09.30.07
Posted in Critique of Evolutionary Economy at 8:52 pm by nemo
One gets a little impatient with the left for fumbling the ball on Darwinian ideology. The birth of the shock doctrine in the wake of Adam Smith produced a mind that enters into the Darwinian worldview,
Birth of the Shock Doctrine.
The destruction of the ethics of altruism in the mystique of propaganda over natural selection is the most obvious giveaway to the ’shock them out of ethical restraint’ strain in otherwise scientific looking evolutionary theory. It is a lot easier for economists to ply value-free (psychopathic) economic legitimation in an environment where Darwinism prospers.
One reason the left is stuck here is, perhaps, that it has its own ’shock doctrine’ history. It is hard to exempt Stalin’s ‘economic shock treatment’ of the thirties from the condemnation of neoliberalism! There terror and torture were the specialty of the house on the grand scale.
Maybe the Chicago Boys plagiarized a bit in their Pinochet fantasies.
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Posted in Critique of Evolutionary Economy, History, Evolution at 8:45 pm by nemo
The ’shock doctrine’ actually is born in the period just after the brief aura of the seemingly ‘revolutionary’ or radical Adam Smith past away and was conservatized in the next generation, witness this passage from history-and-evoluton.com, and World History and The Eonic Effect, Critique of Evolutionary Economy:
—–:
As one author notes, “Classical political economy presents an imposing façade. For more than two centuries, its professed adherents have been grinding out texts to demonstrate how a market generates forces that provide the most efficient method for organizing production. The concept of primitive accumulation—that is, the process of depriving people of their means of producing for themselves—seems far removed from the literature of classical political economy.” Michael Perelman, Classical Political Economy (London: Rowman and Allanheld, 1983), p. vii, and p. 171.
Are we to suppose that Darwin mistakenly borrowed an ideological cover story, yet succeeded in producing a science? The author also cites the often-quoted comment of a Francis Horner, a Captain of Industry if there ever was one, from 1803, declining to review a reissue of Smith’s text,
I should be reluctant to expose S’s errors before his work had operated its full effect. We owe much at present to the superstitious worship of S’s name; and we must not impair that feeling, till the victory is more complete….[U]ntil we can give a correct and precise theory of the origin of wealth, his popular and plausible and loose hypothesis is as good for the vulgar as any others.
I think we should do well to suspect the equally complete cynicism in some quarters in the social promotion of Darwin’s theory. Perhaps we have cut and paste ‘S.’s errors’ for D’s. Is the whole game a hack? How utterly convenient. Economic agents with legitimate selfishness in theory are blessed as the breaking front of evolution and the champions of economy both.
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Posted in Critique of Evolutionary Economy at 8:13 pm by nemo
It is strange that we have been discussing mind control, partly beginning with sillykitty’s concerns here, as I began to investigate, reaching the conclusion that beyond the ‘Manchurian Candidate’ myths there was in fact a crystallizing set of interrogation techniques. See this post on Padilla
Klein’s Shock Doctrine, to my surprise, picks up this theme in the first chapter and tells us that the CIA research (see Kubark Counterinlligence Interrogation, www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv) has been adopted by free market economists, et al, in the tactics of ’shock treatment’ economics. This sets the tone for the book, and Klein shows how the original techniques of the CIA (whose files on this were all destroyed) become a mystique of surprise attack economics plied by the epigones of the Chicago School. We are of course seeing this all come to light in the wake of 9/11, Abu Ghraib, and the rest of it. But its application to macroeconomic manipulations, the famous shock therapy from Pinochet to Jeffrey Sacks and Paul Bremer et co., is an acute revelation of Klein’s book.
We can’t just yawn anymore when these gangs start using these tactics on innocent populations where editorial gonzos slick the news stories with ‘freedom’ verbiage. The tactics are a form of piracy to reap the huge profits of ’shock therapy’ economics, while noone is watching, or quite aware of what is going on.
We need to be on full alert from now on whenever this brand of Neoliberalism gets in motion for more of its profits through crimes against humanity.
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Posted in 1848+, Critique of Evolutionary Economy, Booknotes at 5:58 pm by nemo
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (Hardcover)
by Naomi Klein (Author)
I am finishing up Klein’s superb Shock Doctrine, and if you are anyone not connected with the economic elite I recommend reading this book to figure if you have been fooled lately.
