On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 12:20 AM, wrote:
Hello David Arthur Walters, We’re writing to inform you that we have removed [AGAIN] your article [RADICAL LOVE] written to the title Four great ideas in history, because it is off topic . Your article is inserted below. The Helium Content & Community Team
=================================
The article we have deleted:
Hello David Arthur Walters, We’re writing to inform you that we have removed [AGAIN] your article [RADICAL LOVE] written to the title Four great ideas in history, because it is off topic . Your article is inserted below. The Helium Content & Community Team
=================================
The article we have deleted:
On Radical Love, perhaps the greatest idea in history!
by David Arthur Walters
Radicals have generally acquired a bad reputation because they hate evil and some of them would forcefully replace evil as they perceive it with their own version of good. Although there are right-wing radicals, the term is usually associated with leftist radicals, and we shall use the term in that context. Radicals on the left political wing believe the many are oppressed by the few, and that something should be done about it forthwith instead of just talking about change or making changes that accomplish very little except tweaking the status quo.
For instance, when President Barrack Obama, during the latest bust phase of the latest boom of the usual capitalist business cycle, appointed the very same people who had as usual helped cause the latest banking crisis with the usual credit expansion, to manage it as usual, people began to think that the only change he was making, despite his so-called leftist rhetoric, was to capitalize every letter of the usual superficial catchword, i.e. CHANGE. And it appears that he and his party would tweak the health care system as well, instead of forcing through national health care legislation that would bring the United States up to par with other civilized countries. And so on and so forth. Tinkering with the engines may get a few more repetitive cycles out of them, but that is about it. Not that his rival, John McCain, who, as a "reform" candidate, also rivaled George W. Bush, yet bragged way back then that he helped effect change by going along with voice votes, instead of engaging the arduous debate that is prerequisite to any real radical reform, and who bragged most lately that he was a maverick while standing in President Bush's shadow, is any more of a radical changer than President Obama. Can we blame any one of them for falling short of truly radical reform? The fact of the matter is, the herd is normally conservative: people at large do not really want radical change, and, when called upon to give some skin to the radical cause, they would rather save their skins from that cause. Still, sometimes, during critical times when many people are in dire straights, big changes have been made; such is the progress of history, by sudden lurches, when restrained too long by the lethargic status quo.
Radicals of the leftist bent call for radical reforms to free people from oppression. Radicals love the mob over the powerful minority because they initially intend to distribute freedom more broadly and improve the well being of more men. They have in fact led the historical movement to expand the circle of freedom to all men and women. Nothing gets done without the application of some force: When reason seemed of little avail to the radicals, they called for the force of arms to accomplish their goals.
Aggrieved people are attracted by radical rhetoric with its special vocabulary of humanitarian and democratic terms expressing an indignant and sometimes inflammatory ideology calling for the destruction of what is hated and its replacement by a good society. On the other hand, those who feel that their interests are threatened by the utopian program respond with fear and hatred to such proposals for radical reform no matter how rational and socially just the proposals may be.
The conflict between the relatively powerful few, namely the power elite, and the less powerful many shall presumably persist until the radical ideal of political-economic social justice is realized, until perfectly equalitarian justice is done, for the essence of radicalism is to extend freedom from oppression, in all its forms, to all people: democratic-socialist politics would distribute equally the absolute power worshipped by religion lest it be hoarded by one person to the detriment of the rest. The goal of freedom is, supposedly, individual happiness, which is naturally psychological or egoistic psychologists for the power elite claim that it is the experiences of individuals that makes them happy, and not how much they own, implying that the less powerful should be happy with what little they have. But the individual is also a social person with attendant sympathetic interests in the general happiness so that he may have his own happiness; hence everyone has a real and legitimate interest in the sum of the individual pleasures of the whole society, in the greatest happiness of the greatest number - as the Philosophical Radicals, whom President Garfield and the Radical Republicans admired, often said. In any event, a radical intent accrues to any plan of economic or political reconstruction for distributive freedom, and the most radical program of all aims at the maximization of the welfare of the greatest number of people.
But if the radical root of freedom is in the individual, then every freedom fighter is a radical, is he not? Since people can gain freedom from oppression by controlling each other, will they not always be in conflict and therefore within a vicious cycle of hate? No, they will not, for freedom comes with responsibility; it must have some ground to stand on in order to accomplish anything at all. Without human society there is no human being. People are naturally attracted to each other for very good reason. We need company to be human beings and to enjoy what freedom we have; we have our families and our clans, and through conflict and cooperation we have merged into nations and beyond as our horizon expands.
