Authoritarianism and the instinct-driven

Perhaps it is a fail-safe option. Guaranteed to fail or not. LOL

The last thing we need is another Catholic authoritarian on the Court. Not because Catholics are subservient to the Pope in Rome, but because confession and absolution frees them from the need to exercise self-restraint. Behavior can be hit or miss and, if it goes wrong, all can be forgiven by confessing. That is not a reliable basis for moral behavior but it is what makes authoritarianism attractive to the instinct-driven.

An admission. I left off being a Catholic because the church offended my moral sense.

Personous

When the focus/fixation is on a person, rather than performance, gossip is inevitable. Is jockeying for status equally inevitable?

What makes people think they can make others hate or like them?

Personous people. They create the illusion that they care about others, but the other is merely a foil or standard for self-significance.

Person v. Performance

Instinct-driven people are hooked on personal coonection, evenwhen they do not know how to connect. The politics of personal destruction and personal adulation are examples of both.
The connection to personalities is quite irrational, but usually boils down to some emotional trigger, for good or ill. The Bernie Sanders fans are as unhinged as the Trumpists. Are Sanders’ policy proposals more caring and supportive? Without a doubt. Coukd he get them enacted as President? Not likely.

He’s also got a deus ex machina mentality.

Trump’s a home wrecker. That is all he’s good at. Wrecking is probably an addiction by now.

Inessential and insubstantial currency

The inessential and insubstantial nature of money allows it to be abused with abandon. Not only is it worthless, but there is always more. So, there is no reason to be careful, cautious or economical. That latter point is particularly significant in a society where economy has become synonymous with money.

So, while the original intent of economic behavior was to avoid waste and enhance usefulness, as money became ubiquitous, the original intent evaporated into the ether.

Is the monetary economy esoteric? I have compared it to theologians becoming fascinated by angels dancing on pins. Perhaps it is another example of the triumph of the idea over the real–or the res. The thought over the thing.

We never hear materialism decried anymore. I wonder why.

If thought is disconnected or unconnected to the material world does the lie matter at all?

When one is dealing in figments of the imagination, what consritutes a fraud?

New land.

Today is the day the deed for our woodland is to be signed. It will add two acres on the B&A Canal to our eleven acres of marsh.

Much more gratfying than sending dollars to Costa Rica.

The core question.

Well, we have a large and growing body of non-productive persons who claim a share of what is produced for moving things and people around. They are the commercial class and the entrepreneurs and the “managers” whose functions and behaviors are actually left out of economic calculations. Why? In large part because economists (who are themselves non-productive) took over the binary model which accountants had developed in the interest of promoting accuracy in their summations. (If everything is counted twice and the resukts are the same, there is a better chance the sums are correct). The reality, of course, is that there are many more players in an economy than the two designated agents (sellers and buyers or producers and users). And then there is the fact that currency, an inanimate participant in any transaction, has been transformed from a practical universally available tool into an agent of restriction and control.

If currency/money were a simple measuring tool like the inch or the ounce or even just a symbol like the script we use to represent meaningful sounds, rather than being rationed and distributed to privileged entities, then it could not be used to regulate and restrict enterprise as it is. It is my sense that the accumulation of currency by select individual players, which is facilitated by exempting them from returning it to the issuer, is designed to disguise the interest in keeping currency relatively scarce. Congress is supposed to distribute the currency into the economy as needed. Instead, it distributes some and lets the Treasury distribute some to designated middlemen, the banks, who then determine who is qualified to receive and use more of this inherently unlimited asset.

Currency is an instrument of control. This leaves us with the question,”why are public servants trying to exercise control?”