Bodhisattvacat
2004-11-23 19:58:41 UTC
Intercultural competition and global economy
============================================
When companies compete among each other for customers - when firms
have to struggle to make their sales - the customers are treated to
the best results of many people's efforts. As such, their condition is
greatly improved. When cultures compete among each other for
devotees - when good ideas from many cultures are offered - then
people, the consumers of culture, have meaningful choice among the
best of the world's ideas. The people are given the best of the world,
and none is a victim of bullying by home agents. Through intercultural
openness and competition is thus achieved the best life for the people
around the world.
The global economy means that the customers are given the best of the
world's economic output produced in free and fair global marketplace,
and the world's workers have access to markets outside their
countries. Over the last 20 years, global economy has succeeded in
lifting 250 million people out of poverty in China alone, allowing
them access to opportunity and self-empowerment at a scale unknown in
their history. Global economy is the best policy for improving
people's lives ever invented, a far improvement on any socialist
initiative.
It is said that trade can be not fair, as other countries may lack
America's environmental and labor standards. Through economic
engagement America gains leverage over these countries to demand that
they adopt suitable labor and environmental standards; a power to
improve lives of people that transcends national borders. One may say
that engagement is a two-way street, and that America may stand to be
influenced by foreign powers. I posit that that's not such a bad
thing; I posit that if a foreign power can come up with an idea better
than ours then in a free marketplace of ideas we stand to benefit
through giving it hearing, in the same way as other countries stand to
benefit through adoption of our ideas should they be better than ones
which they possess.
The global economy works because it increases the amount of wealth,
by releasing money that would otherwise be bound up in expensive
domestic goods and allowing the customer more discretionary income
to use elsewhere in the economy, while similarly increasing the wealth
in the trader country - the wealth with which they could buy the best
of our goods. Global economy realizes savings that are used to power
the economies of the countries involved in the exchange. It gives the
customers the best of the world at their disposal. And it allows the
people in other countries opportunity to a better life than they had
ever had through the mechanism of capitalism, while allowing us the
mechanism to bring their governments to treat them legitimately. It
improves the lives of people around the world, and it allows us the
power to effect change in other countries, standing up for the rights
of our neighbor where he or she would have been a victim of
oppression.
We are standing at a gateway to the era of global prosperity - the era
when more people are being empowered to live decent lives around the
world than ever before. The best time in the history of the world, as
measured by the level of peace, liberty and prosperity of its
citizens, is now. The temporary problems of adjustment are mere
hiccups in comparison to what can be achieved if the world stays the
course and possesses political will to make global economy work for
its citizens. I may have to change careers, but I would make that
sacrifice
if that means that people around the world prosper. Right here, right
now. There's no other place I'd rather be.
The equilibrium theory
======================
John Nash proved using game theory that the best outcome - the pareto-
optimal solution - in any situation with multiple players pursuing
their own interest, is a solution that takes into account the
interests of individual players and the interests of the group. To
arrive at a pareto-optimal condition of the global economy, is
required a sense of responsibility of the whole of humanity - as well
as a healthy self-interest, one not based in greed or in hatred or
narcissism but rather in a healthy self-love. Loving oneself, people
also learn to love their neighbor, whether they be next door or in
India, and consider their benefit in their calculation.
The pareto-optimal solution for the global economy thus builds on
Christianity, reifying the Christian command to love one's
neighbor as oneself - that is, to love both the self and the neighbor,
whatever the nationality of that neighbor might be; to do good and to
do well at the same time. It reifies psychology's attempt to raise
people's self-esteem, seeing that healthy positive self-appraisal also
leads to reduction of hostility toward other people and increase in a
sense of empathy for others. The pareto-optimal solution allows for
pursuit of self-interest as well as interest of the whole - for both
self-improvement and altruism - for fulfilment, that is, of both the
self-directed and other-directed elements in the human psyche, both of
which are legitimate and both of which need to be fulfilled for a
healthy society to exist. It demands that self-interest be balanced
with the interests of the whole, working for the self as well as for
the whole of mankind - a situation that requires a mixture of
competition and collaboration, or rather competition within the
framework of collaboration and striving for common good.
Competition is used to arrive at the best product; global
collaboration is used to achieve the best shared outcome. People
compete to arrive at the best product and to achieve the best of
themselves; and together they work for the benefit of the whole.
