Archive for the ‘philosophy’ Category
The myth of selfishness: Part 3 – A new gift economy
If society is in tune with human proclivities it works better, because people enjoy what they do. You only have to look at small boys playing “hunting”, or notice the difference between the incentives necessary to get people to sit in an office shuffling papers compared with those required to get people to dance and [...]
The myth of selfishness: Part 2 – The Rise of Capitalism
Much of this has a European focus, and I apologise for that, especially because colonialism and its devastating effect on the world are consequently not given proper attention. The focus of the article is narrow and designed as a contrast to the situation described in Part 1 – Ancient Economics. By the way, I’m no [...]
The myth of selfishness: Part 1 Ancient Economics
This article is the first in a series. I’m leading up to something and it takes quite a long time to get there, but it’s generally about my idea that people are far less self-interested than it appears.
NB:
In the following I have used the term “traditional culture” to refer to the ancient and complex social [...]
The Tao te ching
From Trace elements:
Our culture is based on control, codification, and the application of force to achieve the ends we desire. We live in a world composed of resources and subject to analysis, and we’ve reached a point where the problems inherent in this approach are becoming clear, from global warming to the greed which allows [...]
Living the decaf life…
Following a post by Robin Warner, a rant on decaf.
You see, I have a guiding principle which steers me away from decaf. It’s based on the idea that fun is temporary – nothing lasts forever and you can have too much of a good thing. So when you enjoy something, really enjoy it. Don’t be [...]
w00t!
Everywhere that desire throws off the heavy armor of lack and expresses its own joyful plenitude, it quickly finds itself captured as an image and offered back to itself as representation. Thus the strategy for any desire that would arm itself with its own self-unfolding is to create for itself a vector outside of commodification, [...]
Principles of freedom
Positive and negative freedom
Suppose a person is on their way to an appointment, and they reach an intersection where they can go left or right. There are several possible reasons why they might choose to go one way or the other, and these reasons relate to the person’s freedom:
If the road is open and the [...]
Bodhichitta
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.
 – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
When I was about six years old I received the essential bodhichitta teaching from an old woman sitting in the sun. I was walking by her house one day feeling lonely, unloved, and [...]
Submission to the Tasmanian Human Rights Project
What follows is my submission to the Colin Brown Human Rights Project. This is a community consultation process carried out by the Law Reform Institute of Tasmania, at the behest of the Tasmanian State Government. The project is described here in more detail. It will culminate in a recommendation to Parliament for human rights legislation.
Introduction: [...]
This is what you shall do
This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing [...]
Rootlessness
A touching scene from a television documentary this evening: a family celebrates orthodox Easter in procession with candles. They stop at intervals, shielding the candles from wind, as the priest intones the ritual. The child’s face shows boredom but he’s comfortable in the traditional environment – the bosom of a hundred generations of his family.
It [...]
Keep off the grass
Australia is probably typical of the English speaking west in that it’s citizens are being buried in an avalanche of red tape. The litigious society meets the risk-averse society and the answer seems to be bureaucracy.
We have occupational health and safety (OH&S); a whole raft of accounting related to the goods and services tax (GST) [...]
At the crossroads
The ethics of altruism
The Ethics of Selfishness was always intended as an introduction to this article, which broadly speaking deals with altruism. I wanted to outline a proposal for a system of public ethics which was sufficient in scope to provide a useful framework for legislation of society, business, and government – even between nations – but at [...]
The destroyer of worlds
Sixty one years ago the human race left behind the unconscious cruelty of children to demonstrate a studied and mature capacity for evil. Seventy five thousand lives were snuffed out in an instant, and as many again died more slowly and horribly over the years. This was the penultimate act in a grinding tragedy [...]
The will to power
This is intended as a sort of postscript to The ethics of selfishness.
Most people are primarily motivated by self interest, but it’s worth considering what form this takes. The simplest self interest is to gain pleasure and avoid pain; food, sex, shelter, and safety. These are motivations crafted by evolution, and they include the satisfactions [...]
The ethics of selfishness
If a person puts their own self-interest above all other considerations, they are said to be an egoist. Someone who claims that doing what is in their self interest is morally right is an ethical egoist, and someone who claims that doing so is rational is a rational egoist. In a trivial sense, any person [...]
Edges are fun
There’s a DJ who played at some of our parties who had an album called Edges R Fun. I asked him why he’d called it that, and his reponse was to ask me what I thought. Which launched me into this (oversimplified) explanation:
Edges are very interesting, because all life happens at an edge. If you [...]
Swords into Ploughshares
I met Ciaron O’Reilly six years ago, at a demonstration outside the World Economic Forum in Melbourne. He struck me as committed, sensible, passionate. I was moved by the sacrifice of the Ploughshares movement and although I’m not a Christian I have great respect for people who express the best elements of their faith in [...]
Politics mysticism and manipulation
I present this with a certain amount of trepidation, although it’s a topic in which I’ve had an interest for a number of years. If you think, reading it, that it’s unduly contentious, or that I’m being inflammatory, then please bear with me and try to understand my point before taking me to task on [...]
