Why Anarcho-Capitalists Need Lyndon LaRouche in Their Corner

[Donnadogsoth]

Allow me to wade into controversy. I am no stranger to it, and judging by my reputation point total here the fact is patent.

 

Fear not: I'm not here to convince you to become a Christian. I believe there are ways around our differences on that count, between Christians and the Godless, that are mutually fruitful. So, Christ, God, the Holy Spirit, and the Catholic Church will not figure in my recommendation as such, here. So, I'm setting that aside, in good faith.

 

Instead, I propose a solution to our mutual Problem, the Problem shared in kind between yourself as a group, Ancap, and myself as an individual, and also ourselves together as part of the human race.

The Problem is threefold: military, economic, and demographic.

 

Militarily (1) the world is, or should be, in some sense, fighting “radical” Islam, Islamism, Jihadism, etc.. which is all intentional; and (2) the world is in imminent danger of the geopolitically brokered, and also likewise intentional, outbreak of global thermonuclear war.

 

Economically the world is bankrupt, bled white by parasitical and politically manipulative oligarchal elites weaking the advanced sector in order to bribe the developing one; which, together with a collapsing infrastructure, hobbled (pure) science sector, and financial derivatives bubble, will inevitably detonate the financial economy, taking the physical economy with it.

 

Demographically, we face the suicidal birthrate of the European peoples; the influx of unlimited unassimilable, ghetto-creating, resentimental aliens; the feminist war against men; the homosexualisation of heterosexual relations; and the Hindooisation of culture into absolute, cacophonic diversity—and all of this is coming courtesy of the religions of multiculturalism and consumerism.

 

My point is not to elabourate an essay on any of these three points, but to highlight their importance and show how they are three aspects of one Problem. And the Problem is the State.

 

I do not come to Ancap easily or naturally. I am authoritarian by nature. I recognise that there is a certain value, in certain bignesses, big projects, and it is a struggle to decouple those projects from the concept of the State, which, is something that exists, has existed in modern form since shortly after Joan of Arc's sublime sacrifice to save France from dissolution. The State, or more properly the nation-State, as a nation of common heritage peoples governed by a State, has been an important, but not perfect, part of human development. It may have been inevitable, it may have been necessary. Not perfect, but not necessary, and not eternal. New forms await their emergence. We might say Ancap is a fruitful emergency.

 

Lyndon LaRouche works as a stateman, and has activated in that capacity for several decades, but really he has been working to perfect his theory and praxis for his entire 93-year-old life. Don't be frightened by the word “statesman.” He is interested in one thing only, and it is not the State. He views at present, given the present exigency as the need to remove President Obama from office, to reinstate the Glass-Steagal law as a bulwark shielding the physical economy from the ramifications of the impending financial economic collapse, and the need to develop a new world order based on mutually beneficial economic, cultural, and scientific interactions between sovereignties.

 

Now, note the word I just used, “sovereignties.” You might think I, and he, are talking about the State. But consider what LaRouche, last November, said about the nation-State:

 

“The idea of the nation-state is actually something which holds mankind down and backward; because by now all the evidence we have in terms of science, is that we have not even begun to scratch the meaning of mankind, what mankind's function is. And it's what we can create from the development of the future that counts. People get so tied up with involvement in what they think their personal identity is; that that's too small a way to speak of mankind.”

--“Man's Destiny in the Universe”

http://www.larouchepub.com/lar/2015/4247man_destiny-universe.html

 

So, is LaRouche Ancap? Historically he has described mankind's struggle as being between the republican impulse of science, beauty, rational economics, and human freedom, human happiness on a spiritual plane; and between the oligarchal impulse, as a false principle, a mere inertia of vacuous evil that hates science, hates beauty, engineers false economics based on imperial looting, and views the hoi polloi as beasts to be enslaved, conscripted, bred, and culled as needed.

 

LaRouche gets his republican principle from Solon the lawgiver of Athens, the architect of that ancient republic echoed in Plato's seminal Republic. No one thought the Solonic republic was perfect or unimprovable, nor does anyone think that the Republic described by Plato as a metaphor for the just ordering of the soul was perfect or attainable, either. They are compelling, these two historical and philosophical attempts, and they constitute something new in world affairs, later embedded in the US Constitutional Preamble: The general welfare principle.