Nature possesses examples of both competition and cooperation. The
living things have to struggle to survive; but all require the
biosphere. The natural world is perfect - in that every specimen
is the best of itself, and they all fit in together in a delicately
balanced ecosystem. In the same way, humanity achieves its best
outcome through an order that improves each member and aims at the
good of the whole - in which each member strives to be the best he
or she can be and get the best for him or herself, but sees the
benefit of mankind as the overarching goal.
To that effect global economy is a perfect solution, combining the
best of entrepreneurial expertise with the best of labor, spreading
prosperity around the world, lifting hundreds of millions of people
out of poverty and making a decent living available to anyone who is
willing to work hard and well. Obeying Christ's definition of one's
neighbor as everyone in the world - including one's wife as well as
the Samaritans - the global economy makes the best of people and gives
the best to people, as they work for the benefit of themselves and for
the benefit of the world. Bad producers, with their cancerous effect
on society, are removed through better production in other countries;
good producers prosper and spread prosperity achieved through
possession of global markets. People end up doing good and doing well
at the same time - the practical implementation of "Love your neighbor
as yourself."
Balance
=======
A structure has to be balanced, and it has to be dynamic. This means
that it has to be stable and self-consistent, with all its components
integrated into a whole; and it has to be moving ahead. An airplane is
a model of this; a balanced structure with two wings allows self-
consistency, which is required for flight to take place. And the
flight - the dynamism - the moving ahead - is the product.
Balance and dynamism, therefore, contrive in making the most of the
structure. The dynamic equilibrium that allows for life to take place,
the complex structures of biofeedback, is a structure that is both
balanced and dynamic - that allows for motion even as it is consistent
in itself. A particular agent within the structure may or may not be
balanced in itself, but it becomes part of the overall balance
contributing in one or another way to its dynamic harmony.
When a mind finds balance, it becomes more effective and is at peace.
Confucianism saw social harmony as the prime goal and deified social
structure, equating it with God. Taoism saw society as essentially
poisonous and saw the divine expressed in the language of nature. The
way of nature is a dynamic harmony, a motion that sustains life within
a structure that enfolds it; and we as people should be capable
of achieving something similar in our own society. And the successful
societies have been the ones that have balance and dynamism at the
same time.
In Holy Trinity is found the highest balance possible, a triangle
between Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. It is a dynamic union, a
union that is always supporting life. The triangle moves in us and
through us, eternally around us; and we reach through this triangle
to the mind of God.
By this triangle we are moved, and encircling around it is the
schechina. Through communion with the Holy Trinity we are given
eternal life. To savor the Holy Trinity, we are required to give up
ourselves and be moved by it. This motion both moves us and balances
us, making us powerful force for good.
To move the world, one needs to place oneself in the center of Holy
Trinity and become a point that has access to every agent within it.
With the motion of human spirit informed by the Holy Spirit comes
enlightenment. The person becomes uplifted, and the depths as well as
the heights become accessible. And the gift, once one surrenders to
Holy Trinity, becomes paradoxically greater choice and greater
strength than can be attained outside of it.
Balanced, dynamic state of affairs allows for relationship with beings
that are not precisely like ourselves yet who in one or another way
interest us and move us. A relationship is best that has both parties
balanced in power and dynamically working for the best for each other
and for the relationship. Balance keeps the mechanism running;
dynamism gives it purpose and strength. The relationship becomes an
airplane flying forward.
Balance and dynamism - the dynamic equilibrium - is the language of
nature. It is what allows for ecosystems to thrive, supporting myriad
kinds of life and remaining alive. It is an expression from which
people can learn and by which they can direct their energies. Learning
God's way is essential to understanding life and building a better
life for ourselves here on earth.
Christianity and women's rights
===============================
My boss is a Jewish carpenter, and the New Testament says that women
should be obedient to their husbands and respect them, while men must
love their wives like their own flesh. The intent of the New
Testament is noble relationships - as Philippians 4:8 says, focus on
that which is kindly, high, lovely, good and righteous. To
achieve the fulfilment of the divine plan, the approach must
be two fold. One is the persuasion path: educating people in the
entirety of New Testament truths and building up inner structures so
as to create noble relationships, ones in which men and wives treat
each other properly. The other path is the earthy one, based on the
fact that people are not perfect, and many men, if left to their own
devices without women's input - if men have all the power - violate
the commands against mistreating their wives. The facts of life -
the imperfection of human nature - thus dictates that it is necessary
to have women possess enough earthly power to act as a check and
balance on men's sinful natures and have the instruments with which
to bring them into compliance with the proper ways of treating women,
even while leaving the relationships in which such treatment exists -
and the healthy woman's disinterest in power and interest in love -
to work its divine magic of healthy living. Based on this reasoning I
embrace both Christian ethics and women's power, and see no
contradiction between the two.
