoism.
The core of these traditions makes up perennial wisdom, in which the one "truth" has many facets. That "truth" is experience of who one really is beyond the phenomenal appearances. This truth is said to be "transcendental," that is, beyond ordinary experience.
“ Thus an assertion creates the need for its complement.”
That’s “broad (‘Plato’) gate” not “narrow gate” in its Christian context… ie non discriminatory… dualistic…
You can see why it doesn’t work…
The MMT people use that then assert “we’re not out of money!” which creates the need for it’s complement from their interlocutors (Greek ‘diabolos’ commonly translated as figurative personification “the Devil” via reification) the Monetarists who assert “we’re out of money!” then back and forth they go… both sides don’t get anywhere and the rest of us suffer under this moron methodology…
It becomes their hell on earth to those of us technically qualified…
At the cost of repeating something that I've said before, and I don't say this lightly, Tom is an ocean of wisdom.
He is now, yet back then he was a gung ho young man who supported the war in Vietnam.
Muhammad Ali was gung ho in the boxing ring, yet had the sense to know what was up.
So what's the explanation?
Higher education versus street smarts? Having the experience of growing up with one skin colour versus another?
To this day, there is no shortage of morons (mostly male) willing to join the military because they believe some BS about fighting for freedom. Alan Alda referred to it as testosterone poisoning. I don't mean to pick on men, but women know instinctively that war is immoral and stupid. When it came to the pandemic, women were just as likely to behave like sheep as men.
There isn't a proper antiwar movement in the US or Canada. Like with everything else, most people just 'go along to get along'. We aren't civilized. We pretend we're civilized only as long as the ruling class permits us to be.
Put simply, class. But also it was a very different time.
I did not come to realize the class thing until later. Actually, it was Bertolt Brecht, a Marxist playwright, that first woke me up, but only a bit.
Otherwise, I was an ordinary American boy growing up in the post-WWII era, the "Ozzie and Harriet years."At that time, the US was not only the world leader but also the world hero, as I experienced when I traveled in Europe and Asia. The Nazis were monsters, the Japanese sub-human, and the South was still segregated. America was the shining city on the hill. These were the halcyon years. The sky was the limit. The world was at America's feet, except for those Reds, which was pretty much equated with Russia then. I still remember the civil defense drills where we had to climb under out school desk to "protect" us from nuclear attack. Many of the kids were screaming. So not all good back then.
Man, did I get a shock, actually a series of shocks.
Times change, yet people remain the same. If the concept of war wasn't clear after WWI, WWII, or Korea, is it any clearer today?
I understand the media doesn't show the gory stuff on the evening news, so that form of censorship may affect public perception. Physical reality is sanitized. But nowadays, the horror of war is available for everyone to see. There are also sites that cater to 'gore hounds', but that is intended for another audience.
Not knowing what war is, is something I can't buy. And the suspension of morals is just breathtaking.
My parents weren't racist, but they were prejudiced, as we all are. My mother was active in welcoming the boat people to our corner of Quebec. Yet when meeting people who were non-white, she'd invariably ask "Where are you from?" I went to school with kids who were of different ethnicity, but it went without saying that they were culturally Canadian.
The class divide in Quebec is based on income and language. Since it is overwhelmingly white, racial/ethnic divides are secondary.
My father spent his childhood in Yugoslavia, but is ethnically German. After the war, his family had to leave their farm. My father's uncle, who refused to leave, died in a Russian concentration camp. That is what I was told, in any case. My father's family was not responsible for the atrocities committed by Croatian locals and their Nazi puppet regime. They had to leave because of their last name.
I didn't think my father had a heavy German accent until I spoke with him on the telephone. That is how it is when you live together. Prejudice would influence our lives. I wasn't interested in learning German and my father refused to speak French. When we visited his relatives in Austria, they were disappointed I couldn't communicate with them. They were decent people, but from my perspective, they were of a different culture. The only person I was able to speak with, was an elderly Austrian woman who spoke French. She turned out to be a Nazi supporter.
