Did you remember to turn your clock forward?

[Starcadia]

I'm actually talking about purely psychological and sociological value. Trends.

I understand that, but you're still being subjective is my point :

...how we place value on things as individuals and groups that often do not have actual value.

What is "actual value"? How can you tell whether something has value if there is nobody who is there to say it is valuable to them? How can we place value on something that doesn't have "actual value" when there is, I would argue, no such thing as "actual value" - how would you define it?

I think first of fundamentals that we do not have to be taught to appreciate, like food, water, love, mother, warmth, safety, joy, laughter and so on. Later when life is more complex, a steady stream of new valuables come down the advertising highway. Most people fall for it all, especially when their neighbors do, but for some people life was fine before these new products, and so they dismiss their proposed value.

A device that is considered necessary now that was not even invented ten or twenty years ago I do not consider valuable in its essence. It is socially and psychologically valuable, but not essentially valuable. It's an interesting distinction.

[Condor]

Semantics!

[Zero]

I'm actually talking about purely psychological and sociological value. Trends.

I understand that, but you're still being subjective is my point :

...how we place value on things as individuals and groups that often do not have actual value.

What is "actual value"? How can you tell whether something has value if there is nobody who is there to say it is valuable to them? How can we place value on something that doesn't have "actual value" when there is, I would argue, no such thing as "actual value" - how would you define it?

I think first of fundamentals that we do not have to be taught to appreciate, like food, water, love, mother, warmth, safety, joy, laughter and so on. Later when life is more complex, a steady stream of new valuables come down the advertising highway. Most people fall for it all, especially when their neighbors do, but for some people life was fine before these new products, and so they dismiss their proposed value.

A device that is considered necessary now that was not even invented ten or twenty years ago I do not consider valuable in its essence. It is socially and psychologically valuable, but not essentially valuable. It's an interesting distinction.

You're essentially describing Maslow's pyramid and, from the sounds of things, restricting your definition of value to things necessary for bare survival and reproduction. All of the other stuff people "fall for", as though it's some sort of joke or trick or something, are just higher human needs.

At any rate, who is to say that even food or water are seen as valuable? Consider Buddhist monks who devote their entire effort to spiritual pursuit, and often beg for food, content with the very little they get? To them there are things of higher value than food to satisfy their base animal needs.

Or how about in a big city, where food waste is almost mind-boggling in its enormity? Food there seems to have rather little value, at least if we consider across all edible items. Certainly there are gourmet dishes which command huge sums, but there are also vast amounts of food which end up as garbage.

Some crave danger and the thrill which goes with it. Safety is boring for these people. In troubled societies these peolpe become soliders or vigilantes, in primitive times they were hunters or warriors - out for the challenge of keeping alive as much as the glory of vanquishing a superior enemy. In peaceful times, these are fans of extreme sports - subjecting themselves to no end of life threatening situations where the line between life and death is little more than a razor thin margin of error.

Some people don't seem to have much use for things like love or laughter, either.

I quote Somerset Maugham's "The Gentleman in the Parlour"

We are gregarious, most of us, and we resent the man who does not seek the society of his fellows. We do not content ourselves with saying that he is odd, but we ascribe to him unworthy motives. Our pride is wounded that he should have no use for us, and we nod to one another and wink and say that if he lives in this strange way it must be to practise some secret vice, and if he does not inhabit his own country it can only be because his own country is too hot to hold him. But there are people who do not feel at home in the world, the companionship of others is not necessary to them, and they are ill at ease amid the exuberance of their fellows. They have an invincible shyness. Shared emotions abash them. The thought of community singing, even though it be but "God Save the King", fills them with embarrassment, and if they sing, it is plaintively in their baths. They are self-sufficient, and they shrug a resigned and sometimes, it must be admitted, a scornful shoulder because the world uses that adjective in a depreciatory sense. Wherever they are they feel themselves "out of it". They are to be found all over the service of this earth, members of a great monastic order bound by no vows and cloistered though not by walls of stone. If you wander up and down the world you will meet them in all sorts of unexpected places...

...But it is more surprising when you hear that the only white person in a Chinese city is an Englishwoman, not a missionary, who has lived there, none knows why, for a quarter of a century; and there is another who inhabits an islet in the South Seas, and a third who has a bungalow on the outskirts of a large village in the centre of Java. They live solitary lives, without friends, and they do not welcome the stranger. Though they may not have seen one of their own race for months they will pass you on the road as though they did not see you, and if, presuming on your nationality, you call, the chances are that they will decline to receive you; but if they do they will give you a cup of tea from a silver teapot and on a plate of old Worcester you will be offered hot scones. They will talk to you politely, as though they were entertaining you in a drawing room overlooking a London square, but when you take your leave they express no desire ever to see you again.

