Re: Don't Forget Mises -- and Dump the Third Way!
From: Ron Allen (rallen2_at_bellsouth.net)
Date: 10/03/04
- Next message: Igor: "Re: Bush busts Social Security with massive deficits"
- Previous message: D.F. Manno: "Re: Bush busts Social Security with massive deficits"
- Maybe in reply to: Ron Allen: "Re: Don't Forget Mises -- and Dump the Third Way!"
- Next in thread: michael price: "Re: Don't Forget Mises -- and Dump the Third Way!"
- Reply: michael price: "Re: Don't Forget Mises -- and Dump the Third Way!"
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ]
Date: Sun, 03 Oct 2004 15:23:30 -0400
Ron Allen wrote:
> There is a will to believe, a wish to believe,
> just as there is an urge to know, and a desire
> to learn. I see the world, reality, through
> clashing perspectives. I have my very own
> consciousness of reality, and I also encounter
> various versions of reality when I read and
> listen to the opinions of writers and speakers.
> From multiple perspectives I make a decision
> about what I believe best and most expresses
> what is real and true. My volition does play an
> important part, I'm sure. I like to believe
> that I'm on the side of goodness and liberty, on
> the side of truth and beauty. There are
> exterior facts, and there is interior desire.
> These come together in every knowing self.
> Knowing is largely solitary. Knowledge is
> autonomy, individuality. Knowledge is a private
> gnosis, a personal gnosis, even a poetic gnosis,
> true only for the individual knower.
Michael Price wrote:
> Then it is not true at all, . . .
Ron Allen answers:
What is true to me may not be true to you; but you
are not the final, ultimate, or unappealable judge
and jury, determining and deciding what is the
true truth. No truth us true for all people, nor
for every places or for all time. This may be a
very hard and difficult truth for us to handle and
manage; but it is a truth which accords with the
facts. You can believe that those with a truth
different from your truth are liars or dunces; but
that judgment of the facts, that people have
different truths, is only your judgment of the
facts, but not the facts per se, not the brute
facts.
Michael Price wrote:
> . . . for how can you know anything that is not
> true . . .
Ron Allen answers:
How can we know if anything is true? Even the
words "true" and "truth" are problematic and
enigmatic words. People have known with certainty
many truths which people no longer believe to be
the truth. This is empirical fact. This is a
significant truth.
The question is: If there is a truth to be known,
how can we come to know this truth, or if what we
believe to be true is truly true? What we believe
to be true corresponds just enough to what may be
true that we can function in the real world with
some degree of certainty and finesse. What we
believe to be true may approximate what is true,
but we do not know how carefully or correctly our
truths approach the truth.
When talking about truth, it must always be kept
in mind that there is natural reality, and there
is societal reality. Gravity is an unalterable
truth about what we observe in natural reality;
but private property rights are an alterable truth
about what has been instituted and established as
a societal reality.
The anarchist, Max Stirner (Johann Kaspar
Schmidt), wrote that property "exists by the grace
of law. It is not a fact, but a legal fiction."
Property is not a natural reality, not a natural
fact; rather, property is a societal reality, a
societal fact, a societal creation.
James Madison, politician and political theorist,
wrote that property is "a social right". I
suppose that with these few words, Madison was
implying that property is not a divine right, and
that property is not a natural right. However, I
do not believe that existing property is a social
right, because society has never democratically
established the right of property, nor has society
ever democratically instituted the rules of
property.
The anarchist, Mikhail Bakunin, wrote that private
property is "at once the consequence and the basis
of the state". Get rid of private property, and
you get rid of the state; get rid of the state,
and you get rid of private property. If Bakunin
was correct in saying that the state created and
constituted private property, then Madison was
wrong in saying that private property is a right
derived from society.
Michael Price wrote:
> . . . and how can truth not be universal?
Ron Allen answers:
Has there ever been an unchallenged universal
truth?
Ron Allen answers:
> I'm sure that I have my own private myths; these
> are like a cure. Knowing, as I see it, is
> neither truth nor fiction; knowing is beyond
> truth and fiction.
> Knowing is loss. This is perhaps why we all too
> often smother freedom with dogma. Knowing is
> also loving. Those who are consumed by fear and
> by hate are so pompous, so defensive, and so
> self-righteous that they can search a text, not
> for its truth-content, but only for its errors
> and mistakes. They will not come to a balanced
> estimate of what they read or hear. Dogmatics
> cannot rightly read, or truly hear, because they
> are consumed by a fear of error and of evil.
> Dogmatics have no curiosity to explore. They
> have no memory, and no hope. All they have is a
> kind of learned ignorance. And it is this
> received dogmatism that often makes them so
> aggressive, and so defensive.
> Your truth just as much a volitional creation as
> is my truth.
Michael Price wrote:
> No it isn't. My truth is based on facts and
> logical deduction far more than yours is. You
> simply believe and then ignore anything that
> disputes your belief backing them up with
> baseless assertions as above.
Ron Allen answers:
The art of reading well is not an art you have
cultivated. Seeing how you read what I write,
it's understandable that you are no better at
reading the facts as they exist.
You are not a common-sense reader, and you're
likely not a common-sense observer of facts.
If you cannot come up with a common-sense
reading of what people write, because you cannot
tolerate opinions that differ from your opinions,
then how are we to believe that you can manage to
come up with a common-sense observation of the
facts?