 

Now, you may find the notion of the general welfare repugnant, but you would be misleading yourself. Isn't what Stefan Molyneux talks about incessantly and vigourously really a way to ensure the general welfare? I don't mean “welfare money,” I mean the happiness of all. This is what we as empathic human beings are, in good part, striving for.

 

So we have the Problem (State), and we have the principle opposed to it, in spirit: the General Welfare principle. But this dyad is incomplete, for the General Welfare principle itself begs a huge question: welfare of whom, exactly. In other words, what are we dealing with when we talking of humanity or of particular humans. What is a human? Why should we care?

 

Here, LaRouche makes a telling statement, in that same article.

 

“...the human mind is the only thing that's important.”

 

Which is a shocking statement, but entirely true. The human mind is the source of all wealth, even of primitively accumulated wealth, it is still the mind in operation. But, there's so much more. The human mind is, uniquely, to the best of our knowledge of the Universe, capable of discovering laws, Universal laws, through that individual, sovereign mind's direct, unmediated relationship with the Universe as a whole. So that when we do proper Science, when we do proper Art, when we improve the world as through raising children, we are acting directly on the Universe as a whole.

 

If we view human activity, human progress as a single manifold, we encounter something beneath or

beyond words, but which exists within the subjective mind of the creative discoverer, which is not merely a “subjective” representation of an “objective” but inaccessible world; rather, it is the human mind in direct contact with the Universe itself, as a whole, not in terms of parts but in terms of whole, and discovering through the resolution of an ontological paradox, a principle of nature, a law, whose form is identical throughout the Universe, is identical through that Universe and reflected directly and without deviation of form into the sovereign discovering human mind.

 

That is the crux of the matter, something that will stick in many of your craws. It shouldn't, it's not my intent that it does, but it will, because many of you were doubtless weaned on materialism and reductionism and classroom-style deductive mathematics, instead of on contructive geometery and processing the concepts of unities, as the Universe is a unity, a One, just as the human individual mind is One. So One is the capital cardinal number, the most complex of all number notations, because it stands, here, (and in slightly different ways elsewhere), for the fundamental relationship between man and the Universe, between a man and the Universe of which he is a part.

 

From this relationship, embodying, scientifically, hypothesis, empirical experiment, resolution of ontological paradox, and the “summoning” of a new hitherto unrealised, unemployed law of nature, into human practice, which, because of the aforementioned human direct relationship to the Universe in the process of its discovery, means that the discovery of the new law or principle acts directly on all of mankind's practice, and therefore all of mankind, past, present, and future, universally.

 

Mankind is therefore the only species with its own reason to exist: It is the crown of creation, capable of reordering Nature lawfully, but creatively, in order to increase its power to survive in a hostile Universe, yet, ironically, a Universe teeming with possibility for new forms, for new life and the unlimited growth of mankind on the Great Adventure. This, thus, makes mankind sacred, in a way that no unreflective beast is sacred. Our animals may be precious, but they are not sacred. Only the human mind is important.

 

Alright, I've taxed your patience enough: How does this relate to the abolition of the State?

It is something that has niggled at me for years, coinciding when I began listening to Freedomain Radio broadcasts where a tiny, holdover-from-highschool affection for anarcho-communism was turned inside out like a glove. The same, but different. And from that point the concept, the words of Stef were worthwhile, intriguing, but inaccessible so long as I adhered to the so-far, at least in the “Free West” imperfect-but-far-from-Bolshevik-Russia republics and parliamentary liberal democracies. But interacting with the passionate people here, in unwitting concert with Lyn, has broken that for me, by that articulate, cogent passion, by his statement, and he says nothing flippantly.

 

So, what we're dealing with are the human species, the general welfare principle, which is really a principle of love, the republican principle, which is subject to re-imagining, re-vision, re-building, and the individual human mind, as the creator of wealth, as the survivor, as the loving creature, love of reason, love of what is behind the eyes of other humans, love of mankind, and with a spillover effect of love of beauty, and animals, and all of Nature.

 

How does this all come together? It means that the human mind is sovereign. “The human mind is the only thing that's important.” So, our practice of government must be based on the human mind, which means the importance, the stucture of inter-State relationships envisioned by Pope Leo XIII and LaRouche later, of sovereign nation-States collaboration externally but keeping their own internal affairs shielded and inviolate, dissolves like soft rain on sugar-snow, leaving the bare green grass revealed beneath.

