In the end Murali, with your constant references to Malaysia, aren't we just dealing with the strange difficulties of separating Islam from the state in Muslim-majority countries from Morrocco to Indonesia. Separating religion from state is hard but some religions are harder to separate than others. The various established Protestant Churches excepted their loss of perogatives and powers with more grance than the Roman Catholic Church, which tended to fight to the bitter end.
Islam seems to have the same issues that Roman Catholicism had with separating relgion and state but worse since the Catholic Church at least acknowleged some idea that the secular and religious are separate. Islam does not seem to accept this and argues that is designed to be a governing force in all aspects of life. Many practitioners of Islam want their religion to be more than private matter for the faithful and something thats observed by the entire community. They need to decide to change this themselves rather than have it opposed on them.
I still think its right to support the removal of Arab dictatorships even if the result is a Jew-hating, homophobic, and mysogynist Islamic democracy. As I outlined above, it's not like the Arab dictatorships are much better and they give a lot of pier to Islam. The other advantage is that at least the government would have some popular support and we could no longer be accused of imperialism. An illiberal democracy is more likely to evolve into a liberal democracy than a secular dictatorship.
I'd like to point out that none of the Arab dictatorships were exactly secular. Mubarak and company might have persecuted the Islamists but Islam was such a powerful force in those countries that a lot of lip service had to be paid to it and its demands. All of the Arab countries are members of the OIC and official referred to themselves as Islamic. This often net more than a simple acknowledgment of the majority faith. Mubarak offered Egypt's Christians more protection than Morsi but not that much more. He allowed periodic persecution to occur as a pressure valve of sorts.
Creon, I think that you need more than a state religion to be theocratic. Even though England has a state religion, it never was a theocracy. The Church of England was always under the control of secular officials. It started with many perogatives and powers but gave them up without much of a fight during the 19th and 20th century.
A theocratic government requires that the religious authorities of the state religion have independent power from secular authorities and are not under their control. Think Iran or the countries where the Roman Catholic Church was the official religion. Theocracy requires the secular be subject to the religious.
L1, this makes sort of intuitive sense but it seems kind of implausible. Does geeky stereotypes prevent non-geeky men from pursuing STEM careers to?
R2, how are skinny homes different from the shot-gun homes? I wish people would stop coming up with cute neologism for things that we have perfectly adequate terms for.
Mike, thats true to an extent but you also have to look at the propaganda of the regime. Stalin's propganda argued that collectivism is a way to fulfill individual desires and wants in a way that Mao's did not. There is a Stalinist propaganda poster that is basically two images of a young man playing the violin. In one image, the young man is an impoverished street musician and the other he is in a tuxedo and playing in a luxurious concert hall. The caption read something about how talent is treated under communism and capitalism. The meaning was basically that under communism you will be allowed to achieve your individual talents to the fullest while under capitalism you will suffer. So even under Stalin, there was at least some concept of the individual that did not exist in the East Asian versions.
The other thing is that the other communist countries in Europe never went into ideological wackiness the way that the Eastern European states did with the exception of Romania and maybe Albania. East Germany and Yugoslavia liked presenting themselves as the consumer-oriented Communist countries. Poland quickly gave up at the idea of trying to elimiminate religion because too many Polish peole insisted on going to church. Hungary allowed for more than a fair bit of private propety. The idea is that nearly none of them attempted the vast sociological experiments on the same level of the East Asian communists and respected the idea of the individual to a greater or lesser extent. When Eastern European countries attempted a more ideologically wacky form of communism, they tended to meet outright hostility and little corporation from the people because the people expected a certain amount of individualism. Romania's population did not get terribly emotionally invested in the Romanian equivalent of juche and the Cultural Revolution.
greginak, another thing that the Left misses with consumer culture is that things like mass entertainment and consumer culture are pretty much as old as human civilization. Granted they are more prevelant in some civilization than others but the Roman Empire, various Chinese dynasties (especially the Tang, Song, Ming, and Qing dynasties), and Japan under the Tokugawa Shogunate had their own pre-industrial versions of popular culture and consumer society. They seem to develop naturally once a society reaches a ceratin level of prosperity and urbanization.
greginak, I recognize that anti-consumerism exists on the right to but it tends to be different than the leftist version.
