So are you saying that politics and economy always involve some sort of violence or deceit?

seespotrun2008,

I have not seen, nor do I now see, that politics and economy always involve some sort of violence or deceit. I can’t see the connection as a necessary one, not like the connection between violence and deceit, and not like the connection between politics and economy.

I see these connections:

Violence/Deceit

Politics/Economy

I don’t see this connection as a necessary one:

Violence/Deceit – connected to – Politics/Economy

Politics can be separated from violence.
Politics can be separated from deceit
Economy can be separated from violence
Economy can be separated from deceit

All of those separations can continue for as long as people avoid criminals who willfully commit crimes and that leaves accidental violence and accidental “deceit” (an oxymoron type conundrum, paradox, etc.?).

Why would anyone assume or have a bias for an inevitable connection with crime (inevitable connections with criminals who commit crimes)? That someone is not me.

I think it may be important at this point to define crime in such a way as to leave no room for the ability of a criminal to cover his or her crimes with deceit.

Crime is the willful injury of innocent victims by a criminal – for profit.

Even if the profit is “just for fun”, the idea here is to establish willful intent and then actual action taken so as to cause the intended injury to the innocent victim.

That would be crime, and violence isn’t necessary. A so called “president” can sign a piece of paper, or push “the button”, and “unleash the (aggressive) Dogs of War”.

A corporate president can sign a work order fully aware of how the work done will, necessarily, poison the ground water, or continue to poison the ground water, and thereby, and quite literally, destroy lives.

Those are examples of crime, they happen, they occur; they are no more necessary than deciding to look one degree to the west instead of looking one degree to the east. Which way do you want to look?

Perhaps there is a connection I can’t see, pertaining to your question, I’m all ears. What would connect crime to economy – inexorably?

The connection that does exist is measurable, as criminals want something for relatively nothing.

The words are now dancing around the problem I have with the book on the table, and I can explain in detail. For now I’ll read on with your very welcome response, to me this is vital stuff being dissected.

So let me repeat in my own words what you said here, so that I am making sure that I do not misunderstand. You are defining “politics” as the psychology coming from inside the person and economy is a human beings relation to physical things outside of him or herself. Which you could technically say is a person's psychology to an outside stimulous. Is that correct?

I read that and confirm it as being something I would write myself. I find this way of seeing as being a very useful measure of reality. Politics is to psychology as economy is to physics.

Probably booktalk.

Smiling is nice, thanks. There is a difference between bias and assumption – or there would not be so many letters used up in the latter. Something must explain the creation of two words when one would suffice.

I think you may have a handle on the difference as, perhaps, a measure of awareness perceived by the proprietor.

Was the proprietor aware of his or her own bias?

Was the proprietor aware of his or her own assumption?

The difference can be seen, it seems to me, as cultural in the case of bias and not at all cultural in the case of an assumption.

The difference can be seen as an automatic response to turn left instead of right in the case of bias, while the case of assumption causes the person to pause and then decide to go ahead with an assumed turn; one that is assumed to be better than the other for some reason – or just for fun.

Have you seen that movie called No Country for Old Men? In it there is a villain who flips a coin to aid in decision making. I think that type of phenomenon can help illuminate the wide gap between bias and assumption – if there is a gap at all.

They are both an unexamined way of seeing the world.

This reminds me of something similar, perhaps, in the difference between learning and instruction, a difference brought into the light by Albert J Nock in his book titled: The Disadvantages of Being Educated.

An educated person projects an unexamined way of seeing the world, as if standing on the shoulders of giants.

A learned person examines the world, which is his or her bias.

In either case assumptions must be made, at least until such time as the assumption is proven wrong. In one case, the unexamined one, the ridged one, there isn’t any device by which assumptions are challengeable, as in a closed mind, while the other case allows for, is even eager to find, any and all challenges that can aid in making more accurate assumptions.

A person doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel. One can assume that wheels offer a mechanical advantage. One can assume that a calculator will crunch the numbers accurately.

