Touchy Subjects

The Consequences of Zombification // Our Health Suffers

It should be surprising that the way we understand reality itself can be disputed. I happen to think that there is a universally accepted account of reality, one articulated and promoted by Socrates and adopted by intellectual and practical leaders since.  My argument is with this generally accepted account. I think it has overwhelming problems both theoretically and for practical purposes. There are, of course, reasons why deep thinkers have adopted the view pushed by Socrates. Those reasons have to do with the advantages to the powerful that Socrates account of our ends and means, as well as his Mission Statement’s enabling clause, the account of reason as a matter of logical argument.

There are several attacks on the Socratic position. One of them is the argument that if we follow Socrates we will be taking the side of the Antichrist against God. I find this argument the most surprising and interesting argument made by the Teacher, who we should understand as the great antagonist to Socratic philosophy. Another argument made by the Teacher has to do with the consequences of any general adoption of the Socratic view. According to the Teacher, adoption of the Socratic view would inevitably lead to the self destruction of anyone so committed and the destruction of everyone and everything loved by them. The Teacher used the word “apocalypse” and the “apocalyptic” to make this argument.

My argument has been that another way to understand the Socratic view is to see that it makes us understand ourselves as zombies. I call the adoption of Socratic principles “zombification.”  That is, adopting Socratic principles makes us zombies, will-less creatures driven by our insatiable hungers or the commands of our voodoo masters. The problem with zombies and people who think of themselves as zombies is that they cannot take care of their health. They cannot understand how to protect themselves because of the confusions created by our perverted understanding of our lives and what, on Socrates’ view, is important in our lives.

Whereas Socrates claims our goal must be to survive, he promotes a strategy involving the use of force and its cognates which makes looking after our health impossible.

One example of this has to do with the problems people have with diabetes mellitus. There is the question whether a diabetic’s diet causes their problems and if so, whether a change in diet might cure it. In the following article the writers claim that a vegetarian diet can cure many diabetics problem. There are others who dispute this claim saying that meat and dairy products need not be avoided in a diabetic diet.

The question I have is about why there has not been definitive research done on this question which would answer this question.  The influence of the meat and dairy producers may have put pressure on  the government to not fund research which could help us understand this issue.One can remember that the tobacco industry put pressure on government to never fund research on the health concerns of  smoking tobacco.

So, what is the argument here about diabetics and their diets? Can the dispute about what to do about this disease be resolved by some simple scientific study?  Or,  will people continue to suffer from this disease, even if there is a n adequate understanding of what causes and cures it, because powerful interests make money doing things that, unfortunately, lead to the endangerment and sickening of millions of people?

So, what do they say?

There Is a Way to Help Avoid Heart Disease and Diabetes: You Are What You Eat!

By Kathy Freston, AlterNet. Posted October 31, 2009.

A plant-based diet is both preventative and healing, whereas a diet high in animal protein is destructive to our health.

 

"If the truth be known coronary artery disease is a toothless paper tiger that need never, ever exist and if it does exist it need never, ever progress."

So says Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, who was a researcher and clinician at the Cleveland Clinic for over 35 years. In 1991, Dr. Esselstyn served as the president of the American Association of Endocrine Surgeons, and organized the 1st National Conference on the Elimination and Prevention of Heart Disease. In 2005, he became the 1st recipient of the Benjamin Spock Award for Compassion in Medicine. Dr. Esselstyn is also an Olympic gold medalist in rowing, and he was awarded the Bronze Star as an army surgeon in Vietnam.

In this series of interviews I've conducted with extraordinary nutritional researchers and medical doctors, I've sought to understand the link between diet and the most common and dreaded diseases that are prevalent in our culture. What I'm hearing over and over is that a plant-based diet is both preventative and healing, whereas a diet high in animal protein is destructive to our health - this is the case with cancer, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease.

The great news is that there is very real hope in shifting the course of our health. What is becoming very apparent through various peer reviewed studies is that by changing our diet - eliminating that which causes havoc in the body (animal protein) and adding in plant based proteins and eating lots of vegetables, legumes, beans, and whole grains, we can not only prevent disease, but also heal from it once it is already in motion. Following is a fascinating conversation I had on diet and heart health.

How do we solve the ‘Bully in the Playground’ scenario? // Step back from the problem and talk about Philosophy

I’ve been talking about Glenn Greenwald and his argument that in order for us to protect ourselves from the bully, or his fellow bullies, we should get everyone on the playground to act nicely to one another. In order to do that, according to Greenwald, we should set up rules of conduct and have everyone, including the bullies,  follow and abide by these rules. Greenwald has been complaining that people with power, i.e., those who own or work for corporations, our political leaders, many in the Media, Judges, and others, have been breaking these rules and promoting the idea that some people should be allowed to break these rules. One of their arguments to that effect is that we need to break these rules in order to keep Americans safe from terrorists and others who want to hurt us. Mr. Greenwald argues that our safety cannot be assured at all by allowing anyone, especially our bullies, to break these rules. His campaign to promote these rules is otherwise called ‘promoting the rule of law.’ He argues that no one should be allowed to break our laws, even if they argue that it is only by breaking certain laws that we can have safety or other desirable ends.