I'm not opposed to voluntary segregation. But to believe that this or that group are subhuman, is on the same level as believing war is a grown-up version of the boy scouts. People are not supposed to be so ignorant as to discard such basic tenets. Yet here we are.
At that time, the US was not only the world leader but also the world hero, as I experienced when I traveled in Europe and Asia.
I remember that my father admired Americans. After the war had ended, the family had fled to Austria, and it was there that he worked for the Americans (i.e. the military forces that were occupying/administering the area. There were a set number of stories he would tell me, about how he picked up his smoking habit because American cigarettes were plentiful; and the trouble a co-worker had because of complaints by the Americans that the buildings were never warm enough. Those particular Americans were identified as 'Texans'.
I don't know why he admired them exactly. He wanted to go to the US, but they weren't accepting immigrants at the time (early 50s). So he sailed to Montreal, and emigrated to Canada. He was the only one in his family to emigrate.
It is said that people who choose to emigrate are different psychologically from people who remain in their country of birth. In the case of my mother, she lived in a house her father had built, less than 200 feet away from her family home, which was occupied by her younger brother. This is the house I grew up in. With the exception of an aunt who lived in St. Eustache, her siblings lived right next door.
This is the situation my father lived in after being introduced to my mother, by one of her matchmaking aunts. The overall impression was that he regretted emigrating. His thoughts were on comparing life in Canada with life in Austria (and sometimes Yugoslavia). He was proud of his German heritage. My mother referred to it as living like a tourist.
If I could pinpoint where my antiwar views originated from, it may have to do with the stories my father told me, or the experience of being raised by a culturally European father. Or perhaps, by someone who would have become an American, had he had the chance.
I had many arguments with him, regarding Europe versus North America. Which had the better culture, who were more diligent, who were more skilled. My father gradually lost his admiration of the US, because of scandals like Watergate, and the way South America was treated.
Thanks to the pandemic, I lost the fanciful idea that North Americans are more individualistic than Europeans. People here are just as willing to be told what to believe and what to think. They will abandon their freedoms at the drop of a hat. They will go to war when told.
22 comments:
Tom
What is the connection between your postings and the heading of this Blog?
"An economics, investment, trading and policy blog with a focus on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT)."
MNE is a sanctuary for critical thinkers.
When the internet was young, BearShare forums were a hub for political and philosophical discussions. Relatively few electrons were spilled over the intricacies of peer-to-peer sharing.
Ask Tom how many mainstream websites he's been banned from.
Ask Tom how many mainstream websites he's been banned from
As long as you asked, for the record I have never been banned or blocked anywhere.
What is the connection between your postings and the heading of this Blog?
I already told you. Economics is an integral component of the world system and if one doesn't attempt to comprehend the world system, one cannot hope to understand economic realities in any practical sense. If one doesn't understand how the system works, "economics" is off in the blue some where, with little relevance for reality. Then, economic is pure theory with little connection to facts and events.
MNE is a sanctuary for critical thinkers.
Joke of the day if you are referring to the comments. Serious people, many of whom used to participate in the discussions here, ask me why I still contribute here when the discussion has descended so low. In fact, I have lost Internet friends over it. I often ask myself the same question.
Academics (serious people) rarely post where ordinary plebs hang out. What the public is exposed to, are the charlatans.
If you haven't been banned on a mainstream site, you're not making an effort.
Frankly, you're too invested in intellectualism to grasp the way the world works. It's a lot simpler and more brutal than you would conceive it.
Muhammad Ali knew the score when you were a true believer. You think your education has allowed you to grasp what he knew?
Anyone that has not served in the military during wartime cannot fathom how the world works
If you haven't been banned on a mainstream site, you're not making an effort.
You would be right about that.
I regard social media as a waste of time. I have only so much time to spend on this sideline and MNE takes pretty much all of it. I rarely comment on other blogs even about MMT these days although I was more active about MMT previously when there were few advocates. Now there are many promoting MMT.
