Baha'i Rants - Latest Comments in Towards a New Economic System

Re: Towards a New Economic System

peyamb — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 19:41:26 -0000

Correction: 562 Comments for human rights and justice issue...

Re: Towards a New Economic System

abbas — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 16:04:47 -0000

562 Comments for sex issue 42 for modelli economici

siete veramente perverti

Re: Towards a New Economic System

fubar — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 03:25:11 -0000

Has "Corporatism" (new totalitarianism) "infected" the "culture of therapy"?

One of the interesting themes of some writers is that old categories of meaning have lost their boundries, and the "memes" that originally defined those categories cross over into other categories.

For instance, Rush Limbaugh is actually very postmodern/unconventional in how he rabidly defends convention and tradition. He attacks relativism with relativist arguments. Entertaining, but absurd and nasty.

James Hillman has an interesting "take" on part of this phenomena, as it relates to economics and social conditions.

Normally, the subject of psychotherapy would seem to fall into the world of liberal, progressive culture. Some critics have disparagingly referred to the "culture of therapy" ("nanny state", etc.) that absorbs liberal culture.

What James Hillman appears to be saying in his critique of the institutionalization of therapy is that the "bad memes" of Corporatism have leaked across the boundry into the liberal/caring institutional world. (This isn't surprising to me since I've seen "caring" culture become increasingly fascist/absolutist about "thought policing" and "political correctness" for a couple of decades.)

http://www.scottlondon.com/...

excerpts:

... In spite of these achievements, Hillman is not exactly an establishment figure in the world of psychology. If anything, he is looked upon by many in the profession as a profoundly subversive thinker, a thorn in the side of respectable psychologists.

As the founder of archetypal psychology, a school of thought aimed at "revisioning" or "reimagining" psychology, Hillman believes that the therapy business needs to evolve beyond reductionist "nature" and "nurture" theories of human development. Since the early 1960s, he has written, taught, and lectured on the need to get therapy out of the consulting room and into the real world. Conventional psychology has lost touch with what he calls "the soul's code."
. . .

London: You're not a very popular figure with the therapy establishment.

Hillman: I'm not critical of the people who do psychotherapy. The therapists in the trenches have to face an awful lot of the social, political, and economic failures of capitalism. They have to take care of all the rejects and failures. They are sincere and work hard with very little credit, and the HMOs and the pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies are trying to wipe them out. So certainly I am not attacking them. I am attacking the theories of psychotherapy. You don't attack the grunts of Vietnam; you blame the theory behind the war. Nobody who fought in that war was at fault. It was the war itself that was at fault. It's the same thing with psychotherapy. It makes every problem a subjective, inner problem. And that's not where the problems come from. They come from the environment, the cities, the economy, the racism. They come from architecture, school systems, capitalism, exploitation. They come from many places that psychotherapy does not address. Psychotherapy theory turns it all on you: you are the one who is wrong. What I'm trying to say is that, if a kid is having trouble or is discouraged, the problem is not just inside the kid; it's also in the system, the society.
. . .

London: In The Soul's Code, you talk about something called the "acorn theory." What is that?

Hillman: Well, it's more of a myth than a theory. It's Plato's myth that you come into the world with a destiny, although he uses the word paradigma, or paradigm, instead of destiny. The acorn theory says that there is an individual image that belongs to your soul.

The same myth can be found in the kabbalah. The Mormon's have it. The West Africans have it. The Hindus and the Buddhists have it in different ways — they tie it more to reincarnation and karma, but you still come into the world with a particular destiny. Native Americans have it very strongly. So all these cultures all over the world have this basic understanding of human existence. Only American psychology doesn't have it.

London: In our culture we tend to think of calling in terms of "vocation" or "career."

Hillman: Yes, but calling can refer not only to ways of doing — meaning work — but also to ways of being. Take being a friend. Goethe said that his friend Eckermann was born for friendship. Aristotle made friendship one of the great virtues. In his book on ethics, three or four chapters are on friendship. In the past, friendship was a huge thing. But it's hard for us to think of friendship as a calling, because it's not a vocation.