Chris, I disagree to an extent. I think that a lot of people on the Left rally against consumption because they are against it in general and not just because its outside the grasp of the proletariat. A lot of consumption is within the grasp of the proletariat and you still have people on the Left rallying against it and arguing that we should all adopt a non-consumerist hippie-like lifestyle. This is particularly common among Anarchists and the more environmentally-oriented Left.
The attitude towards various Communist countries towards consumerism, especially the East Asian ones, showed a problem with consumerism in general.
After Stalin, the Western communists were not willing to go into sociological experiments in the same way that East Asian communists were. The ideological wackiness of the Khmer Rogue, North Korea's juche philosophy, or Maoism scared the shit out of the USSR, Eastern European, and Cuban communists to.
James, I'm aware of Veblein and the liberal side of me is still kind of concerned. A lot of people on the Far Left really don't make a distinction betwen consipicuous consumption and consumption. I'm sure a really radical feminist could come up with an ideological denounciation of all purses even if they aren't Prada because of something historical. Its really hard to tell what the line between consumption and consipicuous consumption is.
My general belief is that as long as people don't impose on others or as long as their fun and happiness doesn't involve intentionally hurting others, its best not to be judgmental about these things.
I'm related to ND and I actual have the same issues. My main point was that separating culture and race issues in mating and dating aren't that easy. Would we say that an American who would gladly date an American of any race but refuses to date non-American citizens because he or she wants to mate with somebody from the same culture is a xenophobe?
James, I recently read a book called The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia by Andrei Lakov. Mr. Lakov was from the former Soviet Union and studied in North Korea as a young man in the 1980s. He pointed out that the USSR was dangerously individualistic and liberal from the point of view of the North Korean regime. The USSR allowed young people to study what they wanted and expected people to get their own jobs rather than applying for them. In North Korea, people were assigned their jobs and told what to study. The private plot given to people on collective farms was much larger in the USSR than it was in North Korea.
And I think the above is true for all communist regimes in Europe and Cuba when compared to the East Asian communist countries. Western communists were unwilling and unable to totally disregard the needs and wants of the individual. Many of them saw communism as a way to fulfill individual needs and wants. East Asian communists were more willing and desirous to totally disregard the individual. I'd argue that this was becuase the West always saw the individual as the primary unit compared to other societies. The clan structure is basically unknwon in Western history. The familial unit of the West has always been the nuclear family of husband, wife, and their children.
Chris, I'd also argue that nearly all forms of fun require the conspicuous consumption of resources. To use one example, sex. At the first sex doesn't seem like it would involve the consipicuous consumption of resources. All you need are two or more willing participants and a room. However, unprotected sex has two downsides that need to be protected against, unwanted pregnancies and STDs. Assuming that the sex in quesiton is heterosexual; the women should be on the pill and the men using condoms. Condoms require latex, which involves harvesting it from rubber trees, etc. Pills also require the consumption of resources to make the pills.
Going into a more innocent direction, making music with other people. Unless everybody is singing, you are going to need instruments. This requires the consumption of wood, metals, and others materials to make the instruments. These materials could probably be put into a more utilitarian use than a musical instrument. Are all musical instruments an example of conspicuous consumption of resources?
Chris, if I'm remembering correctly, and its been years since I read the Republic, Plato used the cave allegory to show how the "wrong" pastimes and leisure can prevent people from seeing the truth by creating a false illusion. Its actually very similar to some of the beliefs found in Dharmic religions like Buddhism. Many Marxists, most prominently the Frankfurt School, have argued that the entire edifice of popular culture and consumerism creates an illusion that prevents the working class from recognizing the true nature of their exploitment. The basic idea is that there is the "truth" out there but people can't recognize it because they are blinded by the illusion of popular culture and entertainment.
I'm against this because I don't think its really true. Its pretty easy to find people who enjoy pop culture and consumerism and realize and/or think that they are exploited. That is they really the "truth". It also runs against my instinct that people should basically be allowed to live as they see fit. I don't want anybody intruding what I find fun, partner dancing, and saying that I can't do it anymore because of its classcist and gendered history. Likewise, I should generally not argue against other people's idea of fun. If people like recreational shopping than so be it.