Integrative perspective
=======================
One is in the picture, and one is the painter. One is the agent and
the acted upon. One is the creator and the creation. An integrative
approach allows one to be both at once, a co-creative participant in
God's world.
Self-esteem
===========
Self-esteem is how one views oneself. The theory of traditional
education has been that it is necessary to undermine people's self-
esteem, or rather their self-centeredness, in order that they not be
arrogant, but rather be dedicated to the country. Families, in
turn, have been undermining their children's self-esteem in order that
they keep a tighter leash upon them. With these factors working
against them, few people ever developed good self-esteem.
Simply to put, the concept of self-esteem is antithetical to all
traditional values. The people were being put down in order that they
might excel; they were told to achieve or else. What Rodney Wines,
a poster on alt.romance, once said - 'can you not look yourself in
the mirror and see yourself as OK?' - is antithetical to the system
that demands oneself to see oneself as entirely not OK and redeemed
only through actions that lead to social benefit or through blood of
Christ.
The cannibalistic orgies that have been seen in the American society
since the development of the concept of self-esteem - the attacks on
women who wind up with abusive spouses or men who do not easily fit in
- are therefore both self-indulgent and injust, perpetuating the
injustice of bad things having happened to people by attacking people
once more as being damaged goods. It is a case of man abdicating his
responsibility for shaping the world into a place worthy of human
habitation, a place in which the concepts of justice and value have
real reification, and instead participating in the harm that was done
to people by forces beyond their control. It is a case of envy by the
lower classes attacking the people who possess refinement of the soul.
It is a case of cowardice and a case of self-indulgence; it is a case
of moral turpitude and emotional weakness masquerading as realism and
strength. The righteous path is to ignore such abuses and resolve the
injustice of injury to people's self-esteem - through showing them
from the sides the love that is necessary to break them out of the
cycle and to remain strong in loving them consciously and
intelligently no matter how hard and emotionally wrenching the task
may be.
Ilya Shambat
http://www.geocities.com/drr0cket
http://www.geocities.com/ilya_shambat2000
http://www.geocities.com/ilya_shambat2000/poems.htm
============================================
When companies compete among each other for customers - when firms
have to struggle to make their sales - the customers are treated to
the best results of many people's efforts. As such, their condition is
greatly improved. When cultures compete among each other for
devotees - when good ideas from many cultures are offered - then
people, the consumers of culture, have meaningful choice among the
best of the world's ideas. The people are given the best of the world,
and none is a victim of bullying by home agents. Through intercultural
openness and competition is thus achieved the best life for the people
around the world.
The global economy means that the customers are given the best of the
world's economic output produced in free and fair global marketplace,
and the world's workers have access to markets outside their
countries. Over the last 20 years, global economy has succeeded in
lifting 250 million people out of poverty in China alone, allowing
them access to opportunity and self-empowerment at a scale unknown in
their history. Global economy is the best policy for improving
people's lives ever invented, a far improvement on any socialist
initiative.
It is said that trade can be not fair, as other countries may lack
America's environmental and labor standards. Through economic
engagement America gains leverage over these countries to demand that
they adopt suitable labor and environmental standards; a power to
improve lives of people that transcends national borders. One may say
that engagement is a two-way street, and that America may stand to be
influenced by foreign powers. I posit that that's not such a bad
thing; I posit that if a foreign power can come up with an idea better
than ours then in a free marketplace of ideas we stand to benefit
through giving it hearing, in the same way as other countries stand to
benefit through adoption of our ideas should they be better than ones
which they possess.
The global economy works because it increases the amount of wealth,
by releasing money that would otherwise be bound up in expensive
domestic goods and allowing the customer more discretionary income
to use elsewhere in the economy, while similarly increasing the wealth
in the trader country - the wealth with which they could buy the best
of our goods. Global economy realizes savings that are used to power
the economies of the countries involved in the exchange. It gives the
customers the best of the world at their disposal. And it allows the
people in other countries opportunity to a better life than they had
ever had through the mechanism of capitalism, while allowing us the
mechanism to bring their governments to treat them legitimately. It
improves the lives of people around the world, and it allows us the
power to effect change in other countries, standing up for the rights
of our neighbor where he or she would have been a victim of
oppression.
