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A new myth appeared during the presidential campaign of Andrew Jackson

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Re: A new myth appeared during the presidential campaign of Andrew Jackson

#61

Post by Atlas667 »

roarcher wrote: post #44
Atlas667 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> could reduce their achievements to whatever configuration of gray matter Even if we could do that it would not "reduce" any personal value. I think these are biases you may have. Accountability can be defined, even in that total view. And right now, even in the incomplete view that we have, it is defined socially and politically. And that's what my real take is: That the ideas that most people have of self, person-…

> They serve a political purpose. Indeed. > That vague notion that "some people are just different" is the base for many political violations. As is the idea that everyone is an interchangeable unit of labor, all producing the same outputs if only they were given the same inputs. > If anything the ideal, final form of what I am saying is this: Real Incorruptible Democracy. I don't know what you mean by this, but I am…

> As is the idea that everyone is an interchangeable unit of labor, all producing the same outputs if only they were given the same inputs.

Agreed. That's why I don't believe in that. And actually that's kind of what I'm criticizing: the fake science used to judge peoples behavior.

But I do know we're way WAY more similar than our cultures would have us believe.

> I don't know what you mean by this, but I am highly skeptical of anything that claims a title like "incorruptible". Such things are usually the exact opposite, sort of like countries with "Democratic Republic" in their name or ships billed as "unsinkable".

I'm saying we can devise a political system that is incorruptible. Just like we generate mathematical proofs that underpin technologies which handle our worlds economy. But the creation of an incorruptible democracy can ONLY be done by the people who benefit from it. As in, the rich would never help us do it, only the poor. In fact, the rich would probably view us as enemies if we seriously tried.

Re: A new myth appeared during the presidential campaign of Andrew Jackson

#62

Post by Atlas667 »

anon291 wrote: post #41
Atlas667 wrote: post #11

"Society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand." - Karl Marx My last few comments on this site have been precisely about these ideas. These ideas, in my view, are inherent flaws of philosophical liberalism, of which modern liberalism and conservatism stem. This ideology places itself at the forefront of morality, but can't even seri…

One thing I noticed about marxists is that they themselves have a hierarchy surrounding the rich and poor which they imagine exists in everyone else. In reality, hardly anyone thinks a poor man is 'spiritually bankrupt'. The main religion of the Western world says the poor man is in fact inherently better.

IDK, man, I hear Christians talk about people being misguided (spiritually) all the time. In fact I think they're the ones who say it the most.

But I actually meant it as a sort of drive (spirit), not wholly about belief (spiritual).

But also, you must take into consideration all the ill effects of poverty. Such as crime, lack of education, lack of opportunities, the emotional faults of poverty, unchecked mental health problems, anger, frustration, ills with socialization, etc. All of the effects derived from poverty. All of these get bunched up into a single shallow view of the poor: "they're just like that" - kinda tone.

While the rich get the material wealth and the status-privilege of their families, the rich are assumed to be valuable.

This is literally what the article is talking about, albeit within a more aristocratic context.

Re: A new myth appeared during the presidential campaign of Andrew Jackson

#63

Post by astrange »

rimbo789 wrote: post #50
anon291 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I noticed about marxists is that they themselves have a hierarchy surrounding the rich and poor which they imagine exists in everyone else. In reality, hardly anyone thinks a poor man is 'spiritually bankrupt'. The main religion of the Western world says the poor man is in fact inherently better.

Read any thread in HN about the unhoused and it is very clear many many people think the poor deserve their condition and are lesser for being so.

Unfortunately one thing being homeless can do to you (or being a drug addict can do to you) is give you permanent brain injuries, at which point you are stuck that way.

So there's circularity.

Re: A new myth appeared during the presidential campaign of Andrew Jackson

#64

Post by astrange »

quesera wrote: post #23
lazide wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, I thought it was the Jews that owned everything? Or was it the Freemasons? I can’t even keep track anymore. I can’t think of a single WASP billionaire though - maybe that’s the mind control at work?

> I can’t think of a single WASP billionaire though Gates, Buffett, Musk ... all spring to mind. White certainly. Anglo-Saxon doesn't mean much more than "of western/northern european ancestry" any more. Protestant as much as any other non-Catholic Christian sect. But WASP doesn't mean literally what it means any more, so maybe I'm missing the reason you overlooked the most famous modern American-citizen billionaires…

Surely Musk isn't a WASP. I think he's from Northern England (don't know why I know this.) You might as well call Paul McCartney a WASP billionaire.

Re: A new myth appeared during the presidential campaign of Andrew Jackson

#65

Post by thaumasiotes »

Atlas667 wrote: post #17
api wrote: post #10

In the debate between self made and team effort my opinion is “both.” Nobody starts from zero. Everyone builds on the work of others with help from others. At the same time, individuals can make unique contributions and are not just interchangeable parts. You see this over and over again in art, music, engineering, science, literature, etc., or really anything requiring skill. People aren’t interchangeable. I think b…

Yes, facts make it necessarily both. But what does that mean? What is attribution? What is ownership? How does our legal framework work? How does the media speak about reality? The reason for "great men" isn't that its true, it's that that's how our society is structured. These ideas come from how our property is structured. If a person can own as much wealth as millions and the media is on their side; great men exis…

> Kings made sense at the time, and were great, not because they were strong, admirable, and morally good individuals, they were great because they owned all the land

That depends on the society. The king in Achaemenid Persia owned all the land. His successors the Seleucid Greek kings didn't. A medieval European king didn't even come close.

I read something to the effect that (in one very early Mesopotamian city) the king owned about 1/3 of the land, another ~1/3 was owned by large landholders who numbered maybe a couple dozen (this group included the queen), and the final ~1/3 was owned by a very large number of small landholders.