London: Motherhood is another example that comes to mind. Mothers are still expected to have a vocation above and beyond being a mother.

Hillman: Right, it's not enough just to be a mother. It's not only the social pressure on mothers by certain kinds of feminism and other sources. There is also economic pressure on them. It's a terrible cruelty of predatory capitalism: both parents now have to work. A family has to have two incomes in order to buy the things that are desirable in our culture. So the degradation of motherhood — the sense that motherhood isn't itself a calling — also arises from economic pressure.
. . .

London: What is the danger for a child who grows up never understanding his or her destiny?

Hillman: I think our entire civilization exemplifies that danger. People are itchy and lost and bored and quick to jump at any fix. Why is there such a vast self-help industry in this country? Why do all these selves need help? They have been deprived of something by our psychological culture they have been deprived of the sense that there is something else in life, some purpose that has come with them into the world.
. . .

But when the medical becomes scientistic; when it becomes analytical, diagnostic, statistical, and remedial; when it comes under the influence of pharmacology and HMOs — limiting patients to six conversations and those kinds of things — then we've lost the art altogether, and we're just doing business: industrial, corporate business.

London: Doesn't this have to do with the fact that, at a certain point in its development, psychology adopted the reductive method in order to gain the respectability of science?

Hillman: I think you're absolutely correct. But as the popular trust in science fades — and many sociologists say that's happening today — people will develop a distrust of purely "scientific" psychology. Researchers in the universities haven't picked up on this; they're more interested in genetics and computer models of thinking than ever. But, in general, there is a huge distrust of the scientific establishment now.

London: As people rebel against the scientific approach, they often wind up at the other extreme. We're seeing many new forms of self-help and personal-growth therapies based on non-rational beliefs.

Hillman: The new age self-help phenomenon is pretty mushy, but it's also very American. Our history is filled with traveling preachers and quack medicine and searches for the soul. I don't see this as a new thing. I think the new age is part of a phenomenon that's been there all along.
. . .

My book is about a third view. It says, yes, there's genetics. Yes, there are chromosomes. Yes, there's biology. Yes, there are environment, sociology, parenting, economics, class, and all of that. But there is something else, as well. So if you come at my book from the side of science, you see it as "new age." If you come at the book from the side of the new age, you say it doesn't go far enough — it's too rational.
. . .

Re: Towards a New Economic System

fubar — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 02:31:32 -0000

rationalism necessary, but not sufficient?
re: http://mavaddat.livejournal...

------------
callmesquanky,

re: raw reality (human suffering, liberation from suffering)

I'm an ex-bahai, but I think you have a valid point, aside from the religious specifics.

Why? rationalism is good for understanding "It" (objects, externals). But not "I" (inner awareness, individual emotion), or "We" (collective emotion, goodness, human decency, empathy, compassion.....).

I think you have correctly reacted against the "absolutism" that rationalism typically represents in the minds of many anti-religious people (this is probably a "projection" of the pain they experienced in a religious community, or family). Mavaddat is correct concerned about ( and presumably pained by) the absolutism in religion, but is perhaps less sensitive to rationalist absolutism.

Alienation results from modernist and postmodern conditions.

Rationalism, since it "sees" emotions/feelings from the "outside" isn't going to lead anyone, by itself, to emotional healing, or wholeness, or love, or awe of the horrible emptiness and expanse of the universe, or any of that kind of stuff.

Rationalist absolutism is as limited and "partial" a perspective as is fundamentalist/authoritarian religion.

Balanced, holistic/integral, rationalism is good. It stops "needing" to be absolutist, because it is healed of pain and suffering.

Mavaddat is right that religion isn't strictly needed in the postmodern world that has had the basis of culture "deconstructed" via pluralism and relativism. The bits and pieces of good stuff about religion can be picked up hither and yon for those interested. No exclusivist membership needed. [no dogma needed]

The bigger question is: what will replace religion now that it had been deconstructed?

The answer is: lots of scary stuff at least as bad as religion, and some good stuff.