We are standing at a gateway to the era of global prosperity - the era
when more people are being empowered to live decent lives around the
world than ever before. The best time in the history of the world, as
measured by the level of peace, liberty and prosperity of its
citizens, is now. The temporary problems of adjustment are mere
hiccups in comparison to what can be achieved if the world stays the
course and possesses political will to make global economy work for
its citizens. I may have to change careers, but I would make that
sacrifice
if that means that people around the world prosper. Right here, right
now. There's no other place I'd rather be.
The equilibrium theory
======================
John Nash proved using game theory that the best outcome - the pareto-
optimal solution - in any situation with multiple players pursuing
their own interest, is a solution that takes into account the
interests of individual players and the interests of the group. To
arrive at a pareto-optimal condition of the global economy, is
required a sense of responsibility of the whole of humanity - as well
as a healthy self-interest, one not based in greed or in hatred or
narcissism but rather in a healthy self-love. Loving oneself, people
also learn to love their neighbor, whether they be next door or in
India, and consider their benefit in their calculation.
The pareto-optimal solution for the global economy thus builds on
Christianity, reifying the Christian command to love one's
neighbor as oneself - that is, to love both the self and the neighbor,
whatever the nationality of that neighbor might be; to do good and to
do well at the same time. It reifies psychology's attempt to raise
people's self-esteem, seeing that healthy positive self-appraisal also
leads to reduction of hostility toward other people and increase in a
sense of empathy for others. The pareto-optimal solution allows for
pursuit of self-interest as well as interest of the whole - for both
self-improvement and altruism - for fulfilment, that is, of both the
self-directed and other-directed elements in the human psyche, both of
which are legitimate and both of which need to be fulfilled for a
healthy society to exist. It demands that self-interest be balanced
with the interests of the whole, working for the self as well as for
the whole of mankind - a situation that requires a mixture of
competition and collaboration, or rather competition within the
framework of collaboration and striving for common good.
Competition is used to arrive at the best product; global
collaboration is used to achieve the best shared outcome. People
compete to arrive at the best product and to achieve the best of
themselves; and together they work for the benefit of the whole.
Nature possesses examples of both competition and cooperation. The
living things have to struggle to survive; but all require the
biosphere. The natural world is perfect - in that every specimen
is the best of itself, and they all fit in together in a delicately
balanced ecosystem. In the same way, humanity achieves its best
outcome through an order that improves each member and aims at the
good of the whole - in which each member strives to be the best he
or she can be and get the best for him or herself, but sees the
benefit of mankind as the overarching goal.
To that effect global economy is a perfect solution, combining the
best of entrepreneurial expertise with the best of labor, spreading
prosperity around the world, lifting hundreds of millions of people
out of poverty and making a decent living available to anyone who is
willing to work hard and well. Obeying Christ's definition of one's
neighbor as everyone in the world - including one's wife as well as
the Samaritans - the global economy makes the best of people and gives
the best to people, as they work for the benefit of themselves and for
the benefit of the world. Bad producers, with their cancerous effect
on society, are removed through better production in other countries;
good producers prosper and spread prosperity achieved through
possession of global markets. People end up doing good and doing well
at the same time - the practical implementation of "Love your neighbor
as yourself."
Balance
=======
A structure has to be balanced, and it has to be dynamic. This means
that it has to be stable and self-consistent, with all its components
integrated into a whole; and it has to be moving ahead. An airplane is
a model of this; a balanced structure with two wings allows self-
consistency, which is required for flight to take place. And the
flight - the dynamism - the moving ahead - is the product.
Balance and dynamism, therefore, contrive in making the most of the
structure. The dynamic equilibrium that allows for life to take place,
the complex structures of biofeedback, is a structure that is both
balanced and dynamic - that allows for motion even as it is consistent
in itself. A particular agent within the structure may or may not be
balanced in itself, but it becomes part of the overall balance
contributing in one or another way to its dynamic harmony.
When a mind finds balance, it becomes more effective and is at peace.
Confucianism saw social harmony as the prime goal and deified social
structure, equating it with God. Taoism saw society as essentially
poisonous and saw the divine expressed in the language of nature. The
way of nature is a dynamic harmony, a motion that sustains life within
a structure that enfolds it; and we as people should be capable
of achieving something similar in our own society. And the successful
societies have been the ones that have balance and dynamism at the
same time.
In Holy Trinity is found the highest balance possible, a triangle
between Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. It is a dynamic union, a
union that is always supporting life. The triangle moves in us and
through us, eternally around us; and we reach through this triangle
to the mind of God.
