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Discussion => Philosophy, Economics and Justice => Topic started by: KintaroBC on August 09, 2013, 02:26 am

Title: Power through pity
Post by: KintaroBC on August 09, 2013, 02:26 am
I find here in Australia politics appeals to pity to gain its power, and it gets more apparent every decade. This leaves a loophole in the system, if you are pitied you can get special treatment from the legal system for victimless crimes. Our courts have a diversion process, where you have to fulfill conditions but bypass getting a criminal record. Even my encounters with the police as time goes on get softer and softer, because I have post traumatic stress disorder.

I find at the moment the politics of pity in the world are growing. This has an impact on the objectivity of mental health. Appealing to the poor me mentality, and with the country offering pensions and special legal treatment with a growingly rubbery criteria make it easier to be pitied by the system, and become immune to it. Think of it as an incentive for low self-esteem.

Though, as safe as that makes me in the short term, the long term destructive effects of the politics of pity creates an incentive for low self-esteem. It is a system which creates individuals who don't feel they can face reality. This makes me think politics will only get more misleading, that lies will become more believable, that civilization as we know it could collapse. That people become powerless while the powerful become more powerful. The powerful will lose power when people don't produce as much and there is less for them to steal.

When altruism becomes a political endeavor, and tears become the coin of the realm I know the system is going to collapse, I know emotions don't build anything, and people destroy themselves to act as parasites on the productive. If we don't question this moral code, and it's influence in politics we will either be eaters or the eaten.

We get eaten, the depression of it becomes to much, we become "disabled" and we get gifts from the eaters. Eventually, the eaters will have nothing to eat, and we will be left with the collapse of civilization.

Anarchy? I don't think the idea does much harm, because it evicts ideas from politics. Because everyone uses the altruist morality these days it is impossible the imagine a Government that appeals to that idea that doesn't collapse. What if it were to appeal to self-interest and just leave everyone alone, and was funded by donations? Sure, you might think it imposes a form of society, but then you are just admitting you don't want objective laws, and we can clearly see where that is getting us already in the age of rubber standards.

We need a principled and free society, which only banishes the initiation of force, and Government is the sponsor of our self-defense. A system which should be powered not by our pity and altruism, but our self-esteem and benevolence. It is benevolent to help what is objectively good such as a free-society, it is sacrifice whether a person intends it or not to drain themselves by any means as some kind of offering to a greater good which doesn't exist. Your life is yours and the good is to live it!

Have you read Ayn Rand yet?
Title: Re: Power through pity
Post by: leaf on August 19, 2013, 02:25 am
politics appeals to pity to gain its power, and it gets more apparent every decade. This leaves a loophole in the system, if you are pitied you can get special treatment from the legal system for victimless crimes.

This is a very valid point when it comes to the international development sector. Oftentimes the mass media will portray either in news reports or in advertisements scenarios of helpless or starving children and impoverished  families, in order to draw our attention to either read the article or donate to the NGO/charity involved. This appeals to our sense of pity, and eventually pride and fulfillment from having either taken the time to care or given money. Arguably this is effective, but it also paints a picture of us vs. them which encourages further segregation by comfortably placing the so-called "third world" into a frozen state of poverty and need. Which, taking both our current economic and humanitarian system, is exactly where these countries in question need to stay in order for industry on various levels to continue being productive and profitable under our current model in the "first-world".
Title: Re: Power through pity
Post by: Overtau on August 21, 2013, 02:13 pm
I started thinking ayn rand after the first few sentences.

If you've read atlas shrugged, you'll see the signs already happening. Things are getting worse. We are losing out to the lower parasitic people who are not producing anything of value to the world and strangling our brightest to do so.

These truly are dark days in the world, bridges falling, planes crashing, furiously intense security - its the end days.