| Subject: | Re: [socialcredit] ecology of knowledge | | Date: | Tuesday, June 6, 2006 15:45:13 (-0700) | | From: | keith wilde <kwilde @...............org>
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| In reply to: | Message 4129 (written by Triumphofthepast) |
OK Michael, I believe it is appropriate to infer from your comments that we
agree that Cultural Heritage and the Knowledge Construct are not the same thing.
The difference is that Cultural Heritage is purified by the elimination of
putative knowledge. And I agree that to impose that condition would change
the pictographs. I hope to ask the question directly of Wojciechowski, but I
suspect that he made a deliberate choice in not restricting the designation of
knowledge to ideas or creations that are truthful, beautiful and virtuous. It is
the notion that such a housecleaning of the noosphere could be successfully
undertaken that I call utopian. By contrast, your description below of
the necessary housecleaning to allow benign human nature to shine through
suggests that the primary obstacle is the financial system. I would designate
the financial system as part of the KC, and even allow that it
is an aspect of "social" capital, but I infer that you would exclude it from
Cultural Heritage? Regardless, it is the Social Credit analysis of the
financial system that is of interest to me, as it relates to my much more lengthy
immersion in issues of population, resources and environment. I am anxious to
have it represented in the papers that the editor hopes to assemble in a
dedicated issue of The Trumpeter. I didn't need much persuasion to believe
that the root of contemporary problems lies in the monetary and financial
system. The problematic element in Social Credit analysis (to my limited understanding)
concerns the FAITH that sovereign consumers will choose benign products,
production methods and to curb personal waste if the system is corrected so that
they can relax from jobs anxiety and rely on their share of income from the
Cultural Heritage. You say I am wrong to say it is WE who have
chosen to engineer the earth, because we have lacked sovereign power. To a
degree, yes, but it also seems that persons bitten by the bug of engineering have
their own visions of what to invent or improve next, and the outcome of their
individual efforts to exert power over nature (from almost purely intellectual
motivation in many cases) is often a pleasant surprise to consumers who may
employ it unwisely but selfishly with collectively quite malignant effects. And
then there are the merchants, like Wal-Mart, who constantly titillate consumers
with the prospect of more junk at lower prices. What does Social Credit have to
buttress faith in the wise and modest consumer, and how does it compare to other
studies of human behavior (and human nature)? That is the kind of stuff I
am hoping for as reinforcement for my assertion to engineers and philosophers
(and economists) of the pessimistic variety that they should focus on the
financial system if they want to find an effective leverage point.
Keith
Triumphofthepast@aol.com wrote: I'm sorry, Keith, that I
just can't possibly respond to this call for papers. However, I want to continue
this discussion with you.
First of all, in saying Wojciechowski concept of
knowledge excludes CONSIDERATIONS of "truthfulness, efficacy, or moral and
aesthetic value," I am saying the same thing you are. Most people think that
knowledge means what is truthful, otherwise it is not knowledge but ignorance. A
better way to make the point, then, would be to say that there is so much
PUTATIVE knowledge that, as you say, it is hard to separate the wheat from the
chaff. For example, I was
very fortunate to discover Social Credit at all. With this way of putting it I
would agree, but it would change the pictographs.
Obviously, social crediters
are keenly aware of the negative aspects of our situation but reserve the term
Cultural Heritage (not "Inheritance") for the positive. For example, the idea
that "money is wealth" is not an addition to our Culture Heritage but, rather, a
diminishment of it.
"To engineer Nature to OUR liking WE have created . . ."
(Keith)
"We" have done no such thing, because "we" were never given the choice.
The statement assumes a true consumer-driven economy, but in absense of a
National Dividend, we do not have a consumer-driven economy. I think Keith's
concerns are implicitly included in the Douglas analysis, in that if you produce
with true EFFICIENCY and calibrate production to authentic expression of needs by
people, instead of sabotaging production to satisfy incentives set by
Finance, then we will live lightly on this planet. At the bottom of Social
Credit is FAITH in human nature. It is arrogant to say that human nature is the
problem and we will force it into a tolerable mold. Our duty is rather the more
humble one of clearing away the obstacles that choke human nature, so that it can
have a chance. If that is what Keith calls "utopian," I plead guilty.
Michael
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