People need to start finding the good stuff fast, but relying on a non-holistic form of rationalism won't work, it simply can't lead people to emotional healing.

What rationalism can do is tell us that our brains are wired, by evolution, for compassion and altruism, love, bliss and enlightenment.

For the next step, some healing process, and/or contemplative practice, which implies "real" community has to exist.

The larger forces of the world are hostile to holism and the integration of spirit and rationalism. Healing (emotional wellness, and the "demands" of community that rise from it: equality, justice) is a "threat" to the worship of money and ego gratification that are the driving force of Corporatism and other forms of "New Totalitarianism" that are taking over the postmodern world.

Mavaddat's rationalism is necessary, but not sufficient.

The New Totalitarians are rationalists that are irrational (their universe is one of ego, power and control for itself, and greed). The world they are creating is vile, and is likely to got more ugly and more unenlightened, and more evil, and more corrupt, fast.

Liberation from ego, from clinging, from suffering is the real game.

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Re: Towards a New Economic System

peyamb — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 13:18:59 -0000

For what? To keep power, what else? When the ignorant and incapable are cornered because they know that they can not lead, then they lash out on the innocent to try to maintain that control. But it will soon end.

Re: Towards a New Economic System

Craig Parke — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 00:59:58 -0000

Iran Accuses Five of Warring Against God

(plus apparently more persecution of the Baha'is)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010...

I have had it with the entire human race about this very bad state of deranged brain chemistry. It is all mas mental illness. I am sick of it. All of this killing and violence for what?

Re: Towards a New Economic System

fubar — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 19:05:54 -0000

An earlier (2006) article on Stewart Brand's "Four Environmental Heresies":

http://www.conservationmaga...

The Green Movement (and Green economy) will be driven by urban slum culture in developing countries. The center of global power will shift away from europe/usa within a generation or two. Depopulation is a bigger problem than overpopulation.

Cities are more "green" (and better in general) than rural villages. This directly contradicts the "spiritual" (romanticist) notion in bahai scripture that rural life is better.

Nuclear power is the only viable solution to global warming (which is mainly caused by coal pollution). Solar/wind are only supplemental.

Genetic engineering (of foods) can be part of the "green" movement/economy.

Re: Towards a New Economic System

fubar — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 15:07:52 -0000

http://www.ted.com/index.ph...

excerpt:
The man who helped usher in the environmental movement in the 1960s and '70s has been rethinking his positions on cities, nuclear power, genetic modification and geo-engineering. This talk at the US State Department is a foretaste of his major new book, sure to provoke widespread debate.

About Stewart Brand
Since the counterculture Sixties, Stewart Brand has been a critical thinker and innovator who helped lay the foundations of our internetworked world.

also see: http://web.me.com/stewartbr...

Re: Towards a New Economic System

fubar — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 12:51:01 -0000

re: http://www.bahai.org/arising/

Bob,

Thanks for sharing the link.

What you NEVER see in such propaganda is the whole truth.

What you NEVER see is honest discussion of the giant problems that have existed in bahai for many decades.

What you DO see is feel good stuff that is either just an act for the camera, or so short terms as to have no real impact on structural problems, or stuff that any group of people could have already known, or done, without all the negative baggage that bahai administration attaches to the very valid efforts of people to gain a sense of community and shared meaning at a "populist" level.

no false prophetology is needed, no dysfunctional administrative bureacuracy is needed for people to work together to solve their communities' problems, or to work together to become more enlightened, self-realized people that are transforming the world into something better.

bahai administration does not "own" people's souls, or their freedom.

Re: Towards a New Economic System

bob — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 10:59:20 -0000

tipically out of context, but the contact thingi was messed up . you might want to have a look at that if it is not already the case : http://www.bahai.org/arising/

I'm shure you'll share your thoughts about it cuz there is a lot of things to say. =)
btw thanks for your blog one of the best! And I would be glad if I could get all the information about baha'is who where expelled or declared CB inequitably (like this lady in US because she was doing better devo' music than one of the NSA relatives or smthg like that)

Bob

Re: Towards a New Economic System

fubar — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 10:06:16 -0000

The classic discussion is about liberals advocating "big government" and conservatives advocating "big business". The real problem is that big government is now in bed with big business. Populism is almost dead in a world of extreme complexity.

