Debt Rattle September 8 2023

[D Benton Smith]

The only way people are ever going to be treated well all the time is if there are whole bunches of other people around them whose goal in life and main activity consists of treating other persons well. If people treat people well then oneself is going to be one of those recipients. Otherwise (like when there are NOT enough of such well intentioned people all around), then there will instead be more people around who more or less tend to treat others selfishly (i.e. badly) so that’s the way they can be expected to treat YOU.

So there’s the choice. To live life as though others were “worth” as much as we are (and therefore adjust one’s behave accordingly. . . that is, treat people at east as well as we would treat ourselves under similar circumstances) OR to act as though other people were worth less than we are (that is to say, deal with them selfishly because we are “better” than them in some arcane way and therefore deserve more than they do.)

So which way should someone go? Should people serve the interests of others as well as they serve themselves or should they serve others less well? If the choice is to serve and interact benevolently then one should use whatever gifts they have (brains, brawn or good looks) to go out and do that, and right now, because there is a severe shortage of such behavior at the moment. Furthermore, if that’s what you want to do (that is, to care for the people around you so that they too care for the people around them . . . which would include YOU as beneficiary, too, of course) then it seems like that is the only sensible thing to do.

On the other hand, if someone chooses to unduly gratify their own selfish desires at the unwilling expense (or unknowing expense) of others, then they should not be surprised at where it lands them. I strongly advise against such a self centered strategy because it goes nowhere good and causes unbearable personal loss on the way there. To BOTH parties.

The plain fact is that people use their gifts. And yes, our innate conscious awareness and volition are pure gifts. We did not make these basic capabilities and as human beings we do not know how we came to have them. At birth, we awakened with the gifts already in place, and just took them for granted through no conscious effort or action of our own, and proceeded to use them to accomplish our goals, or at least try.

Note that when people use their gifts of awareness and volition to treat others as well as they wish to be treated themselves, they thereby build a culture and society in which treating people well is simply what most people do all day long.

But those who use their gifts of various abilities ( yes, GIFTS) such as abstract reasoning or physical advantage to serve only themselves regardless of loss and harmful consequences to others, they build the opposite. If not stopped or persuaded to change their low down ways their actions would build a veritable HELL in which everyone would spend all or most of their time treating other people badly. Very badly indeed, judging from current conditions. Very badly, and very indeed, all of the time.

I aim the above described cautionary accusation at those who use their intellectual prowess (such as it is) to “put one over” on their less devious or cognitively inclined brethren. It requires no great skill, and certainly implies no superiority (quite the opposite, actually). Good people tend to be easy prey for such sharpsters, because good people aren’t selfishly trying to do bad things to other people all the time in order to serve themselves at the of others’ expense. It doesn’t typically occur to good people to spend a lot of their precious time thinking like criminals so as to avoid criminals’ scams. They’re too busy working at doing the right thing.

Nevertheless, and despite the grisly and predictable consequences we are actually encouraged and validated and rewarded (even falsely “admired”) for being bad and (frankly) stupid.

We are diligently trained from birth (at great effort and expense) by our covert masters to venerate money, amass wealth, gain power, promulgate lies, impose our will on those who would prefer that we not, and to basically use our gifts to benefit ourselves at great cost to the victims that we are stealing from.

Those who seek to instill those insane values in us as being desirable or honorable traits are the same ones who are themselves leveraging those literally Satanic values to strip us of every vestige of human decency, by tricking us into behaving like they do and even admiring the twisted evil that drives their behavior. How absolutely insane.

[Veracious Poet]

Those who seek to instill those insane values in us as being desirable or honorable traits are the same ones who are themselves leveraging those literally Satanic values to strip us of every vestige of human decency, by tricking us into behaving like they do and even admiring the twisted evil that drives their behavior.

How absolutely insane.

[zerosum]

Great job
Science fiction, bull shit, Mis information, speculation, is a great place to hide the truth and find security.
(Needle in a haystack)

[aspnaz]

DBS said

The only way people are ever going to be treated well all the time is if there are whole bunches of other people around them whose goal in life and main activity consists of treating other persons well.

I do not understand your thinking. We all know that people only behave well when there are checks on their behaviour, feedback that benefits them behave better. You may claim to be trying to be nice to everybody, but we can see from human history that your self evaluation is probably bullshit as all people seem to be able to behave badly when they have an incentive to do so.

For example, the Catholic nations of the world are very corrupt, all of them, from Italy to Brazil to Venezuela. Catholicism breeds corruption, I will leave you to look into Cathlicism and work out why. These people probably have a very similar self evaluation to yourself, but they behave differently. In fact many of them turn a blind eye to the gay pedophiles in their midst, the reason being the social pressure within the priesthood to keep quiet.