 

Thus, to defend humanity against aggression both human and Natural, to promote the general happiness, to allow breathing room and ingenuity to build new and better Republics, and to foster the creativity of the sovereign human mind, the new principle needs to be discovered or rediscovered, transmitted, and assimilated into global human practice, and that is the Non-Aggression Principle.

 

LaRouche is on your side, whether he explicitly tells or not. I encourage everyone to look into this man's corpus and break out of the materialist/reductionism paradigm that the oligarchal desk-monkeys have crafted and infused like viruses into the body politic. The NAP alone can't do it, it has to have historical weight and if you want that, you go to LaRouche.

 

Merry Christmas!

[Mister Mister]

Before I respond, can I ask why you've come to these boards?  In my estimation you don't seem to accept the fundamental methodology of reason, evidence, voluntarism that are kind of foundational to the conversation.  You've been posting for several weeks and I don't know if I've ever seen you admit error, or show much curiosity towards a different POV.  From what I've observed you are more interested in preaching long, sometimes confusing speeches meant to persuade others.  So I would ask why do you want to do this, here specifically, and how many people do you think you have persuaded so far, given the effort you've put in?

I'm not sure what you are trying to argue.  That ancaps should support LaRouche for President?  That we should read his books?

When you say you are authoritarian by nature, what does that mean?

Your points about our 3 great problems: 1) Radical Islam is certainly a threat, to me the threat is less terrorism but the demographic takeover you have alluded to, which we'll get to.  Nevertheless, the great military threat to me and most other people in the world is the US military and law enforcement/security/regulatory apparatus.  The scary thing is how this force, and the Islamic terrorist forces, feed off one another, especially so long as people like you on one side or the other cheer on and encourage the escalation.  2) and 3) we could nitpick about, but I basically agree.

You talk about rejecting materialism/reductionism vs. what I would call holism or induction, which is an interesting subject to me, but you haven't actually made an argument as to why we should reject one approach for the other.  Really I think it's a false dichotomy.  Healthy, productive thinking is a feedback between the two.  You take something apart, you put it back together.  You analyze the parts, you conceptualize the whole.  It's not one or the other but both. 
 

Can you please try to keep it succinct?  Otherwise it's not really conversation

[dsayers]

Define your terms. To me, anarcho means an acceptance that humans do not exist is different, opposing moral categories and capitalist means somebody who owns themselves, which is everybody. So the title looks to me like "rational people need a specific person" which is irrational.

[Donnadogsoth]

Before I respond, can I ask why you've come to these boards?  In my estimation you don't seem to accept the fundamental methodology of reason, evidence, voluntarism that are kind of foundational to the conversation.  You've been posting for several weeks and I don't know if I've ever seen you admit error, or show much curiosity towards a different POV.  From what I've observed you are more interested in preaching long, sometimes confusing speeches meant to persuade others.  So I would ask why do you want to do this, here specifically, and how many people do you think you have persuaded so far, given the effort you've put in?

 

I'm not sure what you are trying to argue.  That ancaps should support LaRouche for President?  That we should read his books?

 

When you say you are authoritarian by nature, what does that mean?

 

Your points about our 3 great problems: 1) Radical Islam is certainly a threat, to me the threat is less terrorism but the demographic takeover you have alluded to, which we'll get to.  Nevertheless, the great military threat to me and most other people in the world is the US military and law enforcement/security/regulatory apparatus.  The scary thing is how this force, and the Islamic terrorist forces, feed off one another, especially so long as people like you on one side or the other cheer on and encourage the escalation.  2) and 3) we could nitpick about, but I basically agree.

 

You talk about rejecting materialism/reductionism vs. what I would call holism or induction, which is an interesting subject to me, but you haven't actually made an argument as to why we should reject one approach for the other.  Really I think it's a false dichotomy.  Healthy, productive thinking is a feedback between the two.  You take something apart, you put it back together.  You analyze the parts, you conceptualize the whole.  It's not one or the other but both. 