Corporate overlords are pushing a "hidden agenda" to convert the USA to a plutocracy (same for the "global economy"). This is consistent with the decline (paradigm regression) expected by various theorists, e.g., Jurgen Habermas, who stated that soc ial institutions will collapse from within due to spiritual/psychosocial and economic pathologies.

So much for the "new world order".

http://www.rasmussenreports...

Here is some analysis from the UK, of the characteristic weaknesses of conservative/libertarian thinking (and its critique of liberalism/progressivism):

http://attackthesystem.com/...

excerpts:

Out of this process of transformation from personal government to corporate government, the evolution of a system of state-capitalist privilege that has supplanted feudal privilege, the ever greater interaction and co-dependency between the plutocratic elite and the minions of the state, and the wider integration of organized labor, political interests groups generated by mass democracy and unprecedented expansion of the public sector has emerged a politico-economic order that might be referred to as the "new manorialism". These "new manors" are the multitude of bureaucratic entities that maintain an institutional identity of their own, though their individual personnel may change with time, and who exist first and foremost for the sake of their own self- preservation, irrespective of the original purposes for which they were ostensibly established. The â€œnew manorsâ€ may include institutional entities that function as de jour arms of the state, such as regulatory bureaus, police and other "law enforcement" agencies, state-run social service departments or educational facilities, or they may include de facto arms of the state, such as the banking and corporate entities whose position of privilege, indeed, whose very existence, is dependent upon state intervention.9 Out of this domestic state-capitalist order there has emerged an overarching international order rooted in the pre-eminence of the American state-capitalist class and its junior partners from a number of the other developed nations.
. . .

Such is what "big business" has wrought. Such an international imperial order is about as far removed from the libertarian principles of small government and free enterprise as anything could possibly be.
. . .

Re: Towards a New Economic System

Craig Parke — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 11:04:44 -0000

I was recently doing some economic research and now believe classic group-think was the mechanism that took down the entire economy of the United States over the last 30 years and has brought us to this still very much present crisis despite the spin. This is certainly the explanation for what happened to the Baha'i Faith too. It is a simple as that. Group-think is probably the most effective means to total organizational and social destruction ever devised. From blundering into WWI to lock step Islamic fundamentalism to the derivatives economy to the neutering of the once great message of the Baha'i Faith it pretty much explains it all. God help us on this planet of "D" student dupes and dunces!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...

http://www.cedu.niu.edu/~fu...

Re: Towards a New Economic System

Grover — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 03:15:30 -0000

I'm not quite sure how Farhan is managing to restrain himself...

Re: Towards a New Economic System

peyamb — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 19:43:31 -0000

He is studying in a newly revised secret Ruhi course on how to deal with dissent online. I'm sure he'll be back when he graduates...

Re: Towards a New Economic System

Grover — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 03:23:37 -0000

Oh, the horror!

Re: Towards a New Economic System

fubar — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:12:28 -0000

Causes of economic problems are deeply structural: power and paradigm shifts:

http://fabiusmaximus.wordpr...

linked from: http://fabiusmaximus.wordpr...

Re: Towards a New Economic System

fubar — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:24:28 -0000

Comment from a war college type that studies social decay in relationship to terrorism:

http://globalguerrillas.typ...

LINKS: 19 NOV 09
Random items of interest:

Video of unrest at UCLA due to a slated 32% increase in tuition.
[http://www.youtube.com/watc...]

In short, the final round (the first being privatization of the cost) of closing off access to the US middle class is starting to accelerate.

[http://www.examiner.com/x-8...]

Re: Towards a New Economic System

fubar — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:15:22 -0000

quick - someone call themselves a theologian that wants people to think better. that should stir up some controversy.

Re: Towards a New Economic System

Grover — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:57:48 -0000

Well, without Farhan trolling, there was no one to flame. I wonder what happened to him?

