6/8/20

Anthem Anathemas, Riots, Ethics and Economics

 Recently the onerous issue of football players protesting during the national anthem returned to the public square under the category of all things blacks find wrong with America loosely affiliated with law enforcement brutality. With the D-Day commemoration just past it is worth considering the moral rightness or wrongness of holding the national anthem hostage to knee-taking millionaire protesters. Lebron James brought the subject up in a tweet regarding compliance with disrespecting the national anthem for partisan racial purposes as the sole morally correct choice in a right or wrong disjunctive paradigm. I wrote a post on moral norms last year that reviewed some of the philosophical ground from one approach concerning macro-social behavior that I will include following a couple of comments.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxDiQhNO780 metal instrumental

 Colin Kapernik’s original organization of national anthem protests seemed like a kind of intifada against the anthem itself, or an interminable protest without an end in sight because of the lack of particular demands for releasing the anthem-hostage. Black Americans since the end of the civil war in 1865 have fared collectively worse than some other Americans economically speaking because of their racial, cultural and color clash with integrating normally with lighter-skinned people with better education and technically more proficient culture back in the day.  Slavery was an economic choice of avaricious ruling classes of prior centuries that made educating and integrating former slaves a problem for everyone else to the present day. Race as a political issue is easy to recognize and use for dividing the body politic helping to keep income inequality among abstract American masses going. Race as a motive to drive blacks to street protests and riots during the Covid 19 milieu may bring about the needless deaths of 10 to 20 thousand blacks that may contact the illness from marchers infected during marches.

 It is said that the Tsar when experiencing attacks on himself and the Russian aristocracy would prompt a program of Jews to keep the masses distracted; race politics serve much the same purposes in keeping the masses occupied with intractable problems without solutions arising to end problems that require a more egalitarian income equality for all non-rich American regardless of race.

Millionaires of pro sports taking a knee of protest during the national anthem are perhaps willing pawns of the most rich that pay them. Taking a knee during a half-time show in support of national income equality was an alternative possible time-slot that would have disambiguated the perceptible attack on the national anthem, nation and one race against another.

 2nd Peter Chapter 2…

 “9 The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of

temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of

judgment to be punished:

10 But chiefly them that walk after the flesh in the lust

of uncleanness, and despise government. Presumptuous

are they, selfwilled, they are not afraid to speak evil of

dignities.

11 Whereas angels, which are greater in power and

might, bring not railing accusation against them before

the Lord.

12 But these, as natural brute beasts, made to be taken

and destroyed, speak evil of the things that they

understand not; and shall utterly perish in their own

corruption;

13 And shall receive the reward of unrighteousness, as

they that count it pleasure to riot in the day time. Spots

they are and blemishes, sporting themselves with their

own deceivings while they feast with you;

14 Having eyes full of adultery, and that cannot cease

from sin; beguiling unstable souls: an heart they have

exercised with covetous practices; cursed children:

15 Which have forsaken the right way, and are gone

astray, following the way of Balaam the son of Bosor, who

loved the wages of unrighteousness;

16 But was rebuked for his iniquity: the dumb ass

speaking with man's voice forbad the madness of the

prophet.

17 These are wells without water, clouds that are

carried with a tempest; to whom the mist of darkness is

reserved for ever.

16418 For when they speak great swelling words of vanity,

they allure through the lusts of the flesh, through much

wantonness, those that were clean escaped from them

who live in error.

19 While they promise them liberty, they themselves

are the servants of corruption: for of whom a man is

overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage.

20 For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the

world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour

Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and

overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the

beginning.

21 For it had been better for them not to have known

the way of righteousness, than, after they have known it,

to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them.

22 But it is happened unto them according to the true

proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and

the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire.

things, be diligent that ye may be found of him in peace,

without spot, and blameless.

15 And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is

salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also according

to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you;

16 As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these

things; in which are some things hard to be understood,

which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as

they do also the other scriptures, unto their own

destruction.

17 Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things

before, beware lest ye also, being led away with the error

of the wicked, fall from your own stedfastness.

18 But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord

and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and for

ever. Amen.”

  The anthem attack, or anathema rap, could be construed as a support for globalism and basic anti-Americanism from millionaires of the hyper-meritocratic ilk that have made income inequality in the United States about the greatest on Earth. General racism can be a great diversionary issue to cover and conceal the deeper and objective problem of income inequality that is keeping the half of the populace living with just 4-5% of the national income.

 Correcting that problem is the greatest economic challenge facing the nation now along with the shared top-rank problem of ecological sustainability economic transition. Income inequality has occurred in every society under the old order of classical economics, yet it is mal-adapted today with the demographics of the people of the planet and the natural tendency to repress intellectual potential of the masses of the poor not just national, but globally. More egalitarian income allocations and opportunity will promote greater human efficiency in maximizing human potential for productivity, invention and learning.

 Racism that is subjective is psychological and personal and will always be present. Objective social structures and measurable, quantifiable income inequality can however be corrected by the will of competent congressional legislation and government such as may exist if competent individuals are elected and the broadcast media doesn’t always screw everything up because they are owned by the wealthiest Americans.