 

Can you please try to keep it succinct?  Otherwise it's not really conversation

 

I'll give you the short version and then the long version below it if you prefer to read that one.  I appreciate your interest.  I believe we're nearly on the same side.

 

SHORT VERSION

 

(1) I am not a gnostic.  I do not reject the material, sensuous world, but rather recognise that there is a metaphysical world of which the human mind is a part.  This metaphysical world is the level at which universal physical principles and other principles reside, and it is the unique pleasure, honour, and duty of man to discover them.

 

(2) I come here in good faith and hope because you people seem smart, compassionate, and integral, like LaRouche.

 

(3) I hand out firecrackers.  Sooner or later someone will “get it”.

 

(4) My views on violent authoritarianism have changed since coming here.  How's that for admitting error?

 

LONG VERSION

 

I am a wanderer of the wastelands of modern culture who saw the signs of intelligence, compassion, and integrity in these fora, most notably in your critical eye on feminism.  I am very much interested in reason, but may have a different view of what reason is than you.  Reason is more than logic and empiricism, it extends into creative hypothesis and the formulation of thought objects (principles) by which we reorder Nature and human society.  So I've come here because I see potential here to save the world from itself.

 

I came here as an authoritarian because violent authority has so far seemed the best and only way to get big science, big economics, and big culture done.  I am softening in my view, which was not a principled one but a hypothesis, in the face of members such as yourself who argue for voluntarism and moral consistency.  You have shown me a dimension of potential I'd not hitherto encountered.

 

Distinguish error from being wrong.  I'm  not wrong about my principles which I defend here, though I am ignorant of much, being ignorant is not being wrong.  I can commit errors, and have in various ways, but I'm not wrong about the essential thrust of my “preachy” observations.  I recognise that violent authority is unprincipled, and am working, as I wrote above, to decouple the general welfare principle from violent authority, which is really the oligarchal principle in drag.

 

I preach here because you are smart cookies, and rebels, and sometimes loners, which makes it like herding proverbial cats as there are manifold ways of wilfully or innocently misunderstanding what I am saying.  I welcome your input into how I can say what I'm saying in clearer, more cogent, more convincing ways.  This board is Philosophy, and I, by all accounts, am a Philosopher.  I seek to destroy evil.  I view my persuasiveness like firecrackers in the mind.  I'm planting them here and there in people's minds, and sooner or later, if the ideas were absorbed in any significant way, they will go off, and people will say “Ah, that does make a kind of sense.”

 

My argument is that Ancaps should read LaRouche's corpus and begin to sift the violent-authoritarian fallacy from the principles he has discovered or rediscovered.  LaRouche is a gateway drug to the classical humanist tradition which is properly the heritage of all mankind, to his aeternal benefit.  Yes, read him is what I am saying, talk about him, read and talk about the authors he promotes.  Time is short and we need people like myself who, after years of study, finally get what he is talking about.

 

Excellent point about what Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex, sometimes now referred to as the prison-industrial complex, but which I might call the bureaucratic-prison-entertainment complex:  We face a velvet glove (Brave New World) concealing an iron fist (1984).  I agree that both that complex and the Islamic threat feed off one another.  While I continue to support annihilating ISIS and neutralising Islam, I admit that the violent authoritarianism, a.k.a., the financier oligarchy and its military-espionage-geopolitics wings, have and are creating the problems that they then hypocritically rally popular support for further military-economic interventions.

 

The key here is to beware of deductive method, because deduction leads to no creative discoveries.  It can help, as part of the discovery process, but it is not creative, it is not a creative hypothesis as such.  From what I can tell, the genius part of you makes a discovery, the deductive part of you checks the bolts on the testing equipment.  Genius is figuring out how to double the square, deduction is checking the results and doing the measurements that confirm it.

[Donnadogsoth]

Define your terms. To me, anarcho means an acceptance that humans do not exist is different, opposing moral categories and capitalist means somebody who owns themselves, which is everybody. So the title looks to me like "rational people need a specific person" which is irrational.

 

My point is advisers can prove useful.  Stefan is an adviser, is he not?  He's nothing if not an adviser!  And his wisdom and effort has generated here, and been the material cause of you and I talking.  Now here has attracted me, and I have a new adviser to recommend, one I have been studying for a decade and, methinks, know better than anyone outside of his immediate association.

