How do you decide what’s possible, or how far you can be pushed?

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Quantum science teaches us that at the Planck level i.e. the smallest level, there is only potential – pure abstractness. Whether this ‘universal field’ is consciousness or information or something else, this knowledge suggests that all things imaginable are possible, and some think actual. But is that helpful when we’re thinking about our own actions?

I’ve often talked about balance on this blog. And perhaps no one can determine their own optimal balance, in terms of how far they can be pushed, and what they’re capable of, other than themselves. I’m training to do a marathon at the moment, and that requires me to make many decisions about when to rest and when to push myself. But how should I make such decisions? Stop if I’m ever in pain? If we all did that nobody would do anything. But of course there does come a point when I must stop.

Have we got the potential to do anything, as information seems to in quantum physics? Are we in fact in thousands of different places at once, in some places giving up, and in others pushing ourselves on? Or is the quantum world so divorced from our ‘big’ reality, that we can only use our finite amount of knowledge, the opportunities we’re presented with and our finite ability to persevere through pain until we just have to give in? How do you make such decisions?

Is Capitalism equivalent to theft?

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Imagine that in an apocalypse scenario where this is possible, you walk into the woods to make your life anew. You spend weeks finding the right spot, and then months of hard work building a house. Towards the end of your labours a rather seedy looking man with a rifle comes and watches you work. You toil day and night while this person watches on, sat on a nearby log and occasionally using his rifle to shoot deer. Eventually you finish, and you look back on your work with a smile, when all of a sudden you hear the cocking action of a rifle.
“Thanks. Now be on your way” says the seedy looking man.
To Locke, such an an action is inherently wrong; it goes against all notions of natural justice, since people should own the product of their labour.

Using exactly the same argument Marx later said that Capitalism is theft, since under this system you don’t own the product of your labour. He wrote for example about a political debate that was happening at the time. Reformers argued to restrict the number of working hours in the day, whilst capitalists argued that doing so would restrict the potential for profit. Now to Marx this would be good, since profits are viewed as relating to surplus value. For example if you produce enough in 4 hours to cover the resource and labour costs then all value produced thereafter is surplus. It no longer benefits the worker, only the owner of the capital. And thus it fails the liberal, Lockian test of allowing workers to benefit from the toil of their own labour. Furthermore capitalism inevitably worsens this margin according to Marx i.e. as businesses grow workers become able to produce more in the same time, and yet are still required to work long hours due to competitive forces and the need for profit.

In arguing along such liberal lines, and using capitalism’s own logic to undermine it, does Marx have a point? Is Capitalism theft?

The silent majority

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A couple of years ago I found myself launching a new political party called the Democratic Reform Party. And although at the start there was no single idea on which it was founded (we stood strongly against the principle of single issue parties), the central principle on which the party came to argue was the existence of an unrealised cognitive surplus, which democratic reforms could redress through the employment of new technologies in order to make the creative generation of new ideas a key pillar of a new and revised democracy.

In 2010 and 2011 I spoke to thousands of people, often over the Internet, and also campaigning in cities like London, Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham and Worcester. Practically, the experience taught me a great deal. And it also reinforced a lot of what most people only guess. One of those things is the existence of a silent majority. The people most willing to talk and work for change are neither the educated, nor those who’re bristling with ideas. I’ll warn you now, for a democrat this may sound terribly elitist. But those most intellectually able to affect real change are most often those who refuse to act, due to a lack of time, and also a lack of confidence. Those who push most, talk most, and politically speaking shout the loudest, are all too often the principled, but uneducated. The calls you hear from these people, often used to berate all politicians as if they were another species, are in fact so often quotations of what politicians have in the past coined up that it makes you cringe. And they almost always shout about it being “common sense”, which of course really means that they simply don’t know the counter-argument, and have decided to get angry about it rather than open a book. Now I am of course hugely generalizing here. Speaking to thousands in the greater scheme of things is merely a drop in the ocean. And then you have my subjective take on the whole experience to boot. But my point is this: if in addressing so many people I ended up talking to an oversized minority (from day to day life I’m sure you know that the type to take any opportunity to rant about political, economic and philosophical issues they don’t understand is not the majority) then is the majority too quiet? Will the majority ever speak up, or is it always the minorities doing the talking? And what does this mean for democracy? Is it something we could change? Is it even something we would want to change?