My Internet activity is directed here at MNE and even here I have cut back on posting other than links and some brief comments. Blogging is being replaced by social media and I am not going there.
I should add to "Anyone that has not served in the military during wartime cannot fathom how the world works" these qualifications: Better to have served as an officer. Better than that to have served in operations, which requires study of strategy and tactics. Better to have have had a high level security clearance and access to communications and intelligence. Better than that even would be to have graduated from a military academy with a degree in military science
The last competent president the US had was Ike. As a former CIA chief, Poppy Bush at least know how things actually work. (The CIA is both an intel agency and a paramilitary force. The latter is called "operations" to distinguish it from analysis) But he did not come up through the ranks either so his knowledge in this field was limited.
As Andrei Martyanov says, the way the world works is in terms of economic power based on the real productive economy and also on military power, which is the first derivative of economic power, i.e., producing military goods and developing military technology.
The Mohammed Ali analogy is apt but very limited.
Anyone that has not served in the military during wartime cannot fathom how the world works
To voluntarily serve in the military places you in the ranks of the clueless. Were the comments by Smedley Butler unheard of way back then?
What do officers do with soldiers who disobey orders during combat?
My Internet activity is directed here at MNE and even here I have cut back on posting other than links and some brief comments. Blogging is being replaced by social media and I am not going there.
I had in mind sites like the Daily Kos which have blogs and forums. Waste of time but the audience is orders of magnitude larger.
Do you post out of principle of speaking out?
Surely you aren't under the notion that posting links will change anything.
As Andrei Martyanov says, the way the world works is in terms of economic power based on the real productive economy and also on military power, which is the first derivative of economic power, i.e., producing military goods and developing military technology.
That is how the sausage is made. Dividing the world into competing nation states, creates incentives that lead to pathological outcomes. The desire to create world economies, world government, and uniform international policies is a continuation down the wrong path. Good luck dissuading academics, technocrats and stakeholders from their plans.
To voluntarily serve in the military places you in the ranks of the clueless.
Having served as an officer, I obviously volunteered. The choice was either to volunteer or risk being drafted as cannon fodder. I chose to volunteer. Actually, I tried to join the Air National Guard as an enlisted man, but after I took the tests, the CO called me in and told me I was overqualified to be an enlisted person and should apply for OCS, which I did.
Were the comments by Smedley Butler unheard of way back then?
As a matter of fact, yes. Never heard of him until much later in my life. In fact, when I went in I was gung ho and supported the war. It was not until later in my
service that I figured out what was really up.
What do officers do with soldiers who disobey orders during combat?
They are supposed to be courtmartialed. But that is not always the way the world works.
I had in mind sites like the Daily Kos which have blogs and forums. Waste of time but the audience is orders of magnitude larger.
Used to do that regularly regarding MMT in the early days. But after a while, there was an army of people posting on MMT so I decided to cut back. Eventually I quit commenting when I gave up on the left and was not ready to join the right.
Do you post out of principle of speaking out? Surely you aren't under the notion that posting links will change anything.
I am interested in these matters and follow a lot of feeds. I pick out a few things that have a bearing on how the world is working, which openminded folks might be interested in. I try to say up on MMT links, but there are few of those today as the venue has shifted from blogging to Twitter. So the there is not much MMT material available these days.
That is how the sausage is made. Dividing the world into competing nation states, creates incentives that lead to pathological outcomes. The desire to create world economies, world government, and uniform international policies is a continuation down the wrong path. Good luck dissuading academics, technocrats and stakeholders from their plans.
History if largely about war as a contest for territory and resources, on one hand, and the proliferation of knowledge and technology on the other. History is messy.
The present reality is that the world is in transition from the European nation state that emerged from Westphalia toward a globalized world. The Western powers imposed the Westphalian model on the rest of the world as its colonies and vassals. Now the West is pushing globalization. I previously said on a number of occasions that this dialectic between nationalism and globalism will take "500 years" figuratively speaking, that is, a very long time, with lots of ups and downs.