 

dsayers, I get the feeling you're not really reading, or reading in good faith, what I am posting:  you're narrow, hardened-seeming, and not considering the metaphysical reality I am describing. I'm not trying to insult you or belittle your position or your intellect or your emotions, but please try to understand what I am saying outside merely a monotonous dedication to the ramified NAP.  The NAP alone won't save us.  It is one principle of many--surely an important one, but not the only one.  I seek out and point to others.  I value your input and hope we can come to mutual understanding.

[dsayers]

I have a new adviser to recommend

You didn't recommend. You presented as necessary. But 2+2=4 regardless of who says or doesn't say it.

 

And yes, I give less of my time to those who would waste my time. I protect myself.

[shirgall]

Advisors give you a lot of "shoulds". Stef gives fewer "shoulds" and a great deal more reason and evidence than most advisors.

[AccuTron]

"which I might call the bureaucratic-prison-entertainment complex"

 

Interesting phrasing, adding entertainment; I'd not seen it before.  It made my eyebrows go up.  Yes, it's a continuum of control.

[Donnadogsoth]

You didn't recommend. You presented as necessary. But 2+2=4 regardless of who says or doesn't say it.

 

And yes, I give less of my time to those who would waste my time. I protect myself.

 

Developing an understanding of the nature of the human mind is never a waste of time, dsayers.  I can recommend nothing higher, especially to one who, if I read you right, wants to improve the world, rather than merely self-aggrandising, or self-protecting.  Not bad things in of themselves, but not that which serves the highest human self-interest.

 

And yes, I think Ancap needs LaRouche.  It's a recommendation of the highest order such that it becomes a necessity, an IF/THEN statement.  Ancap alone is like a plastic measuring cup that, when empty, easily upsets.  Useful, but unstable.  It needs to be filled with principles:  physical principles, metaphysical principles, artistic principles, to give it weight and therefore stability.

[webdever]

I ran into a LaRouche supporter on the street in 2008, she was telling me how FDR was the model president, and when I said something about how FDR put in motion half the stuff she was blaming on Bush she started screaming at me. LaRouche is pretty philosophical I guess, and has some views I can agree with, but from what I've read his philosophy seems bizarre and quasi-socialist, and all based around a rejection of reason and evidence. I'm not really sure what he has to offer ancaps.

[Donnadogsoth]

I ran into a LaRouche supporter on the street in 2008, she was telling me how FDR was the model president, and when I said something about how FDR put in motion half the stuff she was blaming on Bush she started screaming at me. LaRouche is pretty philosophical I guess, and has some views I can agree with, but from what I've read his philosophy seems bizarre and quasi-socialist, and all based around a rejection of reason and evidence. I'm not really sure what he has to offer ancaps.

 

LaRouche supporters can be a mixed bag because they essentially constitute an army, and an army that can sometimes be run ragged in its dogged attempts at effecting political change.  But I'm not telling you to join his organisation, I'm telling you to get hooked into principle beyond merely the NAP.

 

People around here give the impression that the NAP is the only principle in existence and that its implementation will bring about a utopia.  I'm saying there are other principles:  sufficient reason, identity of indiscernibles, perfection, continuity, preëstablished harmony, creativity, least-time, least-action, isopermetric, Agapic (both as motivator and as proof against solipsism), squaring, pythagorean, general welfare, republican and what I term the role-playing pirinciple.  There are many more that I can only weakly adumbrate.

 

The understanding of these principles is not the memorisation of epigrams, but the creative discovery of a universal thought-object that alters the structure of the mind, creating a "stuff" beneath the "words and pictures" of daily life.

 

This "stuff" is vitally needed to effect justice in the world.  Merely hammering about the NAP as if it will solve all problems is so crude.  It's a real principle, going back to Christ's "do unto others", but it's not the ONLY principle.  Consider, if you dare, the following essay on the grand sweep of European civilisation.  You don't have to be a Christian to grasp this, and I'm respecting your intelligence by offering it to you.

 

Jesus Christ and Civilization

http://www.larouchepub.com/lar/2000/2739_jesus_christ.html

[webdever]

The NAP is the primary principle used in determining whether violence or coercion is acceptable. Thats it, thats all it applies to. Nobody here believes the NAP is the only principle, or that everything will be solved by hammering away at the NAP, if you've noticed many people in this conversation recognize that "hammering about the NAP" has not been effective, much of the discussion is on better ways to achieve freedom.