The only legitimate criticism of consumerism comes from an environmental/ecological point of view in my opinion. Its true that too much consumerism can take a heavy and poisonous toll on the environment. However, the goal should be finding a way to reduce the ecological toll of consumerism rather than get rid of it and make everybody a hippie because that is imposing one group's defintion of happiness on other people.
James, I agree with you but I think that the individualist model as understood in the West only arouse because the Western tradition placed more emphasis on the individual rather than the family or group for a long time. The primacy of the inidvidual in the West has roots in both the Greco-Roman philosophical and legal traditions and the Jewish-Christian religious ones.
Even at its most communal, Western society has been more friendly towards the needs and wants of the individual than other societies.
Except that with Jewisness the issues of race and religion get blurred. First, genetic science pretty much established that all Jews are basically cousins if go far back enough and that most Jews are mainly genetically Middle Eastern even if they have fair skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes. 40% of all Ashkenzai Jews are descendants of four Jewish women from the Middle East who lived a thousand years ago in studies I've read. So Jews are pretty much a genetic group to themselves, which is fairly close to being a race.
Second, there are many atheists who identify as also being Jewish and they want Jewish children. This means that the mother has to be Jewish under Jewish law. These people don't plan to anything religious Jewish but don't want to be involved with anything non-Jewish so they only date Jews. This seems more like an ethnic preference in a mate than a religious one.
In terms of a Jew wanting to marry another Jew is a bit of having an ethnic preference and a religious preference.
LWA. on the Qatarian you talked to. Tablet Magazine has a semi-review of a new book called the Egyptian and Coptic Quest for Modernity by Samuel Tardros, who is a Egyptian Copt. The basic thesis of the book is that Arab liberalism is different than Western liberalism because the first Arab liberals came from civil servants associated with the state rather than bourgeoisie merchants and artisans seeking to limit the power of entrenched interest groups. As a result, Arab liberals have been more comfortable with the use of state power to get what they want than Western liberals.
Chris, I probably read Marcuse during college but I can't remember. I am aware of the Frankfurt School's criticism of popular culture and think it ultimately derives from Plato's discussion of the cave in the Republic.
My least favorite aspect of Marxist philosophy is how they handle cultural issues. I think that the Marxist approach to how people spend their free time has been a long mitigated disaster because it goes against what people actually want most of the time. They try to fit all leisure and culture through a Marxist paradigm and as a result nearly everything fun gets treated as bourgeoisie decadence. I'm not even sure that Marx would approve of this.
ND, tikkum olam doesn't really mean what you think it means. In its strictest sense, tikkun olam is trying to find away around something in the Torah in order to prevent a socially undesirable outcome. The first tikkum olam dealt with the commandment that ordered debts to the poor be cancelled every Sabbitcal year, that is every seventh year. It sounds really just at first but during the time of Hillel it let to situation where the poor couldn't get loans because everybody knew they could not pay them back in seven years and that they would be cancelled in a Sabbatical year. This is socially undesirable. Hillel came up with a legal way around this problem. This was the first instant of tikkun olam.
James, one of my problems with being against materialism is that its really hard to define what materialism beyond vagaries. I'm not really into recreational shopping and really don't feel the need to get the latest gadgets or most fashionable clothing. I receive my first Kindle as a holiday gift from work and only updated to Kindle Fire because my kindle broke, my warranty ran out, and I needed a new one. Upgrading to a Kindle Fire seemed like a good idea at the time. To this extent I'm not really materialist.
At the same time my hobby, partner dancing, is probably one of the most expensive hobbies out there. The lessons cost money and doing competitions cost serious money, especially when you get into the silver and gold levels and need to buy tails. If I was a woman, dancing would be even more expensive because the gowns necessary for competition are in thousands. This isn't materialistic in the strictest sense because dancing involves an actual activity but people really into it spend lots of money on it and that counts as materialism to an extent.
In fact, most hobbies or past times are subject to commercialization. On Lawyers, Guns, and Money there was a recent thread on how nerd fandom is different than sports fandom because sports fans are more dependent on corporations and sports fandom is more passive. I argued against this by pointing out that Japanese nerddom has long been commercialized and the only reason American fandom wasn't earlier was because of geography and density issues.
