Having never gone through any kind of vetting or Congressional scrutiny let alone approval. With no published mandate or actual warrant. Deleting programs and withholding funds previously approved by Congress. Nothing remotely like it has ever been attempted.

If a bunch of tools barge into an office, would the office not require a warrant? — jorndoe

The warrant is ‘don’t you know who I am?’ :brow: Those resisting are threatened with arrest by Federal marshalls.

Well, sure, now that you've provided that background. :up:

Give me an example of what you would describe as a mainstream intepretation? You came in with this:

Maybe it's talking about the time, before the Paleolithic (before cavemen) when men and women were not human. — Arcane Sandwich

which I for one have never encountered elsewhere.

Trump suspending all foreign aid and dissolving U.S.A.I.D. is hardly a demonstration of strength. The America that I used to look up to was deeply committed to humanitarian aid and leadership. That tens of thousands of unfortunates are left suffering without that lifeline speaks volumes about Trusk. What is the opposite of 'philanthropy'? (Oh, it's misanthropy. Hatred of the human race.)

Have you ever come across someone who didn't understand it? I haven't. Think about it. — Arcane Sandwich

Nothing you've said in the brief exchange we've had about 'the allegory of the Cave' would indicate that you interpret it accurately :brow:

I get it, and respect your readings. But at any given time I'm sorrounded by books I ought to read, not to mention my late-in-life attempt to generate some income, so Rödl will have to wait.

...continued:

What this could mean for the US

As Musk continues his assault on the federal bureaucracy, the American people will suffer the consequences.

The most immediate impact of state capture: worse decisions are made. By purging experienced civil servants, cancelling government contracts and accessing sensitive information systems, Musk’s actions will likely degrade the standard of living at home and endanger American lives abroad.

State capture also means there would be less accountability for the Trump administration’s public policy decisions. With a lack of congressional and independent oversight, key decisions over the distribution of economic benefits could be made informally behind closed doors.

Finally, state capture is inseparable from corruption. Doing business with the US federal government could soon require one to pass a loyalty test rather than a public interest test.

Trump’s enemies will encounter more hurdles, while his allies will have a seat at the table.

I studied it in anthropology. I could google it, but you can do your own research. And besides, this is not a thread about the human condition, but about the hostile takeover of the US Government.

Rousseau: 'Man is born free but everywhere is in chains'. But it's basically the 'myth of the noble savage', that the human condition in the natural state is one of spontaneity, freedom and equality. Which anthropology has comprehensively debunked - many tribal and non-industrialised cultures are shown to have high rates of murder and domestic violence. At least the Biblical myth has the Fall, which in my view depicts a real fact about human nature in symbolic form - we're not naturally inclined to being all sweetness and light.

All of which is beside the point of this thread, which was to comment on and document the hostile takeover of the functions of the US Federal Government by Elon Musk, acting as an agent for the current President. Between them they are white-anting the Federal public service - Musk is saying continuously that bureaucrats are a 'threat to democracy' and that 'in order for democracy to survive' they must be whittled down to size (this is Orwellian doublespeak in action). When it's actually Musk and Trump ('Trusk') that are blatant threats to the democratic process - flouting congress, constitution and the rule of law. As the post Banno linked to points out, what is happening in the US is 'state takeover':

the appropriation of state resources by political actors for their own ends: either private or political.

Musk’s aim could be to capture different pieces of the US government and turn the state into a tool for wealth extraction (and bear in mind, his net worth has been increased by hundreds of billions since the election. This is not theoretical.)

State capture is a relatively simple but extremely destructive process. This is how it has played out in countries like Indonesia, Hungary, Nigeria, Russia, Sri Lanka and South Africa (Musk’s birthplace):

First, political and corporate elites gain control of formal institutions, information systems and bureaucratic policy-making processes.

Then, they use this power to apply rules selectively, make biased decisions and allocate resources based on private interests (rather than the public good).

In captured states, strongman leaders often use economic policy and regulatory decisions to reward their political friends. For instance, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Russian President Vladimir Putin and former South African President Jacob Zuma have helped their allies by:

* making government anti-trust decisions
* issuing permits and licenses
* awarding government contracts and concessions
* waiving regulations or tariffs
* conferring tax exempt status.

State capture is fundamentally a predatory process.

I think it's fair to say that I'm respectful of your idealism and spiritualism. Wouldn't you agree? — Arcane Sandwich

Generally you’re a very courteous poster, yes. (Although I would gently distance myself from the word ‘spiritualism’, it always reminds me of Victorian seances with table-rapping and ectoplasm. Philosophical idealism is another thing.)