And what is that universal principle of attraction, unity, and harmony called? What sums up the greatest good of the greatest number, the golden rules, the highest good, the social good, or, if you will, god? What is the common English name for the most radical principle of all, the flip side of hate? It is the name of an idea the Philosophical Radicals hold valuable, but in the interest of a more objective science than subjective sympathy, they subordinate it to the selfish interest in countable things. It is a word that infuriates haters so much that they bite their tongues off because they do not have enough of what it connotes, yet it remains universally popular among those who do have much of it, and those folks do not take kindly to having their affection disparaged. What is it, in a word?
Love is the Word.
"Oh, no!" some radical exclaims, "Get ready for the preachy sermon. He's going to pull Jesus Christ out of the bag, and push the opiate of the masses that kept them oppressed. He's going to talk about praying for people instead of feeding them. He's not going to mention the millions and millions of people selfishly murdered in Christ's name."
I have neither religious nor political sermon to preach, as I am an optimistic skeptic who places his blind faith in Nothing. Nevertheless, I confess that Jesus' name has been repeatedly bandied about and abused. I admit he was a radical reformer who was tried twice: once in the ecclesiastical court, where he was apparently adjudged innocent of spiritual offenses, of blasphemy and the like, that carried a penalty of death by stoning, and once in the political court, where he was tried and convicted of a trumped up-political charge, of treason, that warranted a penalty of death by crucifixion. I admit he was an advocate of genuine love instead of empty ritual. I deny that he invented love. I opine that he inherited love, as the son of the originally good part of humanity, if he was not Love incarnated as the gnostic son of that god who was once called the Stranger because he was previously unknown on the plane presided over by the selfish god of the Garden of Eden, the jealous and wrathful god who was hell bent on punishing mankind forever for stealing a few apples from his orchard.
We might expound on any religion that liberates the individual from selfishness, and still speak of love. I personally view religion as the love of absolute power, the power of life that would endure forever if it could, and politics as the relative or mundane distribution of that power. The so-called original sin is the accident of individuality, but the sin is forgiven in the universality of the category of one, the unity enjoyed by everyone despite their differences. I see at the center of every religion the celebration of the natural sacrifice of the individual for the common good, by which love the individual is made even strongerradical religion is, in a manner of speaking, virtual suicide, by means of which the glorious hereafter is made present now.
"Love is hardly a political or moral principle, you cannot make people love each other. They have good reasons to hate each other."
Radicals have good reasons to hate evil. No, we cannot make people love each other; the very idea of loving some people disgusts laymen lovers. It is said that he who loves everybody loves nobody. Nevertheless, love is available to all persons by virtue of the self-love they naturally share at least with their kindred, a love in part imparted to the person by the care others, for a person is a social individual. Without the care of others, the helpless infant is doomed. We can help people to make sacrifices for the good of all; we can educate them to stop hurting each other, and to do so for their own good or self-love. Hence doing no harm is a form of love. Fortunately, that good can be demonstrated scientifically and is available to almost every understanding, for love wants freedom to endure forever. Your life, my life, every life, is your love, my love, every love.
The "instinct" of love is our social gravity. Just as we now employ our knowledge of the universal law of gravity to launch our ships to the stars, we can and we have employed our knowledge of love to bring heaven to Earth.
Therefore we speak of the science of love. And yes although everything of value is not really calculable, there is a social science of love supported by statistics for those who need numbers as indicators and indexes of happiness. In this day and age many people demand quantification to support qualitative claims: love pays off. For example, one may refer to the research of sociologist Pitirim Sorokin validating the practice of love.
Since the vocabularies of love and god seem unscientific today, we might want to be polite and more politic: it might behoove us to couch our science in other terms. Theists may pray to god; pantheists can worship god everywhere. Deists may presume that god wound up the Universe, and that the rest is up to them. Atheists may presume there is no god, and be on their own too. Humanists, well, they can be romantic and love either god or man or both. In any case, we all need a better education towards our mutual improvement, and we all can therefore employ reason to achieve radical reforms for the betterment of our race. Therefore I may soon be moved to honor my promise to briefly discuss the work of a certain cadre of philosophical radicals who approached people of all parties and persuasions with offers reason could not refuse; as a consequence, radical reforms were made, the benefits of which we greatly enjoy to this very day. I have merely paused here, by special request, to! make a note on love in the context of our intercourse.