Like I said in the original post, the form of liberalism that does not like materialism isn't really liberalism. It comes from ideologies that are further from the left than liberalism but get confused as such. Liberals have always been comfortable with widespread material prosperity since the arouse as an ideology. Even when modern liberalism appeared in the late 19th century, with its call for greater government action than previously allowed in liberal thought, the idea was to make the middle class as broad as possible rather than eliminate consumerism.
Its the various ideologies of the Far Left and Far Right that are anti-materialism becuause of their disdain for modernity.
I heard a similar things happen to people who win the lottery big. Even people who grew up lower-middle class or above rather than in poverty have problems dealing with getting lots of money at once. The tendency seems to spend and do everything or get everything you previously couldn't afford rather than save most of it.
If I every win big at the lottery, the first thing I'm going to do is consult somebody trustworthy and find out how I can make this money last as long as possible.
I think that to eliminate or even measure poverty, you need to first figure out what people on average want out of life from a materialistic point of view. That is what to do they expect in terms of the necessities and luxuries of life. Its important to include some luxuries as opposed to just necessities because they make life happier for most people.
Once you figure out what people on average want than you have to decide whats practical to give. I'm sure that a lot of people would love to live like the rich and famous but its not really practical or possible for everybody to be a Kardashian. The ecological costs alone would be immense. However, if people are satisifed with a relatively decent sized house or apartment with adequate food and clothing plus reasonable discreationary spending and leisure time that would be possible to deliver and keep the environmental and other costs under control.
Now comes the really difficult part, coming up with a way to deliver this to people. Do you do it through a series of programs like universal healthcare, subsidized or public housing, etc. or do you just determine what a necessary minimal income is and give people the money to spend as they please. I favor a bit of both.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Theocratic Democracy”
In the end Murali, with your constant references to Malaysia, aren't we just dealing with the strange difficulties of separating Islam from the state in Muslim-majority countries from Morrocco to Indonesia. Separating religion from state is hard but some religions are harder to separate than others. The various established Protestant Churches excepted their loss of perogatives and powers with more grance than the Roman Catholic Church, which tended to fight to the bitter end.
Islam seems to have the same issues that Roman Catholicism had with separating relgion and state but worse since the Catholic Church at least acknowleged some idea that the secular and religious are separate. Islam does not seem to accept this and argues that is designed to be a governing force in all aspects of life. Many practitioners of Islam want their religion to be more than private matter for the faithful and something thats observed by the entire community. They need to decide to change this themselves rather than have it opposed on them.
On “Linky Friday #36”
L2 and E3 lead to the same page.
On “Theocratic Democracy”
I still think its right to support the removal of Arab dictatorships even if the result is a Jew-hating, homophobic, and mysogynist Islamic democracy. As I outlined above, it's not like the Arab dictatorships are much better and they give a lot of pier to Islam. The other advantage is that at least the government would have some popular support and we could no longer be accused of imperialism. An illiberal democracy is more likely to evolve into a liberal democracy than a secular dictatorship.
"
I'd like to point out that none of the Arab dictatorships were exactly secular. Mubarak and company might have persecuted the Islamists but Islam was such a powerful force in those countries that a lot of lip service had to be paid to it and its demands. All of the Arab countries are members of the OIC and official referred to themselves as Islamic. This often net more than a simple acknowledgment of the majority faith. Mubarak offered Egypt's Christians more protection than Morsi but not that much more. He allowed periodic persecution to occur as a pressure valve of sorts.
"
Creon, I think that you need more than a state religion to be theocratic. Even though England has a state religion, it never was a theocracy. The Church of England was always under the control of secular officials. It started with many perogatives and powers but gave them up without much of a fight during the 19th and 20th century.
A theocratic government requires that the religious authorities of the state religion have independent power from secular authorities and are not under their control. Think Iran or the countries where the Roman Catholic Church was the official religion. Theocracy requires the secular be subject to the religious.
On “Linky Friday #36”
L1, this makes sort of intuitive sense but it seems kind of implausible. Does geeky stereotypes prevent non-geeky men from pursuing STEM careers to?
