From: "Brian Charles Dauth"
Dear List:
Charles writes:
> I'd say we want a society that is in accord with everybody's , individual
self-interest without the fulfillment of some people's self-interest
preventing the fulfillment of other people's self-interest. I don't think
the goal is to get rid of selves (pace Brian), so if selves are going to be
around , it is best to meet their interests, or else they will revolt, by
their very nature.
In a later post Charles, you criticize the 500 years of effort by liberalism to bring about a just and fair society. Yet here, you support the liberal notion of individual self-interest as the goal of society. Isn't it this very notion, which lies at the root of liberalism, one of the main reasons that liberalism has failed?
^^^^^^ CB: Here I am criticizing, not supporting, the liberal notion of individual self-interest, and proposing we replace it with a communist concept of individual self-interest, i.e. one that coordinates each individual's self-interest with that of everybody else's. All for one and one for all.
Liberalism or capitalism has failed because it is premised on class exploitation and oppression which inherently undermines meeting the self-interests of most.
^^^^^
Brian: And for the umpteenth time: what I am speaking is not getting rid of selves. I am writing about replacing the liberal concept of self with the Buddhist conception of self. Liberal personhood with its reliance on the satisfaction of desires is inherently unstable and cannot support a successful new political order.
^^^^
CB: Sorry, I had forgotten you are not talking about getting rid of but replacing. I'm talking about replacing too, but with a communist self.
I know you have discussed it many times, but I am not sold on replacing desires and their satisfaction.
Charles writes:
> Bourgeois pursuit of self-interest in indifference to the self-interest of
others contradicts humanity's most fundamental principle of Darwinian
fitness.
Brian: But yet you advocate people being allowed to pursue their own self-interest.
^^^ CB: There's nothing inherent in self-interests that contradicts others'-interests. Ergo, my advocating people be allowed to pursue their own self-interest does not contradict advocating that they not be indifferent to others' self-interests. In fact, it is in their self-interest to be interested in others' self-interest. That's how humans originally enhanced the fulfillment of everybody's self-interest.
The specific self-interest originally being discussed here was the self-interest ( I said it was a natural self-interest) in not being exploited. We can have a society without exploitation, wherein each person's self-interest in not being exploited is met. We don't need any people for whom exploitation is in their self-interest. Things will go fine without them.
CB: Communism seeks to reaffirm the original principle - communalism - that differentiated humans from other species.
Brian: And isn't one of the foundations of communalism a Buddhist notion of self? Maybe the theoretical cave people could practice communalism because they had yet to develoop the Western liberal notion of self and self-interest.
^^^^^
CB: If the following is the Buddhist notion of self...
"And mutual recognition is the Buddhist notion that other is self and self is other. If it is rational for me to be concerned with your self-interest, then your self-interest is my self-interest. And if your self-interest is mine, then we must share the same self. Again, Marx was merely restating what the Buddha had said centuries before."
...then sort of. The assertion "we must share the same self" is a bit, I don't know... The self is rooted in the fact that there are individual members of the species , individual bodies. There would have to be something to clarify that we still have different, individual bodies. It becomes a semantic or definitional issue of the word "self". I wouldn't describe what I am saying as "sharing the same self". It would just be plain, old sharing.
Surely, the theoretical cave people had not developed a Western liberal notion of self and self-interest.