What makes someone a criminal?

Is that a good question? Is it worth the effort to find the accurate answer? Is victimization as inevitable as breathing – or death? To whose benefit does it serve to have no true answer?

If the question is worth the cost required to uncover the accurate answer; then I think it is imperative to first define crime. We may now be wandering well beyond the limits of forum protocol.

To return this back to the book I’m going to focus my attention back to this idea that mankind is developing toward a future survivability, something I think is written into Blooms book. If that is so, then it may be a good idea to find out why some people commit crimes, and to entertain the possibility that such a phenomenon could be a genetic mutation, a random experiment testing the validity of natural selection perhaps, and once that measure is assumed to be accurate, only then move on to something more vital.

If the assumption is such that “we are all potential criminals”, which is probably culturally based thinking, not at all scientifically measured thinking, then, having that assumption working, the individual beings working that into a culturally based thinking phenomenon, going viral with it, are less, or more, likely to be aware of potential victimization?

A. Crime is ambigous
B. Not A

Everyone is potentially going to “make a killing”, we are all bad (Machiavelli). How can someone so disposed be able to find friends from amongst all the foes?

If, in fact, it can be determined, with near mathematical certainty, that a specific brain produced by specific genetic instructions is missing specific physical properties, in its arrangement of construction, and such a brain cannot produce thoughts common to other people with other brains, where those thoughts are said to be “empathetic” thoughts, where one person is capable of knowing what another person feels, in some way, and these mutated brains are not so disposed, then such a finding could drive specific human action in a specific direction – such as defense against specific people who have those types of brains.

Or people can continue to follow those types of people, believing their lies, paying for their lies, and do so right up until the human species ends.

A. Some people are born without empathy and they can use that to an advantage so long as the victims remain unaware of their impending victimization.
B. Not A.

That can be seen as an A or B political choice or an economic choice. The general trend in this culture, the one I’ve been born into, is B, a cultural bias.

Is A true?

A. Everyone is equally capable of the worst evil imaginable as is everyone else: “we are all human”.
B. Not A

A is the bias I’ve experienced in my lifetime. I am more than ready to entertain an alternative assumption – and I’ve seen evidence that clearly measures the alternative assumption to be an accurate one – so far.

Are criminals only the people whose behavior is considered immoral by the rest of society?

If I am going to offer up an answer, for testing, for validity, for accuracy, for all possible eagerness in knowing any contentious data refuting the answer, and to do so I must return to my definition of crime first – before offering the answer.

Crime is when a person willfully creates a plan by which an innocent victim will be injured and then that person executes the injury of the innocent victim, on purpose, for profit.

Are criminals only the people whose behavior is considered immoral by the rest of society?

Society can't consider.

Majority rules, might makes right, and to the victors flow the spoils? If the thing in view (crime) is ambiguous, who does it serve to maintain said ambiguity?

Please note our present situation. People who torture and mass murder, by law, are currently famous (not infamous) as measured by popular opinion such as an election of a president of a nation. Bodies pile up, and not just for fun. The majority didn’t do it. People decide to move bombs to the targets, and bombs are then moved to the targets. Target A is chosen, not target B. It isn’t random, the majority isn’t doing it. Bodies are pilling up, more than a few.

Which society?

When “society” is used in my society, my culture, my bias, my meme, the connotation is such that responsibility is gloomed onto said society, which is an egregious error in perception, a confidence scheme from another angle, to whose benefit does such a cultural bias favor? Everyone doesn't share this error.

If the idea is to measure by statistics a group of people who share a specific character trait, a specific thought, a specific action, then all who are thinking that thought, or all who are acting out that action, belong in that group.

All who do not think that thought, and all who do not act out that action, do not belong in that group.

Confusing the ones who belong in that “society” with the ones who do not belong in the “society” benefits criminals in two ways.

The criminals in the society are made to look better when confused with the non-criminals in the society when both are seen as the same thing.