 

The most important principle, I think, is methodology. Believing in something which rational and empirical methodology proves to be completely false (the existence of a deity) requires you to reject that methodology. Since LaRouche's philosophy seems to revolve around that rejection (although I am confused about the idea that Aristotelianism doesn't allow for absolutism), I don't think there is much to discuss.

 

 

People around here give the impression that the NAP is the only principle in existence and that its implementation will bring about autopia.  I'm saying there are other principles:  sufficient reason, identity of indiscernibles, perfection, continuity, creativity, least-time, least-action, isopermetric, Agapic, squaring, pythagorean, general welfare, republican and what I term the role-playing pirinciple.  There are many more that I can only weakly adumbrate.

 

The understanding of these principles is not the memorisation of epigrams, but the creative discovery of a universal thought-object that alters the structure of the mind, creating a "stuff" beneath the "words and pictures" of daily life.

 

 

Sounds typical of mysticism to me, big words and sentences that sound deep but mean nothing.

[Donnadogsoth]

The NAP is the primary principle used in determining whether violence or coercion is acceptable. Thats it, thats all it applies to. Nobody here believes the NAP is the only principle, or that everything will be solved by hammering away at the NAP, if you've noticed many people in this conversation recognize that "hammering about the NAP" has not been effective, much of the discussion is on better ways to achieve freedom.

 

The most important principle, I think, is methodology. Believing in something which rational and empirical methodology proves to be completely false (the existence of a deity) requires you to reject that methodology. Since LaRouche's philosophy seems to revolve around that rejection (although I am confused about the idea that Aristotelianism doesn't allow for absolutism), I don't think there is much to discuss.

 

 

Sounds typical of mysticism to me, big words and sentences that sound deep but mean nothing.

 

If you're not obsessed with the NAP, then that's good, that's promising.  Whether or not you respond favourably to LaRouche is a litmus test for how serious you are about human freedom.

 

LaRouche is about creative reason, creative reason as the sole source of wealth and potential for human survival, creative reason as the basis for the human mind as sacred, the basis for religion, for culture, for everything.  Rejecting him because of cultural backwater prejudices about Gawwd is diametrically missing the point.

 

The problem, the reason why it sounds like "mysticism" to you is because you, like myself and almost everyone else, have been degraded by your culture, including your educational system, into thinking in bestial terms.  I do not mean you are a beast; I know you are not.  But the implicit rejection of the panoply of principle I have just referenced is symptomatic of mental degradation.  I'm on your side but you act as though I am not.  If you are at all interested, I recommend working through the following article that discusses principle, particularly as it applies to doubling the square.  Once a mind has that toe-hold, it can move on to understanding creative mentation proper and then attain the purview of the many other principles awaiting discovery or rediscovery.

Carl Gauss's

Fundamental Theorem of Algebra

http://www.schillerinstitute.org/educ/pedagogy/gauss_fund_bmd0402.html

[Mister Mister]

Developing an understanding of the nature of the human mind is never a waste of time, dsayers.  I can recommend nothing higher, especially to one who, if I read you right, wants to improve the world, rather than merely self-aggrandising, or self-protecting.  Not bad things in of themselves, but not that which serves the highest human self-interest.

 

And yes, I think Ancap needs LaRouche.  It's a recommendation of the highest order such that it becomes a necessity, an IF/THEN statement.  Ancap alone is like a plastic measuring cup that, when empty, easily upsets.  Useful, but unstable.  It needs to be filled with principles:  physical principles, metaphysical principles, artistic principles, to give it weight and therefore stability.

wait,so ancaps have no principles?  and this one man is the only person who can provide the right ones?  I don't even know what you are saying

[Donnadogsoth]

wait,so ancaps have no principles?  and this one man is the only person who can provide the right ones?  I don't even know what you are saying

 

On the contrary, RoseCodex, Ancaps should be fertile ground because they take a stand on principle.  That's great!   And if you're interested in principle, you should be interested in LaRouche who lives and breathes principle.  There may have been some you've missed in the cultural shitstorm that's been covering civ for the past century.