I have argued that Greenwald’s argument is futile. He is telling us that we can constrain the bully in our playground. He would allow that it will not be easy, but, we have to make  bullies obey the law. I argue, contrary to Greenwald, that you can’t make the bully do anything that the bully does not want to do.  They have the power to hire enforcers to get back at their critics. If the bully wants to steal valuables from us, as when he threatens us and takes our lunch-money, he will find ways of getting this done no matter how we try to constrain him. So, if we hire police to watch the bully and try to protect the kids from the bully, then, after awhile, the bully will bribe the police, or pose as police themselves, in order to keep anyone from effectively stopping their  profitable larceny.

Why should we think that the kids on the playground could make the bully play nicely with others? Do we imagine that the kids might gang up on the bully? Might some brave kid punch the bully in the nose and thereby teach the bully to stop picking on others?

I think it is fair to say that bullies are not going to start crying if some kids stands up for themselves. The Russian Revolution was an effort by some to stand up to the bullies in their playground. Eventually, at some point, the bullies took over the  new institutions of the Revolution and used the situation to again steal lunch money.

Yes, Greenwald makes good arguments in defense of his position. He tries to point out that some bullies have said they would obey the law, and yet, it can be shown that in particular ways they have not. He tries to shame these people into keeping their word, if not obeying the law. But, I have doubts that his strategy will win the war against the exploitation of  kids, even if he does win a few battles against the bullies.

What issues Unify both the ‘Left’ and ‘Right’? // Aaron Russo on Liberty undermined by ‘One World Government’ and ‘9-11’

 

One of the claims Russo makes is that the Bankers have promoted a ‘socialist’ form of government, even though they may not admit it or tout it as one. That is, the idea that the money system should be controlled from above is supposed to be one of the main ideas of Marx and Engels. I wondered about this. If true, that would undermine any leftist’s commitment to whatever they thought was good about Marx’s argument. At least, if Marx lead to the ‘one world totalitarian government’ as Russo and Jones argued, then maybe Marx should be resisted.

Thom Hartmann Interview On ‘Real News Network’ Needs more Attention // What is a more ‘lefty’ understanding of Obama and the Crisis?

I’ve been concerned that Obama has continued to fight the war in Iraq, and even expand the war in Afghanistan. He does this because he believes in the importance and value of an American Empire. He thinks, I believe, that wars are essentially good ways of settling questions. Part of his thinking there is that, well, there aren’t any good alternatives. I am concerned also that he believes in torture, and lawless incarceration, and the spying on people, whether they are American citizens or people of other countries. He sees no value in past agreements that it’s a good thing to run societies by laws instead of by personal whims. Obama has no interest in abolitionism, meaning, I believe, that he’s a house slave of the sort that supports the masters, i.e., the corporations, but who is willing to argue that the field slaves need new shoes and an hours break every few days so that the plantation as a whole will be more profitable. He has no interest in opposing slavery.

Basically, Obama is the candidate of the one party with two wings that has control over the country we call America. He is now being kept in power, not because he has been supporting policies that we find all that beneficial to the ‘common good,’ but because the alternatives are seemingly so gruesome. The Republicans are so irrational. The terrorists will get us if we don’t support Obama. We will have economic collapse if we don’t do as Obama tells us we should do.

I have a question about what kind of opposition we should have to Obama, and what about Obama’s policies should we support. I’ve thought the central problem that we face is the problems we face because of our deeply held commitments to, well, for one thing, our own survival at the expense of everything else, and, secondly, our insistence that the only way to accomplish our first goal is to be thugs, to use force, and to not shrink away from relying on its allies violence, stealth, and deceit.

But, there are other assessments of where we are and what is important to work on. Thom Hartman has a radio talk show based in Portland, Oregon and broadcast nationally. It’s a good program in that he brings on guests and gets them to talk about their analyses of what’s going on. It isn’t all about Hartmann. Because he does that, I think we can learn some things from listening to his show.

Anyway, he was interviewed on the ‘Real News Network,’ here,

How do we begin to make lives worth living? // The Crisis should make us rethink what we’re doing.

Open Left has an interesting discussion beginning on the question of  how we can maintain a middle class when middle class jobs have disappeared.  Here’s some of the dilemma as Amy Traub sees it,

“…As Robert Reich points out  in the Financial Times, "middle-class jobs that do not need a college degree are disappearing." In the 1950s, high-wage GM was the nation's largest employer and it supported car dealerships and parts suppliers many of which also provided a middle-class standard of living. Today, the biggest employer is low-wage, meager benefit Wal-Mart, squeezing its supply chain to provide similarly inadequate jobs. As GM and other islands of blue-collar prosperity succumb to the economic tide, we are left with a model that does not support a mass middle class. 