Re: Towards a New Economic System

Concourse on Low — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:32:39 -0000

So I see this site is as moribund as the North American Baha'i community.

Re: Towards a New Economic System

Craig Parke — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:23:12 -0000

(1) I indeed don't always trust the muse of Hermes.

(2) The best everyday middle managers I ever knew were women.

(3) Elizabeth Warren is more competent than anyone at the top of either the Baha'i Faith, the Roman Catholic Church, or Scientology.

Somebody left in this hapless dumbed down society has to understand the rule of law and the laws of money regardless of what voices they hear in their heads.

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

(4) I love Ellen Brown.

Other than that, I am pro the Integralists as you have set forth. I am working on a Integral theory on economics.

Re: Towards a New Economic System

fubar — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 18:52:48 -0000

Ok, sure. I do see a distinction between the kind of innovator-warrior women that Born and Brown represent, who are old-school, and from the age of technocratic competence, and the postmodern women "leaders/managers" who tend to be conformists and bullies. Many of the worst bullies I've had the misfortune to encounter in life were "transformative" postmodernist women who are vicious promoters of "nanny statism". Ironically the "business culture" memes that they operate from are lifted straight out of the playbook of the world of "information age" corporate predators, including the "style over substance" problem. Recent research indicates that women bosses are the worst bullies, probably moreso because they tend to have more of a lack confidence (due to social conditioning) than male managers, than because of gender per se.

As you might recall, traditionalists/conservatives that opposed affirmative action did so partly on the basis that quotas/preferences would result in promotion of people that lack competence.

One of the "unintended consequences" of the transition to postmodern culture appears to be that "new leaders" that merely "look good" (style conformance is confused with actual success/achievement) can move far beyond their level of confidence and actual skill and competence.

Bernie Neville of Latrobe.edu has deconstructed the problem with great acumen:

http://www.latrobe.edu.au/e...

Re: Towards a New Economic System

Craig Parke — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:29:18 -0000

It is very interesting to note that the people that have arisen and functioned in the economic disaster in the United States so far with the greatest intelligence and courage have ALL BEEN WOMEN!

Brooksley Born, Elizabeth Warren, Ellen Brown, and Catherine Austin Fitts just for starters! Any system that cannot marshal the insight, integrity, and courage of women like this at it's HIGHEST LEVEL will be out classed and out gunned into total embarrassment. There are no men currently at the top of either the Government of the United States or the Baha'i Faith that can hold a candle to them.

I just love the courage of Ellen Brown!

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

Our guys will be having endless tea and cookies with Greenspan, Geithner, and Summers talking guy stuff while this is going on at every other level in the real world:

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

So it goes.

Re: Towards a New Economic System

fubar — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 23:00:46 -0000

FW: Brooksley Born - Bankers Trust , Long-Term Capital Management [LTCM] , etc.

The PBS Frontline program this week was Un-freaking-believable:

Re: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pag...

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pag...

Re: Towards a New Economic System

fubar — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 22:53:35 -0000

see below for a semi-random item, I'm organizing my email archives, and found this.

http://attackthesystem.com/...

excerpt:

The natural corollary to libertarian anti-statism is the defense of the free market in economic affairs. Many libertarians and not a few conservatives, at least in the Anglo nations, claim to be staunch proponents of free enterprise. Yet this defense is often rather selective, and timid, to say the least. Libertarians and free-market conservatives will voice opposition to state-owned enterprises, the social welfare and public health services, state-funded and operated educational institutions, or regulatory bureaus and agencies, such as those governing labor relations, relations between racial, ethnic, and gender groups, or those regulating the use of the environment. Curiously absent among many libertarian, conservative, or free-market critiques of interventions by the state into society are the myriad of ways in which government acts to assist, protect, and, indeed, impose outright, an economic order maintained for the benefit of politically connected plutocratic elites. Of course, recognition of this fact has led some on the Left to make much sport of libertarians, whom they often refer to, less than affectionately, as â€œRepublicans who take drugsâ€, or â€œTories who are soft on buggeryâ€, and other such clichÃ©s.
...

(sorry for the weird fonts)