The men are at once shyer and more friendly. At first they are tonguetied, and you see the anxious look on their faces as they rack their brains for topics of conversation, but a glass of whisky loosens their minds (for sometimes they are inclined to tipple) and then they will talk freely. They are glad to see you, but you must be careful not to abuse your welcome; they get tired of company very soon and grow restless at the necessity of making an effort. They are more apt to run to seed than women, they live in a higgledy-piggledy manner, indifferent to their surroundings and their food. They have often an ostensible occupation. They keep a little shop but do not care whether they sell anything, and their goods are dusty and fly-blown, or they run, with lackadaisical incompetence, a coconut plantation. They are on the verge of bankruptcy. Sometimes they are engaged in metaphysical speculation, and I met one who had spent years in the study and annotation of the works of Immanuel Swedenborg. Sometimes they are students and take endless pains to translate classical works which have been already translated, like the dialogues of Plato, or of which translation is impossible, like Goethe's "Faust". They may not be very useful members of society, but their lives are harmless and innocent. If the world despises them, they on their side despise the world. The thought of returning to its turmoil is a nightmare to them. They ask nothing but to be left in peace. Their satisfaction with their lot is sometimes a trifle irritating. It needs a good deal of philosophy not to be mortified by the thought of persons who have voluntarily abandoned everything that for the most of us makes life worth living and are devoid of envy of what they have missed. I have never made up my mind whether they are fools or wise men. They have given up everything for a dream, a dream of peace or happiness or freedom, and their dream is so intense that they make it true.

To say that there is any subjective interpretation of value, I think, is something akin to hubris - to think that your worldview is so complete as to be able to fathom something of all human minds and say it is common. I would argue that this hubris is at the root of all authoritarian styles of government, even those which wish to do good. They are convinced they understand people and what they want and need, and set about using force to maximise these things when, in actual fact, they build only towards a single vision of value or ideality which can't possibly account for the endless variations in human dimension.

It's only when you don't understand someone's concept of value that you can take it away even without knowing it.

[Starcadia]

Jesus, dude, are you capable of conversation, or do only enjoy lecturing?

People fall for silly shit they don't need. How's that? Ever heard of keeping up with the Joneses? It's a symptom of our economic system. I don't know how to make it any simpler.

I've never suggested to someone they put down a book as opposed to pick one up, but in your case it might do you some good. And then go run around in the grass in bare feet or something. Smell a flower. Pet an animal. :roll:

I'm a big Maugham fan, by the way.

[SSgtTrav]

ok

[Hoovie]

ok!

[luckysealy]

[bearcat87]

Jesus, dude, are you capable of conversation, or do only enjoy lecturing?

Amen.

[texasmade]

[quote="Starcadia"]Jesus, are you capable of conversation, or do only enjoy lecturing?
quote]


jesus likes lecturing

[Xobeloot]

jesus likes lecturing

I heard he likes butt sex too :lol:

[Zero]

One dude...twelve disciples... you gotta know what they were getting up to :lol:

[Xobeloot]

SOUUUUUUUUUUL Train! TOOOT TOOOT! :lol:

[Judge Faust]

Even your own comments on the eventual failings of capitalism are predicated on the existence of anti-capitalist forces built into the system of government. It's like saying that a gasoline car is doomed to explode because somebody, sooner or later, is going to put nitroglycerin in the tank. Of course this is ludicrous - there's nothing wrong with a gasoline powered car if you simply make sure that people put gasoline in it. Same with capitalism. To say that it leads to oppression or exploitation is to assuume that the laws which should be enforced are not.

What a ludicrous analogy. Don't you think that the hypothetical situation's outcome would change if we assumed that a gasoline-powered car would CAUSE human beings to implant explosives in the gas tank? Yes, it would.

Oil-guzzling cars do not necessarily beget oil-guzzling-car bombers. On the other hand, a system that exists solely to exploit the working class will, in fact, get some quite-predictable backlash from the working class.

Consider just the problems of central banks, fiat currency, and fractional reserve lending. This is a totally anti-capitalist collection of bureaucracy and it lies at the very heart of the entire economic system. How can we blame capitalism for failing when we've built it on a corrupt system which has fraud built into it from the top down?

In other words:

The economic collapse of the Western world has everything to do with "central banks" and other government organizations. Regardless of the fact that said banks and organization are doing fine. Hence, none of the blame can be placed on capitalist leeches such as Freddy Mack. Which has, incidentally, dug a financial hole so deep that even the Imperial government felt obligated to nationalize it. Clearly, capitalism is blameless...

Your thought process is bizarre and irrational.

The only point I'm debating is whether the root cause of this exploitation is founded in the tenets of capitalism or not. I argue emphatically that it is not - because there is no capitalism that I can see which could be doing it. The US, for example, has carried a negative balance of trade for decades now. More goods and services flow into the country than flow out of it. This is not capitalism. Capitalism would force a balancing of these trade figures. It would keep countries honest.

A "balancing" of the "trade figures?" Really? How would, say, Madagascar "balance" its level of trade with China? By using protectionist measures, perhaps? Wouldn't that be explicitly anti-capitalist?

[Zero]

Dude, you don't know what you're talking about. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were essentially an extension of government. Do you know about how they came into being? Where they got their economic power from? Could you explain it to me? I don't think you know.

A "balancing" of the "trade figures?" Really? How would, say, Madagascar "balance" its level of trade with China? By using protectionist measures, perhaps? Wouldn't that be explicitly anti-capitalist?

Do you know what "balance of trade" even means? You're not convincing me.

[bearcat87]

cock, balls