Now the West is seeking to change the Westphalian model to one based on neoliberal globalization under international institutions under the control of Western elites, and American in particular. This transition has run into opposition from several quarters — multipolarists opposing unipolarists, tradionalists opposing liberals, whites opposing non-whites and so on. This is why I say that this going to take a long time. The West wants to force it happen quickly and so is encountering fierce opposition.
I am not beating a drum for any solution other than the spiritual one, which I don't speak of much here since it is not really the place for that. I mention it obliquely now and then. Otherwise, I attempt to act as an objective analyst of the historical dialectic unfolding. I also have preferences from outcomes that I think are mutually beneficial for all peoples, based on my "spiritual" views, specifically, nondualism.
Having served as an officer, I obviously volunteered. The choice was either to volunteer or risk being drafted as cannon fodder. I chose to volunteer. Actually, I tried to join the Air National Guard as an enlisted man, but after I took the tests, the CO called me in and told me I was overqualified to be an enlisted person and should apply for OCS, which I did.
There are draftees who were clueless i.e. they didn't want to go because it would be inconvenient.
As a matter of fact, yes. Never heard of him until much later in my life. In fact, when I went in I was gung ho and supported the war. It was not until later in my service that I figured out what was really up.
No one had to explicitly tell me that war is a racket, or explain why it is immoral to participate. I absorbed those lessons implicitly from my parents, and from society at large. Do young people have to be taught that killing is wrong?
Used to do that regularly regarding MMT in the early days. But after a while, there was an army of people posting on MMT so I decided to cut back. Eventually I quit commenting when I gave up on the left and was not ready to join the right.
It's a very small MMT army. There's a huge amount of teaching material for MMT, if anyone cares to study it. But no, the vast majority prefer to take at face value what they read the Daily Kos. I don't hang out at the Daily Kos because I can't stand to read that kind of material.
History is largely about war as a contest for territory and resources, on one hand, and the proliferation of knowledge and technology on the other. History is messy.
Messy, yet inevitable.
Once the frontier was explored, conquered and settled, what else could have happened?
We could call Westphalia the 'End of the Frontier' model. War could be renamed as the 'Agricultural Expansion' model, which was an improvement over the 'Local Tribal' model. Now there is information technology, which may offer up the concept of a global or technocratic model.
The transition (i.e. inevitability) is proceeding at a pace that may bring some interesting changes within our lifetimes. Right wing conspiracists have been sounding the alarm for decades; now there is talk about digital currencies and IDs. The agenda is on the table. There are pros and cons to it. It is potentially system changing. Will it turn out as planned?
The irony is nothing at this scale is ever planned. It's all seat-of-the-pants bright-shiny-object grabbing.
I came here for Mike's take on MMT 7 or 8 years ago. (longer?) I've stayed b/c of Tom Hickey. Well, maybe Matt a little, flame thrower that he is. Tom, keep it up, I appreciate it.
Tom,
Isn’t classic Philosophy dualistic?
eg you have BOTH a thesis and antithesis … perhaps “dual” theses…
?
I've stayed b/c of Tom Hickey
Same here.
Isn’t classic Philosophy dualistic?
eg you have BOTH a thesis and antithesis … perhaps “dual” theses…
There are two aspects of philosophy. The first is substantive, that is, foundational studies. The second is procedural, having to do with method and for Western philosophy that is chiefly rational discourse.
There are three chief substantive positions regarding metaphysics, or the study of reality as such. They are monism (one stuff, e.g., consciousness, matter, or a "neutral" stuff), dualism (two stuffs, e.g., mind and matter) and pluralism (more than two stuffs, e.g, atomism). Nondualism is a type of monism.
There are basically two methods, the categorical and the dialectical. The categorical method, followed by Aristotle, makes categorical assertions/denials based on two-valued logic (true or false).