By this triangle we are moved, and encircling around it is the
schechina. Through communion with the Holy Trinity we are given
eternal life. To savor the Holy Trinity, we are required to give up
ourselves and be moved by it. This motion both moves us and balances
us, making us powerful force for good.
To move the world, one needs to place oneself in the center of Holy
Trinity and become a point that has access to every agent within it.
With the motion of human spirit informed by the Holy Spirit comes
enlightenment. The person becomes uplifted, and the depths as well as
the heights become accessible. And the gift, once one surrenders to
Holy Trinity, becomes paradoxically greater choice and greater
strength than can be attained outside of it.
Balanced, dynamic state of affairs allows for relationship with beings
that are not precisely like ourselves yet who in one or another way
interest us and move us. A relationship is best that has both parties
balanced in power and dynamically working for the best for each other
and for the relationship. Balance keeps the mechanism running;
dynamism gives it purpose and strength. The relationship becomes an
airplane flying forward.
Balance and dynamism - the dynamic equilibrium - is the language of
nature. It is what allows for ecosystems to thrive, supporting myriad
kinds of life and remaining alive. It is an expression from which
people can learn and by which they can direct their energies. Learning
God's way is essential to understanding life and building a better
life for ourselves here on earth.
Christianity and women's rights
===============================
My boss is a Jewish carpenter, and the New Testament says that women
should be obedient to their husbands and respect them, while men must
love their wives like their own flesh. The intent of the New
Testament is noble relationships - as Philippians 4:8 says, focus on
that which is kindly, high, lovely, good and righteous. To
achieve the fulfilment of the divine plan, the approach must
be two fold. One is the persuasion path: educating people in the
entirety of New Testament truths and building up inner structures so
as to create noble relationships, ones in which men and wives treat
each other properly. The other path is the earthy one, based on the
fact that people are not perfect, and many men, if left to their own
devices without women's input - if men have all the power - violate
the commands against mistreating their wives. The facts of life -
the imperfection of human nature - thus dictates that it is necessary
to have women possess enough earthly power to act as a check and
balance on men's sinful natures and have the instruments with which
to bring them into compliance with the proper ways of treating women,
even while leaving the relationships in which such treatment exists -
and the healthy woman's disinterest in power and interest in love -
to work its divine magic of healthy living. Based on this reasoning I
embrace both Christian ethics and women's power, and see no
contradiction between the two.
Integrative perspective
=======================
One is in the picture, and one is the painter. One is the agent and
the acted upon. One is the creator and the creation. An integrative
approach allows one to be both at once, a co-creative participant in
God's world.
Self-esteem
===========
Self-esteem is how one views oneself. The theory of traditional
education has been that it is necessary to undermine people's self-
esteem, or rather their self-centeredness, in order that they not be
arrogant, but rather be dedicated to the country. Families, in
turn, have been undermining their children's self-esteem in order that
they keep a tighter leash upon them. With these factors working
against them, few people ever developed good self-esteem.
Simply to put, the concept of self-esteem is antithetical to all
traditional values. The people were being put down in order that they
might excel; they were told to achieve or else. What Rodney Wines,
a poster on alt.romance, once said - 'can you not look yourself in
the mirror and see yourself as OK?' - is antithetical to the system
that demands oneself to see oneself as entirely not OK and redeemed
only through actions that lead to social benefit or through blood of
Christ.
The cannibalistic orgies that have been seen in the American society
since the development of the concept of self-esteem - the attacks on
women who wind up with abusive spouses or men who do not easily fit in
- are therefore both self-indulgent and injust, perpetuating the
injustice of bad things having happened to people by attacking people
once more as being damaged goods. It is a case of man abdicating his
responsibility for shaping the world into a place worthy of human
habitation, a place in which the concepts of justice and value have
real reification, and instead participating in the harm that was done
to people by forces beyond their control. It is a case of envy by the
lower classes attacking the people who possess refinement of the soul.
It is a case of cowardice and a case of self-indulgence; it is a case
of moral turpitude and emotional weakness masquerading as realism and
strength. The righteous path is to ignore such abuses and resolve the
injustice of injury to people's self-esteem - through showing them
from the sides the love that is necessary to break them out of the
cycle and to remain strong in loving them consciously and
intelligently no matter how hard and emotionally wrenching the task
may be.
Ilya Shambat
http://www.geocities.com/drr0cket
http://www.geocities.com/ilya_shambat2000
http://www.geocities.com/ilya_shambat2000/poems.htm