Questions answered twice. You didn’t answer the questions. Now let us talk about you as if you weren’t here. Cringe.

Questions answered twice. — NOS4A2

True, but answered so badly as to be completely meaningless. It appears as though you cannot answer the questions. That's fine of course, but it looks rather silly to pretend that you can answer meaningfully or reasonably.

Questions answered twice. — NOS4A2

What is a "fully developed morality" and where does it come from under your view? Do you see it as present in most human adults in roughly equal proportion regardless of historical, cultural and political context? — Baden

Please elaborate. — Baden

I assume that adults have some semblance of right and wrong which they develop as they age. — NOS4A2

I'll repeat the question:

What is a "fully developed morality" and where does it come from under your view? — Baden

A fully developed morality is a set of principles of conduct and behavior. It develops as one ages. Yes. — NOS4A2

Here's the question:

What is a "fully developed morality" and where does it come from under your view? Do you see it as present in most human adults in roughly equal proportion regardless of historical, cultural and political context?
— Baden

Address the role of social, political and historical context re morality. Address its origin. — Baden

This isn’t an interview. — NOS4A2

:lol:

Here’s how it works. You write a long clarification of misrepresented views like this:

That’s an odd projection, especially since I have already admitted that I do not believe people actually need or want to be governed, that they wish only for others to be governed. The answers to the question have confirmed my suspicions. You keep mentioning the violence of aboriginals and Vikings, for instance, which serves as a good reminder that people need states to protect them the barbarians at the gates. It’s invariably someone else who needs to be governed.

I have also explicitly assumed people here are adults, that they have fully developed moralities, so much so that I wager their professed hostility to another’s property is fake.

You find a clause—not even a full sentence or argument—quote it out of context and shift focus so people like praxis and Xtrix have something to play with because they cannot offer much else. Sophistry doesn’t work on everyone, unfortunately.

Even to simply point out theory’s, like Kohlberg's theory of moral development, or more contemporary theories like moral foundations theory, would be a more meaningful response to the question than, and I quote, “A fully developed morality is a set of principles of conduct and behavior. It develops as one ages.”

And no, this isn’t an interview, but I like to think that we’re at least marginally more interested in truth seeking than we are in playing stupid games.

Are you dreaming of the kind of world Marx thought we were headed toward? No governments? We're just not ready for that yet. All attempts so far to build communist nations failed disastrously.

Kind of thought this sounded neat:

People cannot be free unless they are willing to sacrifice some of their interests to guarantee the freedom of others. — Saul Alinsky (1909—1972) in 1971

Goes well with this and this, too.

I would prefer a government that doesn’t operate as a criminal organization, a monopoly, and an anti-social institution.

I would prefer a government that doesn’t operate as a criminal organization, a monopoly, and an anti-social institution. — NOS4A2

I think Marx felt the same way.

"The long-term goal of world communism is an unlimited worldwide communist society that is classless, (lacking any exploitation of man by man), moneyless, (lacking a need for currency to regulate human behavior), and stateless, (lacking any violent compulsion of man by man)"

-- Wikipedia

I think Marx felt the same way.

So did many great thinkers. But he proposed achieving such ends through statist means. That’s why it has never worked, and we see that communist states are some of the most totalitarian in history.

So did many great thinkers. But he proposed achieving such ends through statist means. That’s why it has never worked, and we see that communist states are some of the most totalitarian in history. — NOS4A2

Exactly. Were there non-statist means to achieve the non-state that you had in mind?

The prevalence and ubiquity of an institution is due to the state of mind that prevails towards it, the set of ideas in which men tend think about it. We only need to stop thinking in statist terms and the rest will follow.

I see. I'm not holding my breath.

That’s why it has never worked — NOS4A2

I'm not convinced communism is realistic or feasible in general, at least not as the political philosophers mused, perhaps, in some respects, going all the way back to Plato's "Republic".

In small communities like kibbutzes, sure.

Yet, communism (again, like the philosophers mused) requires a kind of homogeneity or participation, which might explain why it has consistently failed in large communities.

The philosophers thought in terms of flattened class structure, proletariat rule, all that.

Supposed communist countries tend to become something else, something that (to me anyway) is a far cry from what the philosophers envisioned.

