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I am not a Conservative (at least not in the American meaning of this word), but I have to acknowledge that this political "tribe" has understood something about politics in general that their opponents and critics seem to have forgotten: that in politics (maybe even in life in general, if we subscribe to the philosophy of Schopenhauer or Nietzsche, as I do) at the end of the day everything boils down to power : Who is powerful and who is not (the "who" need not be a person, in most cases it is a group with a person as head, but the real power is in the hands of the group, not the 'head'..)

Trump, Putin, Boris Johnson, Bolsonaro, Matteo Slavini ... and their enablers and supporters know that power is not a tool in order to realize lofty ideals and moral values, but that it is the other way round: values and ideals are tools to gain and to maintain power. That is the most profound insight of Nietzsche when he wrote about the Christian "morality of slaves": the weak invented certain values and ideals in order to undermine the position of those in power and to get themselves into a position of power; in the case of Christianty it worked very well : the former slaves became masters, and one of their most important tools in this struggle was their specific sort of morality. And of course: once the former slaves have turned into masters they conveniently ditched the ideals and became ruthless crafsmen of power struggles.

That is the crucial thing that most partisans of the left have forgotten: that all their values and ideals are ultimately nothing but means to gain as much support as possible to finally grab political power, in order to serve their (economic and cultural) interests (their personal interests and those of their supporters).

This Machiavellian worldview may shock the starry-eyed who still believe in values and ideas as ends in themselves, not as tools in an eternal power struggle, but when they aspire to translate their ideas and values into reality they should learn that only those in power are able to change the course of the world (or only a tiny fraction of the world, their personal environment)..
Values and ideals without the Machiavellian / Nietzschean will to power, and a certain amount of ruthlessness associated with it, are junk and completely worthless, they are nothing but fictions.

Matias 8 May 24
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1

Unfortunately, this seems to be the way of the world and is a part of our 'basic' animal instincts. We see this in play in places as Israel where the once oppressed have now become the oppressors. This tells me we need to force a system of checks and balances and a cooperative teamwork. Of course the basic instinct is still there and, again as we are experiencing, a need to overthrow the existing system and go to the more 'natural' one.
To me and what I have learned with 28+ years of study and being active, this planet has limited resources and we humans have extracted more than can be provided. Today I read China and the US are vying for dominance in space especially with setting up bases on the moon and maybe Mars in order to extract resources there. When people start doing without competition starts which turns int inter-tribal warfare. This is exactly what we are experiencing today. Technology only helps us squeeze more out of existing resources and, in the end, will make things worse. Our cornucopian economic method is doomed to failure when the basket of goodies run out so we need to focus on employing a new economic model and limit our numbers. Until then we are doomed to extinction. We either work with what nature gives us or she will exact her power of limiting life forms that go out of bounds she has set.

5

This is the most interesting thread I've read in a while.

Agreed.

0

I fail to see the connection between one being a conservative and one conservative politician/political party having an absolute political power. They are separate things to me.

Ryo1 Level 8 May 24, 2022

@Matias, @TheMiddleWay Simply put, we are conservative in the sense that we want to conserve the stuff that is working well for us all, and we are liberal in the sense that we are open to changes if they are good changes for us all. Labelling anything based on superficial, description of it doesn't mean much to me, I'm afraid.

2

By what measure do you consider yourself not a Conservative in the American sense?

skado Level 9 May 24, 2022

@Matias
The news doesn't reflect reality - only what newspeople think is news-worthy. There are plenty of conservatives here who are actually conservative instead of lunatic fascist. Sounds like your position would probably be pretty harmonious with traditional American conservatism.

@skado Someone in America once told me that what we call 'conservatism' in the UK is what they call 'classicla liberalism' in America, which could be described as socially liberal, fiscally conservative, and possibly in many other terms. Labelling, generalisation, stereotyping, etc., generated largely by the media, as you say, is meaningless.

2

That is a very dark (and in certain instances, accurate) view of idealism and values. Before I say more I would make a tiny modification to the thesis "values and ideals are tools to gain and to maintain power." In place of the word "tools," I would use the term "stepping stones." I make this modification because those who use ideals and values only to propel themselves upward into positions of power tread upon those values, sully them with their muddy feet, bastardize them, and pervert them. Power corrupts not only the powerful, but also everyone and everything it touches. I'm sure that George Washington appreciated this when he voluntarily relinquished power even though many of his admirers wished he would not. And in so doing, our first president vested power back in the ideals and values that birthed a nation. Washington led by example, and made it possible for a vast, interesting, and worthy experiment to be carried out, with no fixed end date. All we have to do to end the experiment is allow shallow, venal, self-interested, misanthropic, and mediocre people to distract us with fear and loathing of our fellows while they seize power for themselves. Or we can keep the experiment going by using the power of our values and ideals, and the institutions we have created to preserve them, to fight rot and corruption, and hold criminals accountable. It only takes a little faith. Well, maybe a lot. But it's not like we haven't been here before.

@TheMiddleWay Of course there are no guarantees, but my money is on the USA. I think it will be touch-and-go, but I also think that we will prevail over the criminal element. Not saying it won't get messy.

We have yet to see the Select Committee's public hearings. I think they're going to be big. I think they will sway people who are currently sitting on fences. I think a lot of Trump-endorsed candidates who sailed through their primaries are going to have trouble in the general. I think we'll squeak by. And then there may be hell to pay. The white nationalist genie is out of the bottle, and will resist going back in. That's alright. We'll sort them out. 🎳

@TheMiddleWay From my lips to the voters' ears!