R2, how are skinny homes different from the shot-gun homes? I wish people would stop coming up with cute neologism for things that we have perfectly adequate terms for.
On “Racism and Cross-racial Love”
Kim, enjoy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_studies_on_Jews
On “How to Measure Poverty”
Mike, thats true to an extent but you also have to look at the propaganda of the regime. Stalin's propganda argued that collectivism is a way to fulfill individual desires and wants in a way that Mao's did not. There is a Stalinist propaganda poster that is basically two images of a young man playing the violin. In one image, the young man is an impoverished street musician and the other he is in a tuxedo and playing in a luxurious concert hall. The caption read something about how talent is treated under communism and capitalism. The meaning was basically that under communism you will be allowed to achieve your individual talents to the fullest while under capitalism you will suffer. So even under Stalin, there was at least some concept of the individual that did not exist in the East Asian versions.
The other thing is that the other communist countries in Europe never went into ideological wackiness the way that the Eastern European states did with the exception of Romania and maybe Albania. East Germany and Yugoslavia liked presenting themselves as the consumer-oriented Communist countries. Poland quickly gave up at the idea of trying to elimiminate religion because too many Polish peole insisted on going to church. Hungary allowed for more than a fair bit of private propety. The idea is that nearly none of them attempted the vast sociological experiments on the same level of the East Asian communists and respected the idea of the individual to a greater or lesser extent. When Eastern European countries attempted a more ideologically wacky form of communism, they tended to meet outright hostility and little corporation from the people because the people expected a certain amount of individualism. Romania's population did not get terribly emotionally invested in the Romanian equivalent of juche and the Cultural Revolution.
"
greginak, another thing that the Left misses with consumer culture is that things like mass entertainment and consumer culture are pretty much as old as human civilization. Granted they are more prevelant in some civilization than others but the Roman Empire, various Chinese dynasties (especially the Tang, Song, Ming, and Qing dynasties), and Japan under the Tokugawa Shogunate had their own pre-industrial versions of popular culture and consumer society. They seem to develop naturally once a society reaches a ceratin level of prosperity and urbanization.
greginak, I recognize that anti-consumerism exists on the right to but it tends to be different than the leftist version.
"
Chris, I disagree to an extent. I think that a lot of people on the Left rally against consumption because they are against it in general and not just because its outside the grasp of the proletariat. A lot of consumption is within the grasp of the proletariat and you still have people on the Left rallying against it and arguing that we should all adopt a non-consumerist hippie-like lifestyle. This is particularly common among Anarchists and the more environmentally-oriented Left.
The attitude towards various Communist countries towards consumerism, especially the East Asian ones, showed a problem with consumerism in general.
"
After Stalin, the Western communists were not willing to go into sociological experiments in the same way that East Asian communists were. The ideological wackiness of the Khmer Rogue, North Korea's juche philosophy, or Maoism scared the shit out of the USSR, Eastern European, and Cuban communists to.
"
James, I'm aware of Veblein and the liberal side of me is still kind of concerned. A lot of people on the Far Left really don't make a distinction betwen consipicuous consumption and consumption. I'm sure a really radical feminist could come up with an ideological denounciation of all purses even if they aren't Prada because of something historical. Its really hard to tell what the line between consumption and consipicuous consumption is.
My general belief is that as long as people don't impose on others or as long as their fun and happiness doesn't involve intentionally hurting others, its best not to be judgmental about these things.
On “Racism and Cross-racial Love”
I'm related to ND and I actual have the same issues. My main point was that separating culture and race issues in mating and dating aren't that easy. Would we say that an American who would gladly date an American of any race but refuses to date non-American citizens because he or she wants to mate with somebody from the same culture is a xenophobe?
On “How to Measure Poverty”
James, I recently read a book called The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia by Andrei Lakov. Mr. Lakov was from the former Soviet Union and studied in North Korea as a young man in the 1980s. He pointed out that the USSR was dangerously individualistic and liberal from the point of view of the North Korean regime. The USSR allowed young people to study what they wanted and expected people to get their own jobs rather than applying for them. In North Korea, people were assigned their jobs and told what to study. The private plot given to people on collective farms was much larger in the USSR than it was in North Korea.
