Crude Poetic Justice?

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coberst

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Crude Poetic Justice?

Wikipedia informs me that “poetic justice” is a notion that fictional literature takes on as a cultural demand whereby literary outcomes must support moral standards by justifying in the end the virtuous behavior of the good guy and punishing the bad behavior of the bad guy. Furthermore logic is also maintained.

How can our (American) present troubles be considered as poetic justice?

Let us just examine the great human manufactured catastrophes visited upon us in the last few years; the Great Crude Oil Smear, the deadliest mine disaster in three decades, the greatest financial catastrophe since the Great Depression, and the looming global climate change induced by human activity.

The common element in all of these catastrophes is our three decade guiding premise that Government is the problem while Free Market forces are the solution.

Poetic Justice results because the American people are punished, with a great crude oil smear, by the logic of their commitment to the free market and their dark suspicion of government regulation.

Perhaps God is a practical joker!
 
Nothing poetic, nor just about any of it.
The people never decided anything, the ones who sit in seats of power did.
The people get manipulated by subliminals and biased media, and then get blamed when things go wrong...oh...and they get the bill for it as well.
How nice:rolleyes:
 
shawn said:
Nothing poetic, nor just about any of it.
The people never decided anything, the ones who sit in seats of power did.
The people get manipulated by subliminals and biased media, and then get blamed when things go wrong...oh...and they get the bill for it as well.
How nice:rolleyes:
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In a democracy such as we have in the United States the people are sovereign and thus responsible for the situation that exists. The lack of intellectual sophistication of the citizens is the fault of those citizens.

The basic problem began when the people allowed them self to be convinced that government was the problem and that the free market was the solution. These problems developed because the American citizen left Corporate America free and unregulated.

The American people are too naive to comprehend the problem and too frightened of reality to accept their responsibility.

An oligarchy controls public policy in America. The oligarchy consists of those who manage the great wealth of American institutions. This oligarchy designs our educational system to graduate good producers and consumers and does not desire independent thinkers.

CA (Corporate America) has developed a well-honed expertise in motivating the population to behave in a desired manner. Citizens as consumers are ample manifestation of that expertise. CA has accomplished this ability by careful study and implementation of the knowledge of the ways of human behavior. I suspect this same structure applies to most Western democracies.

A democratic form of government is one wherein the citizens have some voice in some policy decisions. The greater the voice of the citizens the better the democracy. The greater the intellectual sophistication of those citizens the better the democracy.

In America we have policy makers, decision makers, and citizens. The decision makers are our elected representatives and are, thus, under some control by the voting citizen. The policy makers are the leaders of CA; less than ten thousand individuals, according to those who study such matters. Policy makers exercise significant control of decision makers by controlling the financing of elections.

Policy makers customize and maintain the dominant ideology in order to control the political behavior of the citizens. This dominant ideology exercises the political control of the citizens in the same fashion as the consuming citizen is controlled by the same dominant ideology.

An enlightened citizen is the only means to gain more voice in more policy decisions. An enlightened citizen is much more than an informed citizen. Critical thinking is the only practical means to develop a more enlightened citizen. If, however, we wait until our CT trained grade-schoolers become adults I suspect all will be lost. This is why I think a massive effort must be made to convince today’s adults that they must train themselves in CT.


“Thomas R. Dye, Professor of Political Science at Florida State University, has published a series of books examining who and what institutions actually control and run America. to understand who is making the decisions that affect our lives, we also have to understand how societies structure themselves in general. Why the few always tend to share more power than the many and what this means in terms of both a society's evolution and our daily lives. they examined the other 11 institutions that exert just as powerful a shaping influence, although somewhat more subtle: The Industrial, Corporations, Utilities and Communications, Banking, Insurance Investment, Mass Media, Law, Education Foundation, Civic and Cultural Organizations, Government, and the Military.”
 
You cant blame common people, they are supposed to be intellectually unsophisticated. They are supposed to be mindless followers. They are I guess by birth intellectually weak, & then they get their unsophistications polished by educational institutes & mass media. This is how we get mindless workers & buyers, working as part of the borg. This is how capitalism works.

The problem is manipulative system, not weak-minded people. A true democracy will help weak people evolve, a manipulative democracy will keep them dumb.

BTW any body else who has worked upon this issue? other than Thomas R. Dye. I am looking for some solid intro into the workings of Capitalist Democracy & Human mind living in it.
 
It's all this capitalistic system, yes. It makes people des moutons and we can think people are 'mindless followers'. They look like these. The Western way of life wants everyone to be alike the others, think like the others, live their lives like the others... I see that in Oriental countries that tendency grows, too.
But I think there always were and are people who's able to avoid this karma (there's no any word for that!), who's able to become a master of their own life. But why the others just stand and stare with their mouths open, and looking the capitalism eat their lives? Maybe most of the people in society are indeed a "mindless followers"?..
 
farhan said:
BTW any body else who has worked upon this issue? other than Thomas R. Dye. I am looking for some solid intro into the workings of Capitalist Democracy & Human mind living in it.
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I suggest the book The Great Transformation by Karl Polanyi

The following are a few of the posts I have made based upon the study of that book that book:



Human and Social Degradation of Early Capitalism

The mercantile system was hodgepodges of economic theories dominate throughout England and France in the three centuries leading up to early eighteenth century. This system marked the beginning of large scale government intervention into the economic life of the common people of the nation.

“Prior to mercantilism, the most important economic work done in Europe was by the medieval scholastic theorists. The goal of these thinkers was to find an economic system that was compatible with Christian doctrines of piety and justice.”