The dialectical method, made famous by Plato, uses a complementary logic of parts and whole. Assertions are partial and leave out the complement(s). Dialectic discourse brings out the complements to more closely approximate the whole, which cannot be stated in a single set of categorical propositions.
The thesis-antithesis-synethisis model is used to characterize the dialectical method, but many dialectical logician regard that as overly simplistic. Dialectic is more about holism and complementarity. Dialectic rejects bi-value true-false logic in favor of both-and logic, all assertions being false in the sense of limited with respect to the whole in the absence of their complement. Thus an assertion creates the need for its complement. Thus, progress toward expressing the whole proceed iteratively, e.g., through dialogue and debate. Western philosophy can be viewed as an on-going debate over the nature of reality (metaphysics), knowledge (epistemology), morals (ethics), and beauty (aesthetics).
Eastern philosophy is based on experience and understanding, chiefly experience of the whole, which is supra mental and therefore ineffable, but which can approached linguistically by denial of limitation and use of analogy, e.g., the "oceanic" experience.
I prefer the Eastern way both substantively and methodologically, although the Eastern model is also found in the West and can be located in Plato, although this is not how most scholars interpret Plato.
Eastern methodology includes the methods for attain supramental experience. This is found in the Western mystical traditions, e.g., Qabalah, Christian mysticism, gnosticism (with a small "g" to distinguish it from Hellenistic Gnosticism) and Sufism. The Eastern traditions are chiefly the Indian tradition with its many schools, including Buddhism. As well as Chinese, Tibetan and Japanese Buddhism, and Taoism.
The core of these traditions makes up perennial wisdom, in which the one "truth" has many facets. That "truth" is experience of who one really is beyond the phenomenal appearances. This truth is said to be "transcendental," that is, beyond ordinary experience.
“ Thus an assertion creates the need for its complement.”
That’s “broad (‘Plato’) gate” not “narrow gate” in its Christian context… ie non discriminatory… dualistic…
You can see why it doesn’t work…
The MMT people use that then assert “we’re not out of money!” which creates the need for it’s complement from their interlocutors (Greek ‘diabolos’ commonly translated as figurative personification “the Devil” via reification) the Monetarists who assert “we’re out of money!” then back and forth they go… both sides don’t get anywhere and the rest of us suffer under this moron methodology…
It becomes their hell on earth to those of us technically qualified…
It’s got to go…
At the cost of repeating something that I've said before, and I don't say this lightly, Tom is an ocean of wisdom.
At the cost of repeating something that I've said before, and I don't say this lightly, Tom is an ocean of wisdom.
He is now, yet back then he was a gung ho young man who supported the war in Vietnam.
Muhammad Ali was gung ho in the boxing ring, yet had the sense to know what was up.
So what's the explanation?
Higher education versus street smarts?
Having the experience of growing up with one skin colour versus another?
To this day, there is no shortage of morons (mostly male) willing to join the military because they believe some BS about fighting for freedom. Alan Alda referred to it as testosterone poisoning. I don't mean to pick on men, but women know instinctively that war is immoral and stupid. When it came to the pandemic, women were just as likely to behave like sheep as men.
There isn't a proper antiwar movement in the US or Canada. Like with everything else, most people just 'go along to get along'. We aren't civilized. We pretend we're civilized only as long as the ruling class permits us to be.
So what's the explanation?
Put simply, class. But also it was a very different time.
I did not come to realize the class thing until later. Actually, it was Bertolt Brecht, a Marxist playwright, that first woke me up, but only a bit.
Otherwise, I was an ordinary American boy growing up in the post-WWII era, the "Ozzie and Harriet years."At that time, the US was not only the world leader but also the world hero, as I experienced when I traveled in Europe and Asia. The Nazis were monsters, the Japanese sub-human, and the South was still segregated. America was the shining city on the hill. These were the halcyon years. The sky was the limit. The world was at America's feet, except for those Reds, which was pretty much equated with Russia then. I still remember the civil defense drills where we had to climb under out school desk to "protect" us from nuclear attack. Many of the kids were screaming. So not all good back then.
