Earlier, I spoke of hardship, and the notion that our world is a fallen world; that a utopia of man is impossible. But the philosophical principles that hold up this view are much more fundamental than all that. It boils down to something Nassim Nicholas Taleb discusses in his books rather frequently. A certain degree of hardship produces resilience in a man. It tests him, teaches him, makes him stronger. Like how building muscle requires a certain level of pain to achieve. Without this pain, strength is impossible. It’s related to the concept of antifragility, something that gains from disorder, something that benefits from stress and pain. Human life is like this.
This is a fundamental bone of contention between what we account as the political Left and the political Right. Ever notice how many Leftists are opposed to the very concept of punishment (save for their political enemies, of course)? Spanking your child is child abuse, to them. Imprisonment of criminals is unfair. Some have even come the view that prisons ought to be closed; that nobody really commits a crime, for free will and choice do not exist.
Poverty causes crime, in their view. So if fault is to be assigned, it must be pinned on the evil rich people who took the wealth from the poor. Redistribution will fix it, they say.
This goes against not just human nature, but Mother Nature. Hardship produces strength. Or maybe it kills you. But either way having everything provided for you, having the eternal safety net, the assurance that no matter what happens, you will be safe, winds up sucking away human potential.
Unfortunately, this is an unpleasant truth. The child doesn’t want to be spanked, even if he must be. People don’t want to suffer through pain to gain their reward. And so they are often receptive to the charms of folks who say that all is possible without this pain. Just give the poor man some money; just give the sick man some care, and the hungry man some food. It’s so simple, so easy. And it’s so difficult for the mind to reject the idea. The simplistic morality of it is clear and easy to grasp. And it’s hard to look at person suffering, even if the suffering was his own fault, and say “no, let him suffer.”
Get rich quick schemes pop up all the time, and for all the evidence that they do not work, people still fall for them. Every diet plan on the TV is about some way to lose weight without exercise and while being able to eat things that are tasty and satisfying. Hunger and pain from a day of hard exercise… these are the prices paid for achieving the goal.
Deep down, this belief separates people rather obviously. One sees a man in pain, a man dealing with some terrible problem, and thinks immediately that society has failed him; that his pain can be taken away by waving a government wand. And sometimes, the government wand can do exactly that. It can remove the pain from that man. But at what cost, not only in dollars, but also in the soul of the man so “helped?”
Some years ago, I recall watching all of the old Milton Friedman Free to Choose videos, and there was some interview conducted with some welfare recipients in Britain. They were ordinary folks, a small family just trying to get by. But they lamented that welfare was actually holding them down. Getting a job would take the welfare away and, paradoxically, result in them making less money. But without long job experience, they could never rise up the ladder and make more money. Their poverty was made easy for them, escaping it was made difficult.
In such circumstances, I would take the job anyway. I would take the pain and the hardship of making less and doing more in an effort to escape. But the unpleasant truth is, many folks won’t, because they’ve been given an easy path. A path with less pain, less overall hardship. Good intentions or none, this path destroyed that young family. It sucked something out of them.
When you spank a child, he’ll look up at you in pain, in anger. In that moment, many parents melt. They can’t stomach that look, that moment of suffering, the tears. And so the punishments stop. But this is to the long-term detriment of the child. It’s a good way to raise a spoiled brat, a child who does not understand consequences.
The problem is that the benefit of pain is not immediately apparent, whereas the benefit from the cessation of pain is immediately apparent. Take this quote from Frank Herbert’s Dune:
“You’ve heard of animals chewing off a leg to escape a trap? There’s an animal kind of trick. A human would remain in the trap, endure the pain, feigning death that he might kill the trapper and remove a threat to his kind.”
This requires a certain amount of forward-thinking. The child does not yet possess this thinking, and so the spankings are a way of temporarily providing it to him until he gets the idea on his own. Pain in the now may be beneficial later.
It is also true at a meta level, at a civilizational level. Something that utterly horrifies us may, in fact, be to everyone’s long-term benefit. Consider what would have happened if the first refugee boat floating over to Europe had been sunk on sight? Some would die, this is true, and it would feel horrible. It would cause great pain. But the migrations would have stopped. Maybe there wouldn’t have been dead Syrian children washing up on the beach, because they’d have known not to get on those damned boats to begin with. Now, I suspect the future of Europe is much darker, even, than a few dead kids on the beach. Something very sinister is brewing.
