[QUOTE=Got Stripers;1191865]
Quote:
Originally Posted by detbuch
You're usually a lot more lucid than this. This is wdmso territory in lacking clarity. Are you saying that I claimed that the Amish were a happy low income family not needing their part of the pie. Did I mention any families not needing their part of the pie? Did I specify any part of any pie? Are you referring to my "Many are satisfied with "barely" making a living wage. It keeps them living and able to have sex, watch TV, enjoy meals, get a good nights sleep . . . and, if they catch a spark of an idea, do better"? Are you referring to the rich who don't keep up with the richer rich?
Or something or someone entirely different?
[/What "system" makes it possible for everybody in it to be satisfied?There are some, like the Amish.
My response was to the rubbish you posted, where everyone in an Amish society is happy. Nothing could be farther from the truth, the men rule, they rape their sisters, their wives and probably anything with a hole that fits their “manhood”.
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Yes, well my lack of clarity may have given you the impression that I thought all Amish were "happy." I did not refer to individual Amish, nor to happiness (though being satisfied is a step in that direction). I was referring to the Amish prescribed societal "system" since you were interested in the "system" being responsible for some sort of equitable happiness or satisfaction. Not that, I admit, I am an expert on the Amish system, or even adequately informed about it. My uneducated assumption is that Amish society is a communitarian one in which everyone contributes to the wealth of the community and all receive in some equity the bounties of that wealth. I mentioned the Amish not as a specific model, but a generic type of communitarian society.
And, of course, I did mention that there is probably no system that will be devoid of "miscreants," those who don't perfectly follow the precepts of their system, but who use it for "unfair" advantage in gaining personal pleasure or wealth. If you're correct, Amish society is a total fraud in which all or most of the women are raped, incest is the pre-eminent norm and men are predominantly rapists and stealers of the supposedly common wealth. If that is true, I withdraw the Amish as any sort of model, although I believe that the prescribed system is not practiced by those you describe.
But, again, that will apply to any "system." It can only function as prescribed if its citizens are faithful to it. And if you're searching for or desiring a system without miscreants, I think you're looking for something impossible. Except, as I mentioned, something like that described in Huxley's Brave New World in which fetuses are injected with a chemical which physically implants the proper disposition to be a worker, or manager, or whatever.
There is no "system" created by humans, populated and run by humans which will give you your desired equitable distribution of wealth. Simply put, humans are not insects. Nor birds of any sort. Nor mammalian animals imprinted with irrevocable patterns of herd behavior. We have an endless potential for diversity in the human genome, the best we can do is probably teach each other to respect humanity as something more than living meat and the advantage of caring for each other rather than killing or oppressing each other. But removing the competitive, inquisitive, drive to personally improve commensurate to ones ability to do so is a form of killing and oppressing that which makes us human.