Yet it is unacceptable to give up on the idea of job stability, health coverage, retirement security and wages that can support a family for the majority of Americans. So, after the dramatic retrenchment of the American auto industry, how do millions of Americans get to the middle class? And what policies can we pursue to help them get there?

The Perfect Storm of Criminality // Why Protecting the Financial Sector will not save any of US // Analyzing Joseph Stroupe’s Argument

The question is whether Obama has been able to forestall a worse economic situation by his policies so far and lay the foundation for improvements. I have to rely on the thinking of others on this issue. This is why I’ve been examining economists and political thinkers who tend to be skeptical that Obama has succeeded. One view, which I’ve looked at, is that Obama has not really helped matters because our problems are due to corruption, and he’s not addressed that problem at all. He’s into looking forward, away from wherever the crooks are working. The next view, offered by Stroupe, is that the economic model consisting in the priorities and values that we’ve had for 25 to fifty years have lead us to take a dangerous course.  According to Stroupe, we have injured the ship of state to such an extent that it will surely sink.

The ‘Shock Doctrine’ in Action // Our Domestic elites have no reason any more to avoid treating ‘us’ here any differently than they treat ‘them’ there.

Griffin’s question is which ‘conspiracy theory’ is best supported by the facts?

There are apparently eight chapters to this lecture.

The idea that the Tower murders were done to make people go along with really bad policies the elites wanted passed but could not get through unless people stopped putting up a fight, has been related to ‘Pearl Harbor.” The idea is that when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor Naval Base  the American people would have been expected to change from their previous pacifistic position to one willing to accept their participation in a world war. That was why Roosevelt engineered the Japanese into doing something like that attack. It was a planned event because it would have created the political climate Roosevelt considered necessary to get the United States to join the war against the Germans and  Japanese. The strategy is formulated

How can old dead philosophers say anything about contemporary living? // Can we trust anything beyond our own memory?

I have been arguing that our understanding on the world in which we live right now depends on our being aware of, understanding, and engaging in a dispute about our ends and means, the purpose we decide we are here for, and how we incorporate that decision into our lives. This is a dispute that has been at the bottom of civilization for a long time. I do not know how long. It is the dispute characterized by the phrase, “the war between the sons of light and the sons of darkness.” It is the dispute that brings us Socrates, his nemesis the ‘Teacher of Righteousness,’ the main ideas of Gautama Siddhartha, the Genesis writers, and many others.

One of the main claims about this dispute and its importance has to do with the ‘base’ and the ‘superstructure.’ This has to do with the idea that our civilization has the same basic foundations, although as time passes there are parts of the superstructure which change. Some of those parts that change are the things that change over time having to do with the coming on the scene and passing away of people, their families, their communities, the technologies that they live with and that determines various aspects of their lives. What passes has to do with fads, the passing scene, things that come and go. What stays around has to do with the ‘eternal verities.’

Why don’t Philosophers challenge Chomsky’s ‘mafia principle’? // Hume established that, yes, there’s no getting around it, we are Zombies

I want to put some pieces together.

I have been claiming that one of the central ideas of our civilization has been and continues to be the argument that Socrates was a big part of even 2,500 years ago. In my way of putting it, the idea is that when you strip off the illusions which we have that clothes our understanding of ourselves, the basic truth, according to Socrates, is that people are zombies, will-less creatures driven by their insatiable hungers or the commands of their voodoo masters. Socrates didn’t put it this way. In the Republic he talks about how we are like the people chained up in his Allegorical cave, unable to see or experience anything but the shadows and echoes coming from the wall in front of them but created by a process of objects being carried in front of  fires above and behind them. It’s the same story, really, where the important part is that the cave people, as well as the zombies believe, against what is the truth, that they are people who have knowledge, morality, and a language that allows them to communicate with one another about what’s going in in their world. People believe they have lives, but they are really fake lives.

The Perfect Storm of Criminality // A Marxist Opposes Leftist Re-Regulation as “Been there, Done that” Designed-to-Failism

I have been arguing that Marxism tells us that the solution to the suffering brought about by the foxes eating the chickens is for the chickens to organize and get rid of the foxes.  Given the power of the foxes, this recommendation has seemed wildly unrealistic. I have had the image in my head of the guillotine chopping off the heads of French royalty, or the pistol fire used to snuff out Russian Czars and Czarinas. To put it a different way, though, might make the effort seem less bloody, less eliminationistic, and maybe more doable. So, the following lecture suggests, we put the workers who depend on the success of the companies in control of their ‘boards of directors.’ 

Yes, according to this speaker, there is something fundamentally inadequate about the leftist strategy of regulating the economy. You fix that this time by regulating but also making workers in charge of their own companies.

The lecture here is  by Professor Rick Wolff, Department of Economics at the University of Massachusetts - Amherst on October 7, 2008.

This is his argument,

Capitalism Hits the Fan: A Marxian View from UVC-TV 19 on Vimeo.

I cannot argue with the way he describes our problem. The question is whether his solution makes sense. I can’t help but question whether the movers and shakers in American corporations are going to leave quietly.