No matter how logical your deductions may be, it
is the facts which you accept and believe, and the
facts which you deny and doubt that can totally
debase even your best logic, and wholly subvert
all of your best deductions.
Ron Allen wrote:
> But, if it be true that character is fate, then
> it is also true that personality is our destiny,
> and individuality is our future. You are all
> too willing to display your character in these
> internet discussions, to show off your
> temperament in these newsgroup debates. I get
> e-mails from readers, who refuse to engage in
> debate, because of all the rudeness, who tell me
> that they enjoy what I write. One e-mail spoke
> of my compositions as having re-kindled their
> hope.
Michael Price wrote:
> Anyone who sees hope in your emails is seriously
> deluded.
Ron Allen answers:
I'm not convinced that you are the best judge of
who is, or who is not, deluded.
Ron Allen wrote:
> Do you get such e-mails from well-wishers?
Michael Price wrote:
> No, nor do I seek them.
Ron Allen answers:
It's not like I sent an e-mail asking for e-mails.
Ron Allen wrote:
> There are a number of e-mails that express
> strong disagreement with my opinions, but they
> also take the time to express a courteous
> disagreement.
Michael Price wrote:
> So did I at first my patience is not
> inexhaustable.
Ron Allen answers:
Patience is a virtue, Michael. Patience is the
path to knowledge. Patience is a way of knowing.
If you have given patience up, then you have also
abandoned the path to knowledge, you have forsaken
the one and only way of knowing.
Ron Allen wrote:
> They do not call me a liar, or a moron. What I
> am often praised for is my "heroic persistence".
Michael Price wrote:
> What is heroic about continuing to offer the
> same lies after they have been proven false?
> They write no sagas for fools, Ron.
Ron Allen answers:
I suppose the heroism I'm often praised for is my
ability to take your insults like a gentleman and
continue to make a case for the cause I believe in
as best I can manage, given my limited knowledge,
and my limiting democratic principles.
Ron Allen wrote:
> How can I care what you write against me as a
> person, and not just against my opinions as a
> philosophy, when there are such kind and
> generous people out there, reading what we
> write, and telling me they really enjoy reading
> what I write. I've even been given some
> inverted compliments. One e-mail called me a
> "sublime hypocrite". I've been told that what I
> write is "both brilliant and specific".
Michael Price wrote:
> You must be joking, you are the least specific
> of any poster I've ever debated. I have never
> recieved any information I would call specific
> on your system despite continual requests.
Ron Allen answers:
You want more details about a democratic society
than I can give. What I write is all I can say,
all I need to say, about democracy.
You want me to write more than I write, even while
you fail so ineptly, so abysmally in your readings
of what little I do write?
Ron Allen wrote:
> But, I've also been told that my compositions
> are "curiously elliptical", which from the
> content of the e-mail I took to mean that so
> much that is important is left out of what I
> write.
Michael Price wrote:
> Yeah, I said something very similar.
Ron Allen answers:
There is only so much that an individual can say
in advocating a social-democracy. Besides, I am
convinced that, if one takes a democratic stand,
it is very easy for one to make up some practical
suggestions about how to go about doing democracy
in the devilish details. I do not have to know or
say everything in order for me to be a modestly
satisfactory advocate for democracy. There are
readers of what I write who can connect the dots
for themselves and by themselves, and still come
up with an admirably fine practice of democratic
principles.
Ron Allen wrote:
> I can only reply to this by saying that what I
> write cannot possibly be the whole truth, or
> even the only truth.
> But, again, I digress. Let me conclude this
> post with one last point: Michael, you're an
> inadequate critic.
Michael Price wrote:
> Then why can't you refute me?
Ron Allen answers:
I'm in this newsgroup discussion as an advocate
of my opinions, not as an obstinate and insulting
attacker of your opinions.
It is not necessary for me to refute your beliefs.
It is necessary that those who believe in, and who
desire democracy and liberty set forth their case
as best they can, without fear of being called a
fool or a liar.
Democracy's flaw is optimism. Liberty's flaw is
optimism. If you hate democracy, then you also
hate liberty. If you hate liberty, then you also
hate democracy.
If people take the time to cultivate and develop,
to acquire and improve a critical consciousness,
then that will be enough for me, that is enough to
make me happy, that is enough to make democracy
and freedom more possible and more proximate.
Michael Price wrote:
> Why can't you describe how your system would
> avoid the lethal problems I describe it
> encountering?
Ron Allen answers:
If I could take your descriptive pessimism as
seriously as you do, then I would very likely
feel a motivation to deal with your objections.
But, your niggling reservations are just too
frivolous to take seriously enough to demand
careful thought. Why should I give a careful
consideration of your objections, when you give
so many careless constructions of my opinions?
<><><><><><><><>
"Maturity is crying alone."
-- Anonymous
- Next message: Igor: "Re: Bush busts Social Security with massive deficits"
- Previous message: D.F. Manno: "Re: Bush busts Social Security with massive deficits"
- Maybe in reply to: Ron Allen: "Re: Don't Forget Mises -- and Dump the Third Way!"
- Next in thread: michael price: "Re: Don't Forget Mises -- and Dump the Third Way!"
- Reply: michael price: "Re: Don't Forget Mises -- and Dump the Third Way!"
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ]
Relevant Pages
|