America herself made a similar decision in World War II, to commit what might be seen objectively as a great atrocity: the dropping of nuclear weapons on Japan. We paid a moral price for doing this. But it was the right decision. Accepting the pain of that decision in the near-term prevented worse in the long-term.
Tom Kratman often touches on this theme in his books, where acts that might be seen as barbaric and utterly cruel on their own are actually a form of mercy when measured in the long run.
Don’t take this as an ‘the end justifies the means’ argument of the sort espoused by Communists either, however. Communists assured folks that the revolutionary utopia was just a few more piles of bodies around the corner. But it never was. The promised utopias never came, the payoff never arrived. In the end, we are forced to conclude that, to the Communist leaders, the piles of dead bodies were a feature; an end, not a means. The utopia was a lie.
In the end, the possible utility of pain is a fundamental point of contention between the political Right and the Left. The Left can’t look past the first boat of refugees to see the chaos and conflict beyond, they cannot see past Hiroshima, filled with civilians, to the piles of bodies required to force the war to a close via other means. They cannot see past the poor person struggling to make ends meet financially to the soulless culture of dependency beyond.
They are the children recoiling from a spanking, wondering why their loving parents would ever do this horrible thing to them. They don’t understand that pain can be a benefit.
Spot on. Your post brings to mind History and Moral Philosophy class from Heinlein’s book Star Ship Troopers.
While I enjoy Heinlein, I absorbed more of this outlook from Tom Kratman than from him.
Started reading Starship when Kratman and I were still in school (different schools). Must have read it at least 50 times so that’s usually my go to reference when these types o f threads come up. The Col. is a recent discovery.
It’s vital to keep this in mind when assessing the Left’s public postures and rhetorical tactics. At a time when innumerable varieties of real crimes — mala in se, as the lawyers would put it — are rampant among us, the only “crime” they seek to have punished is “wrongthink.” There’s a great deal of insight buried in there.
Yeah, there is. And the older I get, the more of it I see. If they were even remotely honest, it would have come down to war a generation or two ago. But they lie; they conceal their motives just enough to escape popular notice.
Revolutionary Marxists got defeated, yes. But their Fabian brothers are still with us.
Then why does anyone think that we can continue to live among them now, or that we’re going to be in a better position to win the inevitable war if we keep putting it off?
I don’t know man… I was talking about this on Twitter the other day. This thing is going to get violent sooner or later. American Leftists often forget what this means. But American Rightists retain some memory of it. Maybe because more of them serve in the military. Or maybe just general temperament. Or something else…
Whatever it is, we know how badly it would suck, we have some idea what the cost in blood and treasure would be… and recoil from it.
Personally, I hope for a Kurt Schlichter solution. A division of the country by treaty and a (relatively) peaceful separation.
But I’m not optimistic.
“A division of the country by treaty and a (relatively) peaceful separation.”
I was thinking we give them Europe or put them on reservations.
The entire creed/canon of Leftism/Progressivism is based on a ‘something for nothing’ principle – personal toil, sacrifice or suffering are not required. It’s a central tenet of the faith.
Virtue is a product of surviving and overcoming adversity. Yet progressives believe themselves to possess the highest virtue, simply because they accept and advocate the doctrine/theology of Progressivism. No effort or sacrifice is necessary; you don’t even have to practice what you preach. You will simply become a superior being morally and intellectually if you openly and frequently state your belief in Progressivism.
As a consequence, Progressives commit all of the seven deadly sins. Think about it and the truth of this will become obvious.
But who will till the fields?
The slaves.
It always comes to that. Which is why it amuses me when they talk of slavery. In truth, they wish to resurrect the practice.
You’re right. The key to final control is the dictating of your movement or more importantly non movement. A binding to the land or an occupation. And if they’re really successful at this it’ll be multi generational.
Actually, this is closer to the truth than most realize. In the fine print of New York Governor Cuomo’s recent proposal for free college tuition was the requirement that the recipient stay in New York for 10 years. In other words, Governor Cuomo was proposing the resurrection of indentured servitude.