[Mister Mister]

On the contrary, RoseCodex, Ancaps should be fertile ground because they take a stand on principle.  That's great!   And if you're interested in principle, you should be interested in LaRouche who lives and breathes principle.  There may have been some you've missed in the cultural shitstorm that's been covering civ for the past century.

Like what?  Try to explain it to me like I'm five years old.

[Donnadogsoth]

Like what?  Try to explain it to me like I'm five years old.

 

I'm happy you said this. It's a good exercise to explain things as elementarily as possible.

 

The two best things to have are Love, and Reason. Love moves us to help each other, and Reason tells us how. Together, Love and Reason make your mind the most important thing in the world.

 

Reason lets us find out laws of Nature, which help us help those we love. A law of Nature is a rule for how the world works.

Logic, for example, is a law that says a thing is itself. What that means is, if your Lego brick is blue, it can't be not blue at the same time. If a bird is flying it is not also nesting. If you aren't on your bicycle, you can't ride your bicycle. This is how the world works.

 

The more laws we find, the more we can stop doing things that go against the laws.  If we don't know the laws, we're bumping up against them and get tired, and can even get hurt!  Nothing gets done that way.  But with Love and Reason, we can discover laws and use them to help each other.

 

Now there is an old man named Lyndon, and he knows many laws. And the most important law of all is the the law of Reason and Love together, which, when we help them grow in us by reading good books and listening to good music, and doing experiments with math, we can use to find out more laws. Sometimes they're laws other people have found out before us, other times they are our own laws.

 

As Lyndon says, the laws are needed because they help the Economy. The Economy is like a big lawful garden that lets us stay alive by giving us good food. This garden needs to be tended. So we use Reason to plant laws, and we water it with Love, and we harvest the fruits, from which we can get good food and more laws than before. Without Reason, we forget to plant the laws. Without Love, we forget to water the garden and the laws we planted are forgotten.

 

The good food the garden gives, keeps us alive in the short term, and, by growing more laws than before, keeps us alive in the long term. Love isn't just about helping people right now, it's also about helping people in the future, even people not yet born. For Mankind is an immortal type of animal that does not have to go extinct like other types of animal, because we are the masters of the laws.

 

Lyndon says that we should surround ourselves with beautiful things. Not just things we like, but things which contain law. Art that contains law shows us classical beauty. Classical beauty is meant to stir your Reason and your Love so that you will become a better person. Without classical beauty, art becomes random and ugly and small, so that we forget about Reason and believe man is an animal like any other animal.  And if you think like an animal, you will never find out any laws.

 

The most important people who ever lived are the ones who gave their lives for Mankind, using Reason and Love. These are people who died for the sake of giving people the laws they needed to live and prosper. To die this way is to be sublime. A sublime person turns a bad thing into a good thing, using Reason and Love.  We should honour the sublime people, who have helped us live.

 

So be loving, and use reason, and find out laws, so you can help people, including yourself and your family.

[dsayers]

That is too long to work on a five year old.

 

Also, reason is a requisite for love.

 

If your motivation for this thread is truly that person X "lives and breathes principle," I wonder how many places you sing the praises of Stef or dsayers or RoseCodex or any of the many other people committed to rationality.

[Donnadogsoth]

That is too long to work on a five year old.

 

Also, reason is a requisite for love.

 

If your motivation for this thread is truly that person X "lives and breathes principle," I wonder how many places you sing the praises of Stef or dsayers or RoseCodex or any of the many other people committed to rationality.

 

It wouldn't work on a culturally retarded five-year-old perhaps.  I'm presuming the Platonically ideal five-year-old, a five-year-old from Plato's Republic.  Attentive, bright, respectful, loving, and curious.  So parcel it out one or two paragraphs at a time to your inner five-year-old, if you like.  Other than descending into epigrams and puppet shows, there's no other way to convey it, it demands the reader or listener reach for it.  One doesn't learn by reading at one's comprehension level, one learns by reading above one's comprehension level and tripping new language circuits.

 

You're saying you can't have love without reason?  I agree.

 

I am integrating  Stef, and by extension yourself and RoseCodex, into my list of those committed to principle.  But the most important part of that work of integration is integrating you and them into the concept of creative mentation, which provides the proper historical sweep.  Not just rationality as such, which for many is a synonym for logic, but creativity.