Why would Plato need an allegory to say that? — Arcane Sandwich

Because nobody gets it. Symbolic language is being used to convey profound and difficult insights.

It's philosophy 101, right? That section of the Republic is plainly allegorical, with the Sun representing the knowledge of the Good, towards which all should aspire. The 'ascent' from the 'Cave' is 'painful', and should the one who has ascended return to the cave and try and explain to the cave-dwellers the magnificence of the outside world, they'll want to kill him. The mainstream interpretation is that the cave represents the world of sensory experience, the ascent to the Sun represents the insight into the forms or intelligible principles which are only discernable to the 'eye of reason'. It is followed by the 'allegory of the divided line' which describes the levels of knowledge, from (mere) belief or opinion, through mathematical knowledge (dianoia) and then noesis (higher knowledge.)

None of this makes much sense to us moderns, because being committed to materialism and empiricism, we're essentially cave-dwellers ;-)

Hermeneutics, right? Interpretation of ancient texts. The allegory of the cave being on of the foundational texts of Western culture and being about the nature of knowledge and philosophical insight (noesis). Plato’s cave was never about actual cave-dwellers, or actual caves.

I’m happy to have delved into the book, as I’d noticed it before it was brought up here, but had been put off by the reviews and its perceived obtuseness. I wanted to like it, due to the title being about absolute idealism, what with my interest in and advocacy for philosophical idealism. And when I did the hard yards of reading the first three chapters, I started to see the points Rödl was making. But I also had a strong sense of ‘so what’? In plain language, he’s criticising ‘objectivism’ and/or metaphysical realism, the stance that the world is just so, irrespective of your or my or anyone’s judgement of it, something which I’ve never gone along with. In the end I decided that I’m not really the audience for the book, that audience being the academic profession. In fact I’m not much interested in 20th century philosophy, generally. So I’m not going to persist with it, but I’ve learned from the exercise.

If there were no life on earth, would time still keep flowing? — Corvus

It would - but by what measure? In the absence of awareness of past-present-future then what is time? We of course can comprehend the world before life existed but we do so against an implicit sense of the meaning of time, derived from our awareness of days and years. But again that is what we bring to it.

Maybe it's talking about the time, before the Paleolithic (before cavemen) when men and women were not human. — Arcane Sandwich

:rofl:

Isn’t it about our lack of insight? The absence of wisdom? Not seeing what is real? That’s how I’ve always interpreted it. I don’t think the ancient Greeks had much grasp of palaeontology.

The word "natural" is not made meaningless because it has more than one meaning. — RussellA

But its meaning is to differentiate the natural from the artificial, as per the examples given above. If you extend the meaning of ‘natural’ to encompass ‘the artificial’ then it looses its meaning.

Besides, what does it mean to say that h.sapiens is ‘part of nature’? Why is that meaningful or important?

In which case ‘natural’ has no meaning, because it doesn’t differentiate anything.

Three examples:

1. Light: Sunlight (natural) vs. LED bulbs (artificial)
2. Intelligence: Human cognition (natural) vs. AI algorithms (artificial)
3. Sweeteners: Honey (natural) vs. Aspartame (artificial)

I already said

You sound remarkably sanguine about it. — Wayfarer

I guess he thinks <p>.

I know, I know. I've promised myself, and everyone here, to 'stop posting about Trump', about a million times. But I can't look away, it's just too awful, and the threat too imminent.

Ain't the the truth. 'Look, here's the future I'm unleashing'. :yikes:

Hey Pierre-Normand - Wrong thread, I'm afraid. This one is about the imminent demise of American constitutional democracy.

A monkey is free from the burden of trust and convictions. We are enslaved by these fantasies. — ENOAH

As I’ve said, I see the modern idolisation of nature as a kind of nostalgia, where nature is beautiful and nurturing and pure and innocent. Love of nature is supposed to take us back to that state of innocence or purity. To say we’re ’ultimately nature’ is to try to return to that state of primordial purity. And that’s what is a fantasy. The reality of the human condition is far from that.

Earlier in this thread, I paraphrased the old saying ‘when America sneezes the whole world catches a cold.’ America is doing much worse than sneezing, and the world is going to get much more than a cold.

We are conceited apes. — ENOAH

But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind? — Charles Darwin, private correspondence

:up: Bernie Sanders never tires of pointing out that the World’s Richest Man made $150 billion in the two weeks following the election. It’s why I re-named the thread ‘plutocracy’, meaning ‘government by the very wealthy’.

