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The Political Thread

Started by The Legendary Shark, 09 April, 2010, 03:59:03 PM

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Greg M.

Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 07 October, 2018, 10:16:36 AM
Lawfully.

Am I right in interpreting your frequent capitalisation of this and related words to refer to a belief in some kind of 'law' that exists independently of legislation?

The Legendary Shark

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IndigoPrime

So in other words, that's not actually 'law'. It's a society where 100 per cent of the people act for then common good, all of the time. Because if anyone doesn't, under its own rules no-one can intervene or do anything because everyone's ultimate right is to do whatever they want, without fear of impact from anyone else.

Quote from: TordelBack on 07 October, 2018, 10:12:27 AMIn voting on the same side as the government in the abortion referendum,  weren't we also allowing them to claim our support for their health and housing policies?
My take on that would be no, or at least probably no. With a referendum, you should be voting in favour (or not) of a specific piece of legislation. You therefore take partial responsibility for that legislation alone. Brexit is a good example of a totally warped take on this. Because there was no legislation, the government aligns whatever it wants on to the will of the people. It's an excellent example of how such things can be subverted in the worst possible manner.

JayzusB.Christ

Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 07 October, 2018, 10:16:36 AM

As a wise man often quotes, "Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest." Then the illusory power, invented by the priests and perfected by the kings, will finally be gone and we will be free. I always loved that quote - who said it originally?

Jean Meslier, an oddly atheistic and materialist Catholic priest, no less.  Rehashed a bit by Denis Diderot, the French philosopher who wrote an encyclopedia and who would later discover he was merely a military-grade cyborg with the synthetic memories of his original self.
"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest"

The Legendary Shark


IP, you will never get 100% of the people acting for the common good 100% of the time. That doesn't even happen now. Society is dynamic and adaptable and unpredictable. The best that can be hoped for is a majority. These days, the majority believes in statism - but that's not to say it always will.

There are other ways to apply laws and organise courts, other ways to distribute wealth and tend economies, other ways to provide services and essentials - ways that don't involve voluntary servitude to politicians and their masters.

This does not preclude the existence of law, which is essential in any society. In a free society the law would be free; freely known, freely available, easily understood and applied equally.

We all have an innate understanding of right and wrong, instincts that allow us to live as social animals, this is our basic Law upon which all lesser laws are built. This instinct should be explored - it's served us for hundreds of thousands of years so there must be something in it.

That's not the side of us being encouraged, though. We're being encouraged to do as we're told and rely on the decisions of others. To not blame ourselves when things turn to shit because, hey, I voted for the other guy. To believe that participating in a popularity contest once every four or five years discharges all one's responsibilities?

No, we need, in my view, a society where everybody knows the Law and knows how to use it. The only way for nobody to be above it is for everybody to have it.

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The Legendary Shark

Heh, thanks, JBC - he sounds like a fascinating character.

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Greg M.

Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 07 October, 2018, 11:28:18 AM
We all have an innate understanding of right and wrong, instincts that allow us to live as social animals, this is our basic Law upon which all lesser laws are built.

I'm not convinced of the idea of innate morality – it doesn't really marry up with my own perception of the human condition - though I gather there's been some psychological research that supports the idea.

sheridan

Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 07 October, 2018, 11:28:18 AM
We all have an innate understanding of right and wrong, instincts that allow us to live as social animals, this is our basic Law upon which all lesser laws are built. This instinct should be explored - it's served us for hundreds of thousands of years so there must be something in it.


As a point of order, I'd say ten thousand years - I'm particularly interested in prehistory and 'pre-ancient history' (if you count ancient history as Greco-Roman) so if you're aware of any evidence of human law and society from 20,000 years or earlier I'd love to hear about it.

sheridan

Quote from: sheridan on 07 October, 2018, 12:00:32 PM
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 07 October, 2018, 11:28:18 AM
We all have an innate understanding of right and wrong, instincts that allow us to live as social animals, this is our basic Law upon which all lesser laws are built. This instinct should be explored - it's served us for hundreds of thousands of years so there must be something in it.


As a point of order, I'd say ten thousand years - I'm particularly interested in prehistory and 'pre-ancient history' (if you count ancient history as Greco-Roman) so if you're aware of any evidence of human law and society from 20,000 years or earlier I'd love to hear about it.

p.s. I think I overdosed on greek and roman in my childhood - difficlut to do otherwise in the western world if you're interested in history - so my pre-ancient history would be the pre-roman celts in the british isles, egypt, pre-Alexander in the places touched by that particular bit of world-building (yes, I know Alexander was macedonian).

TordelBack

#14604
Quote from: IndigoPrime on 07 October, 2018, 10:45:29 AM
So in other words, that's not actually 'law'. It's a society where 100 per cent of the people act for then common good, all of the time. Because if anyone doesn't, under its own rules no-one can intervene or do anything because everyone's ultimate right is to do whatever they want, without fear of impact from anyone else.

Quote from: TordelBack on 07 October, 2018, 10:12:27 AMIn voting on the same side as the government in the abortion referendum,  weren't we also allowing them to claim our support for their health and housing policies?
My take on that would be no, or at least probably no. .