-XYX-
Radicals have generally acquired a bad reputation because they hate evil and some of them would forcefully replace evil as they perceive it with their own version of good. Although there are right-wing radicals, the term is usually associated with leftist radicals, and we shall use the term in that context. Radicals on the left political wing believe the many are oppressed by the few, and that something should be done about it forthwith instead of just talking about change or making changes that accomplish very little except tweaking the status quo.
For instance, when President Barrack Obama, during the latest bust phase of the latest boom of the usual capitalist business cycle, appointed the very same people who had as usual helped cause the latest banking crisis with the usual credit expansion, to manage it as usual, people began to think that the only change he was making, despite his so-called leftist rhetoric, was to capitalize every letter of the usual superficial catchword, i.e. CHANGE. And it appears that he and his party would tweak the health care system as well, instead of forcing through national health care legislation that would bring the United States up to par with other civilized countries. And so on and so forth. Tinkering with the engines may get a few more repetitive cycles out of them, but that is about it. Not that his rival, John McCain, who, as a "reform" candidate, also rivaled George W. Bush, yet bragged way back then that he helped effect change by going along with voice votes, instead of engaging the arduous debate that is prerequisite to any real radical reform, and who bragged most lately that he was a maverick while standing in President Bush's shadow, is any more of a radical changer than President Obama. Can we blame any one of them for falling short of truly radical reform? The fact of the matter is, the herd is normally conservative: people at large do not really want radical change, and, when called upon to give some skin to the radical cause, they would rather save their skins from that cause. Still, sometimes, during critical times when many people are in dire straights, big changes have been made; such is the progress of history, by sudden lurches, when restrained too long by the lethargic status quo.
Radicals of the leftist bent call for radical reforms to free people from oppression. Radicals love the mob over the powerful minority because they initially intend to distribute freedom more broadly and improve the well being of more men. They have in fact led the historical movement to expand the circle of freedom to all men and women. Nothing gets done without the application of some force: When reason seemed of little avail to the radicals, they called for the force of arms to accomplish their goals.
Aggrieved people are attracted by radical rhetoric with its special vocabulary of humanitarian and democratic terms expressing an indignant and sometimes inflammatory ideology calling for the destruction of what is hated and its replacement by a good society. On the other hand, those who feel that their interests are threatened by the utopian program respond with fear and hatred to such proposals for radical reform no matter how rational and socially just the proposals may be.
The conflict between the relatively powerful few, namely the power elite, and the less powerful many shall presumably persist until the radical ideal of political-economic social justice is realized, until perfectly equalitarian justice is done, for the essence of radicalism is to extend freedom from oppression, in all its forms, to all people: democratic-socialist politics would distribute equally the absolute power worshipped by religion lest it be hoarded by one person to the detriment of the rest. The goal of freedom is, supposedly, individual happiness, which is naturally psychological or egoistic psychologists for the power elite claim that it is the experiences of individuals that makes them happy, and not how much they own, implying that the less powerful should be happy with what little they have. But the individual is also a social person with attendant sympathetic interests in the general happiness so that he may have his own happiness; hence everyone has a real and legitimate interest in the sum of the individual pleasures of the whole society, in the greatest happiness of the greatest number - as the Philosophical Radicals, whom President Garfield and the Radical Republicans admired, often said. In any event, a radical intent accrues to any plan of economic or political reconstruction for distributive freedom, and the most radical program of all aims at the maximization of the welfare of the greatest number of people.
But if the radical root of freedom is in the individual, then every freedom fighter is a radical, is he not? Since people can gain freedom from oppression by controlling each other, will they not always be in conflict and therefore within a vicious cycle of hate? No, they will not, for freedom comes with responsibility; it must have some ground to stand on in order to accomplish anything at all. Without human society there is no human being. People are naturally attracted to each other for very good reason. We need company to be human beings and to enjoy what freedom we have; we have our families and our clans, and through conflict and cooperation we have merged into nations and beyond as our horizon expands.