It’s the same thing we’d have to do with free health care. You would have to enslave the MDs and nurses. Maybe under a different name, but it would be slavery
As I understand it, it is getting this way in Britain, with underpaid, overworked doctors stuck in a system that mandates pricing from the top down.
I have always thought of it less as something for nothing and more as disassociation of behavior from consequences.
It’s both to varying degrees.
Actually, liberals are worse than children recoiling from a spanking, they’re children who have never been spanked recoiling from the idea of a spanking.
Yeah… even the idea of pain is sufficient to frighten them. Actually, even the idea of insufficient acceptance and praise is frightening to many of them (see: SJWs complaining about this or that).
it must be pinned on the evil rich people who took the wealth from the poor
Sorry, but taking money from people that don’t have any in order to get rich seems a bit of a stretch to me. Did you think this one through? You can’t get rich taking from people that don’t have anything. Africa isn’t poor because we stole cable TV from them.
That was a somewhat sarcastic parroting of the Leftist view – that wealth categorically must be ill-gotten; exploited from the poor.
Why do you think they keep trying to get rid of automobiles? Urge everyone to live in urban hives and use public transportation?
Climate change is a great excuse to force this. Eventually, you are likely to see the requirement of travel permits to even use public transportation.
Outstanding analysis. And now we know the mental mechanisms that underlie the dictum. Centralizing power isolates the center from bad choice consequences. Hence, their minds rationalize their ability to exert their control over others as their due, and begin framing choices as losses, underestimating what, for others, would count as danger — from which they’re isolated. Hence, predation. https://www.routledge.com/Our-Story-How-Cultures-Shaped-People-to-Get-Things-Done/Handwerker/p/book/9781598746785
Yes, that’s true. It’s part of Taleb’s skin in the game concept. Isolating a person from the consequences of a bad decision naturally results in more bad decisions.
Interesting book description. I’ll have to add it to my (already quite long) reading list.
Just one minor quibble – most of the times, as a parent, you can teach consequences without laying a finger on the child. Frankly, this gets easier as the child gets older. Telling a child that if they do (or don’t do) X there will be consequences – and letting their own imagination fill in the consequence can be effective as their imagination will go places that a trained torturer might not. You can ask the child to participate in the consequence process by naming their own penalty – and letting them know that if the penalty is not sufficient for the misdeed, you (the parent) will figure out a more creative way to punish them. Admittedly, some of these techniques are right out of the modern interrogator’s toolbox and if done to enemy combatants might be considered war crimes – but at least they can’t accuse you of child abuse for spanking the child. 😉
My son is almost 3. Spankings are about all he understands at the moment (that and ‘no more sweets’). But it is rare that he actually needs to be spanked. Most of the time the mere threat is sufficient.
It is merely that, every once in a while, he’ll test the theory just to make sure. I love him, but he inherited his mother’s Spanish stubbornness (I love her too, nonetheless).
My parents found that the prospects of a sudden and horrifying death had a salutary effect on my behavior for years.
This is why I have long hated the phrase “[X] RUINED MY LIFE!” It is a combination of lack of agency, fatalism, and refusal to grow from pain. And why the efforts to completely protect people from such things (like foreclosure, bullying, etc) has always bothered me.
It was a realization that really meant something while, as a landlord, I worked with someone to “catch up” and it resulted in failure. I realized just evicting someone and forcing them to find a new and cheaper place to live was actually more of a kindness than allowing them to sink further.
Fatalism is a general theme on the Left that I keep running into. Lack of agency allows them to shift the blame for a thing from an individual to ‘a system of oppressive behavior.’
It is an convenient excuse for would-be tyrants.
See Also: Islam.
Casuistry.
Social Darwinism in five thousand discursive words.
Pain is useful to homo sapiens to warn us that we are damaged and that we should cease doing whatever it is that is causing it. Full stop. You (and better writers) have finessed that limited utility into a bogus life lesson. Not that your screed is entirely without merit. It IS true that social welfare laws frequently inhibit welfare recipients from becoming productive citizens. The solution is not to let them all starve in the cold and dark but to eliminate the inhibition. Were all citizens guaranteed a minimum income, without strings (as the sainted Milton Friedman whom you reference advocated), there would be nothing to dissuade them from bettering their lives.
