The Heisman Trophy, Collegiate Rules, and Capitalism

Live in a prison and you will know what no freedom is like.

__________________
It reminds me of a toilet paper on the trees
- Paula

On the contrary...
The government being not the external, political government, but the government of our minds. Live in a prison and see the infinite possibilities that arise in even the most mundane places. I am not saying that living in a prison is somehow no different than not living in one; it does make a huge difference, of course. But the remarkable "freedom" of which only humans are capable of is not the freedom from a physical or institutional prison. It is the freedom we have within that prison to utterly transcend it.

We are not made free by being freed from all outside influences; we are free when we are able to express an infinity of possibilities from those influences. This capability to infinitely create anything from anything is precisely what Capitalism silences. Capitalism makes us all see only a single possibility: the possibility of Oedipal Man.

I will hopefully flesh this out in a more lucid proposition/conclusion format soon.

__________________
"Loves them? They need them, like they need the air."

I already do. It's called the Iron Cage.

BTW, Spinoza was a hardcore believer in democracy. Democracy can be one of the greatest forms of government, as well as the worst. So I'm not sure where you pulled that quote from, nor the context of it.

__________________
"This is that human freedom, which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the fact, that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined." -Baruch Spinoza

It's really worse than anyone can fathom. We are attacked from both "above" and "below". Foucault focuses on the "from above"; Deleuze and Guattari demystify the "from below". When you put the two together, the subject becomes impossible.

Again, there is simply NO freedom.

Definitely. It is meant to be reversed through a kind of postmodern wit into an examination of the City's relationship to our naturally determined character. The "absoluteness" speaks to a reasoned absoluteness. The reason comes from the classic notion of a general will resulting from a social contract, to use Rousseau's terms. Deleuze writes here...

And later...

And finally...

===

Political Treatise in Political Works. It is quoted with breaks from Deleuze's Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza.

Unfortunately, confirmation bias is often used when attacking Capitalism. An argument is weakend when focusing only on the bad seeds.

On Madoff: Lets use the football analogy. There is playing within the rules (maybe bending them here and there) and then there is playing like the player in "The Last Boy Scout". You cant shoot the guy to get to the end zone.

On economic bubbles: Bubbles are mainly created by those who are ignorant about their buying/investing. Caveat emptor. The advice that you will hear Warren Buffett often give is to not invest in what you dont know. This applies to all types of consumers: dont buy what you dont know/understand. Capitalism will punish those who choose to ignore this.

Dont blame Capitalism. Its kind of like those with the weak gun control argument that claim we should limit the amount of guns or ammo available. Its ignorant to ignore the fact that guns dont kill people, people kill people. Capitalism doesnt hurt people, people hurt themselves.

Rush limbaugh talking points 101 meh.

__________________
"The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it." - Michelangelo.

You're missing the whole point. The way in which capitalism functions makes everyone and everything a bad seed.

I'm an insurance company. Who's more important: the shareholder or the patients? The shareholder. Why? Profits.

I'm McDonald's. What's more important: your health or my ability to make cheap food fast? The food. Why? Profits.

I'm a salesmen. What's more important: you or my company? My company. Why? Profits.

Guns do not kill people, they make it easier and more effective. Capitalism doesn't hurt people, it makes it easier and more effective.

Ah! MattJohn's gone right off the reservation and I think he's taken planet with him this time. Clearly I've been away from this thread for too long. Gonna see if I can slap together another reply today.

&feature=related

I haven't hidden any of this, just so you know, so I've been off the reservation for awhile now.

Ok, I'm Big Fresh, a kosher place I get Falafal all the time. Patrons health is NUMBER ONE, prices are way low, and the people who privately own the establishment are nice as pie - far from the corrupted, money driven people you (and others in this thread) seem to think capitalism makes all of us without exception. I say without exception, because a couple of you sit around in here talking philosophy as if it's fact and more so, how the world works. People's opinions on how modes of thought work in the mind just isn't fact, and it never will be.

Philosophy - A class you take in college during which people sit around for hours arguing that they don't exist. Then they go have lunch.

__________________

None of us are truly free.

Capitalism is oppresing us.

Boo-hoo, boo-hoo.

Yes, by eating at that establishment you're giving a middle finger to the system. Thank you for proving my point.