Man, did I get a shock, actually a series of shocks.
Was there no mention of the atrocities committed in the Korean War?
Times change, yet people remain the same. If the concept of war wasn't clear after WWI, WWII, or Korea, is it any clearer today?
I understand the media doesn't show the gory stuff on the evening news, so that form of censorship may affect public perception. Physical reality is sanitized. But nowadays, the horror of war is available for everyone to see. There are also sites that cater to 'gore hounds', but that is intended for another audience.
Not knowing what war is, is something I can't buy. And the suspension of morals is just breathtaking.
My parents weren't racist, but they were prejudiced, as we all are. My mother was active in welcoming the boat people to our corner of Quebec. Yet when meeting people who were non-white, she'd invariably ask "Where are you from?" I went to school with kids who were of different ethnicity, but it went without saying that they were culturally Canadian.
The class divide in Quebec is based on income and language. Since it is overwhelmingly white, racial/ethnic divides are secondary.
My father spent his childhood in Yugoslavia, but is ethnically German. After the war, his family had to leave their farm. My father's uncle, who refused to leave, died in a Russian concentration camp. That is what I was told, in any case. My father's family was not responsible for the atrocities committed by Croatian locals and their Nazi puppet regime. They had to leave because of their last name.
I didn't think my father had a heavy German accent until I spoke with him on the telephone. That is how it is when you live together. Prejudice would influence our lives. I wasn't interested in learning German and my father refused to speak French. When we visited his relatives in Austria, they were disappointed I couldn't communicate with them. They were decent people, but from my perspective, they were of a different culture. The only person I was able to speak with, was an elderly Austrian woman who spoke French. She turned out to be a Nazi supporter.
I'm not opposed to voluntary segregation. But to believe that this or that group are subhuman, is on the same level as believing war is a grown-up version of the boy scouts. People are not supposed to be so ignorant as to discard such basic tenets. Yet here we are.
At that time, the US was not only the world leader but also the world hero, as I experienced when I traveled in Europe and Asia.
I remember that my father admired Americans. After the war had ended, the family had fled to Austria, and it was there that he worked for the Americans (i.e. the military forces that were occupying/administering the area. There were a set number of stories he would tell me, about how he picked up his smoking habit because American cigarettes were plentiful; and the trouble a co-worker had because of complaints by the Americans that the buildings were never warm enough. Those particular Americans were identified as 'Texans'.
I don't know why he admired them exactly. He wanted to go to the US, but they weren't accepting immigrants at the time (early 50s). So he sailed to Montreal, and emigrated to Canada. He was the only one in his family to emigrate.
It is said that people who choose to emigrate are different psychologically from people who remain in their country of birth. In the case of my mother, she lived in a house her father had built, less than 200 feet away from her family home, which was occupied by her younger brother. This is the house I grew up in. With the exception of an aunt who lived in St. Eustache, her siblings lived right next door.
This is the situation my father lived in after being introduced to my mother, by one of her matchmaking aunts. The overall impression was that he regretted emigrating. His thoughts were on comparing life in Canada with life in Austria (and sometimes Yugoslavia). He was proud of his German heritage. My mother referred to it as living like a tourist.
If I could pinpoint where my antiwar views originated from, it may have to do with the stories my father told me, or the experience of being raised by a culturally European father. Or perhaps, by someone who would have become an American, had he had the chance.
I had many arguments with him, regarding Europe versus North America. Which had the better culture, who were more diligent, who were more skilled. My father gradually lost his admiration of the US, because of scandals like Watergate, and the way South America was treated.
Thanks to the pandemic, I lost the fanciful idea that North Americans are more individualistic than Europeans. People here are just as willing to be told what to believe and what to think. They will abandon their freedoms at the drop of a hat. They will go to war when told.
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