The picture I included was our centre-right (indirectly elected) Taoiseach and the Minister for an imploding Health Service taking centre stage at the victory celebration for the Abortion referendum, to the annoyance of many of the core campaigners (and adulation of others). So they definitely did appropriate the result as an endorsement of their personal and political brands.

That wouldn't stop me voting for a minute,  I have never missed a single vote since I was able to do so,  and always drag the kids to the polling station with me to normalise the process for them as sonething you just do,   but you can see how even a plebiscite requested by a People's Assembly can support an existing political framework.   Sharky's views are not mine, but I can see how voluntary participation is a form of consent.

The Legendary Shark


Sheridan, I'm talking about innate law, not written law - I guess I'm talking about behaviour. Just like any species we have our own core behaviours and from these stem all our modern laws. Before our species could read or write, or even speak, our social instincts helped us to survive and thrive. These instincts run deep and can, as any advertising company knows, be manipulated with relative ease.

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IndigoPrime

Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 07 October, 2018, 11:28:18 AMIP, you will never get 100% of the people acting for the common good 100% of the time.
But without that, and with a society where no-one is compelled to adhere to the common good, and where there's no element of compulsion, what happens when someone murders someone, or steals from someone?

QuoteThis does not preclude the existence of law, which is essential in any society. In a free society the law would be free; freely known, freely available, easily understood and applied equally.
Again, how? I honestly don't get how this can work, because you will always be beholden to some kind of law as decided on by people. How is your future ultimately any different from what we have now, bar a level of benevolence from those setting the rules? (Our law is freely known. It's just that you require a lifetime to understand it, because it's complex, because it covers everything that it needs to – although sometimes not even that, hence it always expanding.)

Application, granted, is a problem, not least equally. But, again, I don't see how that changes in your society, just beyond everyone basically being good people by default. In which case, that's a perfectly nice sentiment, but I'd say we're centuries away from that, and probably going backwards at the moment.

QuoteWe all have an innate understanding of right and wrong, instincts that allow us to live as social animals, this is our basic Law upon which all lesser laws are built. This instinct should be explored
Human history is also based on power – I'm stronger than you, and can kill you and take all your stuff. Women for thousands of years in most societies barely had any power and autonomy. And so on.

QuoteThat's not the side of us being encouraged, though. We're being encouraged to do as we're told and rely on the decisions of others.
Again, you still have this if there is law and courts. And if there isn't, the entire world is the Wild West, where humans have the option to basically cave someone's head in and steal their house.

Quote from: TordelBack on 07 October, 2018, 12:08:41 PMThe picture I included was our centre-right (indirectly elected) Taoiseach and the Minister for an imploding Health Service taking centre stage at the victory celebration for the Abortion referendum, to the annoyance of many of the core campaigners (and adulation of others). So they definitely did appropriate the result as an endorsement of their personal and political brands.
Yes, I can see what you mean there, but that's politicians being arseholes and attempting to claim a result is an endorsement, rather than the result actually being an endorsement. Granted, that's quite a nuanced difference, but I'd hope people would be a able to see the air between them.

Professor Bear

I think Thelema Sharktopia is supposed to work like that Star Trek episode where Wesley stamps on some flowers and gets sentenced to death because equal punishment for every transgression means no-one wants to break any laws, so you end up with a utopia, only in Sharktopia instead of the death penalty, the punishment is that nobody does anything and you're never punished because no-one has the right to tell you you did something wrong, plus there are no laws anyway because no-one has the right to define right or wrong behavior, so technically there's no crime, but we still get a utopia anyway.

JayzusB.Christ

#14608
QuoteWe all have an innate understanding of right and wrong, instincts that allow us to live as social animals, this is our basic Law upon which all lesser laws are built. This instinct should be explored

This is something I find problematic too.  It largely depends on where and when you were born.  Even the deepest thinkers of Roman times were in favour of slavery in one form or another, and there are cultures today who believe wholeheartedly that people who don't believe in their superstitious old books should be killed.

It's easy to be an independent thinker when you're born into a society that values independent thinkers (which, more than most parts of the world, ours does), but not every culture likes that kind of thing.
"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest"

The Legendary Shark

IP - do you refrain from murder because you don't want to murder or because the government tells you not to?

There's more to law than just legislation but all of it, from laws of tradition to case law to theoretical law are all artificial constructs. At best they are attempts to discover and describe the fundamental workings and consequences of Natural Law and at worst tools of control.

This does not render the body of written law thus far accumulated entirely worthless. Case law, especially, is very useful in guiding judges and juries in their decisions if they can see how similar cases were resolved. Even legislation can be useful for providing definitions and recommending standards.

What legislation is really good at is creating criminals whose only offence is disobeying the legislation and also in protecting the state's allies.

I can't see how taking the power to create arbitrary decrees disguised as laws based on often transient political needs and backed up by threat of violence away from a small group of generally questionable individuals can be a bad thing. Just because there isn't a bunch of unqualified sociopaths making the laws, that doesn't mean there'd be no Law. Just because that same group aren't controlling the police, courts and prisons that doesn't mean there'd be no police, courts or prisons.

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