The Right-Wing objection to this is that everyone would just lie around indolently enjoying their minimal lifestyle. This belief, of course, refers to THEM, not to “US” (Right-Wingers), who don’t require the lash of pain. “WE” would all work like energizer bunnies because we are not like THEM.
Behold Right-Wing reason. (In this case indistinguishable from psychopathy.)
Actual “Right Wingers” (as opposed to the cardboard cut outs in your head) is that is would be bad for EVERYONE…. including us, because removal of incentive eventually wears down ANYONE.
You not only took the brown acid, you asked for seconds,
“…because removal of incentive eventually wears down ANYONE.”
Just so.
“You not only took the brown acid, you asked for seconds,”
Or that sweet Colombian crack.
“Pain is useful to homo sapiens to warn us that we are damaged and that we should cease doing whatever it is that is causing it. Full stop.”
This is among the dumbest things I’ve ever read in my life. It is immediately clear to me that you’re some kind of idiot city boy who probably hasn’t seen the inside of a gym since Reagan was President. A soy boy from the land of latte liberals. Are you on anti-depressants?
Any athlete in the world can tell you how stupid that comment was. Don’t even take my word for it. Go ask one.
In the words of Nassim Nicholas Taleb, you need to deadlift, my man. Stop fucking around on the Internet and go to the gym.
@Padraig – you make many claims without supporting logic or evidence. You also poomp on contrary claims that ARE supported by logic and evidence.
Son: proclaiming “guaranteed minimum income without guilt will improve society” does not make it true. You have to prove it. Sneering and snarking about how all ‘right wingers’ are stupid and insane doesn’t change that.
The problem is, there is already ample proof that it is WRONG. See Soviet Union. See Communist Eastern Europe. See Vietnam. See Laos. See Maoist China. See Cambodia.
Let’s ignore political ideologies and their effects on economies for a moment. Look at Saudi Arabia. At least half the population is entirely supported by the State. Has this led to contentment? Or has it led to a massive production of frustrated, unrealized people who turn into jihadists or jihad supporters?
Yes, I know – you’ll reject all the above quite dismissively, as if it were beneath you. You may even invent a shallow and contrived counterargument, such as “If Chinese Communism were so bad, why are they the leading industrialized nation of the world?”, ignoring the fact that it was FREE MARKET REFORMS on a MASSIVE scale which led to that. But you’ll still feel triumphant because you’ve proved it to yourself while conveniently ignoring the actual facts.
Now run off and tell your little SJW friends that you ‘stuck it to those fascist pigs’ by reciting proper, approved Progressive marxist canon at them. Then sit quietly in your room and play with your dolls. You have nothing to worry about – THE ADULTS AND THE ALPHA MALES ARE BACK IN CHARGE IN THE WH.
Here endeth the lesson, cupcake.
Quote:
“Any athlete in the world can tell you how stupid that comment was. ”
————————————————–
Having actually BEEN something of an athlete in my younger days, with a body confirmed by medical measurement to be in superlative shape, I can tell you authoritatively that you are abysmally ignorant. EVERY athlete knows the difference between the DISCOMFORT that one endures to increase one’s ability and the PAIN that tells one to stop.
Being that you are a fan of Nassim Nicholas Taleb, here follows some words of his that you and fellow true believers should take to heart:
“When you develop your opinions on the basis of weak evidence, you will have difficulty interpreting subsequent information that contradicts these opinions, even if this new information is obviously more accurate.”
As for the rest of your post:
[“meow”]
LOL! And now you fall back on the tried and true SJW tactic of not dealing with facts, but parsing words and meanings artificially.
Well, since you chose this path, let me edumacate your silly self.
If you actually knew anything about athletes and training, you would know that when you train, you do indeed experience more than discomfort but actual pain. It may not be CRIPPLING pain, but it is nevertheless pain generated by your muscle tissue and connective tissue partially breaking down. The stress on this tissue is repaired and STRENGTHENED during rest periods.
Hence, a little suffering is indeed good for the soul.
Now: here’s your pacifier, honey. Go ahead and take it, that’s a GOOD little pumpkin, oochie coochie coo! You’ve got a nice fresh, clean diaper now! Take your nap and you’ll wake up all happy and rosy cheeked, you little sweet baby boo!
Briefly, a guaranteed minimum income has nothing to do with communism. Milton Friedman wasn’t advocating changing the economic system. Your criticism is, therefore, misdirected and irrelevant.