Humans have evolved in small communities, their behaviour is guided by the social pressures in those communities and, should the person step too far out of line, they will be ejected from the community. But, we are now living in a world where the west has shunned community, most people do not know their neighbours and most people do not bump into people they know on the street. Without being part of a community, there is no feedback, so you are free to behave as you wish … mostly badly.

Biden operates in his community of Democrat oligarchs, he gets feedback from his peers and he behaves in a way that is considered acceptable to his peers. No, they are not the same people that we mix with, but Biden is no more immune from social pressure than anyone else. The same applies to all the figureheads that we see in positions of power, they are mixing in a social circle that approves of their behaviour and will support what they do.

The same applies to the Trump haters, the vaccine proponents, the mask fanatics.

Improving the behaviour of people is easy; give them an incentive to behave well. It is the ONLY way that people can be persuaded to behave well, it is also the way that people can be persuaded to behave badly, all this talk of “wanting to be nice to people” is rubbish, it is always about incentives. If you live in a village where your bad behaviour will go round the community and your fellow citizens will shun you, where your neighbours and the shop owners and other will consider you to be “that asshole”, then you have an incentive to behave well.

[D Benton Smith]

@aspnaz

I do not understand your thinking. We all know that people only behave well when there are checks on their behavior, feedback that benefits them behave better. You may claim to be trying to be nice to everybody, but we can see from human history that your self evaluation is probably bullshit as all people seem to be able to behave badly when they have an incentive to do so.”

I think that the reason that you don’t understand my thinking is revealed in what you wrote immediately thereafter ( the remainder of the paragraph after the sentence “We all know that people only behave well when there are checks on their behavior, feedback that benefits them [to] behave better.”

Not everyone knows the datum that you assert that they know. In fact, a sizable proportion, and me among them, instinctually know at birth (and thereafter until induced to think otherwise) that there is an important and fundamental difference between good and bad, also between truth and falsity, and they strongly prefer good, and truth, and fairness in the matter of determining which is which.

It makes good sense that (barring congenital malfunction of the organism) all people have this innate capacity for rational thought, because those are the skills which are necessary to survival in a world that automatically rewards error with failure. Badness is an error. Falsity is an error. Injustice (unfairness) is an error. These are fundamentals precepts necessary to long range success, which are equally true to both of the paradigms commonly referred to as either materialism or spirituality, because truth and fairness simply WORK BETTER (ultimately) than lies and injustice.

In other words, it is not actually true that, “. . . people only behave well when there are checks on their behavior, feedback that benefits them [to] behave better.” They behave well because that is their most basic nature, and behave badly because there are horrible consequences to violating ones basic nature for any reason. One of those horrible consequences is degradation of the ability to think rationally, predict inevitable consequences, and tell the truth when they should.

[Veracious Poet]

DBS, you should really learn how to use/B-Quote…

The lack thereof makes your response(s) look quite unreadably suspect, ridiculously so 🙄

But not quite as wrenching as the confirmation bias of the borderline personality you’re responding to, which I won’t even bother with…

[Dr. D]

I grasp both these points of view. They are Mercy, and Justice. DBS says “Mercy” as it makes us feel good and also has good results. However, we’re well aware selfishness exists, and that lacking structural incentives — generally punishments, but also profits — then it’s clear from history the people go astray. Even though, according to DBS argument, maybe they shouldn’t because it makes a terrible world for themselves. Doesn’t matter. We know 100% of the time without the incentives the society will decay and work backward.

Neither bothers me. What if we had a clockwork world with only incentives? It might work, but would be unstable like so many churches. Without the internal compass, the Deacon is boffing the babysitter, no one believes, cares, or does anything about it. That is, they game the system because WHO IS SETTING UP THE SYSTEM? WHO sets these “incentives”? Well, a perfectly moral angel without fault, as Marx said. Lacking that, it’s hell instead.

So this all clockwork world is unstable and will immediately be gamed and corrupted even without outside help, which we have plenty of, believe me. No one would re-connect it. With the internal drive they both care about the corruption and in extremity attempt to re-establish it, as we are now. They also know WHAT to re-establish, since it comes from inside them.

The point of this and knowing it is hardly a waste of time. However, none of us are going to do much about it as they are root function of human nature, beyond even Socialists’ ability to advance or repress.

[Dr. D]

Hell is the absence of free will. Hmmm. Maybe. The Christian version of hell, which does not appear to be the correct one, is that although you can get into trouble, into purgatory, you can actually end up in a prison without appeal. Then your choices are limited indeed. I actually doubt this and in the spirit world you can, in theory, more or less always call on God and return as a function of your life and will, although most won’t as they are now darkened beyond power of will, as say far-gone drug users are. So: caution.