I think you’re right on that one, and well said. It might be feasible if there is some degree of voluntary participation. But wherever Engels and Lenin proposed that the state would whither away has proven the opposite. It has only grown in power, and in inverse proportion to social power.

Lenin was right about the state as an apparatus of coercion, and noted it’s evil and exploitation; he was right that a state is unnecessary in a moral man; but his socialism as a necessary state of transition between capitalism and communism has proven worse than what came before it. People cannot be coerced towards a moral code, especially if you elect your revolution upon the skeleton of authoritarian institutions, where its essential functions of exploitation, control, and confiscation remain.

The communists of today still see the state as the apparatus that will emancipate the proletariat and help usher in communism, a la Lenin. We can call it state socialism or state capitalism, but it’s always state intervention on a totalitarian scale. In a way, it is what they imagined.

Lenin was right about the state as an apparatus of coercion, and noted it’s evil and exploitation; he was right that a state is unnecessary in a moral man; — NOS4A2

I think the founders of the US would have agreed for the most part. Their goal was to leave government some distance from the average person's life.

Their vision didn't work in the end though, due to the massive immorality of slavery. As I said, as a species, we're not ready to live without states.

When the world’s two great propaganda systems agree on some doctrine, it requires some intellectual effort to escape its shackles. One such doctrine is that the society created by Lenin and Trotsky and moulded further by Stalin and his successors has some relation to socialism in some meaningful or historically accurate sense of this concept. In fact, if there is a relation, it is the relation of contradiction.

It is clear enough why both major propaganda systems insist upon this fantasy. Since its origins, the Soviet State has attempted to harness the energies of its own population and oppressed people elsewhere in the service of the men who took advantage of the popular ferment in Russia in 1917 to seize State power. One major ideological weapon employed to this end has been the claim that the State managers are leading their own society and the world towards the socialist ideal; an impossibility, as any socialist — surely any serious Marxist — should have understood at once (many did), and a lie of mammoth proportions as history has revealed since the earliest days of the Bolshevik regime. The taskmasters have attempted to gain legitimacy and support by exploiting the aura of socialist ideals and the respect that is rightly accorded them, to conceal their own ritual practice as they destroyed every vestige of socialism.

As for the world’s second major propaganda system, association of socialism with the Soviet Union and its clients serves as a powerful ideological weapon to enforce conformity and obedience to the State capitalist institutions, to ensure that the necessity to rent oneself to the owners and managers of these institutions will be regarded as virtually a natural law, the only alternative to the ‘socialist’ dungeon.

The Soviet leadership thus portrays itself as socialist to protect its right to wield the club, and Western ideologists adopt the same pretense in order to forestall the threat of a more free and just society. This joint attack on socialism has been highly effective in undermining it in the modern period.

Figured it be refreshing to post something from someone who knows what their talking about.

I think the founders of the US would have agreed for the most part. Their goal was to leave government some distance from the average person's life.

Their vision didn't work in the end though, due to the massive immorality of slavery. As I said, as a species, we're not ready to live without states.

How much is the state involved in your day-to-day?

How much is the state involved in your day-to-day? — NOS4A2

Pretty pervasively.

Do you require their presence?

Do you require their presence? — NOS4A2

Yes. I'm a healthcare worker. Without the massive load of regulations and financial support for healthcare, my profession wouldn't exist.

So they are not actually present or involved in your day-to-day.

So they are not actually present or involved in your day-to-day. — NOS4A2

Present as in Biden texting me about stuff? No?

Yes. You can operate in your day-to-day without some authority telling you what to do.

Yes. You can operate in your day-to-day without some authority telling you what to do. — NOS4A2

No. One of the main ways the US government controls healthcare is by Medicare funding. Few hospitals in America could run without it. In order to secure those funds, every hospital is careful to follow CMS rules, and JCAHO requirements. I acknowledge their authority to intimately guide my actions, and as a result, I am licensed.

You follow their rules for funding, not because you require an authority to govern your life. Presumably you would follow the rules according to any source of funding, not just state funding?

We only need to stop thinking in statist terms and the rest will follow. — NOS4A2

A fine example of magic thinking. Or it is magic not thinking?

How so?

Good question! What follows from not thinking in terms of the state?