I try hard to withstand the disinformation rife in the major media on the issues of politics, economy and ideology, have studied Marx on ideology with its warning to not be fooled, but I know from hard experience that one’s batting average here is comparable to that of baseball players (i.e. always below .500, at best, etc…)
Klein’s tour de force does something that has become rare for leftists: produces a critique of economic issues that is clear, not laden with leftwing shibboleths, and able to get down to cases with what should have been obvious to all of us, but which never fully connects as we sluggishly process disinformation and half-truths.
I was worried at first that Klein’s generalization about ’shock doctrine’ would be one-sided, or put the data into false analogy mode, but was surprised at the deft way she makes her case, connecting the dots on both the legacy of ‘mind control’ (so-called) research, and Milton Friedman’s brand of economics, so heavily disguised behind its mesmerizing ‘freedom’ pitch. The portrait of the influence of Friedman (often with his direct intervention) and the Chicago School is a story that needed to be told, one that few can seem to tell, and the sheer mass of new information here makes an overwhelming case. The latter is the key value of the book, the simple facts of the history of neo-liberalism and the laundered economic history we get from the News, NY Times certainly not excepted.
There are a lot of devastating revelations of fact in this book for anyone not ‘fully informed’ in a busy world (that means me, you speak for yourself), starting with the Pinochet era, moving to the Russian shock doctrine case, and coming to the truly mind-boggling case of the shock doctrine in Iraq.
I can assure that you have been brainwashed here, and I am sure you are sure you are not, so read the book.
Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Science & Religion at 5:42 pm by nemo
Who is Anti-Science?
There is a long record of conflict and persecution in the history of science, as in any area of endeavor. Scientists are given to the same failings as other human beings: greed, status anxiety, envy, and fear. To believe the pious statements by professional organizations about the enlightened way “science works” is comparable to accepting the civics textbook renderings of “how a law is made.” There is a way, all right, that science is supposed to work (and laws supposedly are made), and then there is reality.
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Posted in Evolution at 4:32 pm by nemo
The evolution of Morality
Is ‘do unto others’ written into our genes? Science now thinks it may be, says NICHOLAS WADE.
We can see this Times Darwinism flowing from Wade to the far corners, and the basic fallacy behind this Darwinization of research will not flow with it. This issue has been addressed many times on this blog.
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Posted in Science & Religion, The Axial Age, The Eonic Effect at 4:26 pm by nemo
Raiders of the faux ark
Biblical archeology is too important to leave to crackpots and ideologues. It’s time to fight back.
The confusion over the Old Testament, religious and secular, is disguising its ultimately unique significance as a record of the Axial Age, and the existence of macro-historical phenomena. Rescuing this interpretation (e.g. via the study of the eonic effect) is getting lost in the exploitations and secularist reductions. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Science & Religion, The Axial Age at 6:57 pm by nemo
James on the question of the ’sacred’:
You are quite right, how can we talk about the ’sacred’ at all, in a secular context. We can’t, and don’t need to.
As to what we mean by religion, the question if very complex, and it is probably counterproductive to insist on a single definition. It won’t work, and leads people like the New Atheists to denounce ‘all religion’ in all its aspects, a tactic that is highly dangerous in the end.
Look at history, the question of religion is not simple. We have the signs of religion in the Neolithic, at the birth of civilization, in the Axial Age, etc…
We can’t easily generalize on the question.
Look at ancient Israel. It is hard to figure that one out. Note that the religion(s) came much later, the Old Testemant era itself, was the tale of a Canaanite kingdom and its emergent theocratic state.
Or Buddhism, a tiny ashram in the forest area of India.
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Posted in In the News at 3:27 pm by nemo
Top 100 Ways Global Warming Will Change Your Life
Center for American Progress. Posted September 29, 2007.
Say goodbye to French wines, baseball and the Great Barrier Reef. Say hello to massive amounts of mosquitoes, the northwest passage and hurricanes.
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Posted in Booknotes at 3:00 pm by nemo
The poet of collision
Dashiell Hammett knew that his day job as a detective for the anti-trade
union Pinkerton agency made him in large part a fascist tool - his
guilt, writes James Ellroy, was the driving force of his crime fiction
by James Ellroy
Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Evolution at 2:38 pm by nemo
On Faith on Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens and his best-selling book, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, continues to stir up online controversy. On Faith, the joint Washington Post/Newsweek interactive project, is asking for reaction to his contention that religion is “violent, irrational, intolerant.”
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