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You Hate the State, But Do You Hate Politics? How Self Deception and Coalitions Affect Society

March 14, 2018

You Hate the State, But Do You Hate Politics? How Self Deception and Coalitions Affect Society

Our ancestors weren’t nice people. They kept slaves, looked forward to wars and sent people to concentration camps. It is easy to dismiss them as moral retards, but that would be setting the bar way too low. Slavery is bad, war is violence, and sending people to concentration camps isn’t very nice. Blacks, Jews, and foreigners are not ambiguous classes of people, and violence is unambiguously wrong.

It takes no particular sophistication to see how cruel our ancestors were. But it takesremarkable insight to see such cruelty hidden in plain sight today.

Libertarians are fairly good at seeing cruelty others miss. We see taxation as theft, war as murder and citizenship as slavery. We aren’t naïve enough to think everything will be fine if we have a good president at the helm.

But we make a huge, comparable mistake. We assume the market is a great restraining force against fraud and deception. Now it is true that certain forms of deception are checked by the market. But this is not true of many other forms of deception. There is a real sense in which the market values the ability to deceive. Libertarians are blind to this, at their own peril.

Politics in Business

When I dropped out of college and started working, I couldn’t help seeing that deception is the norm, even in private organizations. There was so much that could have beendone so much better, but wasn’t being done because of political reasons. In my experience, organizations reward prudent predation. What is going on?

Economist Robin Hanson answers such puzzles more satisfactorily than anybody else.In any large organization, there are coalitions which compete for limited resources. Coalition politics is vicious, and a major reason why firms are inefficient.

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Self-Deception, Our Media and the ‘Emperor’s New Clothes Effect’

October 21, 2015

Self-Deception, Our Media and the ‘Emperor’s New Clothes Effect’

Published in 1837, the short story by Hans Christian Andersen called the Emperor’s New Clothes is a children’s story that carries some eye-opening messages about life, reality, society and self-deception.

It seems that no one wants to talk about self-deception these days.  I believe one of the reasons for this is we feel embarrassed when we are wrong especially when we find out that we have been lying to ourselves.

When we lie to ourselves and we decide that we want to grow beyond the lie we have to look into life’s mirror metaphorically and face the truth behind our lies.  This type of truth seeking can leave us feeling naked, vulnerable and a bit scared of what we are going to find.

Owning your Creation
Via prodigalsonspodcast.com
Via prodigalsonspodcast.com

Self-transparency is taught in many different spiritual circles today.  They talk about owning your own creation.  What they often mean is that if you feel that your life is bad, then that is your fault.  Conversely, if you feel that your life is good then that may also be your fault.

Though a lot of our reality is determined by an optimistic or pessimistic perception it is good to learn how to accept our reality and find peace in the present moment.  The truth of the matter is, there are many things that appear to be outside of our physical control.

For example other people’s thoughts and actions.  Those are elements that can add insight into our world, but we cannot and should not control others.  But enough about consciousness, we can dig into the realms of thought and self-mastery at a later time.  What about Hans Christian Andersen?

Was Hans Christian Andersen awake?

Pic by Thora Hallager 1869
Pic by Thora Hallager 1869

 

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Gullible Americans Forever

August 18, 2015

Gullible Americans Forever

“Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.” — Mark Twain

Listening to NPR news today I was reminded how throughly this once independent voice has sold out.

I was also reminded of the Mark Twain quote above. NPR reported that Syrians were lined up in Turkey waiting on passage on inflatable rafts to Greece. According to the NPR report, there are 2 million Syrian refugees in Turkey and 250,000 Syrians have been killed. NPR said nothing about the cause of this murder and displacement of vast numbers of people. It was if the plight of these people materialized out of thin air. The fact that Washington sicced ISIS, al Qaeda, Turkey, the US and NATO Air Forces, and Washington’s Middle Eastern vassals on Syria was not mentioned. The view on NPR is the same as Washington’s — that if only Assad would resign and hand Syria over to Washington, everything would be fine.

Americans don’t go to bed every night unable to sleep from shame from the atrocities that the US government has inflicted on Syria. And on Iraq. And Libya. And Afghanistan. And Pakistan. And Yemen. And Somalia. And Ukraine. And Serbia. According to the prostitute media, all of these human catastrophes are the work of dark forces that America must combat. It is all a clever orchestration of public emotion in favor of the military/security complex’s bank balance.

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