As you can probably guess, my take is that if creativity, the generation of ideas, discussion and debate formed a central role in the state then we would be effectively channeling the input of this outspoken minority, and giving a chance to the majority that they might use more occasionally. What’s your take?

Where should sovereignty lie?

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The word sovereignty basically means power and/or authority. It’s etymology is rooted in a variety of sources, and hence it gives a variety of opportunities for interpretation. Religious men, together with absolutists, have often throughout history said that the ultimate source of sovereignty can only be the ultimately virtuous and powerful i.e. God. Hobbes implied that power lies where it must. Indeed one of the major criticisms of Hobbes, coming from Locke, Rousseau and Mill, was that his work implied we must give up all rights of judgement to the sovereign power. In other words for Hobbes sovereignty was about power, plain and simple. If you lost it then there was a ground for revolution, but not before. For Locke sovereignty was vested in the people, as many people would say it should be today. And for Rousseau it lay not with the people themselves but rather the general will of the people. For the latter one could point to the written constitution as a modern example of that will being written down and made available for interpretation by specialists. Although his argument was also claimed by many of the twentieth century fascists.

Where do you think sovereignty should lie in a political entity? Who or what should hold the right to be the legitimate source of authority for all political decisions?

How can we help others?

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Some people believe our ability to help is boundless. Such people think we can set our sights on helping the collective, where more individually minded people (often the majority) say that if we all help just the few in our inner circle everything will be ok.

Suppose that you buy the former argument; is it possible for just any of us to help the many? How should one do it?

Can life be valued?

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It’s difficult to choose between 2 projects if one saves lives and the other does not. Can/should you quantify such things? Can/should a value be placed on life? And if so can/should further values be attributed to preventing injuries?

And if you want to take it even further still then imagine this scenario: you’re forced to choose only 5 countries that will survive a terrible apocalypse. Would you place equal value on each life and choose the most populous countries? Or would you reason otherwise? Might you for example reason that if you’re thinking about the living then it’s best to save the 5 happiest countries, so that the future is a better world? Would love to hear your thoughts.

Does truth matter?

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The way a person thinks says a lot about someone. And yet there are a great deal of commonalities between us all in this. We think about outcomes. If someone asks you what they should do my bet is that you probably reply with a question designed to seek their objectives. This is pragmatism in the style of philosophers such as Dewey. But for most of history we thought quite differently. For instance the ancient Greeks and middle ages thinkers would ask which course of action best reflects or discovers the truth. If this was deemed logical for most of human history does it still have logic today? Should truth be a constant aim? Or should we always be pragmatic?

Is man fallen (in sin)?

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St Augustin said that man was born into sin and incapable of saving ourselves I.e going from the city of man to the city of god without being lifted there by God. Sounds quite radical no the face of it. But there was a lot of reason in his argument. In today’s language one would probably say that man is selfish because we try to make the world in our image. We view things subjectively, not objectively. And we are not capable of standing behind rawl’s veil of ignorance. Put in such a modern way would you be inclined to agree or disagree with Augustin’s assessment?

Are the forms so very important?

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Have you ever heard of a tyrant who wasn’t also an idealist? From Caesar to Lenin a great many have literally stepped over corpses in order to destroy democratic forms of government and seize power as dictator. Yet what is often most scary to sworn democrats is that many of these peoples’ intentions match our own. Take Caesar for example. By today’s standards he was a barbarous, genocidal maniac. And yet if it were not for he the land reforms would not have passed. That famous success story of the Empire; that not only Italians could gain in power and become Senators or more, would never have come to pass. Indeed it is quite likely that without Caesar inequality would have continued to grow, until it so threatened security that it brought down the Republic.

Thus my question is this: just as with businesses we are more concerned with what they sell than matters of corporate governance, should we not be more concerned with the left/right disputes than with our system of government? Would you rather live in a democracy where the government never did as you saw fit? Or would you rather live in a dictatorship where you agreed with every action taken?

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