And what is that universal principle of attraction, unity, and harmony called? What sums up the greatest good of the greatest number, the golden rules, the highest good, the social good, or, if you will, god? What is the common English name for the most radical principle of all, the flip side of hate? It is the name of an idea the Philosophical Radicals hold valuable, but in the interest of a more objective science than subjective sympathy, they subordinate it to the selfish interest in countable things. It is a word that infuriates haters so much that they bite their tongues off because they do not have enough of what it connotes, yet it remains universally popular among those who do have much of it, and those folks do not take kindly to having their affection disparaged. What is it, in a word?
Love is the Word.
"Oh, no!" some radical exclaims, "Get ready for the preachy sermon. He's going to pull Jesus Christ out of the bag, and push the opiate of the masses that kept them oppressed. He's going to talk about praying for people instead of feeding them. He's not going to mention the millions and millions of people selfishly murdered in Christ's name."
I have neither religious nor political sermon to preach, as I am an optimistic skeptic who places his blind faith in Nothing. Nevertheless, I confess that Jesus' name has been repeatedly bandied about and abused. I admit he was a radical reformer who was tried twice: once in the ecclesiastical court, where he was apparently adjudged innocent of spiritual offenses, of blasphemy and the like, that carried a penalty of death by stoning, and once in the political court, where he was tried and convicted of a trumped up-political charge, of treason, that warranted a penalty of death by crucifixion. I admit he was an advocate of genuine love instead of empty ritual. I deny that he invented love. I opine that he inherited love, as the son of the originally good part of humanity, if he was not Love incarnated as the gnostic son of that god who was once called the Stranger because he was previously unknown on the plane presided over by the selfish god of the Garden of Eden, the jealous and wrathful god who was hell bent on punishing mankind forever for stealing a few apples from his orchard.
We might expound on any religion that liberates the individual from selfishness, and still speak of love. I personally view religion as the love of absolute power, the power of life that would endure forever if it could, and politics as the relative or mundane distribution of that power. The so-called original sin is the accident of individuality, but the sin is forgiven in the universality of the category of one, the unity enjoyed by everyone despite their differences. I see at the center of every religion the celebration of the natural sacrifice of the individual for the common good, by which love the individual is made even strongerradical religion is, in a manner of speaking, virtual suicide, by means of which the glorious hereafter is made present now.
"Love is hardly a political or moral principle, you cannot make people love each other. They have good reasons to hate each other."
Radicals have good reasons to hate evil. No, we cannot make people love each other; the very idea of loving some people disgusts laymen lovers. It is said that he who loves everybody loves nobody. Nevertheless, love is available to all persons by virtue of the self-love they naturally share at least with their kindred, a love in part imparted to the person by the care others, for a person is a social individual. Without the care of others, the helpless infant is doomed. We can help people to make sacrifices for the good of all; we can educate them to stop hurting each other, and to do so for their own good or self-love. Hence doing no harm is a form of love. Fortunately, that good can be demonstrated scientifically and is available to almost every understanding, for love wants freedom to endure forever. Your life, my life, every life, is your love, my love, every love.
The "instinct" of love is our social gravity. Just as we now employ our knowledge of the universal law of gravity to launch our ships to the stars, we can and we have employed our knowledge of love to bring heaven to Earth.
Therefore we speak of the science of love. And yes although everything of value is not really calculable, there is a social science of love supported by statistics for those who need numbers as indicators and indexes of happiness. In this day and age many people demand quantification to support qualitative claims: love pays off. For example, one may refer to the research of sociologist Pitirim Sorokin validating the practice of love.
Since the vocabularies of love and god seem unscientific today, we might want to be polite and more politic: it might behoove us to couch our science in other terms. Theists may pray to god; pantheists can worship god everywhere. Deists may presume that god wound up the Universe, and that the rest is up to them. Atheists may presume there is no god, and be on their own too. Humanists, well, they can be romantic and love either god or man or both. In any case, we all need a better education towards our mutual improvement, and we all can therefore employ reason to achieve radical reforms for the betterment of our race. Therefore I may soon be moved to honor my promise to briefly discuss the work of a certain cadre of philosophical radicals who approached people of all parties and persuasions with offers reason could not refuse; as a consequence, radical reforms were made, the benefits of which we greatly enjoy to this very day. I have merely paused here, by special request, to! make a note on love in the context of our intercourse.
-XYX-
0 comments:
Post a Comment