And I think the above is true for all communist regimes in Europe and Cuba when compared to the East Asian communist countries. Western communists were unwilling and unable to totally disregard the needs and wants of the individual. Many of them saw communism as a way to fulfill individual needs and wants. East Asian communists were more willing and desirous to totally disregard the individual. I'd argue that this was becuase the West always saw the individual as the primary unit compared to other societies. The clan structure is basically unknwon in Western history. The familial unit of the West has always been the nuclear family of husband, wife, and their children.
"
Chris, I'd also argue that nearly all forms of fun require the conspicuous consumption of resources. To use one example, sex. At the first sex doesn't seem like it would involve the consipicuous consumption of resources. All you need are two or more willing participants and a room. However, unprotected sex has two downsides that need to be protected against, unwanted pregnancies and STDs. Assuming that the sex in quesiton is heterosexual; the women should be on the pill and the men using condoms. Condoms require latex, which involves harvesting it from rubber trees, etc. Pills also require the consumption of resources to make the pills.
Going into a more innocent direction, making music with other people. Unless everybody is singing, you are going to need instruments. This requires the consumption of wood, metals, and others materials to make the instruments. These materials could probably be put into a more utilitarian use than a musical instrument. Are all musical instruments an example of conspicuous consumption of resources?
"
Chris, if I'm remembering correctly, and its been years since I read the Republic, Plato used the cave allegory to show how the "wrong" pastimes and leisure can prevent people from seeing the truth by creating a false illusion. Its actually very similar to some of the beliefs found in Dharmic religions like Buddhism. Many Marxists, most prominently the Frankfurt School, have argued that the entire edifice of popular culture and consumerism creates an illusion that prevents the working class from recognizing the true nature of their exploitment. The basic idea is that there is the "truth" out there but people can't recognize it because they are blinded by the illusion of popular culture and entertainment.
I'm against this because I don't think its really true. Its pretty easy to find people who enjoy pop culture and consumerism and realize and/or think that they are exploited. That is they really the "truth". It also runs against my instinct that people should basically be allowed to live as they see fit. I don't want anybody intruding what I find fun, partner dancing, and saying that I can't do it anymore because of its classcist and gendered history. Likewise, I should generally not argue against other people's idea of fun. If people like recreational shopping than so be it.
The only legitimate criticism of consumerism comes from an environmental/ecological point of view in my opinion. Its true that too much consumerism can take a heavy and poisonous toll on the environment. However, the goal should be finding a way to reduce the ecological toll of consumerism rather than get rid of it and make everybody a hippie because that is imposing one group's defintion of happiness on other people.
"
James, I agree with you but I think that the individualist model as understood in the West only arouse because the Western tradition placed more emphasis on the individual rather than the family or group for a long time. The primacy of the inidvidual in the West has roots in both the Greco-Roman philosophical and legal traditions and the Jewish-Christian religious ones.
Even at its most communal, Western society has been more friendly towards the needs and wants of the individual than other societies.
On “Racism and Cross-racial Love”
Except that with Jewisness the issues of race and religion get blurred. First, genetic science pretty much established that all Jews are basically cousins if go far back enough and that most Jews are mainly genetically Middle Eastern even if they have fair skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes. 40% of all Ashkenzai Jews are descendants of four Jewish women from the Middle East who lived a thousand years ago in studies I've read. So Jews are pretty much a genetic group to themselves, which is fairly close to being a race.
Second, there are many atheists who identify as also being Jewish and they want Jewish children. This means that the mother has to be Jewish under Jewish law. These people don't plan to anything religious Jewish but don't want to be involved with anything non-Jewish so they only date Jews. This seems more like an ethnic preference in a mate than a religious one.
In terms of a Jew wanting to marry another Jew is a bit of having an ethnic preference and a religious preference.
On “How to Measure Poverty”
LWA. on the Qatarian you talked to. Tablet Magazine has a semi-review of a new book called the Egyptian and Coptic Quest for Modernity by Samuel Tardros, who is a Egyptian Copt. The basic thesis of the book is that Arab liberalism is different than Western liberalism because the first Arab liberals came from civil servants associated with the state rather than bourgeoisie merchants and artisans seeking to limit the power of entrenched interest groups. As a result, Arab liberals have been more comfortable with the use of state power to get what they want than Western liberals.