A Gallup poll rated Saudi Arabia the third happiest country in the world. However, even if your unsupported assertion that Saudi Arabians are “discontented” were true, it would more likely be because of their utter subjugation by the despotic Saudi royal family than any other reason. The support in Saudi Arabia for jihad can be traced directly to the extremist Muslim doctrine (Wahabism) that the royals support, not to any economic cause. (Extremist doctrine, as I am sure your are aware, often causes anti-social , violent, and even murderous behavior [as in Charlottesville.])
To reiterate, pain notifies us that we have damaged/are damaging our bodies. Athletes learn to discern the subtle differences of the pain that they experience and sometimes elect to continue it. That’s THEIR choice. They aren’t forced to do so by an ideologist (who knows what’s good for them [better than they do.])
Finally, Triple Sphinctered Wombat, do you really think that puerile aspersions improve an ill-made argument? Try WORKING HARDER (or find a discussion pitched more closely to your mental age.)
Milton Friedman advocated his program as a replacement for Leftist welfare state institutions. His assertion was that if we must have wealth transfers, it is best to involve a minimum of administrative waste in the transfer, and not create disincentives to work. Unfortunately, he soon discovered that while Leftists loved his idea of a minimum income, they did not want to replace the welfare state with it. Rather, they wished to have both. He soon abandoned support for the idea, perhaps reluctantly, as a result.
As far as wealth transfers go, he was correct in that the basic income was less egregious than the welfare state. But he failed to understand a key point of Leftist moral posturing, and one of the items addressed in this article. Namely, that Leftists desire to be freed of negative consequence for bad decisions. In Milton Friedman’s program, the basic income would provide each person with the means for basic sustenance, but not necessarily the discipline. In simple terms, a man might spend all his money on beer and crack, and then a medical expense would come and he would be in serious trouble.
Milton Friedman would allow the man to suffer for his mistakes, although he would perhaps hope that charity would step in before things got *too* bad. Leftists can’t have that. They desire basic income in conjunction with a welfare state. In this example, they would want some sort of universal healthcare system, so that even with his basic income, the man would be protected from his poor decision-making. The Leftist position would be that the man doesn’t deserve to die because he made such a mistake, and any of us who suggest that he should suffer (even a little bit) are heartless psychopaths. The Rightist position would be that, while we wouldn’t him to die, we would want him to suffer severe consequences for the mistake, so that he might learn from it and not do it again.
Now, I’d like to make it clear that I still disagree with Milton Friedman on the matter of basic income. But his view of the practice was rooted in a desire to sweep the welfare state off the table, and restore some level of skin in the game thinking. It is a poor fit with the sort of moralizing Leftists like yourself are prone to.
Oh, honey! You’re a marxist who knows nothing about MARXISM? Wow, you really ARE ignorant!
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” Yes, cupcake. A minimum basic income. LOL!
Interesting how you also contradict yourself IN SUCCESSIVE SENTENCES. Example: Saudi Arabia is the 3rd happiest nation in the world, yet its people are discontented and embracing jihad. Logic is an alien concept to you, isn’t it? That’s the only explanation for how you can hold contradictory and even mutually exclusive ideas in your head simultaneously…
BTW: why are saudi citizens embracing Wahhibism if the hated House of Saud is also its chief supporter? I thought you said that the 3rd happiest nation in the world was oppressed by their rulers!
Icing on the cake: why are the citizens of S.A. embracing Wahhabi extremism if their economic situation is NOT causing them deep discontent? I swear, son, if someone ever opened up your skull to do exploratory brain surgery, they’d find nothing in there but a gordian knot. (That’s a classical allusion, btw, I don’t expect you’ll understand it.)
Oh, btw: you were previously saying that athletes DON’T experience pain; just discomfort. Now you’re saying they experience pain and BENEFIT from it? Doesn’t that contradict EVERYTHING you proclaimed and which you mocked and ridiculed the ‘right wingers’ for?
You’re outta your league, honey. Better stick to “My Little Pony” tea parties. You’ll be less stressed that way.
HAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
Padraig is a classic example of Taleb’s Intellectual Yet Idiot.
Your post is largely incoherent so I will simply clarify what I have previously said.
