A Post from Murph

Hey all,

Here is another contribution from Murph. As always, thanks Murph. I will return on Monday. This weeks baseball schedule is killing me!!

Cyclone

"You're free. And freedom is beautiful. And, you know, it'll take time to restore chaos and order---order out of chaos. But we will."

George W. Boosh; Washington, D.C.; April 13, 2003



Politics, Elections, and Documents

I sit in front of the boob tube and listen to the news sources already starting coverage of the elections of 2008. Speculation is running high for who is going to shake out for either party’s candidate for president. I listen to the talking heads expounding on who is who and stands for what. I listen to the politicos trying vainly to clarify stances, or cloud them as the case may be. I listen to the same stuff coming at us over the 2006 midterm elections.

It is a sickening display of cowardice, misinformation and avoidance of the issues by everyone. Not one word so far about the basic issues. They are all only talking about the surface issues, the fluff that seems to be the sole concern of a large proportion of the electorate. I have yet to hear one word being put into the context of what our constitution says about it. Not one word. Of course, I don’t spend all that much time listening intently for words of wisdom from the talking heads anyway. The very principles stated in the documents that supposedly govern us are avoided, interpreted out, or ignored. The overall spirit, overall concepts, are lost in a barrage of verbiage. The people with only passing familiarity, (or for that matter no familiarity) with the documents involved are confused about what is happening and consequently tend to follow those with the most charisma in their public appearances. This process seems to be acceptable to the majority. Very few of the citizens will bother to look at the issues in the context of the original intent or even the wording of their documents. Instead, they depend on those with the, supposed, expertise to tell them what to think and believe. Thus, the society ends up with a majority of its citizens following some multiple and often contradictory pronouncements that may or may not have anything to do with the documents they are supposedly using as a reference point. This is rather obviously true in politics and in religion.

Let’s take one of my favorite examples in governance that is a liberal favorite issue. I cannot find anywhere in the document that we are using as a reference, the Constitution, that authorizes the government to use public tax revenue for entitlements of any sort, either to corporate or private citizen. So to justify this, we ‘interpret’ the document, or we insert the extension of ‘intent’ into the document. We have relegated to the Supreme Court the duty of telling us whether this is acceptable or not, interpreting what the constitution says or doesn’t say. So obviously, the personal political philosophy of the people that render these final judgments is going to influence how they decide.

No document dealing with human behavior can possibly cover every exact and specific form of behavior, religious or political. So over a period of time, those exact behaviors which are not covered in the document are addressed in other ways. That’s where we turn to the ‘experts’ to tell us what we should or should not be doing. In the case of the fundamentalists in religion, they advocate adhering to the exact wording of the Bible. Forgetting of course, that in the historical interval since the drafting of the document, often there are language barriers, translation difficulties, and the period social considerations to take into account. Thus we have the Biblical scholars that run the colleges that specialize in training for the job of spreading the word.

Let’s look at an example of social consideration. During the period of framing of the Constitution, dueling was a perfectly acceptable way of settling disagreements between individuals. Most people today find that rather unacceptable, and prefer to have personal disputes settled in arbitration in what we call our legal system. Personally, I think the dueling method rather forced us to be a bit more polite and civil and less susceptible to taking offense over trivial issues. Making an issue a life or death situation rather changes your values I think. At the least it would unclog our civil court processes for sure, and contribute to thinning out the more belligerent and trivial minded citizens. But this is a whole other subject, perhaps one that could be taken up if we manage to survive our present oncoming disasters.

The point of all of this is that humans take their self interest as gospel and try to manipulate the structure, documentation and system they are living under to conform to these self interest issues. We can therefore conclude, that overall, trying to document and structure in detail is going to fail. At least until we find a system that does not try to define all aspects of behavior, and is so specifically worded that there is no interpretation to be made. Going to be difficult with all the legal attorneys out there who have an agenda of their own.

As with so many of our complex society’s legal and religious documents, these issues abound. And not one of the politicians running for office seems willing to take them on. For that matter neither do the religious leaders. I have yet to see the Beatitudes being posted on a courthouse wall or in the halls of congress. I do not see any attempt to post and use as a guideline the Bill Of Rights. Which standard, document, are we willing to use as a guideline? Or do all of them have such serious flaws and ambiguities that it is impossible to use them as guidelines in any exact frame of reference?

I find it interesting to sit down with someone and have a really serious discussion about what it does mean to be free, and what the role of some system of governance pertaining to this. Invariably, it comes down to ‘Oh yes, I want freedom for me and everyone else, within these limitations’. Then the qualifiers begin. Yes, freedom is ok, as long as it conforms to your moral system of right and wrong. Is it really wrong to want to go naked in public? Sure is a lot of people that think so. May be in bad taste and offend some people but do you really want to codify offensive behavior as a crime? Is it wrong to self administer recreational drugs besides the current crop of legal ones? Every one of these social behavior laws can be classed as consensual crimes as long as they don’t damage other people or property. And I don’t want to hear that being offended is damaging. That has given rise to the extreme position of political correctness, where it is illegal to be offensive. All of these kinds of laws are the result of people or groups deciding for whatever reason that some behavior is so offensive that it cannot be tolerated. It is also a tool used to control society. There is a most excellent book titled “Ain’t Nobody’s Business If You Do” by Peter Mc Williams that is a must read on this kind of subject. I have used this book for a pile of research papers and governance essays. It is the most complete history and documentation of consensual crime in modern society I have found. As a plus, the author is truly entertaining and funny in his discussions of the subject.

Those that have followed my comments and postings already know that I advocate a whole new and radical way of dealing with social organization. But one thing for sure, if we continue to do the organization and thinking the same way, we cannot expect different results, and to think that you can, is simply another form of mental illness.

From Murph