Charles writes:
> No, this making hay while the sun shines, eating, drinking and being
merry is a party where a good time is had by all. No suffering for others.
Suffering is an innate part of all human conduct. You boil water for a cup of tea and you kill micro-organsims in the water -- you cause suffering. The idea is to cause as little suffering as possible with your conduct.
> No, capitalism is the economic system that places first satisfaction of
wealth of the few, and in doing so creates gigantic _frustration of desire_
for the many. When we get rid of capitalism, our desires will be ever so
much more satisfied by spreading the wealth.
Unfortunately, the frustration is not as gigantic as you maintain -- malls are full of people indulging their desires and fetishes every weekend. The key to capitalism is that it is a desire-based system. Since desire can never be satisfied and pleasure always fades (as Jon pointed out in his post), any system predicated upon desire is unstable. Capitalism is made worse by the unequal distribution of the ability to satisfy desire. But even in a society where that power was evenly distributed, you are still faced with the problem of desire.
jks wrote:
> More on all this later, but if BM's only substantive addition to procedural
correctness is civil liberties protections, his "middle way" is the constitutional
liberal democracy espoused by Rawls and me.
No it is not, since I do not believe in the liberal definition of freedom as "non-interference." I believe in freedom as the freedom from domination, and freedom from domination is clearly one thing queers do not enjoy in this society.
> And I want to emphasize that this is a form of procedural correctness --
the point (underlined by John Hart Ely in his book Democracy and Distrust) is
that domination, understood as you define it, upsets the conditions for
democratic deliberation and harms procedural correctness.
And that harm is going on right now in this country. Queer freedom is dependent upon (in the words of the Glorious Bird) "the kindness of strangers" (and there is nothing stranger than the ways of heterosexuals). Liberal democracy as now implemented does not protect minorities.
> The problem with your Buddhist or utilitarian pain-reducing idea, incidentally,
is that not everyone agrees that reducing pain is a good thing, and the question
even among those who do is what is the proper distribution.
I advocate for the reduction of suffering, which is more than pain. There is a difference between the two concepts. A nice quote: "Everything the human race has done adn thought is concerned with the assuagement of pain." - Albert Einstein. My concepts are Buddhist and pragmatic.
Also, what does utilitarian mean?
> As for the first, the right thinks that welfare moms, criminals, poor people,
pregnant women who don't want the babies, and unbelievers deserve to suffer.
You disagree, but how does one adjudicate this dispute?
So long as the suffering inflicted is limited to those who have been deemed to deserve it. See below for more on this.
> As for the second, I am not a Buddhist or a utilitarian, and I don't think that
reducing overall pain is always right. I think that it's just that war criminals,
unusually vicious exploiters, crooks who steal from the public trough, and indeed
violent hoodlums be made to suffer pain (in some cases death -- I am not a death
penalty abolitionist, except situationally) whether or not it deters anyone from
misbehavior and even if it increases the overall amount of pain in the world. So
again, how do you decide, except by a fair procedure, what to do?
I think that is fine so long as the pain inflicted is limited to the person/self targeted. But here we come back to the issue of self. The Western misperception of self as a clearly demarcated being allows the imposition of suffering since it is thought (mistakenly) that this pain/suffering can be limited to specified persons. But if it cannot be so limited (due to the nature of reality), you need not only a fair procedure, but also a moral system that determines how much ancillary suffering is permissible.
> The important point here is that the binding force of procedurally correct law
is a matter of degree. Our laws have more such force than those of antebellum
America because our procedures (including protections for minorities) are better.
The procedures are better, but they still result in domination. The interests of minorities are still regularly brushed aside. If you want to have a better procedure, maybe laws that would restrict the liberties of minorities should have to be passed by a supermajority. In this way, democracy continues (Miles will be happy), while majoritarian mob rule is avoided.
Miles wrote:
> It would be nice if it were this easy! Again, you're assuming that
the "concrete, empirical effects" would be assessed by everyone
the same way you assess them, using your moral standards.
I never said it would be easy. The easy route is mob rule.
> This is a bit facile. The reason why this is such a hot political topic
is that it has a huge effect on the lives on non-queers, from their
perspective.
>From their perspective, maybe. But I am not asking about what they
perceive as an effect, but about concrete examples drawn from
reality which are directly attributable to two men or two women being
married. Shouldn't public policy be based on empirical evidence and
not personal feelings?
> They really do believe gay marriage is contradicting God's rules and
undermining social stability.
Again, if they can prove that empirically fine. But believing don't make it so. Unless you are arguing that a mere assertion of fact is sufficient justification for public policy, there must be some standard of proof.
> I disagree with their premises, but let's face it: they're fighting for a way of
life that is consistent with their religious beliefs, just like you and I are.
Agreed. But if their way of life leads to the domination of others, is that justified?
Doug writes:
> After lacing into Kerry for running an empty DLC-style campaign, he said that that
doesn't change the fact that the Republican party is fundamentally racist, and that
the Bush admin is a "danger to the whole world," that must be removed from power.
What about that need to follow black leadership you like to talk about, Carrol?
But white folk only listen to black folk when they read from the authorized script. This is why Massa Nader was so incensed when the CBC wanted to talk about something other than his chosen topic. Massa Nader didn't like uppity Negroes calling him to account.
Mike writes:
> Basically, the kind of self who realizes that freedom is attainable through class conscious
solidarity. Our power to change the world grows as we act in classwide solidarity for
ourselves.
Which I would call interdependent reality. The only difference is that my approach is to clear away the debris to discover the reality that is already there. Western thinkers seem to prefer the scenic route -- building from scratch a solidarity which already exists, but that has been obscured by delusion.
> To the extent that we give our power to decide what will be and what we want over to
bureaucracies, cliques, masters and other classes, we distance ourselves from attaining
our own liberation.
I think the problem is that most Westerners have been so trained/programmed that they cannot envision a liberation which involves the acknowledgment of interdependent reality. The indoctrination that occurs around the issues of self and desire is overwhelming for most people.
> For a good read on the negative side of the modern self, try Beckett's MALLOY. On the
postive side, try B.Traven's GENERAL FROM THE JUNGLE.
I am a fan of both Beckett and Traven. A nice study is Beckett and Zen: A Study of Dilemma in the Novels of Samuel Beckett by Paul Foster.
Brian Dauth Queer Buddhist Resister