:lol: The commentary said that Trump seemed a sideshow in the Oval Office, seemed distracted by the kid (pet name 'X' :vomit: )

I think it’s a problematic word, yes. Does supernatural mean anything? Is the supernatural unnatural? — Tom Storm

there's rather a good article on Aeon, just popped up, by Peter Harrison, who's books have been mentioned here from time to time, The Birth of Naturalism. (Not quite finished it myself yet, but a very thorough piece of work.)

As for me, I can perceive a distinction. Again I hark back to the Buddhist term for the Buddhas, 'lokuttara', meaning 'world-transcending'. In Tibetan iconographic representations of the 'wheel of life' - the various worlds, hellish, heavenly and human among them - the Buddhas are depicted as being on the outside of the circle, so to speak (as well as often being inside at the same time, i.e. transcendent yet immanent). But the essential thrust is that the Buddhas are no longer subject to the natural cycle of birth-and-death and are in that sense outside of or beyond it - beyond the world of becoming, hence, 'lokuttara'.

But then you find something similar in Christianity

Every progress in evolution is dearly paid for; miscarried attempts, merciless struggle everywhere. The more detailed our knowledge of nature becomes, the more we see, together with the element of generosity and progression which radiates from being, the law of degradation, the powers of destruction and death, the implacable voracity which are also inherent in the world of matter. And when it comes to man, surrounded and invaded as he is by a host of warping forces, psychology and anthropology are but an account of the fact that, while being essentially superior to them, he is at the same time the most unfortunate of animals. So it is that when its vision of the world is enlightened by science, the intellect which religious faith perfects realises still better that nature, however good in its own order, does not suffice, and that if the deepest hopes of mankind are not destined to turn to mockery, it is because a God-given energy better than nature is at work in us. — Jacques Maritain

Nature made petroleum but we made plastics, many of which nature has not previously dealt with, and which will last and trouble various species for a long time--or forever, perhaps, and maybe it should not be considered "natural". — BC

Definitely not!

Just making the information available for those interested. You're under no compulsion to read it, you can keep enjoying your 'very nice life'.

Orwellian - says 'we are being transparent', when in actual fact, nobody has the slightest idea where Musk is getting his information from, what his plan of action is, or what his 'authorisation' amounts to.

So ‘natural’ means ‘anything whatever’. Meaning, it has no definition.

The Musk appearance in the office was also reported by the NY Times.

Answering questions from the media for the first time since his arrival in Washington to run the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, Mr. Musk stood next to the Resolute Desk and asserted that his work was in the interest of the public and democracy. President Trump sat behind the desk, chiming in with approval as he let the world’s richest man expound for roughly 30 minutes on the rationale for the drastic overhaul of the federal bureaucracy.

The goal is to “restore democracy,” Mr. Musk said. “If the bureaucracy’s in charge, then what meaning does democracy actually have?”

Among Mr. Musk’s claims, which he offered without providing evidence, was that some officials at the now-gutted U.S. Agency for International Development had been taking “kickbacks.” He said that “quite a few people” in the bureaucracy somehow had “managed to accrue tens of millions of dollars in net worth while they are in that position,” without explaining how he had made that assessment. He later claimed that some recipients of Social Security checks were as old as 150.

“We are actually trying to be as transparent as possible,” Mr. Musk said, referring to postings by his team on his social media site, X. “So all of our actions are maximally transparent.”

He continued, “I don’t know of a case where an organization has been more transparent than the DOGE organization.”

In reality, Mr. Musk’s team is operating in deep secrecy: surprising federal employees by descending upon agencies and gaining access to sensitive data systems. Mr. Musk himself is a “special government employee,” which, the White House has said, means his financial disclosure filing will not be made public.

It's basically a hostile takeover of the functions of the Federal Government. It is utterly Orwellian.

Trump goes all in on DOGE

“We are going to be signing a very important deal today,” Trump said from the Oval Office. “It’s DOGE.” He said that his administration had found “billions and billions of dollars in waste, fraud and abuse.” — Washington Post

How he's had time to 'find' billions and billions in the three frantic weeks since the inauguration is anyone's guess, although never a problem for someone who just makes stuff up.

The executive order gives billionaire Elon Musk’s DOGE, tasked with finding government inefficiencies, even more power than it has amassed in the first three weeks of the new administration. The order installs a “DOGE Team Lead” at each agency and gives that person oversight over hiring decisions. DOGE stands for Department of Government Efficiency. ...

Trump on Tuesday criticized the judicial rulings, saying that “it seems hard to believe that judges want to try and stop us from looking for corruption.”