Re: A new myth appeared during the presidential campaign of Andrew Jackson

#66

Post by pdonis »

Atlas667 wrote: post #61
roarcher wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They serve a political purpose. Indeed. > That vague notion that "some people are just different" is the base for many political violations. As is the idea that everyone is an interchangeable unit of labor, all producing the same outputs if only they were given the same inputs. > If anything the ideal, final form of what I am saying is this: Real Incorruptible Democracy. I don't know what you mean by this, but I am…

> As is the idea that everyone is an interchangeable unit of labor, all producing the same outputs if only they were given the same inputs. Agreed. That's why I don't believe in that. And actually that's kind of what I'm criticizing: the fake science used to judge peoples behavior. But I do know we're way WAY more similar than our cultures would have us believe. > I don't know what you mean by this, but I am highly s…

> I'm saying we can devise a political system that is incorruptible.

Please show your work. All human history says this can't be done.

Re: A new myth appeared during the presidential campaign of Andrew Jackson

#67

Post by pdonis »

rimbo789 wrote: post #12
rayiner wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Native Americans were here for tens of thousands of years. If it was so easy to use Indians’ resources to build a civilization, why didn’t the Indians do it? Your attitude is illogical cope. How could “WASPs” have gotten rich from stealing from a group of people they vastly outnumbered and who were primitive in comparison?

Given all the raping, enslaving, pillaging, and general genociding europeans did upon arrival to North America I don’t think we can say it was the First Nations that were “primitive”

If you think those things didn't happen before the Europeans arrived, you need to think again.

Re: A new myth appeared during the presidential campaign of Andrew Jackson

#68

Post by gsf_emergency_6 »

api wrote: post #10

In the debate between self made and team effort my opinion is “both.” Nobody starts from zero. Everyone builds on the work of others with help from others. At the same time, individuals can make unique contributions and are not just interchangeable parts. You see this over and over again in art, music, engineering, science, literature, etc., or really anything requiring skill. People aren’t interchangeable. I think b…

Blurb points to the author's other book

Pull: Networking and Success Since Benjamin Franklin

Suggesting that she indeed thinks of the self-made myth itself as a product of many cooks.

I'm more skeptical of her framing this mythmaking as an early but enduring model for populist strategy that was (initially) opposed by the elites of the time.

For context, a review of hers of antitax historiography asks:

How do the privileged rule a democracy without triggering a populist revolt? Scholars Steve Fraser, Gary Gerstle, and their colleagues in Ruling America (2005) see historical continuity in the exercise of the founts of riches and power at elites' disposal. The Power to Destroy astutely addresses this question without asking it directly. Even so, a longer historical perspective would have enriched Graetz's approach to analyzing a populist revolt and its destructiveness. The revolt he tracks was not triggered against the rich and powerful, but on their behalf against the progressive state. His analysis provides an invaluable and distressing new twist on the long-standing question of how the privileged rule in a democracy

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/955278

https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691225562/th...

My own derived question is whether there are historical examples of directed-myth-making (fully adopting your balanced perspective on "individual VS communal values") servicing political goals _orthogonal_ to the populism/elitism axis

Re: A new myth appeared during the presidential campaign of Andrew Jackson

#69

Post by cyberax »

anon291 wrote: post #30
Atlas667 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, facts make it necessarily both. But what does that mean? What is attribution? What is ownership? How does our legal framework work? How does the media speak about reality? The reason for "great men" isn't that its true, it's that that's how our society is structured. These ideas come from how our property is structured. If a person can own as much wealth as millions and the media is on their side; great men exis…

Many kings were strong and admirable. Not sure why you are so down on individual kings even if monarchy is not a great system of governance and prone to tyranny. Good kings provided protection from the very real threat of foreign barbarians, provided a common legal framework, and eased commerce, and thus human flourishing. Good kings deserve commendation even if monarchy has issues. Ascribing only vices (chopping hea…

The only "good kings" are:

1. The ones that are long dead.

2. The ones that have their head chopped off.

3. The ones that don't actually have a lot of power.

> Good kings provided protection from the very real threat of foreign barbarians, provided a common legal framework, and eased commerce, and thus human flourishing. Good kings deserve commendation even if monarchy has issues.

"Good kings" did not "provide protection". The army did. They also did not provide "protection" to everybody, regular peasants usually couldn't care less about their current king.

Re: A new myth appeared during the presidential campaign of Andrew Jackson

#70

Post by card_zero »

cyberax wrote: post #69
anon291 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many kings were strong and admirable. Not sure why you are so down on individual kings even if monarchy is not a great system of governance and prone to tyranny. Good kings provided protection from the very real threat of foreign barbarians, provided a common legal framework, and eased commerce, and thus human flourishing. Good kings deserve commendation even if monarchy has issues. Ascribing only vices (chopping hea…

The only "good kings" are: 1. The ones that are long dead. 2. The ones that have their head chopped off. 3. The ones that don't actually have a lot of power. > Good kings provided protection from the very real threat of foreign barbarians, provided a common legal framework, and eased commerce, and thus human flourishing. Good kings deserve commendation even if monarchy has issues. "Good kings" did not "provide protec…

Many of the long dead ones did good things. In a manner of speaking there shouldn't have been kings in the past, but we can extend that statement to say that the past should have been modern times, which it couldn't be. Any moral judgment has to take into account what can reasonably be expected. Charlemagne, then, who (at least in his capacity as a cultural focal point) standardized Latin and founded schools and reformed the illegible script into miniscule, was reasonably good, for a king. The Persian, Roman, and Indian emperors, who started postal services, were doing it for espionage and warfare, but as it happens, they were also doing some good.
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