Problem is these establishments are dwindling and dwindling. I wonder why? Oh wait, see everything above.

EDIT: BTW, I love how this thread is basically a bunch of walls yelling at each other to move.

EVILS OF CAPITALISM


Capitalism is the greatest evil ever imposed on the species. It dictates to the mass of the species so they can be enslaved by the few.
To enslave the species means to take away his individuality. This necessity comes from the fact that if he can think for himself he will decide against Capitalism.
A major tool for enslaving the species is education institutions. Their job is to teach pro-capitalist, anti-species history. This is done under the guise of teaching when in fact it is conditioning. It starts at the very beginning with pledges of allegiances and a flag in every classroom.
Education in a capitalist state is not an educational endeavor but a conditioning tool.
Even the act of education is conditioning the student to be a part of the mass work force. Stay in line, be on time, speak only when you raise your hand. Respect your leaders, the teachers, the principal.
This conditioning then becomes respect your police, your president , as the children become adults.
The children are overwhelmed by information in a capitalist state. Since there is far more than they can deal with it is left up to the teachers, administrators, politicians and police to sort it out for them. They invariably (with very few exceptions) sort it in support of a suppressive capitalist state.
Teachers attempt to totally control the lives of students. If they do not do their homework, NOTE: this is HOME work, they are punished by being denied recess or in some other manner.
Therefore, the school system that is representing the capitalist government is controlling the student even when he is home. He has no freedom from the beginning of his education to the end and by the time he gets to the end he does not even know what freedom is. He is conditioned to believe freedom is to follow orders.
Capitalism destroys every culture it encounters. It must import slaves from cultures that are deprived of food, housing, clothing and a reasonable standard of living.
They must do this to have someone at the bottom of the work force to do the labor.
These poor people from these other cultures that are imported are required to renounce their cultural background and accept capitalism.
Some cultures resist and that is when the capitalist state imposes harsher rules on their culture. This in turn further deprives them until they bend to accept capitalism.

&feature=relmfu

&feature=related

"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our necessities but of their advantages." --Wealth of Nations

You shouldn't want to abolish a system just because there are those that pursue an unfair advantage. And to say that everyone in a capitalistic society is a bad seed is blatantly ignorant. No system is perfect. All systems have elements of corruption.

Advocates and opponents alike choose to see Adam Smith as someone who believes "greed is good" or that it is acceptable to be selfish through capitalism. Most fail to realize that his belief that man should seek wealth was combined with the idea that he should also be a man of conscience and virtue. The Theory of Moral Sentiments described his intentions for society:

Prudence moderates the individual’s excesses and as such is important for society. It is respectable, if not endearing. Justice limits the harm we do to others. It is essential for the continuation of social life. Beneficence improves social life by prompting us to promote the happiness of others. It cannot be demanded from anyone, but it is always appreciated. And self-command moderates our passions and reins in our destructive actions.

thats all well and good , but the founding fathers warned against the money lenders, but greed found its way anyway.

lets deal with the economic realities of today shall we? Quotes from long since dead folks 100 years gone by offer no practical solution.

What does it mean that they "warned against the money lenders," exactly? They certainly had a debate about debt, and Hamilton's side won -- and thank goodness. And I don't think for even half a second that they ever had the idea in their head that they were abolishing greed, or any other eternal human vice.

Also, I find the idea that "quotes from long since dead folks 100 years gone by offer no practical solution" to be a) pretty short-sighted, b) in conflict with you talking about them warning against something in the paragraph just before it, and c) something I find it hard to believe you entirely believe. There's a lot to be learned from the past, particularly from the people who conceived the system we're living in. What makes those quotes so quotable is that they pierce through their own time period to an underlying truth that speaks to human nature and innate truth.

Also, preemptively, I'm probably not going to watch every video that gets posted, just as I probably wouldn't reply to someone's argument if it consisted of a dozen links I had to read, simply because neither is likely to be precise-targeted to what we're talking about in a way personal replies are. No problem with it, I just find that they work better for general topics or as starting points, since the odds of one video addressing a specific argument made by a specific person fairly rare.

well i post the videos, so as not to be picked apart word by word by the college kids.

however as to the warnings about money lenders, it was Jefferson. He felt that a central bank was more worrisome than standing armies. (not that you guys followed that advice either..lol)

&feature=relmfu