From: Wim Nusselder (wim.nusselder@antenna.nl)
Date: Wed Sep 28 2005 - 20:30:11 BST
Dear Erin and Arlo,
Thanks for having helped me to clarify my thoughts about my "economics of
want and greed" with your discussion. (See
www.antenna.nl/wim.nusselder/schrijfsels/economics.htm if you want to read
what I wrote before about it.)
Erin wrote 25 Sep 18:32 -0700:
"saying you have to be low income to be Christ-like seems just a
glamourization of poverty ... Although I agree with you on not being greedy
I am just wondering where is drawing the line ..where it really starts to
being about greed. ... I was trying to get a sense of where that line [is]
of where it actually is about greed."
Could it be that there isn't really a line where greed starts and something
good or morally neutral ends?
In "economics of want and greed" I wrote:
in chapter 3: "People who want other people to want something and who
organize satisfaction of that want ... can do so for different reasons. They
can do so to get something for themselves in return or they can do so to
contribute to a better world. These possibilities do not exclude each other,
however. Reasons given may be retrospective rationalizations of actions that
were motivated differently prospectively or even of (involuntary) behavior."
in chapter 8 "Greed is what motivates leaders who do not relinquish their
leadership when a better way presents itself to satisfy the wants of their
followers which they are presently organizing."
Maybe there's just a general human drive (which even some animals have) for
3rd level quality: status, money, material and immaterial wealth. If we want
to condemn it, we call it 'greed', but it is essentially the same drive for
those who have little 3rd level quality (and want to get more) and those who
have a lot already. The drive is essential for maintaining 3rd level
patterns of value. If people don't look at higher rates individuals in the
society to which they feel they 'belong' for behaviour te be copied and if
higher rated individuals don't feel a responsibility to behave properly
(i.e. in a way that benefits what they experience as 'their society' as a
whole), society breaks down.
My economics of want and greed in fact analyses this 3rd level. Essentially
it boils down to there being no wealth without hierarchy. In the course of
history humans invented at least four different ways of making others work
for them. (See chapter 4 of "economics of want and greed".) These can be
understood as BOTH ways to create more collective wealth and survival
chances for a society as a whole AND ways to create a social elite that gets
more than it needs. They are BOTH principles for organizing that people in
general get what they want AND means of exploitation.
Erin also wrote:
"I think Wim's sentiment of 'the money can buy a house but not a home' more
in line with 'christian morality' [than Platt's not feeling morally obliged
to worry about whether or not a poor family has heating for the winter, or
food for the week, or medicine for their sick children]."
I hoped it was not just a 'sentiment', but sound analysis of MoQ
implications: "money [being condensed 3rd level value] can only buy 3rd
level value and not 4th level value or DQ".
Part of my religious upbringing (protestant, Reformed Churches in the
Netherlands, my father a minister there) was indeed the value that 'one
doesn't live for oneself alone'. This was to some extent mitigated by the
insight (parotted among enlightened/liberal/free-thinking Christians; I
think my father agreed too, in principle) that loving one's neighbour as
oneself isn't much use if one doesn't love oneself too...
This is all about 4th level patterns of value, I think. People repeating,
rephrasing, passing on and thereby maintaining systems of ideas composed of
symbols.
Quite apart from that there is the systems of collective habits that make up
societies. When you analyse them, striving for (individual) status and other
types of 3rd level quality seems essential to maintain 3rd level patterns of
value and societies. A 4th level reflection on 3rd level patterns of value
(a system of ideas symbolizing systems of habitual behaviour) could thus be
that striving for 3rd level quality is BOTH a duty to oneself AND a duty to
society. Like striving to mate with high quality partners of the opposite
sex is BOTH a duty to one's own genes AND a duty to one's species...
The moral being that there's lots of duties at the 4th level. All claim to
symbolize patterns of value at lower levels or the same level (sq) or even
Quality beyond the levels (DQ). No MoQ is really going to help us sort them
out if we mistake them for (patterns of) value at different levels. They are
all ideas (sets of symbols) at the 4th level. They represent higher or lower
4th level quality. Only creating an integrated system of ideas for ourselves
(and trying to convince others...) can help us rank them.
With friendly greetings,
Wim
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