"
Chris, I probably read Marcuse during college but I can't remember. I am aware of the Frankfurt School's criticism of popular culture and think it ultimately derives from Plato's discussion of the cave in the Republic.
My least favorite aspect of Marxist philosophy is how they handle cultural issues. I think that the Marxist approach to how people spend their free time has been a long mitigated disaster because it goes against what people actually want most of the time. They try to fit all leisure and culture through a Marxist paradigm and as a result nearly everything fun gets treated as bourgeoisie decadence. I'm not even sure that Marx would approve of this.
"
ND, tikkum olam doesn't really mean what you think it means. In its strictest sense, tikkun olam is trying to find away around something in the Torah in order to prevent a socially undesirable outcome. The first tikkum olam dealt with the commandment that ordered debts to the poor be cancelled every Sabbitcal year, that is every seventh year. It sounds really just at first but during the time of Hillel it let to situation where the poor couldn't get loans because everybody knew they could not pay them back in seven years and that they would be cancelled in a Sabbatical year. This is socially undesirable. Hillel came up with a legal way around this problem. This was the first instant of tikkun olam.
"
James, one of my problems with being against materialism is that its really hard to define what materialism beyond vagaries. I'm not really into recreational shopping and really don't feel the need to get the latest gadgets or most fashionable clothing. I receive my first Kindle as a holiday gift from work and only updated to Kindle Fire because my kindle broke, my warranty ran out, and I needed a new one. Upgrading to a Kindle Fire seemed like a good idea at the time. To this extent I'm not really materialist.
At the same time my hobby, partner dancing, is probably one of the most expensive hobbies out there. The lessons cost money and doing competitions cost serious money, especially when you get into the silver and gold levels and need to buy tails. If I was a woman, dancing would be even more expensive because the gowns necessary for competition are in thousands. This isn't materialistic in the strictest sense because dancing involves an actual activity but people really into it spend lots of money on it and that counts as materialism to an extent.
In fact, most hobbies or past times are subject to commercialization. On Lawyers, Guns, and Money there was a recent thread on how nerd fandom is different than sports fandom because sports fans are more dependent on corporations and sports fandom is more passive. I argued against this by pointing out that Japanese nerddom has long been commercialized and the only reason American fandom wasn't earlier was because of geography and density issues.
"
Like I said in the original post, the form of liberalism that does not like materialism isn't really liberalism. It comes from ideologies that are further from the left than liberalism but get confused as such. Liberals have always been comfortable with widespread material prosperity since the arouse as an ideology. Even when modern liberalism appeared in the late 19th century, with its call for greater government action than previously allowed in liberal thought, the idea was to make the middle class as broad as possible rather than eliminate consumerism.
Its the various ideologies of the Far Left and Far Right that are anti-materialism becuause of their disdain for modernity.
"
I heard a similar things happen to people who win the lottery big. Even people who grew up lower-middle class or above rather than in poverty have problems dealing with getting lots of money at once. The tendency seems to spend and do everything or get everything you previously couldn't afford rather than save most of it.
If I every win big at the lottery, the first thing I'm going to do is consult somebody trustworthy and find out how I can make this money last as long as possible.
"
I think that to eliminate or even measure poverty, you need to first figure out what people on average want out of life from a materialistic point of view. That is what to do they expect in terms of the necessities and luxuries of life. Its important to include some luxuries as opposed to just necessities because they make life happier for most people.
Once you figure out what people on average want than you have to decide whats practical to give. I'm sure that a lot of people would love to live like the rich and famous but its not really practical or possible for everybody to be a Kardashian. The ecological costs alone would be immense. However, if people are satisifed with a relatively decent sized house or apartment with adequate food and clothing plus reasonable discreationary spending and leisure time that would be possible to deliver and keep the environmental and other costs under control.
Now comes the really difficult part, coming up with a way to deliver this to people. Do you do it through a series of programs like universal healthcare, subsidized or public housing, etc. or do you just determine what a necessary minimal income is and give people the money to spend as they please. I favor a bit of both.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.