Devolution
Posted on 12/03/2014 8:25:15 PM PST by ReformationFan
“The sanctification of the rights of individuals and their liberties today by libertarians and Tea Party conservatives is contrary to our evolved human nature as social animals. . . . The thought that it is both rational and natural for each of us to care only for ourselves, our own preservation, and our own achievements is a treacherous fabrication.”
The above quotation is taken from an article written by John Edward Terrell for the opinion section of The New York Times.
The author knows very little about the conservative movement. He is mostly describing Ayn Rand’s Objectivist Philosophy where the evolved individual is sovereign. Those that make up the majority of the Tea Party do not hold to an evolutionary moral/social theory. They believe they are created in the image of God, not that they evolved from a soup of elemental chemicals where rational thought and morality were nowhere to be found.
If evolution is true, there is neither a moral nor rational foundation from which to argue for any social or political position based on reason or morality. “Treachery” is what made us what we are given that “nature, red in tooth and claw” brought us to this point in history. Why all of a sudden has it changed for the evolutionists?
(Excerpt) Read more at godfatherpolitics.com ...
The Doctor Zhivago clip from when the good doctor returns to his wife and family after World War I and finds his home has been turned into a collective commune is an effective one.
Communism is a giant leap backwards. Neanderthals lived in communes. What does communism have to do with “evolution”? Somebody has been doing drugs.
By helping myself I am helping others — in this way:
I am not a fiscal burden upon their houses.
Because they need not look after me, they are therefore
free to provide for themselves and similarly prevent
themselves from becoming a burden on yet other people
within the society.
Well put.
Idiot. Ants are social animals. Driven by instinct, from birth, to work for the good of the commune.
People are rational. We use our intelligence to make decisions regarding our behavior. A commune system has never worked for us because there is invariably individuals who are unwilling to carry their share of the load.
Also, since we have individual wills we seem to be incapable of real altruism in managing a commune; we corrupt easily.
So, for us, it works out best if we strive to do what is best for ourselves and our family. This works best for the entire group.
Yeah, because we all aspire to be as highly evolved as, say, Kim Jung Eun.
NOT.
Nearly no one on the libertarian/right/conservative side is arguing for a nation of an anti-cooperative individuals. Rather they are arguing that each one of us has an inalienable right to opt for the freedom to be an individual.
The NYT columnist knows little about Evolutionary theory as well as little about conservatism.
People are social animals. No one accomplishes anything alone.
Everything of meaning is done in association with others.
The issue that the communists are trying to sweep under the rug isn’t individualism vs. cooperation, it’s voluntary association vs. involuntary.
The tea partiers and the libertarians and other individualists are strong supporters of voluntary association. What they oppose is the involuntary association that the collectivists offer.
Because there’s another word for involuntary assocition: slavery.
thanks! :)
Life is self replicating information. As that information changes we call it evolution. Ideas are also self replicating. As Ideas change we call that progress. You can think of ideas a second level of evolution, much more powerful and quick to adopt to change. Progress requires free thought, which needs free trade. Socialism is the opposite of that and therefore NOT supported by evolution.
So did many other primitive peoples including American Indians. Karl Marx did not invent Communism and Robert Owen did not invent Socialism. As Rose Wilder Lane noted in her book The Discovery of Freedom: Man's Struggle Against Authority (New York: Day, 1943), Communism and Socialism were the default forms of social organization for millennia--and those who lived in such communal societies rarely rose above the subsistence level.
NOT a fan of the Norks, but with the exception of rhetoric there is very little about their system that is Communist in any logical sense of the word.
Marx and Lenin, after all, weren’t exactly proponents of a hereditary God-King supported by a system that explicitly prioritizes the military over civilians.
The present Nork system has ancient roots in Korean history, not in 19th century European socialism.
Sorry, but that's just not true.
Pre-agricultural societies very seldom even developed states. They tended to be families or clans. Such societies are sort of communal, but not communist.
The earliest States tended to be run by God-Kings: Egypt, Andes, Sumer, Meso-America, China, etc. Not somewhere I'd like to live, but not communist either.
When the kings were removed, as in Greece and Rome, they were initially replaced by a poweful aristocracy, which gradually yielded, at least in those cases, to a wider exercise of power.
There have been a number of examples of communist or socialist proponents in the past. Mazdak in Persia, several reformers in China, and Cretan and Spartan societies in Greece spring to mind.
But these were very rare. Most societies were openly and proudly aristocratic.
Stalin: 50+milliion dead...murdered with a stroke of his pen. Good thing he didn’t have a phone too!
But states didn't develop until about 3,000 BC and they didn't encompass most of humanity until much later.
Anthropologists usually divide human societal structure into bands, tribes, chiefdoms and states.
Bands are generally found among pre-agricultural peoples. They are essentially an extended family. Little real structure.
Tribes are found in some hunter-gatherer societies, but mostly in agricultural societies. They are much larger than bands and usually have a headman. He leads by persuasion rather than having true authority.
Chiefdoms are the next step up. Almost exclusively among agricultural societies. They have a chief with real, quite often absolute, authority. The chief and his family and retainers are essentially aristocrats.
States are the most complex human societies. Early ones were generally ruled by God-Kings. Probably because the absolute authority was needed to hold the society together when other bonds were not yet developed.
But none of these societies are communistic in any real sense. The notion of a primitive communism, a golden age from which man fell when he developed the notion of private property, is a Marxist idea that I’m surprised to see conservatives promoting.
The only true “primitive communism” was among primitive bands. They essentially HAD no property, so it’s not surprising there was no social conflict over controlling it.
IOW, bands are egalitarian. Tribes are semi-aristocratic. Chiefdoms and (early) states are almost always aristocratic.
http://anthro.palomar.edu/political/pol_3.htm
Anthropologists generally hate to admit it, but the driving force behind moving from tribes to chiefdoms to states was generally war. When a larger and better organized chiefdom came into conflict with a neighboring tribe, the tribe lost. Same with chiefdoms and states.
This is seen in stark form in 1 Samuel 8, when the Israelites decide to move from a loose alliance of tribes/chiefdoms to a state.
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