He threatened to “look at the judges because that’s very serious,” but later said he would “always abide by the courts” and appeal their findings.

Well, that's something, but actions speak louder than words.

Musk saw fit to bring one of his many infant children to the Oval Office, charmingly named X Æ A-Xii.

I'm never really sure what counts as nature in these discussions. — Tom Storm

Like I said:

When astronomers scan the cosmos for signs of an advanced civilisation, they're looking for signals that wouldn't appear in nature; they’re looking for the ‘non-natural’. They might either be electromagnetic transmissions (radio etc) or the spectral emissions of non-naturally-occuring substances like our hydrocarbons and industrial solvents. So it's the assumption that the signs of another intelligent species will be found precisely because they're not naturally occuring. — Wayfarer

If nature refers to the ecosystem prior to or outside of human manufacture or artifacts, then I can't see how that is an especially problematic definition.

If 'artefact' means 'something made' then only h.sapiens can really manage that, courtesy of the famous opposable thumbs (although that is common to apes also). That passage I quoted the other day from Norman Fischer about the origin of ownership, tools and language, and with it, the sense of self - surely that's relevant. And stone tools were being manufactured long before homo became sapiens. So it goes back a long way, perhaps even a million years. But the more h.sapiens becomes reliant on tool use, clothing, possessions, and so on, to that extent they're already becoming separated from nature to some degree. And then with the advent of the Industrial Revolution and large-scale manufacturing, this takes on a whole new dimension doesn't it?

In a way, @RussellA's post illustrates what I said in the post above: the tendency of moderns to idolise nature as representing purity or wholeness. Sans God, it is the nearest we can imagine to those qualities.

Mankind is part of nature, not separate to it. — RussellA

I question that, Russell. If you were parachuted into a completely natural environment with no artifacts and minimal clothing, I suggest you would find survival extremely difficult (depending of course on the specific nature of the environment, rainforest probably being easier to survive than tundra or desert.) But our 'separateness' from nature seems perfectly obvious to me - we live in buildings, insulated by clothing, travelling in vehicles, none of which are naturally-occuring. So I think yours is rather a rose-coloured view in this respect :-)

What necessitates the "co-arising"? How could subjectivity co-arises with the objectivity? — Corvus

You asked about Buddhism before. The 'co-arising of self and world' is not foreign to Buddhism. In many of the early Buddhist texts (known as the 'Pali Canon') you will encounter the expression 'self-and-world' which designates the nature of lived experience. This is because the normal human state is always characterised by the sense of self and world. Being conscious is being conscious of.

Buddhist philosophical psychology is a subject known as abhidharma. It comprises a psychological theory about how perceptions and conceptions give rise to the various states of being. It is a very detailed and complex set of texts, indicating the depth and complexity of the subject matter:

In summary, the Abhidhamma describes how 28 physical phenomena co-arise with 52 mental factors, manifesting as 89 types of consciousness, which unfold in series of 17 mind moments, governed by 24 types of causal relation. — Source

But the point about abhidharma is, that it experiential in nature - dealing with the causal factors of experience. That is where it is somewhat different from Western metaphysics which always dealt with highly abstract concepts such as 'being' or 'essence' or 'substance'. The keynote of abhidharma is self-awareness (hence the connection with 'mindfulness'). That is the context in which the co-arising of self and other is meaningful. It shows how the mind identifies with or attaches to what it identifies with as 'me and mine'. The idea in Buddhism is to learn to detach from or disidentify with that. Not that we're here to discuss Buddhism in particular, but there has been a recent upsurge of interest in the resonances between Buddhism and modern philosophical schools like phenomenology.

When they co-arisen, are they then one? Or still two? — Corvus

Very interesting question. The meaning of 'advaya' (which is Buddhist non-dualism) is 'not divided' or 'not two' ('a-' meaning 'not', and 'dva' meaning 'divided'). That highlights the sense in which the goal of Buddhist practice is to lessen or overcome that sense of division or 'otherness' to existence or the sense of being 'outside' of existence. You will find expressions in Buddhist philosophy such as realising the 'undivided heart' as the consummation of practice.

It will become clear over the next few days and weeks the extent to which Trump and Musk intend to comply or defy with respect to court decisions. Many of those decisions have been adverse to Trump, but it seems to me that he truly believes he is above the law and that anyone who opposes his will is simply an obstacle to be navigated, with the full backing of the MAGA caucus. Today the news is all Gaza again - 'flooding the zone' - but these lawsuits and the Administrations response to them will be crucial.