I was thinking instead about heaven, not hell, where angels cry “Holy Holy Holy” and people there only have harps and sing praises. Wow. How boring. No wonder nobody wants to go. But that’s also not free will, is it? They all HAVE to do it. That’s why Azaziel took the jump.

So wait: there’s no Free will in Heaven, AND no free will in hell? How does that work?

This is basically what I said yesterday, so I’ll leave it to you to figure.

[zerosum]

Good job of hiding the truth/free will/motivators.
Next step.
Try applying your argument/opinion to other social structures that exists among all other life forms.

[D Benton Smith]

Shucks! Just when yesterday’s conversation was starting to get really interesting the clock struck midnight and I turned back into a pumpkin (or something) and had to stop thinking and start sleeping. Several good points had been raised, however, so before today gets rolling in a different (yet oft-revisited) direction there were a few points I wanted to reply to.

But first a note for @VeraciousPoet.

DBS, you should really learn how to use/B-Quote…
The lack thereof makes your response(s) look quite unreadably suspect, ridiculously so .
But not quite as wrenching as the confirmation bias of the borderline personality you’re responding to, which I won’t even bother with…”

What you say is true to a certain extent, but presents no solution to my problem (or to yours either, for that matter) because I have already learned how to use the block quote function quite adequately, just as I have learned and honed my ability to spell and express myself through the written word. Unfortunately I continue to occasionally fail on both accounts. Too often, you might say. Too bad, I reply. In other words, cut me some slack. We’re mostly old geezers around here. If you will forgive me a few typos and procedural errors I will attempt to forgive your grumpy nit-picking. Incidentally, my ideas might be “ridiculous”, but not my keyboarding. My typing and computer skills are simply pathetic . . . and virtually guaranteed no matter how hard I continue to attempt better. It’s the thought that counts.

The case reminds me of one particular reader of a small weekly news mag I published back in the day (in a remote area that lacked easy access to any form of news other than face to face gossip, even telephones.) Most of my fans and critics read the rag for content and opinions, but not Barbara. She read it for grammar and punctuation. Every week on the day after publication, Barbara would drop me a brief note containing a polite list of every single mistake. I never was much of a geek or typist, but she was one hell of a tenacious (and accurate) proof-reader.

In regard to confirmation bias and the alleged borderline personality disorder of my worthy antagonist @aspnaz I subscribe to a different (and I would say much more productive) approach than yours. Rather than write him off or ignore his comments altogether I respectfully (most of the time, unless I’m feeling frisky) and carefully read and consider everything he has to say. When he’s wrong I am able to refute his errors and strengthen the cause of rightiousness, and when he’s right I’m able to correct my own, and thereby ascend even closer to sublime perfection. He’s an intelligent guy, which both makes his criticism worth reading AND explains why he is so frequently mistaken. He falls in love with his own abstract reasoning skills and thus fails to notice that his assumptions and/or obtained information are false and have led him astray.

For example, his assumption (based on the widely observed and awful manifestations of human folly and crime), that people are obviously irremediably flawed and must therefore either be corrected by outside forces or given up on as a lost cause. That’s simply wrong. People can NOT be corrected by outside forces, and there is no point in considering them a lost cause because the human condition (our own included) is the ONLY cause that we are (or even can be) aware of. In other words, we are each one of us STUCK with the inescapable and irrefutable fact that the only awareness we can ever have is the awareness that we have. We can bump it up or dumb it down but it’s the only game in town.

As for how that happens (awareness and right behavior improved by going “up”, or awareness and right behavior degraded by going “down”) that is a very important thing to know. Basically we do it to ourselves, frequently with assistance or impedence from others. We want to HAVE an experience (for example a pleasant sensation of some kind) but we are aware that to DO that will inevitably and invariable result in some consequence that we DON’T want (for example shame or loss.) We’re not so stupid (yet) as to not know about the invariability or inevitability of the consequence of the action which will yield that thing we want to have.

Our solution? Why we simply NOT KNOW (in whole or in part) what those “wages of sin” are going to be. Maybe we say to ourselves that the consequences won’t be that bad, or that we’ll do it “just this once” and then reform on the morrow, or even the laughably stupid idea that we can actually get away with it and have NO consequences. I have even gone so far as to say to myself that I’m just a bad person and DESERVE the bad consequences that will eventually come back to bite my ass. Nevertheless, the fact remains that ALL causes have effects, and that the effects are predictable and known.

But we really do WANT to have whatever it is we want to have and so we avert our awareness and just do it anyway. In other words, we deliberately lower our own awareness by “not knowing” what we damned well knew in the first place. Congratulations. One has just lowered their own awareness.

My next self-inflicted mistake will be a lot easier now that I’m stupider.

The same process can be done in the upward direction, but can be exceedingly painful because it involves taking responsibility for being the cause of the now regretted consequence.

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