Milton Friedman wasn’t a Marxist.
Saudi Arabians, IF they are discontented, are likely so because they are ruled by despots. Wahabism is a FAITH, which is IRRATIONAL by definition. IT has nothing to do with economics (or reality.)
Once again, pain is a warning. What you do about it is up to you. (Except if your are a Right-Winger who wants make that decision about YOU in order to establish his conception of good government.)
Vide supra “WORKING HARDER”. Your infantilism is tedious.
Oooh, Poor Padraig!
First you tell us Friedman wasn’t a marxist – as if to demonstrate unique factual knowledge and recover your utterly lost credibility, whereas you’re actually doing the equivalent of telling us “water is wet.”
Next, you continue to equivocate on the people of Saudi Arabia, who are the 3rd happiest discontented people on earth that live under despots who endorse Wahhabism, causing their citizens to SUPPORT them in such a stance, because the universal basic income they have which leaves 50% of them permanently unemployed makes them so happy/sad.
Finally, you tell us something we again already know – athletes push themselves thru painful training regimens in order to reap the benefits that accrue from their sacrifice and hardship – but say that ‘right wingers’ FORCE them to do it against their will because we’re ‘infantile.’
LOLROFLMAO!
Here, Padraig – wipe away those tears of helpless zeta manleteer rage. THIS will make you feel SO MUCH BETTER!
One can only marvel that anyone could be so dull (or, as is more likely, so jejune) as to miss the sarcasm in a comment noting that Milton Friedman wasn’t a Marxist.
Saudi Arabians, as I have shown by reference, are NOT discontented, contrary to your initial assertion, and your claim that 50% of them are permanently unemployed is pure fiction.
“Zeta manleteer”? What? Is this a character from the fantasy role-playing games you children so relish?
What your undeveloped brain sees as cleverness, adults see as infantility. Your behavior is making us cringe. Please stop.
“Your behavior is making us cringe. Please stop.”
Who is this “us” you speak of? We like Wombat and enjoy seeing him troll you. Or are you so arrogant that only the royal “we” is sufficient for your august self?
That would be my friends here to whom I have shown your blog and whose comments have been along the line of, “That poor kid. He has no idea.” Indeed, inferring his immaturity from his prose, they have suggested, in compassion, that I moderate my comments accordingly (e.g. “Take it easy on him”) and I have done so.
Quote:
“We like Wombat and enjoy seeing him troll you.”
————————————–
Sweet Jesus! You call THIS trolling? Evidently your standards thereto are as low as those you observe for debate.
No worse than your standards for athleticism. Why, you were medically measured! Tell me, are you out of breath typing all this? I’ve heard that when your BMI is north of 30, even the most basic activities become quite strenuous. Athletic indeed.
[“meow”]
“That would be my friends here to whom I have shown your blog and whose comments have been along the line of, “That poor kid. He has no idea.””
I looked into this claim. Since this is my blog and my server, I can actually see who is viewing the site, and where they are coming from. No Leftists have reblogged any of the posts you have commented on since you arrived. Nor have there been any inbound links from Leftist web forums for these pieces, in that time frame. I checked Twitter for Leftists diatribes in that window, and I found some, but none of those accounts were yours.
This leaves a few possibilities.
1. You dumped it on your Facebook page, under friends-only privacy settings (I checked the public postings and referral URLs). If any of these were your “friends”, then they declined to support you here.
2. You privately emailed and/or messaged people the links in question, which is an odd thing to do for an anon dropping replies to a comment on a blog. It would suggest a high degree of narcissism: ‘look at me, I’m telling those evil wingnuts what for!’
3. You pulled it up on your computer in meatspace and physically showed your friends the site.
4. You are completely full of shit, and have done no such thing.
Frankly, option #4 appears more likely. Any of the last 3 are quite pathetic. #1 is merely sad.
Dear me.
I just meant that when they walked by and asked me what I was doing, I showed them. Your notion that I (or anyone else) would go to the trouble that you suggest about your blog is symptomatic of NPD.
Ah yes. So random people who walk by, you must show them your replies to someone’s comment on a political blog.
Projection on NPD, my man.
Chaldean.
Yeah, he is.
Redefining words to suit your argument, so you can still pretend you are right. How small of you.
Take your own advice.