The non-criminals in the society are made to look worse when confused with the criminals when both are seen as the same thing.

Society doesn’t shoot radioactive waste through babies skulls as their mother’s hold them.

A person who discovers that their tax power to purchase (their “money” earnings sent to their elected leaders – who happen to be liars) is invested in aggressive criminal wars for profit may still send that power to those criminals – just because.

That is what a person may choose to do, or not do, as time goes by. Society is merely a statistical angle of view, a measuring device, and a tool. Someone either uses the tool or the tool is not used. What is the use of this tool in this case? What is the goal that the tool user intends to produce?

And people do not always consider violence criminal.

Why is the measure of crime ambiguous – forever?

Certainly a criminal isn’t going to see a crime as a crime, not as an INNOCENT victim does. That would be like calling night: day.

Night is night because the sun isn’t shining on that part of the planet.

Who does it serve to have crime remain ambiguous - twilight?

Person A employs violence (and deceit) to extract power from a new born baby, eats it. Person A does that twice.

Three times

1000 times

At some point it becomes obvious to all but a few aware people (who prefer not to know, for some reason), and many who may as yet be unaware (uninterested), that person A is a criminal, and person A doesn’t think that baby eating is a crime.

Why is person A different by that measure (1000 eaten babies)?

Soldiers are not seen as criminals.

Can that be any more ambiguous? When a soldier is ordered to commit a crime (injure an innocent person), the solder can decide to follow the order or not.

What does the law say about that situation?

Which law?

Which “society”?

Written laws are more specific, and less ambiguous, than “society” – relative to people, who are individuals. Rocks are specifically rocks, by their composition, no need for interpretation, decision making, judgment calls, etc. Rocks are rocks. Soldiers kill, and one's that can't: die. What is the target? Why is that target, the target?

In many parts of the world and sometimes in our own culture violence against women is not seen as criminal.

A woman who is on the receiving end is in or out of that statistical measure called: society?

What is that intended purpose of that society tool here in this case?

Victimized women are seen as bad (for their weakness perhaps).

Victimizing men are seen as less bad (women ask for it).

How convenient is that tool, can it be any more convenient? Someone can invent something more convenient, someone with a desire for it.

I argue that in most if not all cases of violence there is some form of claiming territory.

If you are going to argue something, it seems to me, there must be an opponent in mind. Where is this opponent to this argument?

If I ask any criminal to provide an honest and accurate answer as to what he or she desired when the criminal invented and then executed the crime, what was the goal in mind?: I wouldn’t argue about the answer provided. If the answer is accurate, then the answer was honest: who but the criminal would know the accurate answer?

If the honest answer is “territory”, then that is the accurate answer.

Can the answer be any more ambiguous?

Who does it serve to have the ambiguous answer be the answer?

War is claiming territory over resources and over the bodies of the people in the culture you are claiming.

What is “war” then from the viewpoint of the people being claimed? Why is “war” one thing, and not two things?

A. Criminal
B. Victim

How can A be, without B?

Even in self defense your brain has decided that your life is more valuable than the life who is threatening yours.

If I send another dime (a measure of power) to someone who is threatening me, what happens?

I think that a power struggle angle of view is a most useful one. I think it is how criminals think too.

The topic remains, and to bring it back in clear view I’ll re-read my original post, and return with a comment or two.

If the purpose of sending purchasing power to a collective, a general fund, a pool of power, is defensive, then by all means do so, it seems to me, that is a sound investment, a real return of investment in mind, a moral thing to do, an economic thing, even a political thing to do, to benefit all (all innocent people), and at the expense of no one (except the criminals who would otherwise have ready victims).

If, on the other hand, the purpose of sending purchasing power to that collective, that pot, that voluntary association of defensive individuals, that group of innocent people, turns: then it may be time for repurposing.

I think Howard is seeing that it is time for repurposing. I have yet to read the rest of his book, on account of this current device, this forum. I’m going with the flow of things here. My vested interests include other things to do.