“Mercantilists viewed the economic system as a zero-sum game, in which any gain by one party required a loss by another. Thus, any system of policies that benefited one group would by definition harm the other…To a certain extent, mercantilist doctrine itself made a general theory of economics impossible.” Wiki quote

The mercantile system developed when the feudal system was slowly being transformed into centralized nation-states. The system was centered in England and France. Industries were organized around guilds that were regulated by states by numerous and non integrated directives. Often foreign artisans and craftsmen were imported. The mercantile policies were embraced by both the Tudor and Stuart periods.

The mercantile system was seen as essential to a nation’s success. It fostered intense violence during the 17th and 18th centuries; European power spread across the globe.

Eighteenth-century English society resisted, unconsciously, all attempt at making it an appendage of an integrated economic market system. To establish a market system, especially in England’s rural civilization, implied the wholesale destruction of the traditional fabric of society.

The market for labor was the last to be established to facilitate the new industrial system. “In the end the free labor market, in spite of the inhuman methods employed in creating it, proved financially beneficial to all concerned.”

In England strict laws restricted the mobility of labor; the laborer was securely bound to the parish. “The Act of Settlement of 1662, which laid down the rules of so-called parish serfdom, was loosened only in 1795.” This legal act was called the Speenhamland Law, otherwise called the “allowance system”, which introduced the “right to live”, “and until abolished in 1834, effectively prevented the establishment of a competitive labor market.”

Quotes from “The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time” by Karl Polanyi


Enclosure: The Death of Subsistence Farming

At the heart of the eighteenth century Industrial Revolution was an almost unbelievable advancement in the tools and machines of industrial production.

For centuries the standard farming practice was to leave a field fallow for two or three years after growing such crops as wheat and corn. Viscount Charles Townshend discovered that the solution for this problem was to rotate different crops in the field because one crop would “wear out” the soil the other would rebuild the soil. For example clover or turnips would rebuild land that had been planted in corn or wheat.

Jethro Tull invented in 1701 the seed drill, which sowed seeds in well-spaced furrows rather than using the then common practice of broadcasting seed. Broadcasting was very wasteful of both seed and land.

Suddenly new and more abundant crops were being planted and harvested. Cotton was an important new crop. This fabric was used for such divergent applications as clothing and ship sails.

In 1733 the flying shuttle followed the seed drill, which allowed weavers to increase production by double.

Small and large farmers in the 17th century raised crops and grazed sheep and cattle on open fields for centuries, from the beginning of agriculture. In the late 17th century English landowners began buying up land in the area and fencing them in. They then were able to control access to that land and to charge rental for its use. This was known as enclosure.

This enclosure raised havoc for the masses of families who depended upon these lands for their subsistence; it marked the beginning of the end of subsistence farming and the beginning of the beginning of the market economy.

In the 1830s, Townsend with other landowners demonstrated that by enclosing their land with fencing of various kinds they could make farming a much more efficient operation. With the new machinery and tools combined with the large enclosed land agriculture was set for a great leap forward in efficiency of production.

Some estate owners were able to convince some small tenants to agree to exchange their narrow strip of land for other things of value.

The success of these large landowners led to an Act of Parliament that applied to one-quarter of the land in England.

This period of great change is useful in its ability to help us to comprehend the nature of the problems inherent in change. “Fired by an emotional faith in spontaneity, the common-sense attitude toward change was discarded in favor of a mystical readiness to accept the social consequences of economic improvement, whatever that might be. The elementary truths of political science and statecraft were first discredited then forgotten.”

In this age of industrial upheaval of the nineteenth century we experienced a crude resurgence of utilitarianism combined with an uncritical reliance on the alleged self-healing nature of unconscious growth.

Quotes from The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time by Karl Polanyi
 
In a democracy such as we have in the United States the people are sovereign and thus responsible for the situation that exists. The lack of intellectual sophistication of the citizens is the fault of those citizens.
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Well, yes and no.
Technically that is true, but in practicality and every day reality people do not act like the sovereigns they are. That and through assumpsit contracts the people have voluntarily changed their legal status to that of serf.
It (sovereignty)can be reclaimed, but it is difficult to do and so not many make the effort.
The basic problem began when the people allowed them self to be convinced that government was the problem and that the free market was the solution. These problems developed because the American citizen left Corporate America free and unregulated.
Click to expand...
Last I checked America is not a country at all, but legally a corporation...so what then is the difference?
There is an assumed definition problem here as you assume you live in a democratic country and are sovereign with a say in what they do, yet the reality of daily life is that you are the property of a corporate entity which really doesn't give a damn about what the people think other than lip service to keep up appearances and keep the people appeased, thinking that they are a vital part of the big machine, but really they are not.
USA inc. seems to do as it bloody well pleases regardless of the people and their wishes.
 
The United States with 5% of the global population, which consumes 25% of the global production of petroleum, becomes tarred with petroleum; that is poetic justice!
 

Wiki says: “Poetic justice is a literary device in which virtue is ultimately rewarded or vice punished, often in modern literature by an ironic twist of fate intimately related to the character's own conduct."

To call this situation poetic justice is not to say that it is justice that this should happen to the United States. It is to say that if this was a literary novel and this happened to a country in the same manner then we could evaluate it to be poetic justice.

To say that this is poetic justice is to point this out so that we all might learn something very important about human actions in the real world. We Americans go blindly along "jus doin what comes naturally" without ever analyzing our actions in a critical and sophisticated manner.
 
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