2

Of course, Matias. Whatever it’s called, antisocial personality disorder or something else, it won’t go away.

Instead of power’s being a tool for realizing lofty ideals and moral values, it’s a tool I can use to persuade others that I seek lofty ideals and moral values.

I too enjoy science. Spanish is pleasant, but spoken French is at war with written French.

The happiest may be those who don’t care if they die, even as they pursue power. They may get bridges named for them.

6

As we travel through life we find it is not anything with Democrats or Republicans. It all has to do with the haves or the have nots. This is it.

Yup, it's not so much left and right, but up and down. As the Occupy movement said so eloquently, the 99% and the 1%, the opposing sides in the class war.

6

The left certainly do make a big mistake. They see the threat to people from uncontrolled capitalist institutions, and think that the solution lies with the state, but that forgets that the state is also an institution, which can just as easily be manipulated to create wealth and privilege for a spoiled few, as any private company. And the state is not always under even as much democratic control as a private company, a company has ultimately to sell its product to gain wealth, where the state can, and does usually enforce the sale of its products, whether wanted or not. (And to some degree the left are blind to the problems of the state, because they indulge in the same tribal cognitive dissonance that religious people do. That "people like us" who believe in good things like us, can not do any harm. )

However a large degree of power always exists with the greater number of the people, because they can and do, at least in a mixed economy, decide where they obtain their products, employment and services, by voting with their feet. If used thoughtfully ( A big ask. ) that can be used to enforce democracy, in ways that extend far beyond the ballot box, manipulating the institutions one against the other for the peoples gain. Which is I think, is the one value the religion always offered, by being a third institutional block to give another device for the population to manipulate and obtain a voice through. However the optimist in me, thinks that secular charities can fill that gap, and certainly there are many political and human rights charities that seem to be stepping up to do the job as religion fades, in fact perhaps even better, since they do not have complex additional issues to muddy the waters. Which may be one of the many reasons why social health improves as religion fades.

The one real threat which creates the greatest wealth and power divisions and social injustice, is disinformation and deceit. Which usually results from everybody, singing from the same song sheet, so that therefore whoever can write something in to the song sheet gets their way. Human diversity is not just useful because it is kind to the minorities, but because it creates debate and fuels questioning, which makes it much more difficult for a corrupt few power brokers to manipulate public opinion. Someone on this site recently asked why European culture became so dominant in the world by the nineteenth century, and I suspect that it did so because Europe was such a divided continent, with many different competing factions and states, and could not therefore become so trapped and immobilized by totalitarianism as the great empires did. ( However cynical and criminal the motivation, there is still a large grain of truth in Harry Lime's cuckoo clock argument. )

2

Stupid sick shit.

5

That is very true to a degree, but the reverse also applies. Of what use is power if you have nothing to do with it ?

( Certainly not hedonism, since that is easy to obtain with only moderate power, and the effort required to obtain power and hold it, only wastes time if you only want hedonism, while too much hedonism will only make you miserable anyway. )

Ultimately we are all under the control of our ideals, even the powerful have no freedom from their own thinking, and therefore, if the collective ideas are good the powerful will always be moderated.

@Matias Yes that happens by default. The trick is to insure that the group people in power identify with, is the widest possible group, which is not that hard since logically we are all in the same boat aboard a very small planet.

4

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely….not a new observation, I believe the original is attributed to William Pitt the Elder…British Prime Minister (1766-78) when he stated in U.K. Parliament - “Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it”.

Your summary is the best.

Except Marje, absolute power doesn’t exist because the powerful must share their power with the people who protect them.

@yvilletom I would question that because using that logic would mean that despots and dictators do not wield ultimate power when it’s patently obvious that they do. Certainly if we take Stalin as an example - he trusted no one and those he deemed too close to him or were at risk of sharing as much power, he had bumped off. I think Kim Jong-un has had removed a couple of close relatives too…paranoia runs hand in hand with ultimate dictatorship or absolute power. Those who protect them are the only ones close enough to kill them, but they know it would be instant death if they made an attempt on the leader’s life, and only in few cases have despots been assassinated by their own security staff, and they certainly never share any power with them in the first place.

@Marionville Marje, despots do share power, at least with those who lead their security staff.

@Marionville @yvilletom "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears! I come not to praise Cesar, but to bury him." So said Mark Antony, one of the senators who wetted their blades with the emperor's blood.

Everybody needs somebody sometime.

@yvilletom That is not the same thing as actually making the laws themselves…the head of security doesn’t do that…he only has the power to follow and carry out orders of the leader. He can be removed at any time from his position.

@Marionville He can be removed, if he doesn’t first remove the leader.

@yvilletom I already said that…but it almost never happens in actuality…I already said that too!

@Marionville Yeah yeah, the powerful have power. That's obvious. But they often pay a price. Many get away with murder until they are old and feeble. Mubarak, Mugave, Pinochet,...

Others are less well-known because their nasty and brutish reigns were short and their lives ended suddenly, with a short, sharp shove.

@Flyingsaucesir nobody’s denying that….

0

RAW Power. I figured that out already. But thanks Matias.

twill Level 7 May 24, 2022
2

Generally speaking, I'm not comfortable with extremes of any sort. With that said, I surely get your point.

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