 Objectively speaking, organizational management is virtually a science. Correcting police management deficiencies through numerous means including legislative should be easy to accomplish. Correcting income inequality isn’t too easy because of the political and media power of concentrated wealth that may control American democracy as a kind of black-box.

 In brief the richest control maybe 20% of national capital and are few in number of less than 1% of the 1% of wealthiest Americans. A grossly over-paid hyper meritocratic class of elite managers are aristocrats loyal to the most rich and their existing structure of income inequality. The corporate management class is globalist as are the elite rich and keep American wages suppressed through numerous means including cheap foreign labor, illegal immigration and low minimum wages. One simple remedy to keep U.S. wages competitive with cheap foreign labor would be to pass a law requiring corporations to share profit-dividends with their workers who could build capital even while their wages are low. Another remedy would be free public education through graduate school; free education eliminates basic inability of the poor to afford education at higher levels easily affordable for the prosperous.

 The present structure of national income inequality is not the best one for meeting the demographic and environment challenges of the nation and world in the present- the existing structure is built on certain empirical assumptions of the past environmentally and educationally that are no longer valid. Free enterprise and capitalism can function within structure that is far more egalitarian and efficient at promoting human health, education and security in addition to ecospheric restoration to robust health.

 Contemporary democracy ought to evolve to a transparent state with a well-informed electorate living within egalitarian income equality criteria who understand the demographic and environmental limits and challenges facing themselves and the entire planet and working to solve those challenges. Everyone should have basic income security and with free enterprise and capitalism reformed to a more egalitarian and ecospherically configured condition.

 Hume- Is, Ought and What Not of Moral Norms

 "All prescriptive theory" is quite a large field that isn't even finished. Formal logic and the square of opposition has the A proposition being 'All are". One learns to be very careful with that. All are x or none are x can allow zero exceptions to be true. Hume wanted to disprove cause and effect relationships, so he necessarily would have pointed out the looseness of 'is' propositions to 'ought' or should propositions, quite reasonably.

 https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/square/

 Prescriptive theories can be applied in fields beside moral philosophy, and in some case the formal logical tests would be applied equally and in others the tests fall outside of simple formal logic and within larger structures for analysis that might best be compared to dead reckoned sailing judgments. Rather than being logically rigorous propositions formally the use was analytical. One could say for instance that 1 + 3 equals 4 and the answer they provided is 5, and they ought to have written '4'. That kind of statement is reasonable.

  Moral propositions though, unlike Kant's categorical imperative that has some logical validity in a dead reckoning sort of way, are descriptive of actually existing human behavior and suggestions to improve that in some cases. In others it could be a simple observational use of the word 'ought' for a moral circumstance where variant behavior did not comply with the prevailing idea of the normal correct behavior.

 An example for that might be that a baby is crawling across a street amidst heavy traffic, the mother is lying on the sidewalk knocked out from a falling brick, and a passerby walks past the scene and allows the baby to be squished by a truck when he could have easily rescued the tyke from the road. While not legally responsible to rescue the infant, a police officer that saw the scene from a distance says to his partner the "the rogue ought to have saved that baby".  

 https://www.livescience.com/solution-to-worst-prediction-in-physics.html

 Experience of exigent circumstances are rather subjective and conditional, yet descriptive and normative (prescriptive) ethics describe situations in space-time, Situations that are recurrent can be emergent though not unique. Consider the Nurmagomedov vs. Porier UFC 242 fight- It was like a martial arts match where each knew various katas or forms. None were unique or original, and there are lots of prescriptive analysis about what ought to have been done to get outcome A, B. or C. Prescriptive ethics about what people think they should do probably never would be over regarding humans. Hume's Fork (good point) about empiricism and rationalism going separate paths, disregarded by Kant, might be a subject of more modern philosophical research in the developments of 20th century empiricism and Ayer's book 'Language, Truth and Logic' wherein only empirically based statements-more scientific ones, had validity and the remainder were psychological and subjective. W.V.O. Quine broke that paradigm in 'The Two Dogmas of Empiricism'. Epistemologically speaking the separability of the world and statements about it was renormalized or returned to something closer to a Kantian rather than Humean position. I think a lot of moderns like Dewey's paradigm of everything being subjective, and so they like Hume's ideas. He seemed to want to dismiss common ideas about the relation between words and objects-fair enough, yet he went too far in several ways, from a much later point of view in regard to subsequent developments.'

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative_ethics

 Normative ethics are also known as prescriptive ethics, they are usual contrasted to descriptive ethics. Hume created an epistemological battle taken up by Kant. The resolution of the epistemological war was settled by logic and logical analysis of the relation between words and objects. Ethics falls into valleys between the hilltops of epistemology and logic. Subjectivists like Hume later tended to justify moral paradigms with epistemology that broke the ties between rationality and the world itself experienced by individuals. Prescriptive theory is an ethics about what people think they should do in a particular circumstance, descriptive theory is about what people actually do.


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